[atlantaprog] Re: Last Analog Tape Plant in World Closes (Opelika, AL)

Is this really a suprise, it seems most people don't care about audio
quality, the vast market accepts mp3's as the norm. For that matter
Rap artist degrade the quality of the audio so it sounds like it came
from the streets. Most modern music is squashed compressed, smothered
and covered.....
Hal


On Wed, 5 Jan 2005 21:33:08 -0500, Wheat Williams <wheat@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/06/004226&tid=141&tid=188&tid=1
> 
> Last Manufacturer of Pro Analog Audio Tape Closes
> 
> Posted by CowboyNeal on Wednesday January 05, @07:37PM
> from the reel-too-real dept.
> goosman writes "Quantegy, the last manufacturer of professional
> reel-to-reel analog audio tape in the world has closed their plant in
> Opelika, AL leaving a reported 250 workers without jobs, according to
> the Opelika-Auburn News. Emtec (the former BASF, which used to be AGFA)
> was the last European manufacturer and ceased manufacuring in 2002. An
> audio account of the closing can be heard at NPR."
> 
> http://www.oanow.com/servlet/Satellite?
> pagename=OAN%2FMGArticle%2FOAN_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=103177997676
> 7&path=!news!localnews
> 
> http://www.npr.org/rundowns/segment.php?wfId=4259503
> 
> ------------------
> Wheat sez--
> 
> Tom Scholz, legendary engineer/bandleader for Boston, recently gave an
> interview published at Gibson.com where he stated that he knew he was
> going to have to give up on analog reel-to-reel in the next year or
> two. He has switched to ProTools but hates it, and says he has to have
> an extra full-time professional engineer on his payroll just to operate
> ProTools. And he goes on and on about the specific limitations of
> digital recording (frequent computer crashes) and the digital medium,
> and the audible superiority of analog tape.
> 
> "Classic Sound of Boston is Still Tom Scholz, Still Recording on Tape"
> 
> http://www.gibson.com/absolutenm/templates/FeatureTemplate.aspx?
> articleid=175&zoneid=2
> -------------
> Wheat sez--
> 
> The big problem here is that analog tape is the universal archival
> medium.
> 
> 100 years from now, engineers will be able to play back 2-inch 24-track
> tape if it's been carefully environmentally preserved. But in 2104, who
> will be able to access and remix the individual tracks on an IDE hard
> disk of an elaborately mixed album recorded in Cubase SX 2.2 optimized
> for a Motorola G4 processor running Mac OS X 10.2? Nobody. All we will
> have, if we are lucky, is a 16-bit CD with a stereo mix.
> 
> In 1997 I interned at Crawford Productions. The Martin Luther King
> Foundation brought in Reverend King's entire library of sermons and
> speeches, which were on 1/4 inch reel-to-reel and cassette, for
> archival restoration. While Crawford made DATs and CDs, they explained
> to the Martin Luther King Foundation that they were also re-copying
> everything to fresh 1/4 inch analog tape, and that this would be the
> preferred archival method and the tapes they should most jealously
> protect.
> 
> What now?
> 
> Wheat Williams
> 
>

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