Daft Punk spent 5 years & $1m+ to get a warm analogue sound of the 70s and 80s, and the biggest selling record of the past year…which suggests the answer is “no”

The link below is great review and overview of the amazing recording of Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories.   even if you are not the biggest fan of french electronic dance music in which two dudes sound like robots trying to be human, some folks with very good ears think it is the best recorded mixed and mastered music of the 21st Century.

“We were doing lots of tests with analogue tape,” recalls Franco. “We did things like record into Pro Tools and then transfer the material to tape, at various different levels, and then bring it back into Pro Tools. We then compared this with recording the same material directly to tape and transferring that to Pro Tools. We wanted to see what the different combinations did what and how tape could get us certain sounds. One of our conclusions was that we liked the sound we got when we went straight to tape and then to Pro Tools. We liked how tape changed the shape of a sound. It’s a cool journey to understand what analogue does. It wasn’t just a matter of trying to find the sounds of the past, but also of trying to achieve the best sound possible today.”

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jul13/articles/daft-punk.htm