"Analog - A Closer Connection?"

I've always liked the clarity of digital recording, but every now and then
I'll listen to an analog recording and find myself thinking it sounds
better in some way (at least until I get tired of the muddiness of it and
then end up thinking that digital is better after all). The most recent
example of this was a tape I made in 1984 while living in San Francisco -
of different stuff pulled off the FM airwaves. I made the recording by
going from FM station to FM station riding the San Francisco airwaves, and
recorded bits and pieces of what I heard, including bits of some of the
commercials and a little from AM radio as well. I made the 90-minute tape
to send to a Japanese pen-pal to show her what radio in the US was like,
but that tape has turned into quite a bit of nostalgia for me 21 years down
the road. The analog sounds, the intervening years, and the Pacific Ocean
make the recording some as though it's from another world... and in a
practical sense, it really is from another world....

Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/