The very first commercial digital recordings were in fact a lot better than those to come for the next many years, because the proprietary machines were not cost-engineered. They didn’t know how to build them except to do everything as well as they could and pass the cost on. Then a consensus developed as to where cost cutting could be undertaken and things like Alesis ADAT were the result. They were a step down from the Otari and Tascam analog machines and a bigger step from the Ampex AG440, but they were affordable.

This cycle is a constant. The first one works, succeeds, more profits are “needed”, cost cutting is implemented, quality tanks, sales drop, and there is a corporate come-to-Jesus meeting where a top exec and a few MBAs are purged, quality goes up for a whlle, then the cycle restarts.

The best digital is now where the best analog was in the sixties, but there is a lot of bad digital, because it’s cheap.