Sarm West was an early adopter for digital, Trevor Horn says that 'Two Tribes' was the first digital number one (recorded on a pair of Sony digi 24 track machines), they also had a Fairlight digital sampler (which was silly money, even by today's standards).

But, judging by this somewhat disturbing picture, there was still plenty of analogue gear, the desk looks like a Neve to me but somewhere in my mind I think I remember that he was known for using SSL, anyway:



via: http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/mar0...trevorhorn.htm

So my question is, how far down the line does conversion to digital have to happen for something to be considered AAD or DDD, Surely DDD only exists in terms of electronic music created with digital synths connected digitally to a digital recorder? Anything with performances of 'real' instruments in a room can at best be ADD (what with pianos and guitars being analogue and all).

What if you record a band through an analogue mixer with analogue effects (compression, eq etc) inserted in the signal path and record them to a digital 'tape' machine, what's that? Many folk these days operate 'hybrid' studios, where the tracking is done via a mixer to a computer but the mixing itself is done in the computer, or where the tracking is done straight to the computer but the mixing is done with a range of analogue outboard gear that signals are d/a converted, sent to for processing and the a/d converted back in to the computer. How does one draw a line?

I'm a bit puzzled about the UB40 comparison? Surely the master comes from the same place (probably originally a 24track analogue tape machine) it's been digitised to go on cd but the newer one is post 'loudness wars' and has therefore been unnecessarily touched up (aka had the nuts limited off it) in post before release.

I'm guessing it's less about signal chain and more to do with how 'far' from the master any itteration or version is and how many (and how much) 'touching up' it's had in the meantime?