Six Great Reasons to Return to Tape-Based Multitrack Recording

About five years ago when I had a mid life crisis, decided to drastically downsize my digital home recording facility and set up a 1990s-spec, tape-based studio in the space, I saw the tape studio serving as an occasional change. But it’s actually seen more use than the digital studio.

The digital studio is more capable, controlled and precise, and much easier to use, but tape has easily won the battle for attention. This year, I’ve started to ask myself why. Here are six key answers…

1985 Rich Bitch Studios Audio Cassette Case

This is going to be pretty localised in its interest, but it may perhaps conjure memories of similar practices used by various commercial recording studios in the 1980s.

1984 TDK SA 60 Audio Cassette

The TDK SA 60 was a really nice Type 2 high bias tape with a round but well defined sound. It also seemed a pretty durable piece of manufacture, and this one, whilst not having been played regularly since I moved its content to digital media in the late 1990s, does still sound very good – well over a quarter of a century after it was produced. ‘SA’, incidentally, stood for Super Avilyn, which was the receptive coating formulation TDK used on the actual tape.