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50 years from now the problem will be that we have preserved digital masters in the form of session files for various DAWs and it will no longer be possible to patch together the correct hardware, OS, plugins, and virtual instruments to recreate the session. Artists and producers are encouraged to create stems or bounces of all the individual tracks for the purposes of long term preservation, but this does not always happen.



That's basically the reason Steve Albini gives for staying analogue: https://youtu.be/p-uziD9AvrI?t=822 . That said, in some respects I don't think (not an expert) the situation is clearly worse than it was in the analogue days: it may be difficult to use or replicate some DAW plugin effect in the future, but it's not as if some studio's physical plate reverb unit, for example, was easy to replicate in another place or at a later time either.


Yeah probably more forward compatible to send/bounce wet effects to their own tracks and print all the tracks as audio.

Then in worst case scenario you can load the raw WAV (or whatever format) tracks in a future DAW.


This worries me greatly. I have worked in the music industry and most studios in my area only keep DAW sessions for about a year.

Sadly a lot of music is going to be lost in the next 50 years.


Besides from being able to fiddle with the multitrack myself at home, whenever I have studio sessions for my band I always ask for the stems. I remember a couple years ago while starting work on an EP at a local studio, the guy just deleted some band's sessions to make space for ours.

He didn't want to give me the stems, but we never released that EP anyway. When/if we get to re-record it, I'll be sure that is clear from the start.

Don't know if I'd have this luxury at bigger studios, but I'm starting to record my own material anyway. Home recording and software gear are incredibly powerful tools.


If you are paying for the session its completely reasonable to ask for a copy of the session files IMHO. If you are going to tape and they want to erase it and re-use it or something I would at least negotiate dumping it to digital.


I agree completely, but notice that many engineers and/or mixers seem to believe that the session/mix data (outside of bounced stems) is their IP. Which is truly stupid when you think about it.




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