Well, they're supposedly inseperable aren't they. I think that's part of the problem of the digital age, we haven't learned how to cope with what seems like the abstraction of message from medium.
By way of explanation, here is the preferred, "natural" signal chain for the music closest to my heart, UK rave music:
1. Source materials taken from old vinyl and put into a cheap sampler, often with only 12 bit resolution.
2. Recorded through a budget Mackie mixing desk, and bounced to DAT.
3. Pressed to a one-off acetate record (the analog version of a CDR)
4. Played through a cheap DJ mixer at a pirate radio station, and pushed through a rack of cheap compressors/limiters for broadcast.
5. Encoded as a microwave laser and beamed several miles to the actual transmitter, to obscure the location of the studio from the police.
6. Encoded again into FM and transmitted.
7. Picked up on a consumer radio and recorded to consumer cassette tape.
8. (Optional step) Said tape left in a box for 15 years under your older brother's bed.
Apart from step 8, this was largely how people listened to the music at the time. I have since obtained step 2 copies of music I had previously only heard at step 8, and all the emotion was gone. You could tell it had been shorn of context. So, as you can hopefully see, I find ideas of "fidelity" rather difficult.
When I and other young producers try and make records in this style, its a constant question as to how far we should go to imitate the sounds of all those dead media and ghost rituals. To me it feels pretty self defeating, but I still do it to an extent, because I think it sounds better. Sometimes I wonder what the modern day, internet-age equivalent is, and how to make it. I'm probably too old.
By way of explanation, here is the preferred, "natural" signal chain for the music closest to my heart, UK rave music:
1. Source materials taken from old vinyl and put into a cheap sampler, often with only 12 bit resolution.
2. Recorded through a budget Mackie mixing desk, and bounced to DAT.
3. Pressed to a one-off acetate record (the analog version of a CDR)
4. Played through a cheap DJ mixer at a pirate radio station, and pushed through a rack of cheap compressors/limiters for broadcast.
5. Encoded as a microwave laser and beamed several miles to the actual transmitter, to obscure the location of the studio from the police.
6. Encoded again into FM and transmitted.
7. Picked up on a consumer radio and recorded to consumer cassette tape.
8. (Optional step) Said tape left in a box for 15 years under your older brother's bed.
Apart from step 8, this was largely how people listened to the music at the time. I have since obtained step 2 copies of music I had previously only heard at step 8, and all the emotion was gone. You could tell it had been shorn of context. So, as you can hopefully see, I find ideas of "fidelity" rather difficult.
When I and other young producers try and make records in this style, its a constant question as to how far we should go to imitate the sounds of all those dead media and ghost rituals. To me it feels pretty self defeating, but I still do it to an extent, because I think it sounds better. Sometimes I wonder what the modern day, internet-age equivalent is, and how to make it. I'm probably too old.