[jasonrh]

As computer speeds get higher, hd space gets cheaper, internet connections get better, and portable players have more space (this is the HUGE one), eventually people will realise they really could have this stuff in better shape, and in fact that buying the CD is not just good for having the cover art.

Modern mixing techniques are horrible. Everything is under a veil of reverb to make it sound 'ambient' (actually set the mikes up properly in the first place if you want ambience!!! ).

Instruments are pushed unnaturally into the center - with the actual stereo bit being more reverb than anything else on acoustic or 'quiet' material. When things are actually given some real significant separation, it is used as an attention-grabbing 'gimmick' in the mix. I don't want the old twin-track stuff, but give me a clean reverb-less recording with some semblance of difference between the two channels.

Compression is rife (as the article says), and there is tons of fudging which makes old ADT and splicing techniques look pure as a live recording in comparison.

As popular musicians and singers seem to become less and less talented and more and more based on marketing over talent, the more and more engineers fake up their records (and even their mimed live performances) to seem perfect. Kids hear live recordings of the Stones from the early 1970s and complain about how crap they are, because the music they were raised on is 'played' absolutely perfectly in time and in tune every single show. This of course because it is recorded long in advance of the tour and mimed.

I'm not too fond of modern music anyway, so my worry is largely how archival material can get a bit fucked by post-facto fiddling. Mercifully, it is too expensive to go back to the multi-tracks so the dreaded 'remixing' doesn't happen too often.

For the old stuff, give us tube-based mixing consoles if you ever have to do any multi-track remixing, no pro-tools ever (there is too much of a risk of causing harm while trying to help), no compression or NR ever, and just put the earliest possible generation of the original stereo or mono mix on a CD with the volume at a normal level. Then you'll have a very happy Jason.

I dread the day when 5.1 or 7.1 becomes considered 'standard', and the horrible reverby mocked-up mangling that pre-1990s recordings will likely suffer from that will make old 'electronic stereo' seem like religious adherence to the original mix.