CMU School of Drama


Monday, October 13, 2025

In The Studio: The Importance Of Learning On Analog Tape

ProSoundWeb: I think everyone can agree that digital audio is here to stay. Even those who frowned upon digital in its earlier days have now mostly accepted its reality and have come to welcome its benefits. Digital has quickly become the driving force behind most of the latest advancements in the field of audio engineering today. It has changed the workflows, the budgets and the music itself.

1 comment:

Max A said...

I definitely agree with this standpoint from general perspective–I think it’s always best to learn to do something with analog devices before moving on to its digital version. (For example, how I’m learning hand drafting before CAD.) This applies to almost everything in life–knowing how to send letters, navigate a physical library, read a map, write instead of type, etc. I think that this article, from the analog perspective, helped boil down to me what audio engineers really do. What the job should be (without the author’s definition of laziness) is finding good sound, which ideally you should be able to do without digital tools. A DAW should serve only to enhance an already good source of sound. It should make things sound better than they would on analog. If you use bad sound and fix it in DAW, it’s of course not as good as it would be if the source was good. Using analog or “outdated” tools teaches you to work harder and avoid mistakes.