Anyone record to Studers back in the day?

Yes, many times.

But honestly John, we weren't recording to tape as an "effect" to get a type of sound. We were just recording to document and capture the musicians. In large part, more often than not, we were trying to get tape to NOT sound like tape most of the time.

During the "transition" period between Analog tape and Digital tape, we started to think about what analog tape was doing to the sound, and often we would try to maximize that particular "sound" because the digital mediums weren't giving that back. Throughout the years, we mostly recorded at 30IPS due to noise issues that would build up, but there were times we did 15IPS. Generally NOT 15IPS on a Studer though, cause anyone going 15IPS was either trying to save money on tape, or going for the 15IPS head bump / compressed tape sound, and mostly, those folks were going to Ampex or MCI machines - not Studers.

For whatever it's worth....

I never recorded to tape, save for now on an Otari rarely, but I imagine much of the trend was towards fidelity throughout the years.

I like the A800 plugin a lot. Though I've honestly gotten good with my equipment at getting the sound I want up front, so when I put on the Studer plug I generally have to fight low end etc. I guess that's not unlike in the days when you would listen to the band tracking through the console and playback through tape and hear a different sound, which would be frustrating.

I find I like 900 at 30IPS but I also pull the low end EQ(repro?) down because it's just too big especially on bass. 456 at 15 or 30 is nice and fat for a more smoothed over driven sound I think. GP9 has an edge/dirt that reminds me of some late 90s/2000's records. 250 is a little scooped somewhere in the lower mid to my ear but sweet sounding. Unless I'm doing some real rock type stuff, I find 15 ips loses something. 30 is where I am at these days mostly.

Easiest thing to do is find what works for your setup and go with that normally. 900 and GP9 are the "modern" tapes, though. 250 and 456 being "vintage".

So for summary, to my possibly incorrect ears

250 - sweeter, forgiving, a little scooped in the mid somwhere

456 - Fat, nice drive to it. A little soft but punchy still.

900 - Pretty clean, big low end, still slightly warm.

GP9 - Snotty when pushed, slightly edgy, still some tape fat to it.


Take a typical production you recently did and try them all across the mix with the gang function and you'll probably come up with a couple sounds you know you can go to.

I recorded on a Studer A-80 24-track with a 2" headstack quite frequently for about 5 years from the late 90s to the early aughts. 

Like most others have said, we used Ampex 456 (most of the time) or Ampex 499 (rarely), and we recorded at 30ips. It was an awesome machine and an awesome experience. That machine was really dialed in. But when the band wasn't very good, it was a bit of a pain.

It did very interesting things to the top end. I didn't always like it back then. I like "that sound" considerably more now. At the time, in the world of "acoustic music," we were often trying to achieve greater clarity, and the Studer was sometimes a hindrance in that. Gary Paczosa was using a RADAR system (if my memory serves me, and oh boy, it may not), and that's the sound many of us were after. I'm thinking especially of "So Long So Wrong," for instance. I remember some of the artists I worked with disliked that Studer tape top end so much that they preferred using ADATs (XT20s)! Absolute heresy, I know.

But when recording a band who could all play, and play together, and play live, it was like something out of a dream. It was much easier to mix on that Studer coming out to the analog console (an Amek Angela II, nothing terribly fancy at the time) than the ADATs or the TDM rig we eventually had at the studio.

EDIT: donr just reminded me with his post: I wasn't even thinking about how different it could sound coming back to the tape 6 months or a year later! Everything sounded best (to me) when we recorded on fresh tape, did the overdubs, and mixed the songs down within a month or so.

Yeah - I was thinking about that. Funny, I’m asking how to actually “degrade” the sound lol. But sometimes I think digital has sooo much frequency info, it can be too much.

I currently use an MCI JH110 for tape stems. My findings are: first, I’m not sure the old calibration methods were the best, I can get best SN and FR by doing a loop back and watching a spectrum analyzer. Once it’s dialed in, 30ips is very remarkably close to a digital loop back. It still does something for the sound that makes printing worth it.

15ips is “ok”. It’s a pain on my machine to calibrate to a clean level, is noisier than 30ips, and doesn’t do very much in terms of mojo. I’m sure it’s because like a800 it uses an accurate servo, which keeps the tape artifacts minimal. My old a80VU 2” used an analog servo, and that thing was mojo heaven, even at 30! For this JH110 I have to hit the tape really hard to get any real tape mojo(at least the ways plugins imagine it), and the head bump is kind of there.. think disco drums. Mostly It’s like it’s trying to be 30, but just can’t do it.

7.5ips is my favorite for tone, but it’s not very usable currently, I need to fix some issue.. It’s really thick and soft, but the noise floor and distortion is too much for me to use for most things. However, if I successfully over bias, I can make the tape hiss disappear and it sounds clean.. but in so doing it also rolls off the highs. Basically leaves me with this really fat dense rolled off sound that reminds me of kind of 50’s how clean and clear that stuff was. I do use 7.5ips all the time for delay though, it’s sooo good

It really, really takes time to learn a lot of these plugs. I’ve short changed so many because of my knowledge level. In all honesty, many plugs are so close to what the hardware does that I can’t justify the time/convenience or expense while mixing. Now, tracking 1 that’s a different thing.

Main advantage of "Reel Deal" tracking IMHO,
is it's like the Live TV, of the 50's.
No Net;)

Unless you allow partial re-takes/Punch In's. Why I have a special love for Live Opera/Classical Music.
Viva Toscanini!
Chris

This question has really spiked the difference in my mind between engineering "then" and "now". Back then (at least for me and those I worked with), the decisions were made on the spot, recorded and "lived with". A board faders at unity pretty much WAS the mix. Whether or not you need more top end, what mic to switch out, how hard (or not) to hit the front end of the console, how much to push the tape, how much HF to add to compensate for tape erasing over the course of the project, etc.. All this stuff was dealt with while the musician was sitting in front of you - not down the line when mixing. Quite a paradigm difference. And even though I still try to work that way, I must say I miss the immediacy of that way of working. Oh well, it's never coming back....just a distant memory.

Even those who still roll tape are hugely affected by the digital paradigms that we live in....the times have changed.  

The good news is that now we can have 187 or more 1176's for mixing.  

I've only tracked on a Studer once, an A80 at the original Bunker in Brooklyn. I think that record was 15ips, but I don't remember. I have an A80 2-track and I run it at 15ips most of the time. Its a really great sounding machine. I've been reusing a couple of different reels, and looping back into PT on mixdown. I have some ATR and a Reel of SM900. I like the SM900 on the 2-track, but never dug it on 24-track. I bought a lot of used 996 2" and really loved the sound of it at 15 or 30ips. I should try to ind a 1/4" reel of 996.

I certainly remember fighting noise on an M79 16 track at 15ips, on a loud rock record. One record i played on in the early 90’s was jh24 at 30, with noise and openness substantially better. Mixed to a JH110 1/2” at 30. None of the above with NR. We dreamed of an SR rack back then. We did a second rock record to the first ADATs in the state of NC, and were all very excited to find the dynamics and transients undisturbed on playback, or the next day, or the next week. And we didn’t erase takes anymore! All the best takes on tape always got erased because you thought you could do better. Later in ADAT world there were a couple of records that got bounced across tape, most with hindsight a mistake; took it too far. For awhile I’d mix across my A807 1/4” at 15 and capture the immediate output of the playback head to digital for a ‘maximum transient’ version, capture it again after a couple of days or a week. Sometimes one of those captured would win over the tape itself at mastering. Mostly clients became less interested in tape and the machine has mostly sat unused for a decade.

Coming off my phone, so prob 300 erroneous autocorrects in the above....

The best sounding Studers had beefed up audio channel power supplies. Without that, they sounded thin despite having the same frequency response as the stock machines. The problem today is that tape quality is far from what it used to be with drop-outs becoming common after six months or so.