Albini has recorded, mixed engineered some mega-selling albums. But he charges a flat fee, does not demand the common royalties/points. How many people can say they declined millions 💰💰💰on principle, because they consider common practice unethical? Very few.
There is a great juxtaposition between Steve and the moderator in this video: Steve is humble and makes a solid argument in favor of not passing judgment upon tastes whereas the moderator often makes condescending comments similar to many industry snobs I’ve met in my career (the space echo USB joke, correcting grammar in the questions segment). Steve really sticks out to me because he’s always extricated himself from the norm, in this case, the professional engineer who belittles in order to counteract their insecurity. Steve is comfortable and confident and never arrogant. I’ve learned so much from listening to him talk about the philosophy of music production, as opposed the the onslaught of gear marketing content disguised as informative/inspirational production advice. Stay golden, Albini-boy.
Exactly why I seriously don't like that moderator. Seems like someone trying to impress his boss instead of emerging himself in a conversation with an absolute legend.
@@rarelycomments was just listening and looked over and saw the shaking, oh good, it looks like they werent monitoring the camera at first and just assumed it was all set.
This is terribly a huge fucking loss....I'm not musician or any sort, but I have utmost respect for him. The fact that I will not hear anything from him ever again is unimaginably hard to swallow.
Same here. At least some consolation that we have dozens and dozens of podcasts and master classes where he so generously shares his craft and his perspective on music and life.
Well they’re good at producing music not producing videos lol which is what this kind of thinking is. Plus they know they can just toss the mic around, they’re not concerned with the superficial appearances
I absolutely love the way Steve expresses his thoughts and stuff, he's right on the money about physical copies and stuff will stay around forever. This man is a gem.... a legend of the highest standard (not to sound corny)
31:55 Such an awesome thing to hear an engineer say. A lot of engineers I think get caught up in knowing what is best for the people they work with. Very refreshing to hear of someone who is not afraid to allow people to be creative even in ways the engineer doesn't like the sound of.
This has been a fantastic interview. Great job by the host for getting Steve talking and just letting him go. Such great information from such an experienced guy.
1:05:33 "I think it's a mistake to presume things need to be made better all the time. I think a lot of things are fine just the way they are." This pretty much encapsulates his philosophy (as I understand it), and applies to much more than just recorded music
This is an incredibly enlightening look into Steve Albini's process! I've been both a fan of his music as well as many of the artists and recordings he's worked with. Thank You!!
His recordings with those bands have some of the GREATEST sound of any musical recordings ever done. I also adore his works with HUM, Jawbreaker, Pegboy, and I really wish he'd have worked with Smashing Pumpkins in their early days, but that didn't ever happen as far as I know.
This is an amazing interview I have a Big Black album in my record collection but was never a huge fan. Nor am I a big Nirvana fan but I still have a huge amount of respect for the way he thinks and works. I'm always amazed at all the 'how to build a studio' channels on youtube. It's always these sterile environments with sound proofing everywhere and bass traps with giant mixing boards going into a DAW. Those giant mixing boards are essentially a glorified mouse. Also think about all the pictures you've ever seen of The Beatles at Abbey Road or Hendrix at Electric Lady. You don't see people in glass boxes. You see people hanging out on couches in living rooms or big open rooms with pianos. Use your space for its unique character. Blood Sugar Sex Magik was recorded in a rented house. Led Zep in a haunted castle. Lou Reed recorded the original vocals to The Velvet's self titled album in a closet. So anyone out there who is interested in music production and home studio recording don't let these social media influencers make you think that you need thousands of dollars worth of gear you can't afford. They are being paid to sell a product. Your living room, bedroom, bathroom or garage might sound amazing. Especially right now. Lo-fi is all the rage. There are tons of pedals and plug-ins that try to emulate the sounds of older, less than state of the art gear. I also found out recently that Steve Albini doesn't earn royalties on albums that he's produced. I was stunned when i heard that and it gave me even more respect for the man. I also like his transparency as a producer. Like he says he's very hands off as far as the band and it's sound. I love Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails but every album of another artist that he's produced has his fingerprints all over it. I happen to like that but not all bands would sound good with NIN DNA inserted into it.
I thought analog was campy and outdated until I got into Steve's work. His expertise and genius work educated me and changed the very foundation of my understanding of audio recording. Steve is a legend
Such a brilliant mind. We used to discuss how Big Black recorded their early music and tried to emulate that. Or otherwise attempt to use their technique as a justification for our lack of technological prowess, whether it was a lack of financial means or simply the fact that we were devoid of any recording knowledge. His talks are fascinating
*Sorry, I'm a dumbass*: but, what do you mean you "discussed how big black recorded their early music and tried to emulate it"? Or "using their technique" when recording music? I didn't understand what you meant by that(yes I'm a dumbass, sorry if I'm sounding stupid as hell)
*I agree though, his talks are always fascinating and Big Black(Rapeman, too..Shellac's solid too, just never got too into em..) is/are in my top 5 favorite band(s).
@@josephhopeless829 I think he means that the recordings were 'noisy' and the 'mistakes' were left in which gives a really unique sound that isn't typical of studio albums but also doesn't sound live either because it was recorded in a studio. Edit: put quotations around noisy because calling the room sound noise comes across as pejorative and as Steve says using the sound of the room is a legitimate aesthetic choice.
1:51:30 He's referring to Chris Ott, ex-Pitchfork writer who threatened DMCA takedowns on his content hosted on Pitchfork after they were acquired by Conde Nast
one of the ironies of this is that he is in one hell of a band, Shellac. He doesn’t reference his musical career in the beginning (and throughout) which is of mega cultural importance. Yet he describes himself in the beginning as a guy who didn’t go broke recording bands. He is a true artist and craftsman.
I love his recording of The Breeders record. Partly, it's the band. But his bass and drums are so rich on certain sounds, and it was so different from a lot of the dryer, thinner recordings I was hearing at the time. It feels so present and alive, and those cymbals and guitar pop just right in their contrast. I'm still trying to accept that he's gone. He brought recordings to life. Neat guy.
In 09, I think, I was AES prez at SAE Nashville and hosted a battle of the bands to raise money to bring Steve to town for a seminar. Now, the fact that I had to raise funds in a for profit institution to bring a speaker to town aside... Steve was extremely down to earth and a great inspiration to several/many students. That being said, years later, get a *good* apprenticeship and save your damn money.
To do that, you need to read, experiment, fu*k up and so on .. It's a grueling industry. More so than most others, including the restaurant industry. If you *want* it, be ready to sacrifice, **jump at any opportunity** and be humble. There's 100 people out there who are better than you technically, but you can be better personally. Be-a-good-person.
I love synthesis. But this talk helped me place a firm line between using it to add something and using it to replace something. I really am getting more into using acoustic properties for effects.
"We were all very high on...... the way things were going" 😂 we all were expecting that to go a different direction. Fantastic talk. Thoroughly inspired as a musician and someone who loves the tech side of recording.
Steve's band was in the always play rotation for most of my post-high school drinking music. We partied and got hammered to the 'Hammer Party' and 'Jordan MN' was just north of us.
He is talking about all the digital devices that were introduced and faded out for example the mini disc 8 tracks. I have a few mini discs i recorded that i cant listen to.
The first band that comes to mind is melt banana just thinking about a band that have a very shrill and weird vocal sound. I think he has recorded with them but it would have been longer than 15 years ago. I guess you can call it punk
@@jerkersandquist7244 He also mentions that the vocalist was a male and Melt-Banana has a female vocalist. Did any of the male members ever record any vocals?
I very much appreciate Steve's hands off/non-producer approach to recording. At the same time I also very much like a control freak like Rick Hall of Fame Studios with his extremely hands on, coach/captain/hit-maker style of production. Rick's background as a wannabe hit-maker informs his technique, just as Steve's go for broke punk, originality first esthetic and his self-awareness of it informs his approach.
Agree with virtually everything he says but didn't know I did until I heard him speak. And specifically to the ADAT part. Had a hell of a time finding someone to transfer our 24 track album masters on ADAT from 1996, last year. Got it done at a place called AVAST in Seattle.
Not all digital is redundant I have backups going back 20 years, WAV&AIFF files have been around since 1991 they sound EXACTLY the same as when they were recorded! compare that to tape of the same year!
Have you done the amount of work Steve is talking about? I am sure that he is correct according to numbers. You are as far as degradation, but what about the idea of change of system? Changing file types etcetera.
@@billbradleymusic Can you find me an analog recording from 100 years ago that will play in pristine condition on today's gear? Certainly not on tape, which oxidizes. Look at the retro-computing movement, which saves 40 yr old EPROMs and software on floppy disks and resurrects them using modern hardware. If you want your work preserved for 100 years the ONLY choice is digital. Albini is very talented, but like a lot of creative people, he believes a lot of bullshit.
Digital bits are even more permanent and durable than analog tape. They will truly last forever - it’s just that what they are stored on will change over time. I can checksum digital bits to make sure they have not been damaged during storage. You cannot checksum an analog tape. One just needs to make sure the meaning of those digital bits is properly documented and open source so they can be properly converted back to audio.
@@DVDFRMN what a dummy! If you cant understand allegory then stop embarrassing yourself....you know how many people wrote to me that they got the same vibe? Just go to Barnes&Noble and buy all brainteasers they have, buddy.
Seems like he doesn't put down imitation or comparison, but does at least implicitly put down putting down such things. Seems to me David here's comment is worth ignoring.
Neil Hillis - the David or whoever comment was not registered in any meaningful way. In neurological terms, Broca's region discounts such comments as nonessential.
One might think the the people recording this master class by a renowned recording engineer could have somehow mustered up the foresight and ability to make the questions being asked at the end somehow magically be able to have been heard on the video recording. Maybe I am asking for too much.
I like this discussion because its still the same with film and references not only to technical points but beginning with them. 1. Analogue (Recording) Hardware is in every produced device unique even a machine produced it (like mixers). Its sound is depending on environmental influences and interferences. Maybe that supports the enthusiasm (the romantic feeling on getting warmer recordings) 2. From an archiving and preservation point of view, analogue and digital media is absolutely equal. Magnetic media is nevertheless the actual most cost-efficient media no matter if analogue tape or digital master archived on e.g. LTO. I would digitize analogue master tapes, but never renounce them as a sort of intermediate (which i also keep). 3. Like with analogue and digital film and the recording device the question is if a perfect recording is always the best recording or the best experience or the most natural one ... That's what Mr. Albini says. The more you come to post production the more the digital domain can happen and is more efficient. Dave Grohl's soundcity documentary is definitely worth seeing it. 34:00 That is why Nirvana went back to Mr. Albini after doing Nevermind with Butch Vig to get the more natural sound for In Utero. 44:00 Like in the film/tv and the audio domain -> DO NOT FIX IT IN THE POST - do everything possible during the production :) I like this masterclass. Thanks for filming it and putting it onto youtube. Great!
Great history, great input from Steve, ... but if I shook my head as many times as the interviewer in this vid I'd be a head banger 😛 ... jokes aside, this vid is gold! ... thanks for sharing ... BUT, kudos to the interviewer for letting Steve fully answer whatever he wants to answer ... Even the audience is all ears, meaning: They all know who Albini is and what unimaginable knowledge this man has ...
I will say, .flac and .wav are pretty steady formats. SD cards should be good as long as they keep making adapters when things change. Also data preservation and finding of lost media is a newfound pursuit amd thriving community. That said, the value of reel tapes will continue for such actual studio sessions and producing tape seems like it wouldn't be that hard compared to what it takes to even make vinyl.
I think you'd be better off over the long term with WAV files, optical media, and using things like SHA checksums to validate the files, and establishing a habit of revisiting the backups and performing transfers at regular intervals. Albini has much to say about the downsides of digital storage, but the notion of bit-perfect digital backups (as many as you want) could help avert disasters like the Universal Studios fire that destroyed thousands of master tapes. Any discussion of the downsides of long-term digital storage should include the downsides of analog tape storage: improper storage, natural and man made disasters, and stuff like that. Also: perhaps his position on the cloud would be different today? Today, Microsoft, Amazon and Google all will sell you cloud storage. The notion that all three of these companies would go out of business seems to punch a hole in the argument against cloud?
Albini is greatness! I understand his take on tape and os, but I do hope someone shows him Wav file format for the digital realm. they, like tape, will always be around.
Guys, you don't really get Steve, do you? He's talking about the physicality of tape. That it is an object and it's always there for you. It exists and it carries history. Digital files are not objects, they are easily removed from memory, just like 99% of the popular music of today, which in a few months is gone completely from our collective memory, cause it's made to be consumed and not to be appreciated as a piece of art that defies time. Steve's approach is a philosophical one, but also a pragmatic one.
Sorry. The memory storage devices that digital files exist on is as real as tape. You can touch it and hold it in your hand. What you can't hold on either is the actual music track held within. The notion that the music is more "really there" on tape than a thumb drive is an illusion propagated by Gen X gate-keepers like Albini. Tape deteriorates, tape is easily damaged. The fact that somewhere is the only original take or master of a song on one reel of tape should be terrifying and anxiety inducing.
@@AlexH8280 yeah I found that rather odd, when he's talking about how great TAPE is, and saying "analog doesn't degrade over time," since tape most assuredly degrades over time... Unless he was mixing that up with something like vinyl, or the master for cutting vinyl, perhaps?
As someone that has lost an entire library of work from a failed HD. This speaks to me, profoundly. I will never ever be able to get the time, energy or actual work back.
@@AlexH8280 He is speaking of digital formats. Do you know how many projects were recorded to ADAT in the 90's and early 2000's? Those machines were not meant to last forever. Parts will become unavailable. ADAT was just one format in the beginning of the digital transformation. There were several others. As to analog tape, I have been in the vault at Abbey Road. There are perfectly preserved pre-beatles tapes there that can still be played.
People, we know tape degrades and files don't. His point is if you store tape properly, there will always be a feasible way to play it back. It doesn't matter how many stored copies of your files you have. If they make the format obsolete tomorrow, well, there goes your archive.
absolute nonsense.. PCM WAV files have been around for decades.. the format is non propietary and it comes in all resolution flavors.. from 22khz 8 bit to 192khz 32-bit.. you can even have multirack WAV files. and if it ever becomes "obsolete", you can always transfer the data to a newer format..
I agree with Steve on not ascribing the sound of old records to the faults of old gear. However, I think that using tape saturation plugins as an effect in the digital paradigm is, to use his terms, a completely valid aesthetic. Trying to capture a band as they sound in the room assumes the only sound they aspire to make is the sound their gear is capable of making. Part of the beauty of recording, for me and a lot of people, is that the studio can become its own source of creativity and almost another instrument the band has at their disposal. If every band were limited to the sounds they could make in their basement with traditional rock instruments, recorded music would be boring as fuck.
I don't like to exceed 3 guitars in a mix. If the band needs multiple guitars from a composition standpoint, I'll do left right and center. Much easier to maintain phase coherency and give the mix a broader image. Nevermind was fucking overkill.
My studio has been using Tape Disks as our long term storage medium for well over 35 years since we went digital for multitrack recording so there is a way to archive and resurrect those sessions ALWAYS but its not as cheap as a USB drive or an SSD. Tape drives are slow like analog tape but a single $80-200 tape drive can hold 6 to 12 terabytes of information. I saw the same issues when the Sony PCM 32 track 1 inch reel to reel went out of production and DAT/ADAT was no longer able to be retrieved. But the engineer who owned the studio before me started archiving on computer Tape drives in the late 1980s. I can pull the lossless audio files from those tape drive that go back to around 1987/88 when he started using it and every digital session is archived on this format. Tape drives look like a 8-track cassette or a radio cart. The most common tape drive type is LTO but the drives to write to tape disks costs between $500 and $50,000 dollars depending on the brand and size. IBM, Apple, HP and all of the other giant tech companies use these for long archival storage and it is the only medium that isn't going away since the computer companies agreed to build a long term storage solution to always use as a backup to digital storage. You can buy them at B&H and other places online. But like with any analog medium the bulk quality matters.
Hi Mr. Albini, (if you ever read this), I'm a huge fan of dozens of your recordings, from early Urge Overkill and The Pixies, to The Jesus Lizard and Nirvana. Likewise, I'm a fan of many of your musical projects, including Big Black, and especially Shellac. That being said, I'd like to offer, to you and to all of RUclips's readership, my own arguments in the age-old battle of "what's better... analog or digital?" My background: I have an electrical engineering degree with specific applications to pro audio, from the College of Engineering and the School of Music at the University of Miami, in Florida. I worked for several years as a digital signal processing (DSP) engineer in Silicon Valley and later co-founded the Rhapsody Digital Music System. As you can surely guess, I'll be arguing on the side of digital audio being superior, and here's why. Yes, in the first 40 years of commercially available digital audio technologies, many physical media formats have already become obsolete. But PCM data is the straight sampled audio, which will never become obsolete. Today, there is no need for physical media when you can put pure PCM digital data up into any big-name "cloud storage" service and keep it indefinitely. If you insist on putting your PCM data on some physical medium, you can always do so, and the fidelity of the recording will be perfect even if the machine that reads that digital data is very low quality, while analog information suffers greatly when using sub-par equipment. Even in the hypothetical apocalyptic scenario, building a D/A converter to turn that PCM data back into an electrical signal that can be sent to loudspeakers is actually not that complex. Both A/D and D/A converters can essentially be built using nothing much more than a voltage divider made by a bunch of resistors in series. Hypothetically, one could even write down the entire series of zeros and ones onto paper, and their audio is perfectly stored and retrievable; try doing that with an analog signal. Digital will always be played back at the correct speed, with only extremely small amounts of time variance (jitter). All of the major cloud services have very robust backup regimens, with backups, and backups of the backups, stored on SSD's and physical tapes at multiple physical locations in different geographic regions. For extra security, go ahead and put it up in a couple of cloud services. Your data will be available for download at any time, to anywhere. It will still be available long after we're all dead, and it will sound as perfect as the day it first came through the A/D converters. You can record and save as many tracks as you want, tracks of your entire recording session, all studio talkback, all submixes, all "final" mixes, all masters, EVERYTHING, indefinitely, at a miniscule cost. You can make as many copies of any and all of this audio with ZERO loss of fidelity, even after a billion (or more) copies. ZERO loss of fidelity means no new noise, no harmonic distortion, no lessening of dynamic range, no compression... perfect. Digital recording technologies do not add appreciable (i.e. audible) compression or dynamic distortion all the way up until the very point of clipping. Nobody needs to learn every setting, every option, every feature of digital recording software or systems. One can be considered an "expert" as long as they create excellent recordings, mixes, masters or whatever they specialize in. Yes, digital processing of effects and other manipulations CAN introduce mathematical errors, but if the processing is done at a modestly higher bit-rate than the final product will be released at, then the accumulation of errors is simply trimmed off during bit-rate reduction. 6 or even 4 additional bits is usually more than adequate. Analog tapes are saved on reels. They can be permanently destroyed by a magnet or one single fire in the place they are stored. Even if backups exist, the quality of them suffers on each replication. Tapes are typically saved "tails-out", and even with the best quality tape, over time, there will always be SOME magnetic bleed-through which will create some degree of ghost images. No matter how faint they might be, they're there. The images effectively add echoes to the recording, and the time between echoes doesn't even remain constant, because the time between them is a function of the diameters of the tape on the reels at each moment in time. Each reel of analog tape is expensive and will only record a finite set of tracks, typically 16 or 24 on the professional 1" or 2" tapes. Recording and playing the tapes require large and very expensive machines that require skilled maintenance over time to keep the biasing and the gauss levels going to and coming off of tape consistent over the life of the machines. The machines attempt to maintain the same tape speeds, typically 15 or 30 ips, over the life of the machines, but there is always "wow" and "flutter". Capstans, tape guides and heads all wear over time and replacement parts aren't always identical to originals. Audio signal paths are often compromised by poor design in the use of switches, pots and fader sliders. As every engineer knows, tapes will also add natural compression as you push the levels up closer and closer to saturation. When this happens, the dynamic range is reduced, effectively pulling the noise floor up, and the clipping of signal adds harmonic distortion. Even the subtlest rounding off of peak levels adds harmonic distortion. Vinyl media and the equipment to create and use them, have limitations that are even more serious. No matter how perfect vinyl recordings are created, with direct metal cuts created by the best quality machinery, pressed onto the best media available, etc... the audio will still be recreated by players that vary greatly. Most record players are not particularly good at playing a recording back at the actual correct speed, and most players will also add low frequency noise due to the slightest vertical warping of media. The styluses (needles) used by most players are not high quality, but even the BEST styluses are subject to the tiniest particles of dust, dirt, even fingerprints on the records. Also, the records themselves continually degrade with every playback due to the friction of the stylus, losing the high frequencies first and then working on down to the upper-mid frequencies over time. Whether or not you think analog "sounds better" or "warmer", or more "lively" or "musical", these are subjective judgements. I disagree that noise, saturation, distortion, pops and crackles, etc. is immaterial to one's listening experience, but again, that's a subjective evaluation. However, the concept that the finest analog equipment is somehow "peerless" is ridiculous. The A/D and D/A converters are the ONLY elements of a digital system that are subject to any physical imperfections, and on EVERY possible technical and/or electrical measurement, the qualities of the finest, professional A/D converters FAR exceed their analog counterparts, and consumer D/A converters far exceed the abilities of vinyl. In fact, even many midrange/mid-priced digital converters will typically outperform even the best analog signal path, with the MOST ACCURATE representation of what one's microphones capture. If an individual prefers the results of recording and playing back via analog signal paths, then I certainly cannot argue with them. One likes what one likes. But if you're considering the accuracy/fidelity of a recording with respect to what came down the wire from the microphone... then there is NO question: digital audio systems are superior in every way. And... all of the above is just what came off the top of my head today. I could fill an entire book with more details. :-) Cheers, Steve. I love your work.
Dave Lampton Damn, that was pretty convincing. I'm not qualified to give a truly informed opinion on this, but I know enough to be impressed with your argument. I appreciate you sharing that information and angle on this, Dave.
I think albini was more referring to the fact that the analog master is open to remastering and preservation , but a wav from a session on one computer that ran ableton (or insert any recording software program) is pointless to open on another computer ten years later because you will not have those same raw samples and plug-ins that were on that master from the original (most likely at least)
Hi LIL RETRO MANE, thanks for the comment. So actually, WAV/AIFF and other PCM formats contain the raw sampled audio, so as long as the producer/engineer/artist/label/somebody was wise enough to archive their original raw recorded tracks and their mixes, then indeed, those projects can be remixed and/or remastered using any future audio software. While it's true that some or all of the original effects plug-ins MAY not be available, if somebody is thinking ahead, the effects plugins themselves can also be saved into a plugins archive or as part of each project archive. Storage has become so inexpensive that file and archive sizes can be virtually ignored. If not, there will be plenty of equivalent or better alternative plugins available, many are even free. Furthermore, most DAW software and/or the effects plugins themselves have some way(s) to backup all of their settings in standard file formats (e.g. VST, RTAS, AU, XML) which can easily be supported for a very long time to come, even after the inevitable new standards start being used on new projects. This is because support for those formats is already available and they will not require any new development efforts in order to continue supporting them. (Those sorts of "already solved" software efforts are packaged and redistributed as reusable libraries, DLLs, etc.) Lastly, the suggestion to store all data archives on multiple cloud storage services will provide full access to redundant, secured copies from anywhere in the world, 24/7/365, while eliminating all concerns about having to manage the long-term storage, safety, and security of physical computer hardware, all at very reasonable prices, especially paid long-term, up front. Cheers.
NOW, I DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH KNOWLEDGE ON AUDIO ENGINEERING TO REFUTE OR BACK UP ANY OF THESE POINTS EXCEPT ONE. IN ONE OF STEVE'S MANY LECTURES HE DISCUSSED THE FACT THAT IF YOU TRY TO INPUT SOMETHING INTO A PROGRAM FOR MAKING MUSIC DIGITALLY AND IT DOESN'T READ THAT BIT OF BINARY IT WILL FUCK UP THE NEXT FEW STEPS IN A SEQUENCE, NOW AS A WAY TO PRACTICE MAKING MUSIC BECAUSE I'VE ONLY BEGUN TRYING TO MAKE MUSIC AND RECORDING IT A YEAR AND A HALF AGO I'VE USED A D.A.W. AND I CAN SAY THAT IS INDEED 100% CORRECT. IN HERE, AT SOME POINT, YOU SAY YOU COULD SAVE THAT CODE IN ANY WAY A COMPUTER COULD POTENTIALLY READ IT, AND IT WOULD READ IT BACK *PERFECTLY*. ANY D.A.W. OR DIGITAL PLAYBACK METHOD LOVES TO FUCK UP ON READING SOMETHING OCCASIONALLY, ESPECIALLY IF THERE IS A LOT OF INFORMATION TO PROCESS AT CERTAIN MOMENTS. ANOTHER THING: GET A STRONG ENOUGH MAGNET AND IT WILL ERASE ALL YOUR DATA ON A COMPUTER, OR LIGHT A FIRE AND YOUR COMPUTER IS JUST GONE. JUST SAYING. I COULD VERY EASILY PASS YOU OFF AS SOMEONE WHO IS SOLELY INTERESTED IN SAYING PEOPLE ARE WRONG ABOUT DIGITAL BEING INFERIOR TO ANALOG WAYS OF RECORDING AND PLAYING BACK BECAUSE YOUR LIFE WORK IS COMPLETELY GEARED TOWARDS DIGITAL AND THAT YOU SIMPLY DON'T WANT PEOPLE TO MAKE YOU LOOK INFERIOR FOR SPENDING SO MUCH OF YOUR RAW TIME IN THAT SPECIFIC PORTION OF THIS FIELD, BUT BECAUSE I KNOW ONLY WHAT I HAVE BEEN EXPOSING MYSELF TO I WON'T FOR NOW.
the idea that there is music out there locked away on inaccessible dead formats is fascinating Of course when it comes to computers, nothing is really impossible. Perhaps very difficult and not financially feasible, but not impossible
I graduated college in the 1990s. My files then were largely stored on floppies and hard disks. In the late 1990s, I bought a CD-ROM burner and burned the contents of those floppies and hard drives to CD's. Later, I transferred the data from CDs to DVDs. Many years later now, my files have been transferred two more times, from DVD to a RAID array, then to another RAID array. The point is, I have data that is almost 30 years old today. If it's worth keeping (and sometimes if it isn't!) it is always easy to execute digital transfers. Not only that, I still have the optical disks, and 20+ years later, they can still be read successfully. For this reason, I simply don't agree at all with Albini's assertion that digital backups can't be done safely. Because I've done it. And he doesn't mention all the downsides to analog tape storage either. Now, one thing I will say is that if you backup using a proprietary format, you could be in trouble down the road. The safer route would be to export full multitracks of an audio recording in something like broadcast wave format, where we can be reasonably sure the format will be around for a long time. Additionally, we can be sure that since the standard for that format has been published, software could be developed to read it if need be. So, don't save a pro tools session and hope you can load it later. Export multitrack wav files, save notes along with them and name the files properly, keep them organized, and revisit your backups over time, store multiple backups, and you will be fine.
1:46:00 I use pre-iLok, pre-auth protools and plugins. Other engineers and sometimes musicians ask me when will I "upgrade" and I try not to laugh. I don't need the internet or anything to work. Why should I expose myself to the whims of the corporations and the possibility that the internet could just go dark someday? then what? What's your plan then, people? Apparently, the U.S. military has a ton of mission critical programs running on Windows XP and they refuse to "upgrade" for similar reasons
If a band like Led Zeppelin was recorded on an expired digital format they would find a way of copying it to a modern format. It's not lost forever, it's just not as easy to extract and may cost substantial money compared to analog tape.
Mr. Albino, seems like your attitude and philosophy of recording musicians is what any artist would or should look for when going to make a recording. If you have any extra material from In Utero...👍😀
The guy who fullfilled Nirvanas wish to make a record how they wanted to sound. Kurt was so happy about that he could do it...the problem was the label, they want sell and not make great art. Digital vs Analog....i have no problem with digital as far as the band can play it live without a computer.
Albini has recorded, mixed engineered some mega-selling albums. But he charges a flat fee, does not demand the common royalties/points.
How many people can say they declined millions 💰💰💰on principle, because they consider common practice unethical?
Very few.
Kurt blew up his head for millions of dollar....how many can say that?
The guy is realness incarnate. Absolute don.
recording engineers are not in it for the money, it's not a high paying job to begin with.
Lol it varies a huge amount and most the pop producers are making bank
@@okirrama3587 oh you were there
RIP Steve. You really were one of my heroes. Gonna miss you much.
There is a great juxtaposition between Steve and the moderator in this video: Steve is humble and makes a solid argument in favor of not passing judgment upon tastes whereas the moderator often makes condescending comments similar to many industry snobs I’ve met in my career (the space echo USB joke, correcting grammar in the questions segment). Steve really sticks out to me because he’s always extricated himself from the norm, in this case, the professional engineer who belittles in order to counteract their insecurity. Steve is comfortable and confident and never arrogant. I’ve learned so much from listening to him talk about the philosophy of music production, as opposed the the onslaught of gear marketing content disguised as informative/inspirational production advice. Stay golden, Albini-boy.
1:25:27 that warm analog sound is IS not ARE otherwise it would be THOSE analog soundS, he is actually correcting grammar wrong
Exactly why I seriously don't like that moderator. Seems like someone trying to impress his boss instead of emerging himself in a conversation with an absolute legend.
@lassebang I think you meant "immersing" , not "emerging" 👍
Steve should teach art ethics. His are impeccable.
yeah, so impeccable that he used to run bands called "Rapeman" and "Run Ni***r, run"
“If you have a any further questions feel free to send me an email or whatever, I’m always around” RIP Steve 😢
props to the cameraman for persevering thru a severe bout of parkinsons
Mat Turner love ❤️
I was so afraid the whole video was going to look like that
@@rarelycomments was just listening and looked over and saw the shaking, oh good, it looks like they werent monitoring the camera at first and just assumed it was all set.
Avantgarde
@@Cap_tain_Cave_man hahahaha
This is terribly a huge fucking loss....I'm not musician or any sort, but I have utmost respect for him. The fact that I will not hear anything from him ever again is unimaginably hard to swallow.
Same here. At least some consolation that we have dozens and dozens of podcasts and master classes where he so generously shares his craft and his perspective on music and life.
RIP to one of the best to ever do it, music today simply would not be the same without him
a room full of sound engineers and no mic for the audience
Lol
Except.... the only microphone is for the mains.
@@billbradleymusic woosh
They’re not known for their musical skills
Well they’re good at producing music not producing videos lol which is what this kind of thinking is. Plus they know they can just toss the mic around, they’re not concerned with the superficial appearances
steve is such an eloquent speaker, it's a joy to listen to him speak.
I absolutely love the way Steve expresses his thoughts and stuff, he's right on the money about physical copies and stuff will stay around forever. This man is a gem.... a legend of the highest standard (not to sound corny)
31:55 Such an awesome thing to hear an engineer say. A lot of engineers I think get caught up in knowing what is best for the people they work with. Very refreshing to hear of someone who is not afraid to allow people to be creative even in ways the engineer doesn't like the sound of.
Such a loss to musical world! RIP, Steve - so much respect for this brilliant and generous man!
"It's always worth a listen," Steve is a true master of capturing the true sound of an artist
This has been a fantastic interview. Great job by the host for getting Steve talking and just letting him go. Such great information from such an experienced guy.
🔥Thank you!
Rip Steve, Thank you for all your amazing work
When Steve talks it becomes clear that he was a student of history and philosophy - loads of perspective, beyond your typical modern person.
this is incredible content. this interview made me a fan of steve albini solely because of his ideas.
All those years of wisdom pouring out. 👏
have you checked out any of his music yet? I have loved big black for most of my life.
Steve - we miss you so much already. ❤
Man….he was something truly special.
Steve is generous for sharing so much. I appreciate SAE for documenting this event.
1:05:33 "I think it's a mistake to presume things need to be made better all the time. I think a lot of things are fine just the way they are." This pretty much encapsulates his philosophy (as I understand it), and applies to much more than just recorded music
Humble as it gets. Cheerio Mr.Real One
This is an incredibly enlightening look into Steve Albini's process! I've been both a fan of his music as well as many of the artists and recordings he's worked with. Thank You!!
goodbye, sir. rest in peace.
Spot on. This man knows exactly what is important. Great interview.
A real eye-opener when it comes to digital archiving. It was so obvious and yet I didn't realize it.
if he had only ever worked with the Pixies & Nirvana he'd still be a legend
His recordings with those bands have some of the GREATEST sound of any musical recordings ever done. I also adore his works with HUM, Jawbreaker, Pegboy, and I really wish he'd have worked with Smashing Pumpkins in their early days, but that didn't ever happen as far as I know.
he DID work with Nirvanna.
Even if he didn't record Nirvana and the Pixies, he'd still be a legend.
@@iwanttoseemrshowyou DIDn’t read the comment did you
Wonderful interview. I love Steve's ballsy, sometimes-iconoclastic view of things.
Never gets old this session. I have to say though that I absolutely love tape saturation and compression, but y'know...
This is an amazing interview I have a Big Black album in my record collection but was never a huge fan. Nor am I a big Nirvana fan but I still have a huge amount of respect for the way he thinks and works. I'm always amazed at all the 'how to build a studio' channels on youtube. It's always these sterile environments with sound proofing everywhere and bass traps with giant mixing boards going into a DAW. Those giant mixing boards are essentially a glorified mouse. Also think about all the pictures you've ever seen of The Beatles at Abbey Road or Hendrix at Electric Lady. You don't see people in glass boxes. You see people hanging out on couches in living rooms or big open rooms with pianos. Use your space for its unique character. Blood Sugar Sex Magik was recorded in a rented house. Led Zep in a haunted castle. Lou Reed recorded the original vocals to The Velvet's self titled album in a closet. So anyone out there who is interested in music production and home studio recording don't let these social media influencers make you think that you need thousands of dollars worth of gear you can't afford. They are being paid to sell a product. Your living room, bedroom, bathroom or garage might sound amazing. Especially right now. Lo-fi is all the rage. There are tons of pedals and plug-ins that try to emulate the sounds of older, less than state of the art gear. I also found out recently that Steve Albini doesn't earn royalties on albums that he's produced. I was stunned when i heard that and it gave me even more respect for the man. I also like his transparency as a producer. Like he says he's very hands off as far as the band and it's sound. I love Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails but every album of another artist that he's produced has his fingerprints all over it. I happen to like that but not all bands would sound good with NIN DNA inserted into it.
I love how Steve is both a ruthless pragmatist about the nature of his industry, and a total romantic about analog recording.
I thought analog was campy and outdated until I got into Steve's work. His expertise and genius work educated me and changed the very foundation of my understanding of audio recording. Steve is a legend
Such a brilliant mind. We used to discuss how Big Black recorded their early music and tried to emulate that. Or otherwise attempt to use their technique as a justification for our lack of technological prowess, whether it was a lack of financial means or simply the fact that we were devoid of any recording knowledge. His talks are fascinating
ikr i was like "how come i not heard of him before"
*Sorry, I'm a dumbass*: but, what do you mean you "discussed how big black recorded their early music and tried to emulate it"? Or "using their technique" when recording music? I didn't understand what you meant by that(yes I'm a dumbass, sorry if I'm sounding stupid as hell)
*I agree though, his talks are always fascinating and Big Black(Rapeman, too..Shellac's solid too, just never got too into em..) is/are in my top 5 favorite band(s).
@@josephhopeless829 I think he means that the recordings were 'noisy' and the 'mistakes' were left in which gives a really unique sound that isn't typical of studio albums but also doesn't sound live either because it was recorded in a studio.
Edit: put quotations around noisy because calling the room sound noise comes across as pejorative and as Steve says using the sound of the room is a legitimate aesthetic choice.
I love listening to him! So intelligent & interesting.
Steve is DA MAN! Instant legend and enjoyable personality. Real deal!
1:51:30
He's referring to Chris Ott, ex-Pitchfork writer who threatened DMCA takedowns on his content hosted on Pitchfork after they were acquired by Conde Nast
Fine catch
I was a Pitchfork writer back then along with Chris, I never knew about this. Thanks for the info.
one of the ironies of this is that he is in one hell of a band, Shellac. He doesn’t reference his musical career in the beginning (and throughout) which is of mega cultural importance. Yet he describes himself in the beginning as a guy who didn’t go broke recording bands. He is a true artist and craftsman.
Everyone needs to hear Atomizer & Songs About Fxxxxxg by Big Black. I definitely didn't think in 1988 I'd be sitting here in 2021 watching this lol.
@@duprie37 love Big Black
I love his recording of The Breeders record. Partly, it's the band. But his bass and drums are so rich on certain sounds, and it was so different from a lot of the dryer, thinner recordings I was hearing at the time. It feels so present and alive, and those cymbals and guitar pop just right in their contrast. I'm still trying to accept that he's gone. He brought recordings to life. Neat guy.
Drum kit advice was pure gold
In 09, I think, I was AES prez at SAE Nashville and hosted a battle of the bands to raise money to bring Steve to town for a seminar.
Now, the fact that I had to raise funds in a for profit institution to bring a speaker to town aside...
Steve was extremely down to earth and a great inspiration to several/many students.
That being said, years later, get a *good* apprenticeship and save your damn money.
To do that, you need to read, experiment, fu*k up and so on ..
It's a grueling industry. More so than most others, including the restaurant industry.
If you *want* it, be ready to sacrifice, **jump at any opportunity** and be humble.
There's 100 people out there who are better than you technically, but you can be better personally.
Be-a-good-person.
I thoroughly enjoyed this. Albini is smart with a lot of great ideas and knowledge.
this guy is really really smart.
"The mobile phone would be farting some mp3 at you" LOL
1:13:00 he's talking about "Swallowed". Razorblade Suitcase was recorded by Albini at ABBEY ROAD!!!
thanks
Thanks👍
Although the story of it being their only number one is a little exagerated.
He has perfectly articulated so many things I have thought and felt for years now. I'd love to do a record with him someday. If only in a dream.
He might be gone now but the advice he’s given is still out there for us
I love synthesis. But this talk helped me place a firm line between using it to add something and using it to replace something. I really am getting more into using acoustic properties for effects.
I could listen to him talk forever
"We were all very high on......
the way things were going"
😂 we all were expecting that to go a different direction.
Fantastic talk. Thoroughly inspired as a musician and someone who loves the tech side of recording.
RIP. This dude influenced how MANY of us record
I could listen to Steve talk about a paper bag all day long !!! Love this guy
I KNOW exactly what you are talking about.👌🥰💖👏
Me too. Hope he describes the sound of it. In colour.
Steve's band was in the always play rotation for most of my post-high school drinking music. We partied and got hammered to the 'Hammer Party' and 'Jordan MN' was just north of us.
He is talking about all the digital devices that were introduced and faded out for example the mini disc 8 tracks. I have a few mini discs i recorded that i cant listen to.
Anyone know who the punk band is that he talks about at 31:00? The singer using a guitar amp and a solo cup over an SM57?
@@dannyperfect9270 you sure about that? Albini did In Utero and the vocals on that record don't fit that description.
The first band that comes to mind is melt banana just thinking about a band that have a very shrill and weird vocal sound. I think he has recorded with them but it would have been longer than 15 years ago. I guess you can call it punk
My guess is Leftöver Crack. Albini recorded them in 2004.
@@jerkersandquist7244 He also mentions that the vocalist was a male and Melt-Banana has a female vocalist. Did any of the male members ever record any vocals?
@@manate36 You are right, i must have missed that. As far as i know only YaKo sings :)
I very much appreciate Steve's hands off/non-producer approach to recording. At the same time I also very much like a control freak like Rick Hall of Fame Studios with his extremely hands on, coach/captain/hit-maker style of production.
Rick's background as a wannabe hit-maker informs his technique, just as Steve's go for broke punk, originality first esthetic and his self-awareness of it informs his approach.
Agree with virtually everything he says but didn't know I did until I heard him speak. And specifically to the ADAT part. Had a hell of a time finding someone to transfer our 24 track album masters on ADAT from 1996, last year. Got it done at a place called AVAST in Seattle.
I’ve watched it again , as much as possible in the past few days !
So sad , such a loss !
R.I.P Rocker ❤
Not all digital is redundant I have backups going back 20 years, WAV&AIFF files have been around since 1991 they sound EXACTLY the same as when they were recorded! compare that to tape of the same year!
i agree
Well, have you?
Have you done the amount of work Steve is talking about? I am sure that he is correct according to numbers. You are as far as degradation, but what about the idea of change of system? Changing file types etcetera.
@@billbradleymusic Can you find me an analog recording from 100 years ago that will play in pristine condition on today's gear? Certainly not on tape, which oxidizes. Look at the retro-computing movement, which saves 40 yr old EPROMs and software on floppy disks and resurrects them using modern hardware. If you want your work preserved for 100 years the ONLY choice is digital. Albini is very talented, but like a lot of creative people, he believes a lot of bullshit.
@@_P_M_ @ANALOG is King!
Digital bits are even more permanent and durable than analog tape. They will truly last forever - it’s just that what they are stored on will change over time. I can checksum digital bits to make sure they have not been damaged during storage. You cannot checksum an analog tape. One just needs to make sure the meaning of those digital bits is properly documented and open source so they can be properly converted back to audio.
I would love to see Rick Beato interview Steve Albini. Their personalities would be very fun to watch interact
If Noam Chomski was a recording engineer, he'd be Steve Albini
same energy
@@DVDFRMN what a dummy! If you cant understand allegory then stop embarrassing yourself....you know how many people wrote to me that they got the same vibe? Just go to Barnes&Noble and buy all brainteasers they have, buddy.
Seems like he doesn't put down imitation or comparison, but does at least implicitly put down putting down such things. Seems to me David here's comment is worth ignoring.
Neil Hillis - the David or whoever comment was not registered in any meaningful way. In neurological terms, Broca's region discounts such comments as nonessential.
Good call... lots of valuable insight, sounds like he was woken up to speak.
this is pure gold...
Obviously a great human being. Respect 🙏🏻
One might think the the people recording this master class by a renowned recording engineer could have somehow mustered up the foresight and ability to make the questions being asked at the end somehow magically be able to have been heard on the video recording. Maybe I am asking for too much.
Wow thanks for this great interview!
Long live Steve Albini!!!
I like this discussion because its still the same with film and references not only to technical points but beginning with them.
1. Analogue (Recording) Hardware is in every produced device unique even a machine produced it (like mixers). Its sound is depending on environmental influences and interferences. Maybe that supports the enthusiasm (the romantic feeling on getting warmer recordings)
2. From an archiving and preservation point of view, analogue and digital media is absolutely equal. Magnetic media is nevertheless the actual most cost-efficient media no matter if analogue tape or digital master archived on e.g. LTO. I would digitize analogue master tapes, but never renounce them as a sort of intermediate (which i also keep).
3. Like with analogue and digital film and the recording device the question is if a perfect recording is always the best recording or the best experience or the most natural one ... That's what Mr. Albini says. The more you come to post production the more the digital domain can happen and is more efficient. Dave Grohl's soundcity documentary is definitely worth seeing it.
34:00 That is why Nirvana went back to Mr. Albini after doing Nevermind with Butch Vig to get the more natural sound for In Utero.
44:00 Like in the film/tv and the audio domain -> DO NOT FIX IT IN THE POST - do everything possible during the production :)
I like this masterclass. Thanks for filming it and putting it onto youtube. Great!
Great history, great input from Steve, ... but if I shook my head as many times as the interviewer in this vid I'd be a head banger 😛 ... jokes aside, this vid is gold! ... thanks for sharing ... BUT, kudos to the interviewer for letting Steve fully answer whatever he wants to answer ... Even the audience is all ears, meaning: They all know who Albini is and what unimaginable knowledge this man has ...
This was one of his best talks
I wish he could have recorded Maurizio Pollini playing Chopin. It would have been great. What a brilliant humane man.
I will say, .flac and .wav are pretty steady formats. SD cards should be good as long as they keep making adapters when things change. Also data preservation and finding of lost media is a newfound pursuit amd thriving community. That said, the value of reel tapes will continue for such actual studio sessions and producing tape seems like it wouldn't be that hard compared to what it takes to even make vinyl.
I think you'd be better off over the long term with WAV files, optical media, and using things like SHA checksums to validate the files, and establishing a habit of revisiting the backups and performing transfers at regular intervals. Albini has much to say about the downsides of digital storage, but the notion of bit-perfect digital backups (as many as you want) could help avert disasters like the Universal Studios fire that destroyed thousands of master tapes. Any discussion of the downsides of long-term digital storage should include the downsides of analog tape storage: improper storage, natural and man made disasters, and stuff like that.
Also: perhaps his position on the cloud would be different today? Today, Microsoft, Amazon and Google all will sell you cloud storage. The notion that all three of these companies would go out of business seems to punch a hole in the argument against cloud?
A very well articulated man.
For a bunch of audio nerds you think they would have had a mic for the audience questions. Loved the interview
Steve is one of the best! Totally understand the attitude.
I don’t care what Steve says Shellac’s music is beautiful. RIP Steve you were one of the best.
God bless you Steve.
Get you a significant other that talks about you the way Steve Albini talks about his job.
Albini is greatness! I understand his take on tape and os, but I do hope someone shows him Wav file format for the digital realm. they, like tape, will always be around.
Guys, you don't really get Steve, do you? He's talking about the physicality of tape. That it is an object and it's always there for you. It exists and it carries history. Digital files are not objects, they are easily removed from memory, just like 99% of the popular music of today, which in a few months is gone completely from our collective memory, cause it's made to be consumed and not to be appreciated as a piece of art that defies time. Steve's approach is a philosophical one, but also a pragmatic one.
Sorry. The memory storage devices that digital files exist on is as real as tape. You can touch it and hold it in your hand. What you can't hold on either is the actual music track held within. The notion that the music is more "really there" on tape than a thumb drive is an illusion propagated by Gen X gate-keepers like Albini. Tape deteriorates, tape is easily damaged. The fact that somewhere is the only original take or master of a song on one reel of tape should be terrifying and anxiety inducing.
Tape deteriorates and digital copies don't get worse each generation they are copied.
@@AlexH8280 yeah I found that rather odd, when he's talking about how great TAPE is, and saying "analog doesn't degrade over time," since tape most assuredly degrades over time...
Unless he was mixing that up with something like vinyl, or the master for cutting vinyl, perhaps?
As someone that has lost an entire library of work from a failed HD. This speaks to me, profoundly. I will never ever be able to get the time, energy or actual work back.
@@AlexH8280 He is speaking of digital formats. Do you know how many projects were recorded to ADAT in the 90's and early 2000's? Those machines were not meant to last forever. Parts will become unavailable. ADAT was just one format in the beginning of the digital transformation. There were several others. As to analog tape, I have been in the vault at Abbey Road. There are perfectly preserved pre-beatles tapes there that can still be played.
People, we know tape degrades and files don't. His point is if you store tape properly, there will always be a feasible way to play it back. It doesn't matter how many stored copies of your files you have. If they make the format obsolete tomorrow, well, there goes your archive.
absolute nonsense.. PCM WAV files have been around for decades.. the format is non propietary and it comes in all resolution flavors.. from 22khz 8 bit to 192khz 32-bit.. you can even have multirack WAV files. and if it ever becomes "obsolete", you can always transfer the data to a newer format..
Go open your 1st pt session
No shit! It's easier to fix bad tape (hypothetically, it is currently) than retrieve a non compatible file type.
You can store digital files on magnetic tape, too.
also there are blu ray discs that last 150 years, longer than a reel of tape that will degrade over time or be erased by a strong magnetic field
I agree with Steve on not ascribing the sound of old records to the faults of old gear.
However, I think that using tape saturation plugins as an effect in the digital paradigm is, to use his terms, a completely valid aesthetic.
Trying to capture a band as they sound in the room assumes the only sound they aspire to make is the sound their gear is capable of making.
Part of the beauty of recording, for me and a lot of people, is that the studio can become its own source of creativity and almost another instrument the band has at their disposal.
If every band were limited to the sounds they could make in their basement with traditional rock instruments, recorded music would be boring as fuck.
Steve Albini: No need to have 30 layers of the guitar part to add some sense of massiveness
Butch Vig: Challenge accepted
HAHAA! Exactly!!!
I don't like to exceed 3 guitars in a mix. If the band needs multiple guitars from a composition standpoint, I'll do left right and center. Much easier to maintain phase coherency and give the mix a broader image. Nevermind was fucking overkill.
My studio has been using Tape Disks as our long term storage medium for well over 35 years since we went digital for multitrack recording so there is a way to archive and resurrect those sessions ALWAYS but its not as cheap as a USB drive or an SSD. Tape drives are slow like analog tape but a single $80-200 tape drive can hold 6 to 12 terabytes of information. I saw the same issues when the Sony PCM 32 track 1 inch reel to reel went out of production and DAT/ADAT was no longer able to be retrieved. But the engineer who owned the studio before me started archiving on computer Tape drives in the late 1980s. I can pull the lossless audio files from those tape drive that go back to around 1987/88 when he started using it and every digital session is archived on this format. Tape drives look like a 8-track cassette or a radio cart. The most common tape drive type is LTO but the drives to write to tape disks costs between $500 and $50,000 dollars depending on the brand and size. IBM, Apple, HP and all of the other giant tech companies use these for long archival storage and it is the only medium that isn't going away since the computer companies agreed to build a long term storage solution to always use as a backup to digital storage. You can buy them at B&H and other places online. But like with any analog medium the bulk quality matters.
Hi Mr. Albini, (if you ever read this), I'm a huge fan of dozens of your recordings, from early Urge Overkill and The Pixies, to The Jesus Lizard and Nirvana. Likewise, I'm a fan of many of your musical projects, including Big Black, and especially Shellac. That being said, I'd like to offer, to you and to all of RUclips's readership, my own arguments in the age-old battle of "what's better... analog or digital?" My background: I have an electrical engineering degree with specific applications to pro audio, from the College of Engineering and the School of Music at the University of Miami, in Florida. I worked for several years as a digital signal processing (DSP) engineer in Silicon Valley and later co-founded the Rhapsody Digital Music System. As you can surely guess, I'll be arguing on the side of digital audio being superior, and here's why.
Yes, in the first 40 years of commercially available digital audio technologies, many physical media formats have already become obsolete. But PCM data is the straight sampled audio, which will never become obsolete. Today, there is no need for physical media when you can put pure PCM digital data up into any big-name "cloud storage" service and keep it indefinitely. If you insist on putting your PCM data on some physical medium, you can always do so, and the fidelity of the recording will be perfect even if the machine that reads that digital data is very low quality, while analog information suffers greatly when using sub-par equipment. Even in the hypothetical apocalyptic scenario, building a D/A converter to turn that PCM data back into an electrical signal that can be sent to loudspeakers is actually not that complex. Both A/D and D/A converters can essentially be built using nothing much more than a voltage divider made by a bunch of resistors in series. Hypothetically, one could even write down the entire series of zeros and ones onto paper, and their audio is perfectly stored and retrievable; try doing that with an analog signal. Digital will always be played back at the correct speed, with only extremely small amounts of time variance (jitter). All of the major cloud services have very robust backup regimens, with backups, and backups of the backups, stored on SSD's and physical tapes at multiple physical locations in different geographic regions. For extra security, go ahead and put it up in a couple of cloud services. Your data will be available for download at any time, to anywhere. It will still be available long after we're all dead, and it will sound as perfect as the day it first came through the A/D converters. You can record and save as many tracks as you want, tracks of your entire recording session, all studio talkback, all submixes, all "final" mixes, all masters, EVERYTHING, indefinitely, at a miniscule cost. You can make as many copies of any and all of this audio with ZERO loss of fidelity, even after a billion (or more) copies. ZERO loss of fidelity means no new noise, no harmonic distortion, no lessening of dynamic range, no compression... perfect. Digital recording technologies do not add appreciable (i.e. audible) compression or dynamic distortion all the way up until the very point of clipping. Nobody needs to learn every setting, every option, every feature of digital recording software or systems. One can be considered an "expert" as long as they create excellent recordings, mixes, masters or whatever they specialize in. Yes, digital processing of effects and other manipulations CAN introduce mathematical errors, but if the processing is done at a modestly higher bit-rate than the final product will be released at, then the accumulation of errors is simply trimmed off during bit-rate reduction. 6 or even 4 additional bits is usually more than adequate.
Analog tapes are saved on reels. They can be permanently destroyed by a magnet or one single fire in the place they are stored. Even if backups exist, the quality of them suffers on each replication. Tapes are typically saved "tails-out", and even with the best quality tape, over time, there will always be SOME magnetic bleed-through which will create some degree of ghost images. No matter how faint they might be, they're there. The images effectively add echoes to the recording, and the time between echoes doesn't even remain constant, because the time between them is a function of the diameters of the tape on the reels at each moment in time. Each reel of analog tape is expensive and will only record a finite set of tracks, typically 16 or 24 on the professional 1" or 2" tapes. Recording and playing the tapes require large and very expensive machines that require skilled maintenance over time to keep the biasing and the gauss levels going to and coming off of tape consistent over the life of the machines. The machines attempt to maintain the same tape speeds, typically 15 or 30 ips, over the life of the machines, but there is always "wow" and "flutter". Capstans, tape guides and heads all wear over time and replacement parts aren't always identical to originals. Audio signal paths are often compromised by poor design in the use of switches, pots and fader sliders. As every engineer knows, tapes will also add natural compression as you push the levels up closer and closer to saturation. When this happens, the dynamic range is reduced, effectively pulling the noise floor up, and the clipping of signal adds harmonic distortion. Even the subtlest rounding off of peak levels adds harmonic distortion.
Vinyl media and the equipment to create and use them, have limitations that are even more serious. No matter how perfect vinyl recordings are created, with direct metal cuts created by the best quality machinery, pressed onto the best media available, etc... the audio will still be recreated by players that vary greatly. Most record players are not particularly good at playing a recording back at the actual correct speed, and most players will also add low frequency noise due to the slightest vertical warping of media. The styluses (needles) used by most players are not high quality, but even the BEST styluses are subject to the tiniest particles of dust, dirt, even fingerprints on the records. Also, the records themselves continually degrade with every playback due to the friction of the stylus, losing the high frequencies first and then working on down to the upper-mid frequencies over time.
Whether or not you think analog "sounds better" or "warmer", or more "lively" or "musical", these are subjective judgements. I disagree that noise, saturation, distortion, pops and crackles, etc. is immaterial to one's listening experience, but again, that's a subjective evaluation. However, the concept that the finest analog equipment is somehow "peerless" is ridiculous. The A/D and D/A converters are the ONLY elements of a digital system that are subject to any physical imperfections, and on EVERY possible technical and/or electrical measurement, the qualities of the finest, professional A/D converters FAR exceed their analog counterparts, and consumer D/A converters far exceed the abilities of vinyl. In fact, even many midrange/mid-priced digital converters will typically outperform even the best analog signal path, with the MOST ACCURATE representation of what one's microphones capture.
If an individual prefers the results of recording and playing back via analog signal paths, then I certainly cannot argue with them. One likes what one likes. But if you're considering the accuracy/fidelity of a recording with respect to what came down the wire from the microphone... then there is NO question: digital audio systems are superior in every way.
And... all of the above is just what came off the top of my head today. I could fill an entire book with more details. :-)
Cheers, Steve. I love your work.
Dave Lampton Damn, that was pretty convincing. I'm not qualified to give a truly informed opinion on this, but I know enough to be impressed with your argument. I appreciate you sharing that information and angle on this, Dave.
I think albini was more referring to the fact that the analog master is open to remastering and preservation , but a wav from a session on one computer that ran ableton (or insert any recording software program) is pointless to open on another computer ten years later because you will not have those same raw samples and plug-ins that were on that master from the original (most likely at least)
You're welcome, Brandon. I'm glad it was useful.
Hi LIL RETRO MANE, thanks for the comment. So actually, WAV/AIFF and other PCM formats contain the raw sampled audio, so as long as the producer/engineer/artist/label/somebody was wise enough to archive their original raw recorded tracks and their mixes, then indeed, those projects can be remixed and/or remastered using any future audio software. While it's true that some or all of the original effects plug-ins MAY not be available, if somebody is thinking ahead, the effects plugins themselves can also be saved into a plugins archive or as part of each project archive. Storage has become so inexpensive that file and archive sizes can be virtually ignored. If not, there will be plenty of equivalent or better alternative plugins available, many are even free. Furthermore, most DAW software and/or the effects plugins themselves have some way(s) to backup all of their settings in standard file formats (e.g. VST, RTAS, AU, XML) which can easily be supported for a very long time to come, even after the inevitable new standards start being used on new projects. This is because support for those formats is already available and they will not require any new development efforts in order to continue supporting them. (Those sorts of "already solved" software efforts are packaged and redistributed as reusable libraries, DLLs, etc.) Lastly, the suggestion to store all data archives on multiple cloud storage services will provide full access to redundant, secured copies from anywhere in the world, 24/7/365, while eliminating all concerns about having to manage the long-term storage, safety, and security of physical computer hardware, all at very reasonable prices, especially paid long-term, up front. Cheers.
NOW, I DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH KNOWLEDGE ON AUDIO ENGINEERING TO REFUTE OR BACK UP ANY OF THESE POINTS EXCEPT ONE. IN ONE OF STEVE'S MANY LECTURES HE DISCUSSED THE FACT THAT IF YOU TRY TO INPUT SOMETHING INTO A PROGRAM FOR MAKING MUSIC DIGITALLY AND IT DOESN'T READ THAT BIT OF BINARY IT WILL FUCK UP THE NEXT FEW STEPS IN A SEQUENCE, NOW AS A WAY TO PRACTICE MAKING MUSIC BECAUSE I'VE ONLY BEGUN TRYING TO MAKE MUSIC AND RECORDING IT A YEAR AND A HALF AGO I'VE USED A D.A.W. AND I CAN SAY THAT IS INDEED 100% CORRECT. IN HERE, AT SOME POINT, YOU SAY YOU COULD SAVE THAT CODE IN ANY WAY A COMPUTER COULD POTENTIALLY READ IT, AND IT WOULD READ IT BACK *PERFECTLY*. ANY D.A.W. OR DIGITAL PLAYBACK METHOD LOVES TO FUCK UP ON READING SOMETHING OCCASIONALLY, ESPECIALLY IF THERE IS A LOT OF INFORMATION TO PROCESS AT CERTAIN MOMENTS.
ANOTHER THING: GET A STRONG ENOUGH MAGNET AND IT WILL ERASE ALL YOUR DATA ON A COMPUTER, OR LIGHT A FIRE AND YOUR COMPUTER IS JUST GONE. JUST SAYING.
I COULD VERY EASILY PASS YOU OFF AS SOMEONE WHO IS SOLELY INTERESTED IN SAYING PEOPLE ARE WRONG ABOUT DIGITAL BEING INFERIOR TO ANALOG WAYS OF RECORDING AND PLAYING BACK BECAUSE YOUR LIFE WORK IS COMPLETELY GEARED TOWARDS DIGITAL AND THAT YOU SIMPLY DON'T WANT PEOPLE TO MAKE YOU LOOK INFERIOR FOR SPENDING SO MUCH OF YOUR RAW TIME IN THAT SPECIFIC PORTION OF THIS FIELD, BUT BECAUSE I KNOW ONLY WHAT I HAVE BEEN EXPOSING MYSELF TO I WON'T FOR NOW.
This was incredibly insightful. Great content.
what about the WAV digital format? I don't think that will ever expire...
I still buy CD'S which is a digital recording, younger people think I'm mad as you can get a streaming service.
the idea that there is music out there locked away on inaccessible dead formats is fascinating
Of course when it comes to computers, nothing is really impossible. Perhaps very difficult and not financially feasible, but not impossible
I graduated college in the 1990s. My files then were largely stored on floppies and hard disks. In the late 1990s, I bought a CD-ROM burner and burned the contents of those floppies and hard drives to CD's. Later, I transferred the data from CDs to DVDs. Many years later now, my files have been transferred two more times, from DVD to a RAID array, then to another RAID array. The point is, I have data that is almost 30 years old today. If it's worth keeping (and sometimes if it isn't!) it is always easy to execute digital transfers. Not only that, I still have the optical disks, and 20+ years later, they can still be read successfully.
For this reason, I simply don't agree at all with Albini's assertion that digital backups can't be done safely. Because I've done it. And he doesn't mention all the downsides to analog tape storage either.
Now, one thing I will say is that if you backup using a proprietary format, you could be in trouble down the road. The safer route would be to export full multitracks of an audio recording in something like broadcast wave format, where we can be reasonably sure the format will be around for a long time. Additionally, we can be sure that since the standard for that format has been published, software could be developed to read it if need be.
So, don't save a pro tools session and hope you can load it later. Export multitrack wav files, save notes along with them and name the files properly, keep them organized, and revisit your backups over time, store multiple backups, and you will be fine.
He is one articulate dude! 👍
The Bush Song is 'Swallowed' for anyone interested
absolutely brilliant interview (despite the awkward jokes of the host); 2 hours felt like 15 minutes.
All bow down to the great god Albini!
1:46:00 I use pre-iLok, pre-auth protools and plugins. Other engineers and sometimes musicians ask me when will I "upgrade" and I try not to laugh. I don't need the internet or anything to work. Why should I expose myself to the whims of the corporations and the possibility that the internet could just go dark someday? then what? What's your plan then, people? Apparently, the U.S. military has a ton of mission critical programs running on Windows XP and they refuse to "upgrade" for similar reasons
If a band like Led Zeppelin was recorded on an expired digital format they would find a way of copying it to a modern format. It's not lost forever, it's just not as easy to extract and may cost substantial money compared to analog tape.
Was the cameraman hang gliding while filming this?
What a cool guy! I would LOVE to learn from him more! Anyone know what punk band he was talking about with the reamping guitar vocals?
great interview and great information Steve. I hope to work with you one day!
Mr. Albino, seems like your attitude and philosophy of recording musicians is what any artist would or should look for when going to make a recording. If you have any extra material from In Utero...👍😀
“Mr. Albino”?? 😂
Tape is safe - except for the 2008 Universal fire - check it out
The guy who fullfilled Nirvanas wish to make a record how they wanted to sound. Kurt was so happy about that he could do it...the problem was the label, they want sell and not make great art.
Digital vs Analog....i have no problem with digital as far as the band can play it live without a computer.