One of the generally accepted purposes of editorials is to promote discussion (read argument), and what more controversial topic than digital multitrack recording?

It would be an understatement to say that the music industry is not currently at its all-time strongest, particularly in financial terms, yet we seem to be having the concept of digital multitrack thrown at us as though there was no alternative. Nobody denies that digital multitrack is a remarkable technological achievement, but until the price falls considerably, it isn't often cost-effective. And do we need it? In my book, it simply cannot be considered essential and it certainly shouldn't be a priority. Consider the following argument.

Classical music may certainly benefit from the low distortion, low noise and extended dynamic range of digital recording. However, the purist approach is often to record directly onto 2-track in which case an inexpensive PCM F1 system may be all you need. (I believe there to be a very strong case for digital mastering.) Rock or pop music on the other hand needs the flexibility of multitrack but the quality requirements differ, so is digital necessary or even desirable in this area? To answer this, let's consider a combination of voices; traditional acoustic or electronic instruments and synthesised sources. Most vocal recordings if listened to in isolation contain a little spill from the monitor phones that is higher than the noise floor of the recording medium and gates are often employed to clean up any such background noise, including unwanted breathing, so there's not really much to be gained in this area by going digital. Drums are gated viciously to improve crosstalk or replaced by machines or samples, so again there's no real advantage here. Electric guitars played through valve amps already contribute so heavily to the background noise that it's debatable whether even noise reduction is of benefit when recording onto a reasonable analogue machine. So, what is there that could improve on this? Traditional acoustic instruments might well sound better but there aren't really that many used in modern rock production any more and those that are are usually buried beneath other tracks. But what about the new generation of digital keyboards and samplers, surely they can do justice to a digital recorder? Undoubtedly some of them could, but now there is a fashion for driving all these devices from timecode so that they never actually come into contact with tape until they are mastered, which is often onto digital 2-track anyway.

So what is the advantage of digital multitrack (except to the manufacturer)? Moreover, consider that CDs haven't really increased the public's access to high quality sound: The majority of consumers are simply adding CD players to indifferent stereo systems or worse, buying low budget tower systems with CDs built-in. In this instance, the only real advantage of CDs is that they don't scratch or click, are small and maintain a low background noise. This is true for CDs made from either good quality analogue or digital masters.

Of course digital will eventually replace analogue, but let's wait until it makes financial sense before we do it. In the meantime, I can't help but feel that the public would be better off if the record companies would allocate more of their budget to finding worthwhile bands and a little less on recording mediocrity to the highest possible standard.

Having sown a few seeds of contention, what's new? Well, we've just returned from the NAMM and APRS shows and I can see that we are going to have many exciting products to look at over the next few months. Moreover they're not all exclusively priced for the professional market. To take one example, the Alesis Midifex costs exactly the same as the Midiverb (itself the cheapest digital reverb yet), and is previewed in this very issue.