Hi People,

A friend & I were discussing what we thought to be the advantages and disadvantages of recording in the analogue & digital domains.

I was hoping to blow my friend away by confronting him with the hard actuality of fact -- but I've found myself to be lacking in knowledge and would appreciate a few bullshit-free answers to help me get there.

An arm of my friends' argument concerned the heads on tape machines. He maintains that the heads have a negative effect upon the tape where multiple over-dubs occur. Now, I tried to get him to expand on this 'negative effect' he mentioned but was met with pure-gold couplets like, 'compromised integrity' and my personal favourite, 'partial erosion' RE: Regions of the tape that contain the over-dubs. His tirade ended with ".... this doesn't happen on the computer, and that's why I prefer to record digitally. It's 'cleaner', like." My friend did, in his youth, "make a few tracks" and has at least seen the inside of a studio, I have not - yet I smell the rotting corpse of ignorance here.

Is there any thruth in what he says? For want of a more appropriate word , do the tape heads 'damage' the tape (to whatever extent) during over-dubs? Is there a limit to what you can expect in terms of sound quality by over-dubbing liberally?

There was also the matter of Longevity. Just how long could you expect the final tapes of your record to last? A lifetime? Two? What's the half-life of tape used in recording?

I enjoy being a smart-ass with this guy...would someone help me wrap this one up?

Thanks in advance!