Note: If you have sold your car (and re-mortgaged your house) to buy one, stop reading and start chanting: "It's okay to record on a G4, it's okay to record..."
This is not another digital versus analog article, I promise. This is a highly opinionated, anecdotal investigation regarding the uses and misuses of Pro Tools Mix Plus 24 in the context of recording electric/acoustic instruments. While I am stridently pro-analog, I have no problem with the possibilities and promise of digital audio. I am a great champion of MP3 (the little codec that could) and hold the heretical view, at least in the analog world, that CDs are a superior storage medium to vinyl. I will focus on the sound (or, more accurately, my opinion of the sound) of Pro Tools, not on the supposed by-products of digital editing (i.e., decrease in the overall performance level of musicians — slick, lifeless, quantized, over-produced records), nor will I consider the larger question of hard disc recording.
I was reminded time and again by the people I interviewed for the article (many of whom, by the way, did not share my negative feelings about PT) that hearing is subjective and wholly personal. Tony Visconti, the brilliant producer/engineer who worked on over half of Bowie's earth-shattering '70s work, reminded me that hearing is a chemical process of the brain. "The bottom line is that Pro Tools is just a storage medium, just like tape, it does it in a different way." He adds, "Digital recording is still in its infancy and is getting better and better."
My studio, Tiny Telephone, has PT Mix Plus 24, and I've spent countless hours in the past two years using it for looping, sampling, recording and mixing demos. As a result, I have overwhelmingly dour feelings about this soon-to-be studio standard.
There was a time when the only projects in my studio that requested our Pro Tools rig were doing club remixes, sequenced beats, or the occasional rock band seeking Eric Valentine-like sheen [producer for Third Eye Blind, etc...]. But I've noticed a sea change in the past year: bands that have made great home recordings in the past (and who grew up listening to analog classics like the White Album and The Who Sell Out) started asking me about getting Pro Tools for their home studios. They not only wanted to do editing and sequencing on PT, they wanted to record directly into the computer. Indie bands that a few years ago would have been knee-jerk pro-analog would ask about bypassing the 2". "There's so much more we can do there, besides we don't want to buy tape..." And who can blame them? If PT sounded good it would be a dream come true, wouldn't it?
