AMPEX: [Fwd: so much for digital recording]

[Eric at Svetlana Electron Devices]

This was seen recently on the Ampex User's Group mailing list.


At 11:46 AM 12/5/97 -0500, you wrote:
>
>
>John Etnier wrote:
>
>> hank alrich wrote:
>> >
>> > wSkaface <bradbass at earthlink.net> wrote:
>> >
>> > > Well, we have been through this one a THOUSAND times on this group
already,
>> > > but you are missing the point Rick - If the public buys recordings
made on
>> > > ADATS, then your opinion doesn't mean shit, since you are neither the
>> > > consumer, nor the artist. Good luck finding that 2" tape in 5 years
pal.....
>> > > "analog recording dinosaur". Time to give that one up.

>From a transcript of the "Analog Reality Check" forum held concurrently
with the Sept. NYC AES. The speaker is Steve Smith of Quantegy-

I would like to talk a little bit about our company, and how we view our
tape manufacturing process.
Because when you manufacture tape, capital investment is extremely
important, and we are always looking to new technologies and
adding equipment.

I can on board on the audio tape side of Ampex in 1987, and when I
walked in, there was a business plan that had just been done, and
Ampex had left the manufacturing of analog tape machines about four
years prior to that, about 1983. Mike and I worked there
together. The word then was that, by 1990, analog would be dead. It
would not be with us anymore. We had actually proposed
manufacturing plans that would stop our analog coating lines and move
them to videotape manufacturing. That was the plan. As we all
know, that did not happen.

Today, in fact, we are manufacturing more professional analog tape than
we ever have before. Obviously, with 3M leaving the
marketplace, that has given business to Quantegy, so that's easy for me
to say. But analog, still today, in our audio professional line, and
unlike BASF we don't make consumer products, is 60% of our sales. So it
outweighs all the digital formats combined.

Another thing I would like to bring up. We talk about the kind of work
that we do, and the media that's used, I think a good measure of
that is Billboard magazine every week, they have a section called Studio
Action, and there's a production credit chart. It lists the
number one records that week in five chart categories, and 85% of those
in the past year have been on analog tape. Only 15% of the
number one records in five chart categories have been digital. So all of
you people doing the recording, if you make it on analog, it
seems like it goes to number one!

Of course, I think everyone in this room would have to agree that the
sound quality of analog is obviously superior, because it's infinite
sampling.

Looking at the future of Quantegy, and how our analog business will
continue, I get a phone call probably three times a week from
someone thinking about buying an analog machine or refurbishing an old
one, asking should I do that, will you have tape available.

I reply that we have a unique situation. The building where we make
analog tape was the first building built in 1952 in the Ampex plant,
and it houses the analog manufacturing facility. It's separate from the
rest of the business, the new buildings that do metal
manufacturing for the digital and new video formats. The building at
this point does not lend itself to renovation for making these other
formats. So the good news, the building and the people that work on
analog tape, when the last reel is made, we will shut the door and
close it. There is no financial pressure in our company to do anything
else with that facility, saying if we could only change that over to
videotape we could make a lot more money. They are satisfied with the
capabilities of that building, and it will always remain an analog
manufacturing facility.

On the future of analog, we also continue to develop and spend large
amounts in R&D on analog product. As you are aware, we
purchased 3M's tape line last year at this time, and along with that we
received the 3M technologies for formulation of their tapes. We
are now incorporating those in our analog program. The 3M 996 was a very
good tape. We have that technology and we are using that
to improve our 456 and 499 tapes. In the near future, we are even
planning to introduce a new analog tape. So analog tape is not dead.
We look to it in the future, and we will try to emulate some of the
subtle sonic differences of the 3M tapes.

On other developments, the archival stability of analog has been an
issue over the years. We continue to improve our binder systems,
and work with companies like B.F. Goodrich and Morton who develop the
binder materials, and today the archival stability of analog is
probably ten times what it was ten years ago. The warranty is one year,
but if we could put numbers on it, we expect analog today if
stored in a normal environment, to last at least 40 years. So there are
archival people are looking at analog as an archival standard, and
as a manufacturer we continue to look at improving that aspect. 

So in summary, I would like to say that as a business segment of our
company, analog is extremely strong, it makes up a majority of our
professional audio tape business. As a segment of the recording
industry, more number one songs-85% of them-are being made on
analog tape. And as a company, we look at it to carry on into the
future, and we have no plans to guess when it might end.
-- 
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John Etnier
Studio Dual
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http://www.studiodual.com
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Eric Barbour
Svetlana Electron Devices
Portola Valley CA USA