Have things really changed that much?

While cleaning out a storage room recently, I came across a July 1988 issue of Recording magazine. If you're like me, 1988 doesn't sound like all that long ago, but it has been more than two decades since that issue was published. I later spent some time to see what was going on the recording industry back in 1988. Here are some interesting observations.

That issue had several ads for multi-track cassette recorders. Another ad touted a cassette duplicator that could duplicate up to 12 cassettes at a time. One company claimed that they were first to import DAT (digital audio tape) recorders into the United States. One of the major pressing plants (which is still in existence) advertised that they press vinyl records, duplicate cassettes, and now produce compact discs. One note of interest is that not a single ad listed a website or email address. While many of the ads were not much different from those of today offering microphones, recording consoles, equalizers, limiters, and compressors—most of the same gear found in current magazines—almost all of the equipment was analog. Only one ad mentioned the word "digital." Two computers were in evidence with one ad for an Atari and another offering an Apple II.

One of the most interesting articles was entitled "A Hard Disk Recording Primer" and subtitled "The ABC's of the newest recording medium." Most of the article was spent discussing how an analog audio signal is converted into digital data. It concluded by noting that most hard disks have a capacity of 20 megabytes which "gives us over 226 seconds of sound - more than enough for a three-minute pop tune >in mono." I guess things have change somewhat in the last twenty years.