The purpose of this post is to seed the collective consciousness.

Imagine a world where you could download the digital master tapes for a particular song, or album, or live event!

A 24 track master would be like 12 CD players all sinked up playing at the same time. The density of that would make a 2 track CD sound, well, exactly like so many of them do.

When we had our little studio on Spring Street, there was an open jam every Thursday night, and the following Friday evening I would spend in the studio playing back the tapes, sometimes analog, sometimes digital, sometimes two track and sometimes multi-track. I specifically remember how when listening to our modest 16 track board, each channel at 24/192, the sound was so damn good it was disturbing. I would listen to it over and over. All 16 tracks being mixed down to 2 tracks in the analog domain. Then I would get it just the way I like it, hit burn, and the 16 tracks would be digitally combined into 2 tracks.  Afterwards  I  would listen to the 2 channel " master, "  and it simply didn't have it. So much density and energy was lost it was just ridiculous.

Imagine setting in your room in front of your speakers listening to 24 tracks of your favorite group or artist through an analog mixer (tube of course ; ) ) with the main outs feeding your amplifier and speakers.  You could mix the song the way you want.  Now that would be worth a lot of serious cash...  One night you could delete the vocals all together and make it an instrumental.  One night you could move the bass player up and give him more presence. You could move the drum kit around.  Center it in the back, or blow it up bigger than life so the toms go from  far left to far right...  In fact, you could do what no one else but the sound guy at a live show could do... adjust shit on the fly to compliment the direction of the music as it plays!

This would allow you to perfect the recording to your own gear, room,  speakers, and taste. It would also make it possible to have an infinite number of variations of the recording. I believe it is possible to achieve the density of analogue tape this way, and let's say the price was the same... $450 for a 40-minute  session... It would be about 20 tracks, each with 24 wav files attached.... 480 24/192 wav files would be included in the package.

This approach would put a world of hurt on the master tape market because 24 digital tracks at 24/192 with the right hardware is going to sound better than a 2 track master analogue tape most of the time.

Another thing that you could do when you want to have some real fun, is take some simple recordings (less money) that feature 3, 4 or 5 tracks and set up a 3, 4 or 5 channel system in your room and set the speakers where the actual musicians sat during the recording.  With the right material this can be very convincingly real sounding in your room.  I've done it many times and why wouldn't I, right?

So there you go, that's the seed, and some water to get it growing.

Steve

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With my Ultra preamp, this would be a breeze!

Great post Steve and very thought provoking.  You know I love my analogue tape, but I am also well aware of its shortcomings from a practicality perspective.  I deal with it because the sound is so fricken amazing!...  period!  If that level of SQ with its massive frequency range and insane density could be achieved in ways that surpass what can be achieved with analog tape, and yet offer functionality beyond what a tape machine could reproduce?,,,  now that would be something other worldly.  

The ability to "home mix," albeit for the Uber audio geek (i.e. not the feint at heart), would be pretty bad ass.  We futz so much with speaker position, equipment selection, room treatments, cabling, etc. to get the sound stage, imaging, "live" experience. that we all yearn for.  To have the ability to fabricate what it is that each of us listeners are striving for would be something special.  It shifts the pendulum from leaving many things to chance to the opposite end where we have better control our own listening destinies.  

Sounds like you might have a great opportunity to create some audio intellectual property  ;)

I WANT...