Interesting article about Abbey Road Studios:
 http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/10/the-technical-constraints-that-made-abbey-road-so-good/381820/
 

Great find, Don! Lessons there that we can all learn from, and that us old-timers can certainly relate to. 
 
I, too, have sold off 95% of all the gear I've ever owned under the misguided assumption that it had become, or was soon to become, obsolete. Vintage instruments, effects, speakers, even microphones (that anyone should know rarely go obsolete).
 
Favorite paragraph:
 

Today’s creative paradox is that this human element, which often makes a song distinct or artistically interesting, is the thing which is almost always erased from modern productions.

 
I once sat in on a friend's recording session, to provide an electric piano lead for a song. Unfortunately, it was an evening session at a time when my diabetes was not under control and I'd neglected to eat beforehand. During the session my blood sugar dropped. I was unable to focus and my fingers felt like they had lead weights on them. After multiple failed takes, I suggested that we'd have to try again another day.
 
I took a mix home with me, loaded it into SONAR and recorded the part under more ideal conditions. I recorded it as MIDI so that any flubbed notes could be easily corrected. I played multiple variations and comp'd in the best bits of each. It was, to my ear, nearly flawless. I delivered the part to the engineer, thinking I'd done my friend proud.
 
When they brought the finished album to me a month later, I was shocked to hear my original sloppy studio-recorded solo on the track. My friend said, "oh yeh, we all listened to the tracks you did and everybody decided they liked the first one better."

I paused when I read that paragraph too, Dave! It brought to mind the numerous times I've begun to record a part in tense 'safe mode', made a mistake a few seconds in, think to myself, oh crap, I'll just write this take off, keep going and re-record it later. At that point, all the nervousness about making a mistake is gone and some cool things happen that never would have otherwise.

Bingo, I feel like we have gone overboard with editing and the industry is at the point where they are editing ALL of the character right out of the finished product. As a result, everything is starting to sound the same.

Music may be applied mathematics, but it is the slight imperfections and playing one line off another that make it ... interesting. (note this is coming from a horrible musician)  Bit's example is a good one, but even the biggest of the pros use it.  On "I saw her again" by the Mamas and the Papas the male chorus line comes in early and stops after "I saw her."  A mistake in the grid centered world of pop.  They decided to leave it in because it worked, and Lennon said it was pure genius.  Little things that knock music off the grid of expectations can make the music - at least non-classical music. When I happen to hear the radio/TV and the picture perfect timing and pitch it is like looking at American Gothic w/o the wrinkles.  As Wm. Burroughs said, "That's the point, don't you see."
 
@ 

One of the reasons why I'm such a huge fan of Jimmy Page is that he never let his musician ego take precedence over his role as a producer.
 
As a guitar player, even though I'm worlds apart from the flashy virtuoso type of musician, even with the somewhat minimalist parts I tend to assign to myself, I still find it's a very, very tough thing to let go before I reach take no 257.
 
Page and those guys captured music. There were goofs, there were noises - like that plane you can hear at the beginning of a song on Physical Graffiti, and Plant tells Eddie Kramer to keep rolling... 
 
For all its perfection, modern music is extremely sterile by comparison.
 
Yet, the other side of it is that more and more, I tend to hear very bad edit jobs. The musicians are edited out, but the Pro Tools engineer is sloppy and leaves evidences all over the place...

Well as the resident Abbey Road expert, (yes a big call, I know but Jeff Evans might actually back me on this one) I pretty know how every Beatle recording went down, both The Complete Beatles Recordings by Mark Lewisohn and Geoff Emericks book are the go to tomes for the budding young producer or engineer. 
 
A lot of The Beatles majik was in the neumann microphones, which were tubes, The Beatles vox amps, which were solid into the original Redd (EMI made) mixing desk which was also tubes, so you got tube EQ's and limiters.  Basically you were getting the perfect mix of odd and even harmonics or this is the theory I have bandied around.  This changed with Abbey Road the album, when the Redd desk went solid state and you can hear it in the bass of Come Together and I Want You.  Of course it was the music too, the tech stuff would have meant nothing without the music.  Interestingly enough you can hear the same combo's in Pink Floyd's music and Queen's.  So I think there must be something to the odd/even harmonic combo.  Want further proof...Britpop Oasis and Blur, I think used a similar combo to get that sound.  Hell Lenney Kravitz brought an EMI Redd desk, I'm not sure if it was solid or tube for that sound.
      
Now I'm musing, I would have been a great producer, if they still existed today.  I know the techniques, (Ringo's towel drums, variespeed, tube harmonics, Pages...Bonham sound...Bowie's/Visconti Heroes' vocals. Fripp's measured feedback for Heroes, Frippertronics, on it goes oh even the technique used for Queens harmony vocals).  Now here is the kicker, and I will be kicked...we can emulate it now all for a few hundred bucks and a DAW.  I am in no doubt, that the various emulations, with tube and transistor front ends for the real stuff...vocals, guitars and drums, you can get that sound.  It takes technique, historical understanding and perspective.  And an understanding of digital recording technique, which is different to analogue but just the same in Sonar...Huh. 
 
It's hard to emulate, or it was, analogue recording techniques in Pro Tools, no gain stage built into every channel.  This is important because most of the time, and again I'm waiting to be kicked most of the analogue stuff was recorded to a level to get some sort of saturation.  To get this in digital land a minimum of -6 db level is required...note a 6db level minimum.  Using the gain on the channel when you go to mix, allows you to set the gain proper when you mix. 
 
The Pro Channel console emulator is just as good for this too, I know the current paradigm of using it last is all the rage...but I think this is a mistake, I use it first.  This is because if you were going to feed a track out of a mixer for recording then it would be first in signal chain.  Actually it's not a mistake to use it last, it just depends on which paradigm your using.  Because I am using the mix as you go technique, rather than mix it off the tape technique, I'm aiming for a different sound.  Hmm I just worked this out.  Again musing. 
 
Of course you guys are probably all wondering about headroom on the master buss, particularly if I am recording or even bouncing or freezing, this is where the analogue idea comes in...its all about summing.  30 odd tracks means you have to sum about -15 db on the master buss for the appropriate headroom.  It works too.  But I will leave it to the boffins to fight it out and tell me I'm Capt chump. ;)
 
Ben           

Good post, Ben! One element you left out was the Fairchild 670 that they (Emerick, Smith and that other guy) put on pretty much anything and everything. It's the Fairchild that's responsible for Ringo's signature ride wash. An example of forget-the-rules improvisation, as that compressor was was designed specifically for mastering and re-purposed in the name of creative license.
 
It was also Emerick who broke EMI's explicit rule against sticking expensive microphones right up next to drums, thus pioneering what has since become standard practice. Of course, few are brave enough to put a vintage Neumann an inch from a tom tom; we use $99 microphones for that nowadays.

bitflipper
Good post, Ben! One element you left out was the Fairchild 670 that they (Emerick, Smith and that other guy) put on pretty much anything and everything. It's the Fairchild that's responsible for Ringo's signature ride wash. An example of forget-the-rules improvisation, as that compressor was was designed specifically for mastering and re-purposed in the name of creative license.
 
It was also Emerick who broke EMI's explicit rule against sticking expensive microphones right up next to drums, thus pioneering what has since become standard practice. Of course, few are brave enough to put a vintage Neumann an inch from a tom tom; we use $99 microphones for that nowadays.

Thanks Bit...for a change I didn't piss you off.
No I never forgot the Fairchild, paramount for that Beatle sound.  I already mused enough I thought, all I do is piss people off with my musing...lol.  Actually the UAD Fairchild is amazing, combined with Rings Beat kit in session drummer three and a hi-shelving down to about 2khz for the tea-towel sound, if anyone is interested and want to emulate Ringo's playing.  Get The Complete Beatles song book, which has drum transcriptions and you'd be amazed at how close you can emulate Ringo's drums.  What would be an even more amazing experiment is the new Abbey Road waves emulator's stuff.  I should not be such a tight wad and purchase.
 
Ben 
 
PS Anyone want to experiment and turn a speaker into a microphone, ala Paperback Writer and Paul Mc's bass sound. 

As interesting as the article is, it's just as interesting seeing what people got out of it. For me, the quote in bitflipper's post and the following quote stood out the most:

“Do mistakes make music better? ” I asked Kehew. Not really, he responded. It’s just that, when it comes to what people like about music, there was actually only one thing worse than these imperfections: perfection.
 
“I’ve done it and seen it many times," he said. “Take something flawed, work on it 'til every part is ‘improved’ then listen. It's worse. How could that be? Every piece is now better. But it's a worse final product.”

If Paul McCartney recorded a song using a built in laptop mic, it would probably sound good to me (assuming it wasn't something off of his 2nd solo album). Much better sound than the old transistor radio I used to happily listen to the Beatles, Drifters, Supremes, Ventures, etc. on.