PSW - True, but think of the poor tape companies. You don't use very much tape that way! Aren't you worried tape might go away?

I don't think tape is going to go away anytime soon, though it will likely keep getting more and more expensive, as people make fewer, smaller runs, smaller batches.

Though it's true that tape sales guy is freaking out. He tells me, "When I don't have a job in a couple years, because nobody is buying tape anymore, will you hire me?"

PSW - Is this the technique you used for Sailing to Philadelphia?

No, on that one we did mix straight to the 1-inch, because we were coming out of an analog board and there was no sense in going to digital and then back out again.

PSW - So you do this only when you mix digitally?

Yes. I never did it like this before, but I've only had the digital console a couple years. The concept makes the most sense off a digital desk, because you’re not going through any conversion process, just the mix out of the console being saved to a digital machine. Whether I went to analog machine in the mixdown or at mastering, it’s still one round of conversion, so waiting until the last possible moment to make the transfer to analog seems to make more sense, so I thought, why not just do it like this? And it just happened to sound pretty cool!

Before I got into doing it this way, I would mix to an analog machine as well as to the digital for backup, but I also used to go to a second digital machine that was straight off the repro head of the analog machine. So there would be a digital backup of first generation analog. So it used to be that I would have three masters…in fact, that’s what we did on Mark's Golden Heart Album, and at that time I was using the Wadia converters.

PSW - What speed do you run your 1-inch ATR?

I run the 1-inch at 15ips. There's a head bump associated with any analog machine and with the ATR-100s, it's down around 60Hz at 15ips, where as at 30 ips it moves up closer to 120. If you just think about it, 60Hz is that area which is pleasingly plump, it has this nice low end oomph that hits you in the chest, where 120hz gets up into that muddy area. Yes, 30ips makes the snare fatter, but it also can muddy the bass.

Also, there's a rolloff below that bump, so 30 ips has a significant rolloff where at 15ips it goes flat on down to DC pretty much. So I like the low end bump at 15ips, but I also like the top end off the 1-inch in particular. You get a presence boost rather than the boost way up there that you get from 30Hz. So at 15Hz, vocals seem to jump out from the track, and guitars have more bite, snare drums crack more.

Almost every artist that has listened to the playback of the 1-inch machine has gone, "God, that's the way I've always wanted to hear my voice sound." It seems to be something that other people dig, besides myself.

PSW - But you do the rhythm tracks at 30ips on the 16-track?

Right, because of the need to keep the noise level down. Even with 16-track, it's still not that quiet when you add up all those tracks. And another thing about the 1-inch two-track is that, compared to a half inch machine at 30ips, it's about 7dB quieter even at 15 ips. It's pretty amazing. But I don’t know if that's partly due to the electronics, but it is spectacular. Mike Spitz at ATR Services, really has made a great machine.

PSW - You started that Knopfler project a long time ago. Would you do it any differently today?

Probably not. We're planning to begin Mark's next album soon after he gets off the road, and we'll probably do something similar with 16-track analog locked to something digital.

PSW - What about for surround? I suppose you have to go digital for that.

Yes, we just did Sailing to Philadelphia in 5.1, just finalized mastering. Warners is eager to get it out. The DVD will also have the full 88.2 resolution of the stereo mix.

PSW - And what is the standard for surround- these days?

It's an issue of debate at the moment. Basically, I think the stance for DVD audio, when mixing from analog archive, is that it should be mixed at least 96K, 24-bit. But if it's a current project, if more than likely a generation of 48K is involved, if you tracked on a 3348 or have gone through Pro Tools and at some point reducing the multitrack to 48K, then at that point 48K is acceptable.

My preference is to mix on a digital console with automated panning and automated aux send functions, all of which is more involved in surround than in stereo. You are very restricted if you don't have those functions.

Still, I'm giving a lot of consideration to going to an analog stage. In fact, Elliot Scheiner kind of took my idea. I'll give him credit, he actually did it first, but it was my idea. He's mixing to a two-inch 8-track and it really does sound spectacular. I heard the Van Morrison album he just did, and he's just finished an America album and it sounds amazing as well. He’s using SR on that, which I understand you have to because when authoring DVD audio, if there's any noise at all it causes problems. Supposedly that analog 2 inch 8-track is the "bee's knees" for doing surround.

PSW - So, in summary, how do you get the best out of analog and digital media?

I think the main thing is just to strive to make whatever you've got the best it can possibly be, within the economics of what you have to work with. Try to go beyond what's been done before, always try to make it better. But then, more than likely somebody else has done it better than you ever thought you could possibly do it. Still, the whole point is to keep trying to push forward the art of recording.