Recording studios producing for CD ( digital)

[RMutt]

As I am now the owner of a turntable but still buying CD's, I am in a quandary as to which format to buy. So I have decided to go for a fairly arbitrary production date, where, if before I will buy the record, if after I will get the CD. So what do you lot think would be a good date to go for? I am looking for a date where the mastering changed to CD (digital) becoming the priority. I realise the date would be different for different studios and perhaps some overlap where they considered both CD and vinyl, but as I said the date would be somewhat arbitrary. I'm thinking maybe about 1985. What do you think?

[PaulStewart]

In 85 Iwas certainly still producing, mixing and madtering for vinyl. I would think if you had to have arbitrary date, then not till digital recording on computers became the norm would be right. But of course, you now have artists to whom analogue is again king and are again using vinyl as the benchmark.

[struth]

Digital recordings started in late 70s so from then on its difficult to know unless you can get info on the recording. Many of the better recordings on vinyl will say if it was originally mastered analogue and if they remastered it that way too. I believe there are sites out there that specialise in this info but dont know for sure...
It would be nice to always know

[crackorama]

Really interesting post.

[RMutt]

I remember when buying CD's they used to sometimes have on AAD or ADD label or some such. It meant analogue recording, analogue mastering and digital format or analogue, digital and digital, I think. I suppose at some point it all went DDD. Maybe that's the date I'm after.

[Macca]

I'd guess around 1990 for rock and pop - earlier for classical.

[Moko]

I worked for probably the most successful Indie in the mid 90s and even at that point it would be impossible to give you a guide date. Some of the acts recorded to tape and mastered from tape, others recorded to tape but the cut would be done from a DAT copy of the tape what probably matters more was whether a separate production master was cut for vinyl and CD or if the vinyl was just cut from the CD master but you would have had to be in the mastering suite on the day to know that so good luck finding anyone who remembers.

The main switch to digital production would have occurred in the very late 90's early 2000's when bands ditched recording to tape and went over to ProTools

[Lodgesound]

My studio now custom masters specifically for analogue tape.

[RMutt]

Thanks for your input everyone. Given that, I suppose, I'm an indie kid at heart. I'm going to go with Moko and set my date at 1995, which is, to my surprise, a full ten years after I thought. I must at some point, work out what was the last record I bought back then.

[Audio Advent]

Although Moko didn't say that....

Some of that vinyl you'll be buying before 95 may well be recorded digitally or recorded with CD mastering in mind, whilst the vinyl cut was made from a derivative of that CD master, perhaps from a DAT sent off to a separate mastering studio for that purpose.

I'm afraid, as Moko suggests, you will end up with vinyl where the CD was better and CDs where the vinyl was better... so it's going to be a case of research on a band by band basis, if not album by album.

And that my friend is where you decend into the craziness of music collecting! Next you'll be working out which is the best sounding vinyl pressing, CD master...