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Post by Guitar on Sept 30, 2020 7:26:54 GMT -6
The analog file is also louder, according to my measurements. When levels are adjusted, thinks get more interesting. Would also be interesting to hear the ITB ran though the Burl. I noticed that too. In that case, it's definitely not a fair fight to A/B these files.
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Post by ragan on Sept 30, 2020 8:39:47 GMT -6
I thought iI was hearing a significant difference until I pulled them in the DAW, rms-normalized then and blind AB’d. Then I wasn’t. No meaningful difference between the two.
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Post by nick8801 on Sept 30, 2020 11:53:51 GMT -6
The analog has hair, depth, and vibe. The digital is a bit sterile and sounds like it needs a little push somewhere. I agree. The difference is not subtle. I could see somebody liking the digital mix better because the vocal has more of it's own space and is a bit clearer but for my tastes, I'll take the analog version any day of the week, it's sounds much more rock n roll. Everything is glued together and the guitars that drive the song have way richer mids. It's more agressive and smoother at the same time. I would definitely not get rid of your outboard! Definitely something in the mids for sure....could I get that if I pushed the digital a little harder though?
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Post by nick8801 on Sept 30, 2020 11:54:41 GMT -6
The analog file is also louder, according to my measurements. When levels are adjusted, thinks get more interesting. Would also be interesting to hear the ITB ran though the Burl. Yeah, wasn't totally scientific. Just vibing it out....I think the analog sounds less wide when they are matched.
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Post by nick8801 on Sept 30, 2020 11:55:50 GMT -6
I thought it was hearing a significant difference until I pulled them in the DAW, rms-normalized then and blind AB’d. Then I wasn’t. No meaningful difference between the two. Yeah same here....if I push the analog into the limiter more, maybe add a hair of excitement to the mids, it's realllllllly close. Definitely not a 3500 dollar difference!
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Post by christopher on Sept 30, 2020 12:32:11 GMT -6
I’m kind of been through this in the last few months. Since I’m naturally impatient and lazy, I tend to build mixes pretty fast ITB and want to see the results ASAP! All seems ‘ok’ until I compare to good references, then I notice there’s a lot of things missing that are esoteric and hard to explain. Frequency wise, things are fine. Levels wise things are fine. Space wise everything checks the boxes. The real thing that matters, does it connect? Does it make me excited to hear? Do I want to hear it again and again? so anyway, the answer is often ‘nope’. However.. introduce some analog harmonics and certain things can start to sound interesting. For instance, I could listen to the analog intro all day. Even though it’s small, It can be the difference between connecting and not connecting with the listener. But if analog ruins the frequency/level/space of the mix, well it’s not going to matter. That’s what happened for me, the mix might not be totally dialed in, but had some cool character.
And this happens when I take a ITB mix all the way, then try to turn it analog at the last stage. I’m hopefully finally learning (again) that staying away from plugins as long as possible and using analog to build the mix, it’s getting me the esoteric things first.. from there it’s a matter of keeping that vibe while checking off the other boxes, which usually means transparent EQ plugins/gain. So before selling, see if you can try it. You might be surprised.
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Post by Guitar on Sept 30, 2020 12:36:23 GMT -6
For me, a mix revision can be good or bad, and it depends about zero percent whether I was using analog or digital mixing tools. I've had good and bad luck with both. Certainly not enough to favor one over the other. When I'm selecting mixes, I pick the best one, and that may or may not be an analog or digital mixdown.
To me it's a fair fight with no obvious winner.
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Post by johneppstein on Sept 30, 2020 12:58:11 GMT -6
Personally, I've been using less and less outboard and have cared less and less about analog-vs-digital as I've gotten better at mixing. turns out about half of my favorite producers/engineers are totally ITB now. Anyway, to answer your questions about your mix.. I don't hear much difference at all. Certainly not enough difference to care. I wouldn't be able to pick out which one was digital and which one was analog if you hadn't labelled them. I think plugins have become so good overall that it's made the analog-vs-digital argument moot. Personally, I think TRACKING analog is probably more important than MIXING analog.
That being said, I also believe that mixing analog makes a bigger difference on material that was tracked analog.
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Post by nick8801 on Sept 30, 2020 14:14:08 GMT -6
Personally, I've been using less and less outboard and have cared less and less about analog-vs-digital as I've gotten better at mixing. turns out about half of my favorite producers/engineers are totally ITB now. Anyway, to answer your questions about your mix.. I don't hear much difference at all. Certainly not enough difference to care. I wouldn't be able to pick out which one was digital and which one was analog if you hadn't labelled them. I think plugins have become so good overall that it's made the analog-vs-digital argument moot. Personally, I think TRACKING analog is probably more important than MIXING analog.
That being said, I also believe that mixing analog makes a bigger difference on material that was tracked analog.
Most of these tracks I’ve been getting were made in GarageBand....so about as far from analog as you can get!
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Post by johneppstein on Sept 30, 2020 15:31:10 GMT -6
Personally, I think TRACKING analog is probably more important than MIXING analog.
That being said, I also believe that mixing analog makes a bigger difference on material that was tracked analog.
Most of these tracks I’ve been getting were made in GarageBand....so about as far from analog as you can get! Oy!
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ericn
Temp
Balance Engineer
Posts: 14,976
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Post by ericn on Sept 30, 2020 21:11:07 GMT -6
Personally, I think TRACKING analog is probably more important than MIXING analog.
That being said, I also believe that mixing analog makes a bigger difference on material that was tracked analog.
Most of these tracks I’ve been getting were made in GarageBand....so about as far from analog as you can get! Work is work my friend!
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Post by mrholmes on Oct 1, 2020 2:54:11 GMT -6
I think its not breaking the show using a limited amount of hardware. I cant help myself but sometimes it makes a difference to my ears. A full 3D base most often is caused by one of my optos. I have no idea which factors are involved, phase issues, frequency shift's. I dont care, what I know that 8 of 10 guitar studets picked the mix with the mellower, subjectively broader felt low end. And yes I levelmatched as close as possible. Using plugs which do not give me the sonics whih I have in mind can be frustrating. But we are geting extremely close. Biggest surprise for me was the MC77 and the SPL Iron. Both sound extremly close to the hardware versions. Karzorg Iron is also a big surprise. But the plug in industry became big, too big.I get lost because every company claims to have the best technology. I dont have time to demo every single plug in. If ITB is the future for all I hope we see afordable controllers which follow the logic of an intuitive producing process... Part of the problem I have with plugins is that it seams like the goal is to win you over with discounts and packages so that you buy into the system not a particular product. Then let’s say you buy into UAD, somebody sends in a project with waves all over it.
True and something else comes to mind too.
My RME has DSP on board but I can't load my favorite third party ITB compressor into the interface to use it on my consoles mix bus. The routing is possible the plug in not. WHY?
Two, or more, companies could benefit, but it's not happening.
The SPL IRON plug in sounds just very good. I would love to use it this way.
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Post by mrholmes on Oct 1, 2020 2:55:12 GMT -6
I thought it was hearing a significant difference until I pulled them in the DAW, rms-normalized then and blind AB’d. Then I wasn’t. No meaningful difference between the two.
Damn I did not recognize the level difference will try again....
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Post by nick8801 on Oct 1, 2020 4:13:00 GMT -6
Most of these tracks I’ve been getting were made in GarageBand....so about as far from analog as you can get! Work is work my friend! Oh I’m not complaining. I’m actually pretty impressed with the sounds! It’s actually really easy to work with, and most of the sounds are pretty accurate. It’s a great way for all these musicians to work together in quarantine. Here’s a link to the rest of the project. I didn’t mix everything, but I did work on a good number of them.... m.soundcloud.com/njpparchives/sets/jersey-interchange
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