Remember when making a copy of an analog recording was always worse? A cassette tape of an album, even a fancy reel-to-reel, always lost something of the original. And every subsequent copy lost more.
Record companies weren't worried about piracy back then; mix tapes were shared; favorites assembled and enjoyed.
Then all that changed with digital audio's perfection—accurate, repeatable, but said to be cold and without personality.
Its detractors say analog recordings have 'soul'; enhanced with each copy.
I can understand added 'soul' as character. Analog recording and its subsequent copy-to-copy degradation imprints its mark upon the original microphone feed. 'Character' seems a good description of this distortion, though 'soul' is certainly more romantic.
Is the added character of analog copies preferable to the perfection of digital?
