"musician uses GarageBand for songwriting (or even full production
Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band (The Beatles' masterpiece, one of the most highly-regarded and influential albums of all time) was recorded on an analog 4-track.
Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band (The Beatles' masterpiece, one of the most highly-regarded and influential albums of all time) was recorded on an analog 4-track.
Admittedly cheap solid state gear sounds worse than high quality tube gear but that has way more to do with good design and quality components than the tubes themselves.
Even in professional gear, it's usually a ridiculous jump in price - often double - to much fancier hardware to get more channels.
It makes sense as few people do need it, but I do wish there were more assorted consumer electronics that would throw in more channel recording just because. Rather than as an upsell to way more expensive gear.
The album is a little unusual in that by 1967 tape recorders with larger channel counts were becoming more common, allowing separate recording of most of the original channels. But linear editing of audio was very difficult, recording engineers still did the mix as live, so there were recording studios that hadn't seen a reason to make the upgrade or were attached to older equipment that they were very familiar with. Especially with analog equipment prominent recording engineers were often averse to new equipment since they would learn how to get the best results out of their particulat setup - and things like frequency response could vary noticeably from one model to another.