Cool thread. Coupla contextual statements: I used to read "Stereophile" religiously, for the amusement, I could never afford that level of equipment. And, I spent time with some true audiophiles auditioning that kind of stuff, to hear what they were hearing. While I'm not a full believer, I do think there's "something there" in the analogue vs. digital debate. What it is is wide open in terms of interpretation.
What I _do_ remember decades before that, though, was back when I was listening to music in my parents' house, as a teenager, and had put on a recording (it was LP in those times) of Scriabin's "Poem de L'Extase" (sp) and then Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue" while my parents were hanging around with an old family friend (my godfather, actually). I remember the family friend commenting on how much better "Kind of Blue" was recorded than the Scriabin, and him posing me the question as to why. At the time we chatted about it, it boiled down to a couple of things, that also became an issue in the recording of classical symphonic music at the time:
a) "Kind of Blue" is recorded comparatively simply, with not that many mics. The orchestral recording was being done with the standard of the time (early '70s), lots of mics for the different sections. Later on, recording technique changed and fewer, better mics were used, it was felt you got a clearer, less "busy" mix that way, despite some loss of the detail that the 100-mics approach was trying to buy (all of this in the area of trying to capture orchestras more "realistically").
b) and more important, and lining up with what Pongoid's been hinting at a couple of times in the thread: it ain't the meat, it's the motion, to borrow an old blues line that Bonnie Raitt borrowed once upon a time. What makes "Kind of Blue" such a crack recording is the _experience of the engineers working with the musicians_. They all knew they had a special thing, they were all listening to each other, and working together with a kind of intimacy and understanding that's not often found.
I would say it's not a question of analog vs. digital, really, but the attitude towards both music-making and music-recording reflected in the approach of different generations.
The "analogue" generation treated the art of music, of recording, and the interaction of all the elements with incredible respect and attention to detail. They also brought a range of experience, not just in music, but in culture, a breadth of knowledge of human experience, and history, a passion for a few small, important things, to the process.
The "digital" generation lives in a sea awash with 60 million versions of the same thing, all being simultaneously hyped as new and improved every other week. There's a general levelling towards sub-mediocrity that's induced as a result, since what's being hyped grows out of people with about as much knowledge about the world as the average high school sophomore left off with (and I'm talking _knowledge_ not _information_ -- _knowledge_ means _passion_ for finding something out, say, why a musician in Kenya is doing what they're doing, going there, spending time with them, learning about their lives, not just watching an MTV video with a guy playing "that really cool instrument in the background").
I'm not saying everyone back in the '50s, '60s, '70s were geniuses (though a few were), nor that everyone these days are idiots.
I just think that because there's so "much" around now, and access is so easy and instantaneous, that we're easily distracted, have a difficult time paying deeeeep attention to one thing for a sustained period of time, think we have to do 90 things well at the same time, etc. etc. Generalized ADD, basically. The results are inevitable.
So, when it comes to "analogue" vs. "digital," my main opinion for you there, Mindspawn, is that there's no special equipment or technique you can hand out in a flyer at the workshop to get from "digital" to "analogue" except the one that simply states, "Pay Attention to Details." The commercial pressures to "work quickly," the cost of studio time, the cost of education, etc. all leads to trying to do too much, too fast. You can get that "analogue magic" with any equipment, even digital, if you only give it "analogue attention." And, it's only worth giving the music "analogue attention" if the music itself has been composed and performed with the same kind of attention.
Find a group that's worked closely and lovingly for years with their mixing and studio engineers, who have a real, sustained relationship around what they're doing, who feel they're on a mission with what they're doing, who feel they've got something truly valuable to contribute with what they're doing, who take the necessary time and attention to accomplish what they're doing in a decisive fashion, and you'll get "that sound."
Just my opinion.
rt