Every day, countless college students grab their MP3 player before heading to class, listening to their favorite songs in digital form. Recently, however, more bands have been turning away from digital in favor of the analog recording styles of the past.
Audiophiles are flocking to record stores to buy vintage vinyl records and even cassette tapes because of the music quality associated with analog. Yahoo!, for instance, reported a 210 percent increase in searches for “blank cassette tapes,” and NPR ranks its favorite cassette releases of each year.
Unsigned bands, in particular, are capitalizing on the nostalgic appreciation people have for older styles of recordings.
“Within the past five years, a lot of independent bands have started releasing on cassette just to almost create their own market,” said Chris Lute, whose band Valley Boys released its lastest EP on cassette.
While digital recording processes remain dominant in the music industry, Lute does not foresee the disappearance of analog, saying he believes the form will continue to gain popularity during the next few years. His statement is supported by decisions such as the Foo Fighters’ to record their newest album, Wasting Light, on cassette.
“If anything is going to be extinct, it’s going to be CDs,” Lute said.
The differing sound qualities offered by digital and analog often come into consideration for bands when they choose how to record and release their music.
Valley Boys liked the idea of recording onto a physical product instead of using digital production methods.
“Any physical medium is going to sound warmer and it has natural compression,” Lute said. “Digital sounds plastic-y and just not as good.”
The nature of the recording methods affects the way the final product sounds.
“The biggest difference is that digital is a representation of a sound wave — digital recordings take samples of the sound so many times per second and connects the dots,” said Eric Miller, a sophomore studying audio production. “Analog is as close as possible to a true one-to-one conversion of sound waves to tape.”
Because analog is a truer representation of the music’s sound, it adds a different quality to the recording. Analog picks up background noises and small mistakes more clearly than digital, adding to the authenticity of the sound.
Lute added that mistakes on analog sound more natural than they do on digital.
“There is a definite warmth and natural distortion to analog,” Miller said. “People often think digital sounds too digital or clean. Analog’s natural distortion adds depth to the sound.”
Although analog recordings offer raw sound quality that digital can’t duplicate, not everyone can discern the difference, Miller said. People with a good understanding of recording techniques make up much of the audience for analog recordings, he added.
“Intense music fans and collectors, people who are insane about music quality tend to buy it,” Lute said. “There’s also people who like to be cool and just do retro stuff.”
The retro aspect of analog, which produces music on physical mediums that were popular in the past, notably vinyl and cassettes, draws significant attention.
“If something is from a certain era … I always appreciate it better if it’s on whatever technology that was ‘the thing’ then,” said Madeline Jackson, a sophomore studying media studies.
“If it originally came out on tape, I want to hear it on tape,” Jackson said. “If it originally came out on vinyl, I want to hear it on vinyl.”
Although Jackson continues to buy music in its digital form because it is easier to purchase songs online and immediately be able to listen to them, she still seeks out analog recordings.
“I … usually prefer the sound of the vinyl record. There’s the nostalgia thing,” she said. “If it’s an older music form itself, like blues, it just sounds good on vinyl.”
Some independent record companies have been embracing the appreciation for analog recordings, and many bands have started releasing their music on vinyl with an accompanying digital copy.
“It has all of the convenience of the digital, but you have the tangible product with album artwork,” Jackson said.
bm257008@ohiou.edu
@ThePostCulture
