Sam Rosenthal of ethereal gothic pioneers black tape for a blue girl and founder of Projekt Records started making music with cassette decks and Radio Shack keyboards. He has come a long way in the past twenty years. The days of the cassette deck are long behind him as are the "stone age" days of the ½ inch Teac 80-8 he used before 2001. These days Vegas 5.0 is his weapon of choice along with CD Architect. And Rosenthal misses the old a lot less than some other artists.

"Although I like the way all of my early albums turned out, I have to say that there were lots of limitations on what I could create based on the tools I was using. Moving to digital permitted me to finally have automated mixes and to construct pieces in a much more modern way," says Rosenthal. "Instead of having to work with samplers, I could slide .wav files around on the screen--create rich deep loops and washes with pieces of bits that I recorded relatively straightforwardly. Sure, the sonic bar is higher now. And that's a real big bother when you're anal compulsive."

Working with his 8 track Rosenthal says there was always a danger. When erasing hiss between the words in vocal tracks you risked erasing part of that take. At that time and with that gear it was a risk you had to take.

"But now with the digital, I can spend hours and hours on one little thing, trying to clean it up perfectly," says Rosenthal. "It's great, but also a nightmare. Sometimes I just have to let it go!"

Rosenthal is not completely down on tape or other older gear. He still likes outboard gear--things made to do a certain sort of processing where there are wires and knobs involved. Rosenthal says that plug-ins have not yet replaced a really great reverb or effects processor. Even tape has an upside in his book.

"One positive of tape is the warmer sound and the fact that you can take the reels off and record instruments playing backwards. It gives some songs a naive sort of charm, says Rosenthal. "But the drawbacks are way too many to outweigh the positives."

The drawbacks, according to Rosenthal, include the limited number of tracks. With an 8 track, minus one track for Sync (and often minus another for sync bleeding through) you wind up with 6 tracks to work with. Rosenthal is proud of what he could get out of 6 tracks but he says mixing and re-EQing the board mid-song was a nightmare. There was also a non-technical reason for not missing the old 8 track recorder.

"It weighed 70 pounds and was a real drag to bring up stairs!" he says.

You can still get unintentional "naive" sounds when using digital. Rosenthal found this out recording "Pod," his first CD from his new project, As Lonely As Dave Bowman, named after the ill-fated astronaut in 2001 A Space Odyssey). Rosenthal cranked up the noise when looping with his newly bought Eventide.

"I had just bought it and reassembled my studio, and the signal paths weren't all optimal yet, so sometimes I'd be loving the loop that was so far into the noise floor that it sounded like there were bugs chirping all over the studio. I know there's not usually insects in space, but what the hell? I EQed them and brought them in, and made them part of the texture. I had a friend help me with the effects processing and I said, 'Don't get rid of my bugs!'," says Rosenthal.

As Lonely As Dave Bowman is only his second instrumental release.

"With black tape for a blue girl, vocals are always part of the project, and an important part. With Bowman, I wanted to create a space music album, so it's all electronic instrumentals. My 4 year old son (Sasha) took some very cool photos that looked like outer space," says Rosenthal. "I decided it would be interesting to create an album to go with his photos. I recorded the album very quickly, and am really pleased with it. I say it kind of sounds like what you would here if you were a stowaway in the nuclear reactor of the Discovery’s motor. The Discovery is the spacecraft from 2001: A Space Odyssey."

New technology has leveled the playing field for ambient music. Back in time it took more effort and studio skill to get the results you can get today in short order.

"I think that anyone can make ambient music, and anyone can pop it up onto their Myspace page and pretend they are going somewhere. But when you put on good ambient music, you know it. I sometimes listen to SomaFM.com – and there's good stuff on there," says Rosenthal. "But whenever I hear a piece that is great and I look at the artist name, it's Steve Roach. Why is that? Because the equipment can level the playing field. But it takes an artist to make something really good. I think there are a lot of people who can make music, but shouldn't. I know that's really pretty harsh. I guess everyone should have the opportunity to enjoy the process of making music. But not everyone should ask me to listen to what they have made! It's just too easy for crap to flow forth. Crap has always flown forth in the music industry. But it seems to be a tidal wave, these days."