Is analog gear still worth it for mixing, or only for tracking?

The debate between analog and digital gear has been a cornerstone of audio discussions for decades. Every week I get a message asking for my opinion on analog gear.

A vast majority of engineers, myself included, primarily work “in the box” these days. Even those with elaborate racks often use them sparingly.

There’s an argument to be made that distinguishing between a track mixed analog and one mixed digitally is virtually impossible nowadays, given the quality of current DSP processing. And that’s the reality. If you compare an analog-mixed song to a digitally mixed song, it’s completely impossible to tell the difference.

I do believe some genres and styles can greatly benefit from analog pieces, such as classical music, jazz or other acoustic genres. But even then, the benefit comes ONLY from boutique pieces, and those are usually pretty expensive. Anything worth buying usually goes beyond the 5-6K price tag.

So is analog dead?

Absolutely not.

Analog gear still plays a huge role during tracking and recording, and its value there is undeniable. 90% of a great mix comes from great tracking.

This is why, when you watch professional mixing engineers work on a song, they sometimes make only a slight EQ adjustment to a track and nothing more. But when you try to copy that on your song, it doesn’t work, and you end up with humongous chains.

Why? Because if something is recorded well, mixing becomes an easy task, and that recording quality is 100% correlated with the right choice of analog equipment.

My setup

Personally, I got rid of all my outboard for ergonomic reasons. Given the number of songs we work on daily in our studio, it’s impossible to manage everything if I have to keep recalling settings.

My Dutch & Dutch 8C speakers, my RME ADI-2/4 Pro SE, my Audeze MM-500 and my M4 Max MacBook, plus GREAT acoustics, are all I need to deliver outstanding work. And if I need an analog touch, I pass a track or two through a real analog tape machine that is easily available to me.

If I ever go hybrid again, it will definitely be with special machines that are difficult to recreate in the digital domain, such as tape machines, some tube EQs or boutique converters. And ideally, they’d be digitally recallable.