Yeah it's crazy. I was a senior in 1987. We've come a ways since then! Another engineer and I were just talking about how much has changed just in the last 20 years...how much better are plugins now than they were in 2004? A billion times better. (Shout out to the digitalfishphones plugins, Spitfish still gets used daily here. 20+ year old freeware. Respect!)echokiloromeo wrote: Fri Jan 26, 2024 12:11 pm **I just spent two weeks teaching a digital recording technology class for high school juniors and seniors. The amount of change that has happened since I was their age is extraordinary, but when I do the math it kind of makes sense while simultaneously making me feel very, very old.
I really like that, it's interesting to think about. There is definitely something to the simplicity of a 4 track. I'm nostalgic for my old Fostex, I loved that thing, and I tried to make my current setup as close to that as possible so I can basically hit record and go.Also: they may actually have too many options now....maybe the mind had more room to think about songs.
But I think back to ~1996, I had an Otari 8 track (nostalgic for that too) and a 24 channel Mackie (not). I had a "song" I was trying to mix. It was a drum loop on track 1, bass line on 2, tracks 3-8 were all improvised guitars, and they were all over the place, ideas-wise. So I'm trying to figure out where the good bits are and ok, it's cool with the guitars on tracks 3 and 4 for the first 10 seconds, but then 3 gets shitty so mute that and switch to 5, oh but then 4 gets shitty a few bars later so.....you get the idea.
It was too much to keep straight and I remember sitting there thinking "if I could just SEE what was on the tracks and just cut out all the shitty parts so only the good bits played, this would be so much easier."
Maybe a year later I had a computer and was getting started with Cool Edit Pro and here we are.