Why go FULLY itb, rather than hybrid?

Compressors and color devices. 1176 for instance - and I’m talking light settings on it - every time I compare it’s obvious the plug-ins shortcomings. Other compression as well, but the 1176 is the most obvious to me.

Other than that - saturation, harmonic distortion built up from transformers/circuits and EQ boosts. Here I use Silver Bullet, Electrodyne and Capi EQs. Analog I find smoother, and hard to make sound bad, especially with boosts. It almost always sounds good. Easy to make this sound bad in the digital world - to me.



So natural sounding compression and excitement from harmonic distortion/color (Sb, Elec 511, CAPI EQ) are the big things I lean on analog for as it achieves what I want quickly and without a lot of work. And my 1176s for instance don’t change settings. I just gainstage the insert plug-in and leave as is.

Also recall is huge. Down time hurts mix decisions. Even 30 seconds to a minute or two to unfreeze and freeze again hurts workflow and effects results. Instant recall is a tweaking curse yet not having it is worse with the (lack of) quality of raw tracks today.

Let me tell you why I've gone mostly ITB after decades of mostly OTB or hybrid..

Ease of use. Lets face it, everything is at you fingertips with a keyboard and mouse.

Recall. I can just save versions as I go and if I get backed into a corner, I just open a different version or select an earlier history point.

NOISE. One of the biggest things I always fought was noise. No matter how low the noise floor of your devices, they aggregate and build up. After all the compression and gain I got tired of hearing hiss only 30-40dB down.

Power/heat. The room is cooler, my power bill is slightly less. I used to have to run the AC even in the winter when I had sessions..

Repair. I don't have to maintain and repair gear regularly like I used to.

Costs.. One good plugin that I can use across a bunch of channels costs WAAAAY less than having actual hardware across a bunch of channels.

Space. I had 3 full racks full of gear and another closet full of gear that I would trade in and out depending on what I was doing. Now I select it from a menu.

Sound. I can't tell the difference between the hardware and software anymore and I don't care to A/B for tiny little differences that you can't hear in a mix. I put the plugs on the tracks and do my thing.

Speed. I just reuse my templates and adjust whatever I need to adjust for the next session. I can reroute or change things in seconds instead of minutes or hours.


But I still use some hardware on the inputs, but so far it's patched for the task at hand. Bass will always get a tube pre, EQ and 1176. vocals will always get neve preamp and 1176, etc.

Recall and Money. That's the only reason. Both good reasons, but neither pointing towards true art.

IME, the DA/AD thing is a non issue. A non starter. I have no issues going out and back in multiple times. Once a signal is digitized for the first time, there is minimal degradation with modern conversion. IMO.

Well-said, svart.

Side note/mild rant:  Noise is a big one.  I always feel like the odd man out in this regard.  Any time I mention self-noise of gear (mics especially), I just get weird looks of confusion.  I've concluded that self-noise in gear doesn't seem to bother most people, or maybe they don't notice it.  It's refreshing to know that I'm not alone.

Quietly yours,
-09

Noise? I don't' think that is even a reason anymore. Since I haven't had tape machines in the fray, and since I've had pro level gear - noise has been a non issue. I'm using 20-100 pieces of PROPERLY WIRED and GROUNDED and properly GAIN STAGED hardware in a hybrid mix situation and noise has NEVER been an issue. Never.

Well, mathematically, 100 pieces of gear adding no additional noise through gain should increase the noise floor by 20dB by simply adding uncorrelated noise power back to the system.  

One of the biggest reasons people arguing over whether or not their A/DD/A has 120dB or 132dB of SNR/SINAD is complete BS.  

In the end, I was back to ITB for many reasons.
But the main reason was the songs which I did ITB were the more creative ones, and the ones which I like more.

I don't miss anything, ITB I can sound like I want it - this song 70s alike the next more 80s.... etc.
The times when software sounded flat and boring are long gone.
Every compressor Ray does has a different flavor, one is more open and wide, another one is round and pushes the midrange etc.
Ray just knows how to do it.

Understood.

My micro-rant was about things you can't ground or gain-stage your way out of.  Like hissy mics or preamps.  I've sold mics because they were too noisy.  As soon as you bring up that track, you get SSSSSSSSSSSS.   Or maybe I could market it as tape hiss and then it would be cool! 

When you're tracking things like classical solo pieces or chamber music, noisy mics become quite obvious.

-09