I had a younger guy in hear one day who said the reason I may think my modified mixer was quieter was because I'm old (55) and I can't hear anymore!!!!
Of course, he wasn't right and he's not a client either!
We're all older. And I say thank God for it. We've seen a lot and we know where it all came from.
As for analog recording... I don't miss spending hours tweaking head zenith and the 50 million combos to alignment. I did it often enough to KNOW that nothing under 40hz was really there, and that anything above 14kHz was a blessing. I used DBX type I NR and it worked very well... even flawlessly to the point where I could abuse the medium a little. And I did.
But miss analog? No way. However... I miss being able to do something the average Joe Bag o' Donuts can't do. I sit here at my COMPUTER and click and peck way... missing the days when I worked with a console all lit up and the multi-track spinning around with meters and lights flashing. It was something unique.
Now, in a certain way, I'm just another warm body with a TV screen and a Windows based computer that doesn't work. And I can attest... I spend 10 times the time troubleshooting WINDOWS, as I did in tape machine alignment. Microsoft is the WORST part of this new technology. I resent their monopoly, and I resent being forced to essentially be a subsidiary of MicroSoft Inc. Without them, I and most of us HAVE NO BUSINESS. And yeah... it might be worse if there WERE 4 other OS systems. But at least there would be competition to produce the BEST OS and one that is reliable. The way it is now... Bill could care less... put up and shut up. He's a philanthropist now and more concerned that he leaves a legacy about how he tried to save the world.
So what have we lost? IDENTITY. CONTROL. FUN... and the sense that we were doing something unique that few others were doing. Now anybody with $450 bucks and a computer can record and mix and process with effects and basically, achieve a semblance of audio quality WITHOUT US. It's similar to what I'm seeing in the film world... they buy a digital video camcorder, a Mac G5 with Final Cut Pro and they're a filmmaker/director/producer. Don't laugh... it's happening!
And don't dare question them about what frame rate their film edit is at because they'll get real mad! Honest. It happened last week. According to this "filmmaker" ... SMPTE wasn't important. And when I told him differently, he was insulted.