It is rare. I think we are the only 2 that really do that type of thing. I'm from the M, but raised in 865 and archiving everything released here. The advantage I have is that just about everything was recorded at my business partner's house from 80's on up til 2003. So, I have the masters to everything from that time period, both released and unreleased. The problem was, he used ADAT. So I had to buy a bunch of legacy equipment to archive it. Then the mixdown and mastering process is time consuming.
Yeah I hear that 100%. Working with analog tape today is very different and much more difficult than when we were working with them in the 90s, and literally 99% of the population have no idea about all the factors that come into play to work with tape correctly, even engineers today. You have to be running high end legacy equipment, that has to be serviced back to original specifications or better, there's already a few $1000s right there, and you have to be able to manipulate the media sources for the best possible playback, case by case; and that's all before it ever touches a DAW. For me, the majority of master material is on 4 track cassette, mixdowns on Type II & Type IV, and pressings/releases on Type I cassette; which are all much more finicky than ADAT due to the size and format. And a lot of the material was recorded/duplicated with inferior low end & out-of-spec equipment in the first place, which is difficult to counter. Having to deal with head alignment, playback azimuth, bias calibration, playback speed, frequency response, channel levels, noise, and age/condition of the material itself -- it's a lot of things to deal with just to get a quality digital file to source into mastering, and that's where the whole second part of the work starts. So yeah, I can see why a lot of people wouldn't even bother touching analog tape today. Yeah you could just throw an old tape into a $2 tape player and plug into a PC and hit record, but it's not going to sound how it's supposed to sound. So I always have had massive respect for the people who have worked magic with analog for years; producers and engineers alike. Because today it's just a matter of 3 clicks and you have piece of garbage ready for the radio
