Mixing in the Analog Domain

Rediscovering the Lost Mojo

By Frans de Rond, Engineer at Sound Liaison

When I began my career as a recording engineer, the very first digital technologies were just appearing on the horizon. But in those early years, my world was still completely analog. Recording meant placing a microphone, routing it through a mixing console, and capturing it on a multitrack tape machine. Mixing meant taking that multitrack tape, running it back through the console, and printing a stereo master on a two-track tape machine. The entire process was tactile, immediate, and deeply connected to the physical medium.

Then came the digital revolution. When the first digital workstations arrived, the possibilities felt endless. Suddenly, you could manipulate sound in ways that had never been possible before. You could align notes perfectly, correct pitch with precision, and use a vast arsenal of plug-ins to shape the sound with EQ, compression, and effects. Most of these plug-ins were (and still are) modeled on classic analog gear. At the time, there were questions about sound quality, but over the decades digital processing made huge strides forward.

Now, forty years later, an entire generation of engineers has grown up working exclusively in the digital domain. Many of them have never experienced what it is like to record and mix entirely in analog. And as a result, that particular “sound”  - the analog mojo -  is slowly disappearing from our collective memory.

Music lovers who still spin vinyl records on a high-quality turntable know what I am talking about. There is a presence, a warmth, an emotional immediacy that is different from the polished precision of digital.

This year, as I started recording in DSD256 at Sound Liaison, I made a decision that brought me back to my roots: I installed a fully refurbished Studer 961 console (vintagetools.de) for monitoring and mixing. I was blown away by the quality of this 40-year-old desk. The sound was so inspiring during playback that I decided to take the bold step of doing the full mix through the Studer as well.

And what happened surprised even me. Compared to mixing entirely in PCM, something intangible returned. Something I could only describe as familiar, a sound from the past, a sound we had somehow lost along the way.

The realization hit me hard: blinded by the limitless possibilities of digital recording and mixing, we had unknowingly thrown away something valuable. With the Studer in the chain, the sound and the mojo were back.

The experience is almost overwhelming. It feels like listening to a finished album rather than a session that still needs fixing. Instead of reaching for endless tweaks, the music itself takes over. There is a natural flow, a depth, and a three-dimensional quality that simply draws you in.

Sometimes I wonder: am I just imagining this? Am I nostalgic for something that isn’t really there? But again and again, the musicians themselves confirm it.

A few weeks ago, drummer Bruno Castellucci was sitting on the studio couch listening to playback. After a few minutes he turned to me and said: “Man, the sound I lost in the 90’s is back again.” That gave me goosebumps. Because I knew exactly what he meant.

And speaking of goosebumps, that has become the norm when playing back a DSD256 recording through the Studer 961. Time after time, both musicians and listeners react physically to the sound. It’s not just “a good take” or “an emotional performance.” There is something more, something harder to define. With PCM recordings, we often felt that a take was strong, but there was always a subtle sense that something was missing. With the Studer and DSD256, that missing element suddenly reveals itself.

It’s like the famous story of the Native Americans not recognizing Columbus’s ships when they first appeared, simply because they had no frame of reference for such a thing. In the same way, many of us no longer hear the analog mojo because we’ve never experienced it, or we’ve forgotten what it sounds like. But once you hear it again, you know instantly what was lost.

At Sound Liaison, we are passionate about capturing performances with the highest possible fidelity, using DSD256 technology and now also embracing the analog domain for mixing. The combination is breathtaking. It is as if the best of both worlds, the precision of modern digital recording and the soul of analog mixing, come together in a way that is both timeless and new.

For me, mixing in the analog domain is not about nostalgia. It is about reconnecting with an authenticity that too often gets buried under layers of digital perfection. It is about sound that moves you before you even realize why. It is about bringing back the goosebumps.

And this journey has only just begun.

To be continued…