The notion of taking a studio “offline” is not new, it’s been that way since the dawn of digital recording and the internet.
We got our start recording digitally in the late 90’s. It was obviously problematic for us to be online then because we were broke and had to pirate everything. Connecting to the internet would have caused some of the software to check for licenses which would have tanked our studio and means of scraping a living.
In the early 2000’s when we were less dependent on 1GB SCSI arrays and stolen software, there was a new issue: software updating or connecting during a session would cause CPU timing issues and you’d get pops in your recordings or weird monitoring latency.
This issue is perennial. Now we also deal with the OS Self-updating, internet browsers that operate in the background and all the other stuff from the past which is still and issue (legally owned software also continues to check for updates and license keys). On Windows, I’ve found even worse issues with not only downloading updates but crashing my DAW and audio card drivers when I fail to restart. Add in the planned obsolescence of OS, digital tracking initiatives like Google and MS authenticators and it becomes a very scary reality connecting the fragile DAW workstation to a network.
If I still did recording professionally, I’d never allow my workstation on the Internet, but it’s been this way since the beginning, its not a new phenomenon.
I run a book publishing company and I stopped updating Adobe applications past CS version 6. They lock you in the subscriber model forever, disable your software if you no longer want to pay, and i can't see any off-ramp. No thanks. Plus updates disable key features: older Type 1 fonts, made by Adobe no less, don't work with the newer software and of course there was the entire Pantone color fiasco.
With regard to 'lost movies,' it is certainly true that motion pictures were thought of a product that had their time and weren't taken all that seriously with regard to preservation until the Museum of Modern Art got involved. What is ironic is that MOMA asked studios for copies of these films with the aim to preserve them themselves if the studios weren't going to do it, and they were more often than not turned down.
The other aspect that the author left out is that many missing films continue to turn up. A much longer print of "Metropolis" turned up in Argentina and this film is now a lot more coherent. Archives often don't have a record of the films they have, or have been mislabeled; the films of Charley Bowers were hiding in plain sight in France, because he was known as Bricolo there. There are many such success stories. In a recent Substack article I wrote about recent film preservation projects, I point out that the other thing that brought renewed interest in older movies was video cassette and particularly cable, since the cable companies needed product, and old 16MM prints struck for television back in the fifties were cut up and not acceptable.
Definitely appreciate this practice of sharing articles, planning to do more of this myself. Your community-boosting ethos is exemplary. As always, love that you share your bookshelf! Serpent and Rainbow has always stuck w/ me, and I discovered Kingsley b/c of you. Thanks!
The next step after unplugged is probably emulation. If you have old Mac or PC software, your more modern machine will be unable to run it without a virtual environment. Unless you have lovingly tended an old rig, that's the only way to experience something like Laurie Anderson's Puppet Motel.
You won't be alone. Emulation is has a long tradition in computing. Back in the 1960s, the most commonly executed program on the IBM 360 was an IBM 1401 emulator. I did some work for a major airline in the 1990s. They were running their flight planning software under an emulator. The machine it was written for and likely the company that manufactured it no longer existed.
It helps that modern computers are so much faster than earlier machines. There are old Macintosh emulations that run in one's browser at reasonable speed. A typical JPG image nowadays is bigger than the storage on the original Mac. That airline eventually rewrote new software, but they are used to buying things like $250M airplanes. For decades, they relied on a company that specialized in supporting antique software under emulation. Given how much software is now mission critical for the rest of us, I wouldn't be surprised if emulation moves more mainstream with companies focusing on various markets like, for example, music studio support.
P.S. It isn't even just end users. Software developers love Docker because it lets the freeze a system configuration. It's the Red Queen Hypothesis gone mad.
Automatic software updates have had an impact on me in several ways. My phone, of course. It will, quite unpredictably change how it works. Often in a way that seems worse to me. It may be better for some, but not for me.
Or games I play (computer games). The updates or expansions aren't always better than the original, but there's no way to go back to the thing I loved.
And computer software that I use for programming often changes without much warning. Libraries and/or frameworks will update in a way that disrupts my workflow. This is the situation most like those recording studios. I know how chaotic it is when I have to port to the new release in the middle of something else, and I'm not on much of a production schedule.
Automatic updates exist for a reason. The reason is that people might well never do it otherwise, and on balance, that's a bad thing. But yikes, the situation we are in has me constantly asking, "Who owns this computer anyway?"
Hey Ted, your quest for useful music, let me point to that scene in Strange Encounter's of the Third Kind. Yeah that 1977 pop sci fi movie. The scene were humans and aliens finally catch up with one another. How did they try to communicate? Music! Those famous chords you heard everywhere back then. After the human's computer and the alien's exchanged those chords they began really sending music back and forth, ever faster. Its been along time but I think I remember it was a little jumbled up sounds and tonal at that! But that was the movie folks ideas of what it would sound like had it actually happened. Main point: rather than some advanced binary buzzing they choose music to do the very fundamental first contact stuff.
I like going offline. For example, I've got an older car which I will likely keep for a long time because it is dependable/reliable and is completely offline. I've resisted having Alexa or any other "convenient" (aka intrusive) type thing in my home. I like paying cash and have resisted all payment apps on my phone (although using credit/debit cards is obviously not offline). I'm seriously considering getting a dumb flip phone, especially if the government continues to spy on its citizens.
All artists ( musicians, painters, sculptors and culinary )and gardeners share bits of Wicca. Songwriters seem to have the biggest share, since their intention is to sway the audience to a particular emotional direction. …Just sayin’…
I work in the music instrument industry, and my experience is that studios are always trying to balance stability and familiarity with would-be clients who call and ask "Do you have the latest X? No? Okay, bye!" There's no space to say "No, but I have this other thing which works fine..." and sometimes the would-be client is wanting to bring in a project they've started at home on a more recent version of the software, using plugins which the studio doesn't own, doesn't really want to buy, and may not even be compatible with.
I'm not sure I've ever been in a professional studio that wasn't based on a system that wasn't at least five years old. The number of people holding on to Pro Tools 10 is not insignificant.
Great recommendations. I look forward to reading this regularly. I really value digests. Interesting how a circumspection is growing about computer technology and its potentially destabilising effects.
I enjoyed reading the recommendations. Was surprised at the music studios going unplugged but I understand that frequent software upgrades are cubersome. The reaction is radical but I’ve been thinking a lot lately that there’s a tendency towards going analogue in certain aspects of life, art. I’m also thinking about my writing which for now is 100% digital. Let’s see.
The notion of taking a studio “offline” is not new, it’s been that way since the dawn of digital recording and the internet.
We got our start recording digitally in the late 90’s. It was obviously problematic for us to be online then because we were broke and had to pirate everything. Connecting to the internet would have caused some of the software to check for licenses which would have tanked our studio and means of scraping a living.
In the early 2000’s when we were less dependent on 1GB SCSI arrays and stolen software, there was a new issue: software updating or connecting during a session would cause CPU timing issues and you’d get pops in your recordings or weird monitoring latency.
This issue is perennial. Now we also deal with the OS Self-updating, internet browsers that operate in the background and all the other stuff from the past which is still and issue (legally owned software also continues to check for updates and license keys). On Windows, I’ve found even worse issues with not only downloading updates but crashing my DAW and audio card drivers when I fail to restart. Add in the planned obsolescence of OS, digital tracking initiatives like Google and MS authenticators and it becomes a very scary reality connecting the fragile DAW workstation to a network.
If I still did recording professionally, I’d never allow my workstation on the Internet, but it’s been this way since the beginning, its not a new phenomenon.
I run a book publishing company and I stopped updating Adobe applications past CS version 6. They lock you in the subscriber model forever, disable your software if you no longer want to pay, and i can't see any off-ramp. No thanks. Plus updates disable key features: older Type 1 fonts, made by Adobe no less, don't work with the newer software and of course there was the entire Pantone color fiasco.
With regard to 'lost movies,' it is certainly true that motion pictures were thought of a product that had their time and weren't taken all that seriously with regard to preservation until the Museum of Modern Art got involved. What is ironic is that MOMA asked studios for copies of these films with the aim to preserve them themselves if the studios weren't going to do it, and they were more often than not turned down.
The other aspect that the author left out is that many missing films continue to turn up. A much longer print of "Metropolis" turned up in Argentina and this film is now a lot more coherent. Archives often don't have a record of the films they have, or have been mislabeled; the films of Charley Bowers were hiding in plain sight in France, because he was known as Bricolo there. There are many such success stories. In a recent Substack article I wrote about recent film preservation projects, I point out that the other thing that brought renewed interest in older movies was video cassette and particularly cable, since the cable companies needed product, and old 16MM prints struck for television back in the fifties were cut up and not acceptable.
Definitely appreciate this practice of sharing articles, planning to do more of this myself. Your community-boosting ethos is exemplary. As always, love that you share your bookshelf! Serpent and Rainbow has always stuck w/ me, and I discovered Kingsley b/c of you. Thanks!
The next step after unplugged is probably emulation. If you have old Mac or PC software, your more modern machine will be unable to run it without a virtual environment. Unless you have lovingly tended an old rig, that's the only way to experience something like Laurie Anderson's Puppet Motel.
You won't be alone. Emulation is has a long tradition in computing. Back in the 1960s, the most commonly executed program on the IBM 360 was an IBM 1401 emulator. I did some work for a major airline in the 1990s. They were running their flight planning software under an emulator. The machine it was written for and likely the company that manufactured it no longer existed.
It helps that modern computers are so much faster than earlier machines. There are old Macintosh emulations that run in one's browser at reasonable speed. A typical JPG image nowadays is bigger than the storage on the original Mac. That airline eventually rewrote new software, but they are used to buying things like $250M airplanes. For decades, they relied on a company that specialized in supporting antique software under emulation. Given how much software is now mission critical for the rest of us, I wouldn't be surprised if emulation moves more mainstream with companies focusing on various markets like, for example, music studio support.
P.S. It isn't even just end users. Software developers love Docker because it lets the freeze a system configuration. It's the Red Queen Hypothesis gone mad.
Automatic software updates have had an impact on me in several ways. My phone, of course. It will, quite unpredictably change how it works. Often in a way that seems worse to me. It may be better for some, but not for me.
Or games I play (computer games). The updates or expansions aren't always better than the original, but there's no way to go back to the thing I loved.
And computer software that I use for programming often changes without much warning. Libraries and/or frameworks will update in a way that disrupts my workflow. This is the situation most like those recording studios. I know how chaotic it is when I have to port to the new release in the middle of something else, and I'm not on much of a production schedule.
Automatic updates exist for a reason. The reason is that people might well never do it otherwise, and on balance, that's a bad thing. But yikes, the situation we are in has me constantly asking, "Who owns this computer anyway?"
Hey Ted, your quest for useful music, let me point to that scene in Strange Encounter's of the Third Kind. Yeah that 1977 pop sci fi movie. The scene were humans and aliens finally catch up with one another. How did they try to communicate? Music! Those famous chords you heard everywhere back then. After the human's computer and the alien's exchanged those chords they began really sending music back and forth, ever faster. Its been along time but I think I remember it was a little jumbled up sounds and tonal at that! But that was the movie folks ideas of what it would sound like had it actually happened. Main point: rather than some advanced binary buzzing they choose music to do the very fundamental first contact stuff.
I like going offline. For example, I've got an older car which I will likely keep for a long time because it is dependable/reliable and is completely offline. I've resisted having Alexa or any other "convenient" (aka intrusive) type thing in my home. I like paying cash and have resisted all payment apps on my phone (although using credit/debit cards is obviously not offline). I'm seriously considering getting a dumb flip phone, especially if the government continues to spy on its citizens.
Nice! These audio technicians have taken the saying 'unplugged' literally.
All artists ( musicians, painters, sculptors and culinary )and gardeners share bits of Wicca. Songwriters seem to have the biggest share, since their intention is to sway the audience to a particular emotional direction. …Just sayin’…
Fascinating!
I always enjoy your recommendations on any subject, so yes, I’d enjoy more of this.
I work in the music instrument industry, and my experience is that studios are always trying to balance stability and familiarity with would-be clients who call and ask "Do you have the latest X? No? Okay, bye!" There's no space to say "No, but I have this other thing which works fine..." and sometimes the would-be client is wanting to bring in a project they've started at home on a more recent version of the software, using plugins which the studio doesn't own, doesn't really want to buy, and may not even be compatible with.
I'm not sure I've ever been in a professional studio that wasn't based on a system that wasn't at least five years old. The number of people holding on to Pro Tools 10 is not insignificant.
I first heard about taking a studio "offline" when I interviewed David Torn in 2017 for All About Jazz: https://www.allaboutjazz.com/david-torn-making-records-film-composition-and-working-with-david-bowie-david-torn-by-mark-sullivan I don't think it made it into the article, but he said his main recording and production rig would be rendered unusable if he tried to update the software.
Great recommendations. I look forward to reading this regularly. I really value digests. Interesting how a circumspection is growing about computer technology and its potentially destabilising effects.
I enjoyed reading the recommendations. Was surprised at the music studios going unplugged but I understand that frequent software upgrades are cubersome. The reaction is radical but I’ve been thinking a lot lately that there’s a tendency towards going analogue in certain aspects of life, art. I’m also thinking about my writing which for now is 100% digital. Let’s see.