I already said how I listen to my (quality) audio, I record Vinyl (a physical analogue format) onto a portable Audio Cassette (another physical analogue format), I do this via an analogue audio exciter.  Vinyl is strictly for home enjoyment through a real Hi-Fi, tape recording allows me to take that quality wherever I go, and I prefer the warm sound of tape to any other format.

Tape recording is one of the secrets to the quality "big-console" type sound that more and more modern musicians are starting to catch on to (but most like to keep a secret of course).  Record a real analogue synthesizer (many new models coming onto the market) to one of these machines, and you'll be rewarded with lush, thick, solid, analogue sound that can only come from real analogue equipment.

There's a clear pattern that emerges with todays button-pushing musicians:

• They get an iPad.
• They realise it doesn't sound as good as what other people are producing.
• They wonder why (lol).
• They discover real analogue synthesizers.
• They recognize it is the quality sound they hear and always wanted for themselves.
• They ditch their iPad and buy a real analogue synthsizer.
• They get uncontollable techno-stiffies from using it.
• They record their analogue music to digital (bad idea).
• They realise something was lost by recording digitally.
• They look into the equipment that the better-sounding recording artists are using.
• They spot Open Reel Analogue recorders everywhere they look, and suddenly it hits them like a cannonball in the knackers.
• They buy an Open Reel Analogue recorder.
• They get that uncontrollable techno-stiffie again.
• They stick to analogue, no going back, they twidde their knobs and secretly laught at the kids still playing with iPads.
• They revel in comments like "Woah, that's an awesome sound you have to your work!"

This is a basic but high quality Analogue Open Reel machine, all the guy did was record to a brand new tape (in this case a Quantegy 478 tape) to demonstrate his machine.  This is the sort of warmth I have on every recording a take with me, and to hear it, I simply put a cassette into my Walkman, put on my headphones, press Play, and start walking ;-)

Don't expect to see beautiful Open Reel machines being manufactured again any time soon, but it's not impossible due to the resurgence in Vinyl, which in turn is going to mean people will want to record in real analogue as well as hear it.  This in turn means that people will want to buy physical analogue media, both to record from and record to.

Analogue is making a massive comback, be pleased about it because crazy as it sounds, life just isn't the same without it:

And here's an analogue fanatic, Adrain Utley (Portishead) being let loose on a brand new, modern-day, real analogue synthesizer from Arturia. If you've been brought up on digital, you probably can't imagine what it would sound like being recorded to that Open Reel machine above, or better still, via an analogue exciter in it's recording path ;-)

Anyway, this is starting to get a bit OT, and believe me, I could talk analogue non-stop - so I'd better shut-up now!
Now where was we, oh yes ... how to beat the pirates ... check out Adrain's boxset posted earlier and consider it absolute proof of concept ;-)