Reel to Reel decks

True that about vinyl. Think about it as a long term archive only vinyl discs will stand the test of time. Sure they must be properly stored but they will be playable at any time in the future with a simple turntable and playback stylus.

Analogue tape is a convenient archive of analogue but it will degrade worse as time passes compared to vinyl. Yes, if you use a good tape medium and proper storage you will get good long term storage with analogue tape.

Digital storage be it on an optical disc, hard disc or flash card will likely not be playable unless you routinely recopy it as time passes. Not only is there fear of a hard disc failure but if your playback machine lacks the ability to read and play what would inevitably be obsolete storage medium you could wind up having a properly stored digital medium setup that just wont be able to be read by any future computer play back set up.

Astralography,

Three letters: AAA

From T.H.E. Show, Newport Beach (where the best sonics where evident in rooms featuring RTR and vinyl and where RTR, vinyl, and digital formats were front-end options).

Astralography, I agree on the need to use analog from one end to the other in the recording process.

When my band has released its LPs, although they had set up the studio before I joined the group, none of them had experience editing a master with a razor blade so I wound up with that task. Fortunately there was not a lot of that to do- we did our recordings 'live' which is to say while we did use a multi-track recorder, we did not do any over-dubs.

We kept 24-bit backup digital files too, scanned at double the redbook frequency to avoid the use of a brickwall filter. Compared to the 2-channel analog tape, the digital files essentially fall flat on their respective faces.

I never play my most valuable records after I made a recording. I don't use RTR yet, I use Nakamichi deck. If I ruin those records by accident they will be almost impossible or very expensive to replace, or both. Good for me that I don't have many of those.

If the best sound quality is the primary objective, then I agree you should keep the recording purely analog throughout the recording/manufacturing process. It will sound better. However, if the objective is best quality music, then keeping it pure can actually limit the artistic flexibility of the musician/engineer/producer. I think most people favor flexibility over purity and are only trying to achieve good to very good, not great, quality sound.