Why go FULLY itb, rather than hybrid?

Yeah anything where the standard is a sort of thick sepia yet clear tone like golden syrup or so, that’s hard to get itb without brown molasses sound. Like clearer than the newer Chris Stapleton stuff, which is kinda “red” which itb can do pretty easily. Itb can also do “milky” pretty well now.

The neold big al and vintage modes of satin are the most golden syrup I’ve tried along with psp emt 2445 and tai chi tweaked.

Part of the problem is the music industry is still stuck aping the past aesthetics that were a side effect of the recording equipment and not intentional distortions to validate the present art by using that or similar equipment for intentional distortion. appealing to nostalgia rather than being itself. Those recordings would’ve been cleaner and more realistic if they could’ve been but now we’ve taken a 180 from trying to be as real as possible or realer than real or as interesting as possible to just guys clipping drum machines under robotic voices. They don’t want to make a big budget sterile record like daft punk or an interesting one like chris Stapleton. Instead they spend thousands on beat makers and vocal producers and specialty genre producers who pretty much play the whole record for them like imagine that Brendan O Brien interview but a million times worse. Now they can diy it themselves with vsti kits, beat port, instrument synths, sample libraries, tuners, thousands of takes you name it and this is what is financially rewarded based on nepotism to be rewarded based on bullshit like “album equivalent units” which tries to equate airplay with album sales and there really is no equivalence.

Add elements snippets of past music but with lyrics about how conformist they are so cars, beer, hats, small towns, cookouts, how criminal, how evil, or how much of cad they are, whatever is celebrated in the genre they are if they’re not aping a past song’s lyrics. The major and big indie labels (ones who used to be innovative) sign established or upcoming artists who have already made it based on social media followings so this is financially encouraged. Then they can get on the streaming payola and placement machines with the under the table minimums paid to their labels. It’s like the market saturation of crap from before but they’re not even selling the crap itself anymore, they’re selling a marketing vehicle for other crap like a mini indie Kardashian. Add in all the nostalgia tours and stupid merchandise and multicolored reissues and it’s basically a trinket selling business like the medieval relic and pilgrimage trade but for middle aged artists and people imitating them.

lol …. 

Edit: I see that Dan deleted his post that I was quoting before I was able to hit send. Ah well, I already typed it below...:



But all of those things are exactly what some of us are talking about when it comes to using hardware. It is that sort of extra sauce that hardware brings to the table that is desirable, at least for some of us. It's a thing that some people like.

You may not like it, and that's fine, but its THAT sort of saturation/distortion/non-linearity/etc. that analog brings that digital still struggles with sometimes. It's more noticeable in the type of music that Mark mentioned because there is a lot of space in between the notes to hear all of the hardware non-linearity. In metal or other music like that? Maybe not as much. Though I still don't see that as a reason to not use hardware in the metal world. There is still plenty of saturation that can be used creatively in that genre, even if you don't notice it quite as tangibly as you might on a Ryan Adams record or something.

If there are other non-tone related reasons to avoid hardware in metal, such as the need for extreme control of dynamics, in ways that hardware might struggle with or is incapable of, I totally get it. All of the hardware tone in the world isn't going to bring that machine gun kick drum into submission in the way that certain plugins might be able to. But from a tone perspective, I think hardware still can do some things that digital can't, though things are getting closer and closer there.

All I’m seeing is a lot of folks who should give me a call sometime. 😂

Lmao, that got me! (My wife is looking at me funny, like wtf are you laughing at?)

Now on topic…personally, I love having one stereo hardware chain that I use for tracking and mix bus duties.  Although, I’m not recording drums (all vsts).  I love the ease of using plugs in the mix, but really like what a combo of my hardware insert along with some plugs on the mixbus does.  Also, when I can’t nail an individual source itb, I typically send it out and that does the trick.  Recall in general isn’t an issue with such limited hardware.  I can’t see myself ever mixing entirely itb, my analog chain just adds too much on the back end.

Who thinks the recent Chris Stapleton are “ITB”?

I can’t speak for all the “big” names. I can tell you that for me it was a GOAL. Long term. That I worked towards. Picking off pieces one by one. Blind AB in real world mix situations. 96khz was a big part. Mixbus was a big part.

Why? A SINGLE piece of “hybrid” and you’ve lost a lot of what ITB brings. Let alone lots where session recall and troubleshooting adds up. I’m not saying anyone is wrong for doing it—or any other set of tools they’re familiar with….keep that in mind. I’m not arguing that software is better sounding. I WILL point out that most people arguing it isn’t aren’t very astute at gain matching and level calibrations, IME. They’re more gonzo “I plug it in, turn some knobs-done”. Which again isn’t a criticism as much as explanation.

I’ve sent people….clients….things where I’d use an outboard chain for the lead vocal….and one where I used a plug in and they picked the plug ins as their fave. Now….wasn’t MY fave….but, at some point I realized no one I work for cares about little nuances. I recently did some stuff for a long term client in Cubase to save time. He didn’t notice AFTER I pointed it out. I did. Again…I DO use Mixbus for a reason….but I also don’t think it sounded “bad”….it was just a little more scoopy and modern.

Anyhoo….as to having a two bus set up the same….um….thats not how master processing works. You still need to adjust even if the chain is the same….complicates the monitoring and printing….if a connection or component gets slightly sketch you’re hunting down why the middle is now ever so slightly cocked…documenting it all for recall…

At the end of the day. Pick your tools. Do the work.

Byrne's point is that it just kind of is what it is. The format changes to fit the technology. People hear the technology without ever even knowing what the music sounded like before it had to be changed to be recorded. People copy what they heard on records assuming that's what their heroes really played like. Nobody remembers why it was played like that, the music just evolved.

One example he gives is the use of rim shots and stick hits and such in very early jazz recordings. They only did that because you couldn't hit a snare full force without drowning out the rest of the band. But then people heard the recordings and assumed their heroes really WANTED to do these rhythms with stick hits and cross sticks and things and they invented new beats having no idea that the guys on the records didn't play like that at all when they were doing their real shows in New Orleans or wherever. 

So by the time you get to Krupa and Rich, the way drums are played is totally nuanced and interesting and way beyond the beat keeping and groove building that was most of the history of drumming. All because drums were too loud to be recorded in the way they were played.

Another example is how people have begun to sing like they were autotuned. Kids grew up listening to that having no idea that nobody actually sings like that. But... now they do! Because they thought they were copying their heroes, but they were just copying technology that was limited and created artifacts. But kids heard how Britney Spears or whoever sang and thought that was a real voice.

By the time AutoTune improved and Melodyne came around it didn't matter, people sang differently (in pop especially).

So what's my point?

On one level it's kind of weird that people want stuff to sound like it was recorded with technology that is actually vastly inferior to tech we have now. Vastly inferior IF the purpose is to create an accurate capture of what the performer really sounds like. But that's the not purpose, the purpose is to capture what people THINK the performer sounds like.

One final example that Byrne gives is the way that field recordings were deliberately made to sound old and scratchy so they'd be more "authentic". Even the revered Lomax's (according to Byrne) deliberately tried to make performances and recordings sound lo-fi (for its time) so that it would be believably rural. Nobody wanted to hear Leadbelly playing a brand new guitar with nice strings singing into a beautiful RCA microphone singing standards from the American songbook (which is what he really sang before they found him). Lomax wanted him singing slave songs and work songs on a beat up twelve string wearing overalls.

Never mind that by that time Leadbelly had more than enough money for decent guitars and wore suits while performing Tin Pan Alley pop hits. White audiences in NYC would never buy that!

So... nothing changes.

I'm gonna have to read that book.

To answer the OP question...

Workflow, sonics, cost.


cheers

Wiz

Convenience should never be the end goal in your life's work, IMO.

If your client likes the sound of ITB, that may say more about your available hardware than the client or your ability to use it. Or maybe it say's they prefer ultra clean or hyped modern production, even if they don't know it. Alot of people want to sound like modern radio and might think something is amiss when they don't. Doesn't matter if it is creatively lacking, unique or dynamic. Personally, the little nuances are the only thing that matter to me.

Modern well-built hardware (and well-made vintage gear) suit my vision because I produce within a relatively small and specific era of tones, noise floor, resolution limits etc. Those limits feel good to me. I like the limits of hardware or plugins that have a similar feel. I like the limits of hands-on listening. Turning off the screen. Plugin emulation is impressive in many scenarios, but it is difficult to genuinely turn the clock back on production values unless you use the gear of the time. Regardless of forum or marketing hype. (just pop in the albums) And even then, you cannot escape a large degree of modern, hyper clean production mixed in.

There is nothing inherently complicated or challenging about hardware recall or gain staging. It's just part of the gig that requires hands on attention and listening. You might need paper and a pen (imagine that) or greater mental recall or longer term relationships with your gear. Knobs get bumped, settings get changed, tubes sound different from session to session. Ghost or gremlins in the machine etc, I have noticed for some, switching from song to song might require the inconvenience of brain-power or time and energy that is difficult to sacrifice for what we consider to be such mundane tasks in 2024. I understand. But the alternative seems like such a slow 2 dimensional death.

Yeah but they didn’t insist on using ersatz of 50 year old technology. Leadbelly might have been presented like that But they didn’t use Edison’s wax cylinders. There’s a really good book, segregating sound, about how the blues were as much a force of marketing to create a genre to sell to northerners regardless of race. And then it goes on to white washing of rock n roll, Atlantic records (maybe this was a different book?), muddy waters playing mostly what would be considered pop and country music today but having to be marketed as blues, etc.