Some of the early critics of digital audio immediately went after the "bright" sound some early CDs had. It was true that CDs produced in the mid 1980s (that were actually reissues of older albums) revealed a much more intense high-end. They sounded edgy and brighter than the original records - not the best way to introduce a new medium. The problem turned out to be the fault of the old records - record engineers would expect that vinyl LPs and cassettes would dull the sound of the music, so they over-compensated the high-end to make it sound the way they wanted the listener to hear it. When these masters were simply copied onto CDs, the high-end was not softened at all - it was accurately reproduced, warts and all. Nowadays record producers have a different respect for high frequencies, but through digital equipment also have more control of them.

The sampling rate was another issue digital critics fought; in between each sample (which happen 44,100 times every second), they claimed there was an infinite amount of additional information that was lost - details, super high frequencies, subliminal information, etc. The reason why the number "44,100" was chosen has to do with sample mechanics - suffice it to say that it can accurately capture all of the frequencies heard by a human; the range of 20Hz to 20kHz. Some critics claim that there is subtle information above 20kHz that we don't hear, but we "feel", or even use to put a sound at a particular point in space (instead of left or right, a sound can be left and above your head, or behind and to the left, etc). This cannot be scientifically proven just yet, but digital folks have given in to the pressure - a new standard that suggests sampling should take place 96,000 times per second is just now taking hold of the industry.

It seems as though digital recording technology has overcome all the problems and criticisms, and is poised to put analog recording on the endangered list. Those who believe in analog technology shouldn't worry too much, though - there are a lot of things that analog techniques are able to do that digital cannot do without lots of extra work. Besides the built-in "warmth" and pseudo-distortion that analog tape does to the sound (which is actually a very good thing in most cases), tape tricks such as vari-speed cannot be duplicated easily. However, major issues like tape editing, cost, size, dynamic range, frequency response, and tape winding and re-winding are much easier, better and faster in the digital realm - which in the long run may kill the analog format in the professional field.

The next and final column of the series will focus on the differences between analog and digital effects equipment and the new things it's allowed musicians and artists to do in the past 10 years.