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Post by RicFoxx on Jan 17, 2017 8:20:13 GMT -6
I romanticize about using a Tascam 488 8 track cassette multitracker. Not because it sounded good but because it was a fun process and I l developed great chops knowing I couldn't fix things! I had that little machine wired... it made me disciplined and focused. Why isn't someone building a new tape deck in China and mass producing them. How about the WA 1200 based on the Ampex machine. Come on Warm Audio🙏🏻
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Post by jjinvegas on Jan 17, 2017 8:29:51 GMT -6
Ill get some clips that I feel match the clips you posted soon enough. As far as passion, Im with you on that. As the special brand of crazy behind Zulu not just in gospel but in verse and scripture, my goal was and is still the sound of tape without the issues. Your prints convinced me that my efforts werent in vain. We will get some Ampex targeted prints up soon enough. Thanks -L. As long as this thread is still current, I think if would be very interesting to find out if a previous comment about the order of analog tape to DAW is actually discerible. Maybe a bit of a hassle, but if as I suspect printing a source to digital and then flying it to the tape machine versus printing to tape and then transferring is exactly the same from a blind test. If you set it up so that a source feeds a channel in the DAW and then routes to the input of the tape machine, and from the output of the tape machine back to the daw, that should give you identical levels for each result so that you aren't fooled by volume changes. And then post them here without revealing which is which, I think would be very interesting. Because I have considered having a half track machine around to treat some things with oxide compression, and I truly believe, okay, suspect, that nothing changes with whether you hit tape first or hit digital first. Now the need for multirack machines and expensive tape is taken out of the equation. May be you will be bored enough to try it sometime, Noah........
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Post by illacov on Jan 17, 2017 13:04:06 GMT -6
As long as this thread is still current, I think if would be very interesting to find out if a previous comment about the order of analog tape to DAW is actually discerible. Maybe a bit of a hassle, but if as I suspect printing a source to digital and then flying it to the tape machine versus printing to tape and then transferring is exactly the same from a blind test. If you set it up so that a source feeds a channel in the DAW and then routes to the input of the tape machine, and from the output of the tape machine back to the daw, that should give you identical levels for each result so that you aren't fooled by volume changes. And then post them here without revealing which is which, I think would be very interesting. Because I have considered having a half track machine around to treat some things with oxide compression, and I truly believe, okay, suspect, that nothing changes with whether you hit tape first or hit digital first. Now the need for multirack machines and expensive tape is taken out of the equation. May be you will be bored enough to try it sometime, Noah........ Of course its discernible. I've been doing some research on converters and I think a good bit of what's missing from digital to tape versus tape first then digital transfer is that you are skipping the filtering in ADC by going to tape first and ingraining the harmonics and saturation/compression into the signal first at full bandwidth (relatively speaking). Versus when you got to digital first, you are filtering out a portion of the signal with the anti-aliasing filtering (yes it's beyond the range of human hearing, but if signal exists up there then its there, so there -sticks out tongue), I have questions about whether this potentially includes harmonics and overtones etc..that are now no longer present in the signal or dramatically altered in amplitude post filtering vs pre filtering. Once you go from digital back to DAC (whatever filtering is present there kicks in) and now you're hitting tape and then back again to digital (ADC) if you want to work ITB, plus whatever impacts you're hearing from the DAC when you listen back. So you're talking about 4 rounds of filtering impacting your signal overall, versus 2 rounds. Plus the harmonics, saturation, compression was done completely in analog before being captured by the computer, instead of filtering said signal first and then sending that signal to tape. I'd love to get some feedback on those who are familiar with converter design like svart regarding anti-aliasing filtering and oversampling to accomplish sample rates vs if there are ways to improve the filtering and how that impacts not just audible but measurable harmonic content. I think this is why devices like saturators, tape simulators, distortion generators, vibey compressors etc are really big for people who work primarily in digital settings. By adding harmonic content into the signal, it gives it more of an alive sound and helps to restore some of the texture of the sonics. But I still think the best way to do it is at the original analog stage rather than after. You can definitely work with louder signals, accomplish some very different results and print that to the computer at the onset. As well, driving a DAC is just the last thing you really want to do unless its magic as I've heard the svartbox is, otherwise they leave alot to be desired once they get past -12db peaking. They will work its just that how they work turns me off. I honestly prefer to interface with all gear, if I'm using them in post, with some kind of line amplifier or a mic preamp in place, if not for the vibe then for the real analog gain staging and the clarity that guarantees. Especially when going to tape from digital (the only way to fly in my opinion) or to Zulu (one of many ways to fly). Thanks -L.
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Post by illacov on Jan 17, 2017 13:07:42 GMT -6
I romanticize about using a Tascam 488 8 track cassette multitracker. Not because it sounded good but because it was a fun process and I l developed great chops knowing I couldn't fix things! I had that little machine wired... it made me disciplined and focused. Why isn't someone building a new tape deck in China and mass producing them. How about the WA 1200 based on the Ampex machine. Come on Warm Audio🙏🏻 If you're going to mass produce a tape machine, you still need the tape too! Without that you can't really do much even with a brand new tape machine. BTW I mass produce Zulu in the USA. And I'm pretty happy with our latest clips (soon to be uploaded) where we try to match the MM1000 and the 440B. Thanks -L.
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Post by RicFoxx on Jan 17, 2017 14:20:32 GMT -6
I romanticize about using a Tascam 488 8 track cassette multitracker. Not because it sounded good but because it was a fun process and I l developed great chops knowing I couldn't fix things! I had that little machine wired... it made me disciplined and focused. Why isn't someone building a new tape deck in China and mass producing them. How about the WA 1200 based on the Ampex machine. Come on Warm Audio🙏🏻 If you're going to mass produce a tape machine, you still need the tape too! Without that you can't really do much even with a brand new tape machine. BTW I mass produce Zulu in the USA. And I'm pretty happy with our latest clips (soon to be uploaded) where we try to match the MM1000 and the 440B. Thanks -L. im sure it will be popular if it sounds like that 440b😀😄😇 I'll likely purchase radar cause I'm tiring of computers.
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Post by johneppstein on Jan 17, 2017 14:47:35 GMT -6
Personally thats why I think digital from a creative veiwpoint is better because it frees you up to not have to worry about anything . This can be bad and abused of course , over editing and recording way too many takes until the soul has been sucked out of the music . But think about it , you can get a laptop and an interface and go record wherever you want for as long as you want . You could record all day long in some wherehouse , 12 hours and it won't cost you like running tape . Setup is simple , Hit record and you can make music as much as you want 24 hours a day . Theres no fixing machines , buying tape , being stuck at one location ..........no worries . Making music couldn't be easier today !! This frees you to be 100% focused on the music and performance . Talk about freeing up an artist to do his thing to its full potential . I bet the beatles and beach boys would have LOVED and prefered digital to let them experiment back in the day . Problem is with digital people are more focused on making perfect music rather than enjoyable music . I don't agree with that. Digital doesn't "free you up to not have to worry about anything", all it does is substitute a different set of things to worry about (and often makes you ignore things you should be paying attention to.) At the same time it makes various processes more "visual" when they're actually much better suited to being auditory. The availability of presets and automated chains makes you less directly involved with the process on the basis of the individual song. Digital also doesn't provide the perspective - the time to think about what you're doing that is forced by the mechanical realities of dealing with the tape machine - you can set up a loop and wail on something withou actually considering whether or not is really artistically beneficial rather than just superficially (visually) "better". Note that I'm not talking about any "digital vs analog" technical "superiority" here - what I'm talking about is process.
It would be entirely possible to adopt an analog style process in digital, but most people don't.
No, quite the contrary. A protools rig would have destroyed The Beatles. It woulds have derailed their creativity and originality into simply "playing with toys". A key point that too many people fail to comprehend is that things tend to be better if "they don't come easy".
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Post by Deleted on Jan 17, 2017 16:31:17 GMT -6
Personally thats why I think digital from a creative veiwpoint is better because it frees you up to not have to worry about anything . This can be bad and abused of course , over editing and recording way too many takes until the soul has been sucked out of the music . But think about it , you can get a laptop and an interface and go record wherever you want for as long as you want . You could record all day long in some wherehouse , 12 hours and it won't cost you like running tape . Setup is simple , Hit record and you can make music as much as you want 24 hours a day . Theres no fixing machines , buying tape , being stuck at one location ..........no worries . Making music couldn't be easier today !! This frees you to be 100% focused on the music and performance . Talk about freeing up an artist to do his thing to its full potential . I bet the beatles and beach boys would have LOVED and prefered digital to let them experiment back in the day . Problem is with digital people are more focused on making perfect music rather than enjoyable music . I don't agree with that. Digital doesn't "free you up to not have to worry about anything", all it does is substitute a different set of things to worry about (and often makes you ignore things you should be paying attention to.) At the same time it makes various processes more "visual" when they're actually much better suited to being auditory. The availability of presets and automated chains makes you less directly involved with the process on the basis of the individual song. Digital also doesn't provide the perspective - the time to think about what you're doing that is forced by the mechanical realities of dealing with the tape machine - you can set up a loop and wail on something withou actually considering whether or not is really artistically beneficial rather than just superficially (visually) "better". Note that I'm not talking about any "digital vs analog" technical "superiority" here - what I'm talking about is process.
It would be entirely possible to adopt an anaqlog style process in digital, but most people don't.
No, quite the contrary. A protools rig would have destroyed The Beatles. It woulds have derailed their creativity and originality into simply "playing with toys". A key point that too many people fail to comprehend is that things tend to be better if "they don't come easy". Well if it bothers people that much, they could just buy a hybrid all in one mixer / mixer with multi-track AD/DA and use pro tools (or insert any DAW) as nothing but a multi-track recorder. Whether they do or don't adapt to it, fact of the matter is it's easy to go full analogue..
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Post by illacov on Jan 17, 2017 16:49:55 GMT -6
I don't agree with that. Digital doesn't "free you up to not have to worry about anything", all it does is substitute a different set of things to worry about (and often makes you ignore things you should be paying attention to.) At the same time it makes various processes more "visual" when they're actually much better suited to being auditory. The availability of presets and automated chains makes you less directly involved with the process on the basis of the individual song. Digital also doesn't provide the perspective - the time to think about what you're doing that is forced by the mechanical realities of dealing with the tape machine - you can set up a loop and wail on something withou actually considering whether or not is really artistically beneficial rather than just superficially (visually) "better". Note that I'm not talking about any "digital vs analog" technical "superiority" here - what I'm talking about is process.
It would be entirely possible to adopt an anaqlog style process in digital, but most people don't.
No, quite the contrary. A protools rig would have destroyed The Beatles. It woulds have derailed their creativity and originality into simply "playing with toys". A key point that too many people fail to comprehend is that things tend to be better if "they don't come easy". Well if it bothers people that much, they could just buy a hybrid all in one mixer / mixer with multi-track AD/DA and use pro tools (or insert any DAW) as nothing but a multi-track recorder. Whether they do or don't adapt to it, fact of the matter is it's easy to go full analogue.. All very true and all very relevant to the discussion. I personally feel what's unique about the process behind what the Beatles engaged in was committing as you went rather than reaching for some esoteric bridge between convenience and control. They were constantly bouncing, overdubbing during a bounce, using compression during tracking, EQ, mic placement that would become more so an effect than a scientific practice. Recording culture changed somewhere along the way to highlight more of the limitless options we have for LATER ON rather than RIGHT NOW. Its an oversimplified assertion at best but its a good part of how you have these recordings. People working at their peak, laying down insanely creative ideas to tape, constantly pushing the envelope of what worked and how to get those ideas out of your head and into the studio. Its part of where music falls apart currently is the incessant need to fix it later or have endless control over an outcome. It defies logic that something which is purely about the spur of the moment, has become less and less about that and more about using technology to let you off the hook. At some point all of that convenience just turns creativity into fluffer nutter. I don't reject it, I simply imply that the beauty of well practiced musicians, who play tight and are prepared for studio work will never be the same as the opposite. Its far easier to make great musicians sound good, regardless of what you use than it is to make people who can't keep time, lack soul or any kind of rhythmic feel sound like they actually do. Tape and Zulu can't do that, no matter how great I think they are. Thanks -L.
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Post by Quint on Jan 17, 2017 18:56:20 GMT -6
I romanticize about using a Tascam 488 8 track cassette multitracker. Not because it sounded good but because it was a fun process and I l developed great chops knowing I couldn't fix things! I had that little machine wired... it made me disciplined and focused. Why isn't someone building a new tape deck in China and mass producing them. How about the WA 1200 based on the Ampex machine. Come on Warm Audio🙏🏻 If you're going to mass produce a tape machine, you still need the tape too! Without that you can't really do much even with a brand new tape machine. BTW I mass produce Zulu in the USA. And I'm pretty happy with our latest clips (soon to be uploaded) where we try to match the MM1000 and the 440B. Thanks -L. So will the Zulu manual include recommended settings to mimic different machines? Obviously you could adjust things to your liking from there but some "presets" might provide a nice starting point to get to know the Zulu. As I mentioned before, I'm definitely interested in the possibility of the Zulu to ape an Ampex 440b or MM1100/1200. I look forward to hearing your samples.
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Post by illacov on Jan 17, 2017 19:22:56 GMT -6
If you're going to mass produce a tape machine, you still need the tape too! Without that you can't really do much even with a brand new tape machine. BTW I mass produce Zulu in the USA. And I'm pretty happy with our latest clips (soon to be uploaded) where we try to match the MM1000 and the 440B. Thanks -L. So will the Zulu manual include recommended settings to mimic different machines? Obviously you could adjust things to your liking from there but some "presets" might provide a nice starting point to get to know the Zulu. As I mentioned before, I'm definitely interested in the possibility of the Zulu to ape an Ampex 440b or MM1100/1200. I look forward to hearing your samples. What I'm actually thinking about doing is exactly that, plus having an online form (in development) for people to share their presets online to make our own Zulu preset archive. I actually want to make it where you can log on and try out Noah's preset or John Kennedy's and be like holy sh*t thats a great sound. Or you can upload your own and we all equally have a chance to share that information. My reason for creating this preset Bible has a lot to do with how many people I meet on the REGULAR who don't know about classic settings on classic gear. For example, I get so many strange looks when I tell people to set their 1176 to Dr. Pepper. And yet this is a very classic way to use the 1176 as a starting point. It also teaches you a lot about how 1176s work in principle and how your gain staging BEFORE the 1176 can impact the performance of the compressor. Rather than have people fumble about with Zulu, say they don't understand it, they couldn't get it to do the tape thing or realize that need to hit it with a preamp to get it to do this record producer's preferred way of working, I figured documenting that, plus having a fun to read and informative user manual, plus a quick start guide to get you going, would benefit you the most. So yes, the manual will have some presets, but the online preset Bible will hopefully (based on you and your peers!) have a bunch more presets that people can share, plus the chains involved. Thanks -L.
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Post by Quint on Jan 17, 2017 19:51:27 GMT -6
So will the Zulu manual include recommended settings to mimic different machines? Obviously you could adjust things to your liking from there but some "presets" might provide a nice starting point to get to know the Zulu. As I mentioned before, I'm definitely interested in the possibility of the Zulu to ape an Ampex 440b or MM1100/1200. I look forward to hearing your samples. What I'm actually thinking about doing is exactly that, plus having an online form (in development) for people to share their presets online to make our own Zulu preset archive. I actually want to make it where you can log on and try out Noah's preset or John Kennedy's and be like holy sh*t thats a great sound. Or you can upload your own and we all equally have a chance to share that information. My reason for creating this preset Bible has a lot to do with how many people I meet on the REGULAR who don't know about classic settings on classic gear. For example, I get so many strange looks when I tell people to set their 1176 to Dr. Pepper. And yet this is a very classic way to use the 1176 as a starting point. It also teaches you a lot about how 1176s work in principle and how your gain staging BEFORE the 1176 can impact the performance of the compressor. Rather than have people fumble about with Zulu, say they don't understand it, they couldn't get it to do the tape thing or realize that need to hit it with a preamp to get it to do this record producer's preferred way of working, I figured documenting that, plus having a fun to read and informative user manual, plus a quick start guide to get you going, would benefit you the most. So yes, the manual will have some presets, but the online preset Bible will hopefully (based on you and your peers!) have a bunch more presets that people can share, plus the chains involved. Thanks -L. Cool. Exactly what I hoped to hear. Now I'm just waiting to hear the price on the 8 and 16 channel rackmount. Hint hint...
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Post by johneppstein on Jan 18, 2017 1:19:58 GMT -6
I don't agree with that. Digital doesn't "free you up to not have to worry about anything", all it does is substitute a different set of things to worry about (and often makes you ignore things you should be paying attention to.) At the same time it makes various processes more "visual" when they're actually much better suited to being auditory. The availability of presets and automated chains makes you less directly involved with the process on the basis of the individual song. Digital also doesn't provide the perspective - the time to think about what you're doing that is forced by the mechanical realities of dealing with the tape machine - you can set up a loop and wail on something withou actually considering whether or not is really artistically beneficial rather than just superficially (visually) "better". Note that I'm not talking about any "digital vs analog" technical "superiority" here - what I'm talking about is process.
It would be entirely possible to adopt an anaqlog style process in digital, but most people don't.
No, quite the contrary. A protools rig would have destroyed The Beatles. It woulds have derailed their creativity and originality into simply "playing with toys". A key point that too many people fail to comprehend is that things tend to be better if "they don't come easy". Well if it bothers people that much, they could just buy a hybrid all in one mixer / mixer with multi-track AD/DA and use pro tools (or insert any DAW) as nothing but a multi-track recorder. Whether they do or don't adapt to it, fact of the matter is it's easy to go full analogue.. Well, as I said, it's all about process. HUMAN process, not technology. Most people tend to be a bit lazy and digital tech abets this, Many humans also favor visual cues over auditory and digital, with all its pretty, fancy looking displays, abets this as well. You don't have to do this - I have a 32 channel Antelope Orion converter and a DAW that just gets used as a backup/mixdown recorder, no ITB processing at all, but most people aren't (crazy) like me.
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Post by scumbum on Jan 19, 2017 11:15:13 GMT -6
As long as this thread is still current, I think if would be very interesting to find out if a previous comment about the order of analog tape to DAW is actually discerible. Maybe a bit of a hassle, but if as I suspect printing a source to digital and then flying it to the tape machine versus printing to tape and then transferring is exactly the same from a blind test. If you set it up so that a source feeds a channel in the DAW and then routes to the input of the tape machine, and from the output of the tape machine back to the daw, that should give you identical levels for each result so that you aren't fooled by volume changes. And then post them here without revealing which is which, I think would be very interesting. Because I have considered having a half track machine around to treat some things with oxide compression, and I truly believe, okay, suspect, that nothing changes with whether you hit tape first or hit digital first. Now the need for multirack machines and expensive tape is taken out of the equation. May be you will be bored enough to try it sometime, Noah........ Brad McGowan tested all this around 10 years ago . Hopefully he can chime in on this thread . But his conclusion after testing was that it didn't matter in what part of the chain tape was used . You could hit tape before or after digital and it got him the same results .
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Post by scumbum on Jan 19, 2017 11:34:43 GMT -6
Well if it bothers people that much, they could just buy a hybrid all in one mixer / mixer with multi-track AD/DA and use pro tools (or insert any DAW) as nothing but a multi-track recorder. Whether they do or don't adapt to it, fact of the matter is it's easy to go full analogue.. All very true and all very relevant to the discussion. I personally feel what's unique about the process behind what the Beatles engaged in was committing as you went rather than reaching for some esoteric bridge between convenience and control. They were constantly bouncing, overdubbing during a bounce, using compression during tracking, EQ, mic placement that would become more so an effect than a scientific practice. Recording culture changed somewhere along the way to highlight more of the limitless options we have for LATER ON rather than RIGHT NOW. Its an oversimplified assertion at best but its a good part of how you have these recordings. People working at their peak, laying down insanely creative ideas to tape, constantly pushing the envelope of what worked and how to get those ideas out of your head and into the studio. Its part of where music falls apart currently is the incessant need to fix it later or have endless control over an outcome. It defies logic that something which is purely about the spur of the moment, has become less and less about that and more about using technology to let you off the hook. At some point all of that convenience just turns creativity into fluffer nutter. I don't reject it, I simply imply that the beauty of well practiced musicians, who play tight and are prepared for studio work will never be the same as the opposite. Its far easier to make great musicians sound good, regardless of what you use than it is to make people who can't keep time, lack soul or any kind of rhythmic feel sound like they actually do. Tape and Zulu can't do that, no matter how great I think they are. Thanks -L. But you can work the same way with digital that you do with tape . You could even get a console and only record the stereo mix of a band like the beatles did on their first album into a 2 channel converter . You can work EXACTLY the same way with digital that you do with tape theres no difference . Even do a manditory 20 second ( rewind ) break between takes . Its kinda like a fat obese person blaming Mc Donalds that they are fat . Fast food is not to blame because your obese its because you have no self control !! Same thing for blaming Digital for ruining music . You just need self control . Its like driving by that McDonalds everyday , you have the choice to stop and eat there , or instead go home and eat an organic salad . You have the choice of self disicpline or give in and ruin your health (or ruin your music with digital ) .
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Post by illacov on Jan 19, 2017 11:56:15 GMT -6
All very true and all very relevant to the discussion. I personally feel what's unique about the process behind what the Beatles engaged in was committing as you went rather than reaching for some esoteric bridge between convenience and control. They were constantly bouncing, overdubbing during a bounce, using compression during tracking, EQ, mic placement that would become more so an effect than a scientific practice. Recording culture changed somewhere along the way to highlight more of the limitless options we have for LATER ON rather than RIGHT NOW. Its an oversimplified assertion at best but its a good part of how you have these recordings. People working at their peak, laying down insanely creative ideas to tape, constantly pushing the envelope of what worked and how to get those ideas out of your head and into the studio. Its part of where music falls apart currently is the incessant need to fix it later or have endless control over an outcome. It defies logic that something which is purely about the spur of the moment, has become less and less about that and more about using technology to let you off the hook. At some point all of that convenience just turns creativity into fluffer nutter. I don't reject it, I simply imply that the beauty of well practiced musicians, who play tight and are prepared for studio work will never be the same as the opposite. Its far easier to make great musicians sound good, regardless of what you use than it is to make people who can't keep time, lack soul or any kind of rhythmic feel sound like they actually do. Tape and Zulu can't do that, no matter how great I think they are. Thanks -L. But you can work the same way with digital that you do with tape . You could even get a console and only record the stereo mix of a band like the beatles did on their first album into a 2 channel converter . You can work EXACTLY the same way with digital that you do with tape theres no difference . Even do a manditory 20 second ( rewind ) break between takes . Its kinda like a fat obese person blaming Mc Donalds that they are fat . Fast food is not to blame because your obese its because you have no self control !! Same thing for blaming Digital for ruining music . You just need self control . Its like driving by that McDonalds everyday , you have the choice to stop and eat there , or instead go home and eat an organic salad . You have the choice of self disicpline or give in and ruin your health (or ruin your music with digital ) . Unless digital gives you a free time machine to go back in time and relive the moment you recorded a part as if you are actually doing it then that's not quite true now is it? Decisions made in the moment, which is what being forced to commit is about, are beyond simply having the flexibility later to commit. Its like playing sports in real life instead of in a video game where you have multiple chances to relive the exact same scenario without consequence. I decide right now, where to kick the soccer ball and I have to kick it, right now. If I miss, I miss. If I kick it towards the direction, but not all the way, then the outcomes change, along with my next step, versus if I had just booted it to the left wing in the first place. I don't see that ever applying in digital via post decisions. You're out of context. The most powerful person in any session is the goof in front of the microphone, not the goof at the desk. Whatever your goof in the tracking room does, you are stuck with it. Sounds impact performance. Especially when stylistic prooduction/engineering decisions impact the performance of the musicians if they can actually hear those sounds during recording. Letting a musician monitor with reverb or compression or both is different than not. Perhaps you won't need to commit that sound with a digital system, but he heard the compression and he performed to the compression, the reverb, the eq, all of it. The impact this has on drummers is not to be understated. With a tape scenario, those stylistic decisions are final. Perhaps not every single nuance, but the bulk of it, especially in 4 track world, that's a wrap, whats on tape is on tape. I think in conclusion the way I see it, we as producers have to humble ourselves at times and realize that we can't defeat our musicians in post. We have to utilize their subconscious and conscious selves with limitations and advantages, all of those things that we can offer them when they are recording. If the concern is about screwing up or making a poor choice, that's about self control too isn't it? Learning how to not make those bad choices, but also not being afraid to take those chances and make those bold strokes. I mean shoot, mic placement when done a certain way is a bold stroke, a risk, a stylistic decision. This has just as much impact, just as much commitment laced thinking as using any compressor to digital or using a tape machine. You might be able to trigger a snare and cover your tracks that way but the bones of that performance and those choices are there. So in my book, just make decisions, make more while you're at it and mixing is a dream at that point! What other way can you develop those instincts and those unspoken observations unless you stimulate that part of your mind in the first place? That's what works for me anyway! You could always run mults too. I used to do that for years, but I always kept the compressed, saturated, vibey stuff. My clients always picked those versions over the safeties and after doing that a couple hundred times, you just learn to sculpt as you go and don't look back. I hate looking at computer screens when I work on music, the less computer programming I have to do the better. Thanks -L.
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Post by illacov on Jan 19, 2017 12:12:11 GMT -6
Brad McGowan tested all this around 10 years ago . Hopefully he can chime in on this thread . But his conclusion after testing was that it didn't matter in what part of the chain tape was used . You could hit tape before or after digital and it got him the same results . I just read that thread or one that has him in it too, where he doesn't quite say that at all. "I never did anything rigorous or remotely scientific, but I did bounce about 2/3rd's of an albums worth of drums to tape and back into the computer. I mixed from the computer by the way. My subjective impression is that it didn't strike me in the same way as the tracks that I tracked directly to tape and then mixed from the computer. Perhaps I wasn't hitting the tape that hard or in the same way when I tracked directly to tape. I know that's kind of vague, but I since I didn't do a more controlled test I don't want to draw incorrect conclusions. One of things I'm hoping to do in the next few months is track a project to tape and then run two sets of mixes straight to 1/4". One will come off the tape and go through a mixer. The other mix will be transferred onto the computer and then be played back from the computer through the mixer onto the 1/4" machine. Brad." - Purple Site 1/3/2009 BradMDid you do any more tests of this nature? What were your findings? My own personal experience is that as much analog processing as you can do before conversion is far more productive than in post, if at all possible. Analog straight to tape to digital or digital to tape will both sound subjectively good if it works for the material, but you get far better results to tape when the audio is still "live," versus post conversion. Thanks -L.
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Post by scumbum on Jan 19, 2017 21:48:18 GMT -6
Brad McGowan tested all this around 10 years ago . Hopefully he can chime in on this thread . But his conclusion after testing was that it didn't matter in what part of the chain tape was used . You could hit tape before or after digital and it got him the same results . I just read that thread or one that has him in it too, where he doesn't quite say that at all. "I never did anything rigorous or remotely scientific, but I did bounce about 2/3rd's of an albums worth of drums to tape and back into the computer. I mixed from the computer by the way. My subjective impression is that it didn't strike me in the same way as the tracks that I tracked directly to tape and then mixed from the computer. Perhaps I wasn't hitting the tape that hard or in the same way when I tracked directly to tape. I know that's kind of vague, but I since I didn't do a more controlled test I don't want to draw incorrect conclusions. One of things I'm hoping to do in the next few months is track a project to tape and then run two sets of mixes straight to 1/4". One will come off the tape and go through a mixer. The other mix will be transferred onto the computer and then be played back from the computer through the mixer onto the 1/4" machine. Brad." - Purple Site 1/3/2009 BradM Did you do any more tests of this nature? What were your findings? My own personal experience is that as much analog processing as you can do before conversion is far more productive than in post, if at all possible. Analog straight to tape to digital or digital to tape will both sound subjectively good if it works for the material, but you get far better results to tape when the audio is still "live," versus post conversion. Thanks -L. "Analog straight to tape to digital or digital to tape will both sound subjectively good if it works for the material, but you get far better results to tape when the audio is still "live," versus post conversion." I think I talked to him in a pm on GS and thats what he told me.........is that it didn't matter where in the chain tape was if your gonna end up going digital . But of course never going digital would be best . I'm not knocking recording on tape or the sound . Even the process of recording to tape . I'm knocking the mentality that the recording process to tape is superior because you can only use those limitations when recording to tape and you can't use that same process or mentality when recording to digital . Theres a thing called destructive record in Pro Tools . Click that box and suddenly you have a "digital" tape machine with the same commitment as recording to tape . Don't use any other "fix it in the mix" plugins like beat detective or auto tune , only EQ and compression and limit your track count to 8 , 16 , 24........and if you want to use an analog console then don't even touch the audio in Pro Tools , leave the faders at unity . You now are using the SAME EXACT process and mentality as working with a tape machine without the maintenance or tape costs . Now I think music sucks today because of Digital . NOBODY or maybe very few , have the discipline to commit and so we have 100 track count mixes , millions of edits , tuning , quantizing ..........you name it , and it SUCKS ! It sucks literally and sucks the life out of the music . Tape forced people to be good at their instruments , you had to be good there was no choice . Humans are lazy , not all but most , so if you give lazy humans the choice to be lazy they will be lazy ....and thats what digital nurtures ...Lazyness . So if everyone still used tape today , music would still be good because people would be forced to nail that part in the studio and not rely on a computer to fix everything . We'd have human music again . Not music made by a droid . My point is with digital you don't have to be a lazy ass and make computerized music that only R2D2 or a teenager would listen to . You can commit while recording and not let the computer make the music but have humans do it instead , just like back in the day with tape .
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Post by johneppstein on Jan 19, 2017 23:28:04 GMT -6
Brad McGowan tested all this around 10 years ago . Hopefully he can chime in on this thread . But his conclusion after testing was that it didn't matter in what part of the chain tape was used . You could hit tape before or after digital and it got him the same results . Who? The hockey player? The venture capitalist? OH, the gear hacker. He may make a bunch of cool stuff for the lower budget studio set but I'm sorry, I'll take the consensus of real pro recording engineers over even a well liked gear hacker any day. And nearly all the engineers I'm in contact with who use both tape and digital on a regular basis agree - tape into digital works a HELL of a lot better than digital into tape. Of course if you have a product line that includes devices that are alleged to make digital recordings sound "tape-like" you might understandably have a different viewpoint. The results are NOT the same. The difference is obvious to anyone who has actually used the gear. How much recording to professional format tape have you done? In my own case, recording my voice directly to digital brings out aspects of my voice that I really, really don't like, aspects that are exteremely difficult if not impossible to deal with via processing. Recording to my Studer A-800 tape machine through the exact same input chain yeilds a much better result in which the aspects I dislike are minimized with the residual being much more easily dealt with. Rerecording the digital recording over to tape does not yeild the same result. Neither mixing down to digital nor transferring from tape to digital brings out the undesirable sonic artifacts after the initial recording was made to tape.. Note that I'm NOT talking about "saturation", distortion, noise, or any of that crap that the Purple amateurs are always going on about. I'm talking about recording to a machine with the rep of being the best sounding, cleasnest analog tape machine ever made (although a definite PITA to maintain.)
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Post by wiz on Jan 19, 2017 23:54:02 GMT -6
Brad McGowan tested all this around 10 years ago . Hopefully he can chime in on this thread . But his conclusion after testing was that it didn't matter in what part of the chain tape was used . You could hit tape before or after digital and it got him the same results . Who? The hockey player? The venture capitalist? OH, the gear hacker. He may make a bunch of cool stuff for the lower budget studio set but I'm sorry, I'll take the consensus of real pro recording engineers over even a well liked gear hacker any day. And nearly all the engineers I'm in contact with who use both tape and digital on a regular basis agree - tape into digital works a HELL of a lot better than digital into tape. Of course if you have a product line that includes devices that are alleged to make digital recordings sound "tape-like" you might understandably have a different viewpoint. The results are NOT the same. The difference is obvious to anyone who has actually used the gear. How much recording to professional format tape have you done? In my own case, recording my voice directly to digital brings out aspects of my voice that I really, really don't like, aspects that are exteremely difficult if not impossible to deal with via processing. Recording to my Studer A-800 tape machine through the exact same input chain yeilds a much better result in which the aspects I dislike are minimized with the residual being much more easily dealt with. Rerecording the digital recording over to tape does not yeild the same result. Neither mixing down to digital nor transferring from tape to digital brings out the undesirable sonic artifacts after the initial recording was made to tape.. Note that I'm NOT talking about "saturation", distortion, noise, or any of that crap that the Purple amateurs are always going on about. I'm talking about recording to a machine with the rep of being the best sounding, cleasnest analog tape machine ever made (although a definite PITA to maintain.) Brad is a real nice guy, and on this site. I think thats an insulting thing to say, unless you know him and forgot the smiley face. There is only one rule on this site... and that post flies to close to it for mine. This is a friendly place, and we treat each other with respect. Hell, I flew around the world to meet with a lot of these guys and break bread. I think you should apologise. Wiz
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Post by johneppstein on Jan 20, 2017 0:44:23 GMT -6
Who? The hockey player? The venture capitalist? OH, the gear hacker. He may make a bunch of cool stuff for the lower budget studio set but I'm sorry, I'll take the consensus of real pro recording engineers over even a well liked gear hacker any day. And nearly all the engineers I'm in contact with who use both tape and digital on a regular basis agree - tape into digital works a HELL of a lot better than digital into tape. Of course if you have a product line that includes devices that are alleged to make digital recordings sound "tape-like" you might understandably have a different viewpoint. The results are NOT the same. The difference is obvious to anyone who has actually used the gear. How much recording to professional format tape have you done? In my own case, recording my voice directly to digital brings out aspects of my voice that I really, really don't like, aspects that are exteremely difficult if not impossible to deal with via processing. Recording to my Studer A-800 tape machine through the exact same input chain yeilds a much better result in which the aspects I dislike are minimized with the residual being much more easily dealt with. Rerecording the digital recording over to tape does not yeild the same result. Neither mixing down to digital nor transferring from tape to digital brings out the undesirable sonic artifacts after the initial recording was made to tape.. Note that I'm NOT talking about "saturation", distortion, noise, or any of that crap that the Purple amateurs are always going on about. I'm talking about recording to a machine with the rep of being the best sounding, cleasnest analog tape machine ever made (although a definite PITA to maintain.) Brad is a real nice guy, and on this site. I think thats an insulting thing to say, unless you know him and forgot the smiley face. There is only one rule on this site... and that post flies to close to it for mine. This is a friendly place, and we treat each other with respect. Hell, I flew around the world to meet with a lot of these guys and break bread. I think you should apologise. Wiz Sorry, my humor tends to be excessively dry at times. And no personal insult was intended. OTOH, I think I do have something of a point. However the actual post I was responding to was something on the lines of hearsay, and I'd welcome what Brad has to say about the subject himself.
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Post by jjinvegas on Jan 20, 2017 7:55:44 GMT -6
Okay, let's just think for a moment. When you say the Beatles were forced to make decisions and then react to those while creating, well, how many takes do you think they did? A lot more than your typical digital session. I read an interview back in the foggy past where John Lennon was defending Phil Spector's production of "Let It Be", where he mentioned that Phil waded through over one hundred hours worth of tape to come up with forty or so minutes. So the idea that they made snap decisions and then rolled on is just nonsense. Four track recording, but how many tape machines are in play? As for engineers claiming that the order of transfer as it pertains to the effect of oxide compression is discernibly different if you go to analog first, and then digital, I I bet the difference is negligible. If you take a program material, e.g., and run it into your typical pro-sumer set-up choosing which is the clone even with an analog conversion on the way in is not readily apparent. Since so many people are enamored with analog summing and inserts which are basically putting the audio through the same process, and claim negligible or inaudible differences, why is this particular order different? I am calling bull droppings on it, without some actual data. And yes, I have done just a wee bit of recording to pro formats and know this, you can talk yourself into anything. You think your voice sounds bad on one format over another, that is more than likely preconceived notions affecting your opinion. The placebo effect is verifiable, do you think it is any different on something like audio perception, as opposed to actual disease abatement? Here is something I think, I like the Beatles, but their recordings sound not so good anymore. Sorry, I wish it weren't true, they are the shot across the bow and the impetus for so much of what we take for granted, but that doesn't change all the fog and swampy vague imaging. Or is that analog magic? ![???](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/huh.png) ? hahahaha
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Post by illacov on Jan 20, 2017 8:04:04 GMT -6
First off I have mucho respect for Brad, he is involved in lots of cool electronics design and his degree of designer's mind and engineer's mind is not a common find these days. He is damn fine engineer and designer. Nothing about what he does strikes me as low end or done to a budget point.
I humbly request we keep it civil, period.
Let me offer up my thoughts for inspection instead.
Nyquist and the range of human hearing are often interchanged as components of reality.
Nyquist is a reference not a law. Human hearing is limited but only for us, there is information below and above our range of hearing that impacts what we do hear. Perhaps that belies internet science, but waves and physics are the rules I tend to defer to first.
Case in point if you're working at 44.1khz, unless you have a fancy A/D, then your audio on the way to the ADC chip is filtered via a steep hicut filter @ circa 22khz, due to ADCs dealing with high frequency content vs the Nyquist limit for that sample rate. You may say "Langston we can't hear past 20khz," to which I say, very true, but there's still energy that's part of the way that we are cutting out of the capture and if you know about filters, you're creating resonance around that corner frequency and introducing artifacts into the wave that were not there before conversion. Now can you "hear," this change? Of course, the top end for starters is already bright sans tape. But you're taking whats bright to begin with and adding a filter that cuts highs (and whatever other harmonics are present above the 20khz point) and adds resonance around that same filter point. So you get a somewhat smooth yet whispy/harsher result post conversion. Add this up on drums or vocals and you get my drift.
Let's go back to tape before digital or any analog process. Your gear doesn't have "ears," you can measure equuipment and get some pretty intriguing results from the range of energy it transfers and effects. Your equipment is still going to react in some way shape or form to energy. By allowing this to happen before brute force filtering happens at your ADC, you're giving your analog gear the only true opportunity to be exposed to these unadulterated freaky frequencies and energies that the filtering pre conversion attempts to strip out. "Well tape can add that back in via hardware looping or printing to tape right?" But here's the catch, your DA has some kind of filtering too!
So you've stripped away a great deal of information from the audio wave before you even get to use tape, Zulu, your SB or Distressor, any analog device. Then you go back into your ADC post analog mojo compressor, but get hit AGAIN with more filtering and then you hear it filtered by the DA you're monitoring with.
So in my mind this is far less "convenient," to filter your audio several times just to get the sound of device X ingrained to your source, when you could have tracked thru it at the onset. Now mind you, sometimes you have no choice, if you didn't track the project or its a midi soft sampler thing then you have to take that hit.
I would at least think that tape because its got a filter of its own special kind would perform better with pure audio hitting it than not.
Thanks -L.
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Post by svart on Jan 20, 2017 8:54:50 GMT -6
LOL this thread. I just wanted to know if people think it's viable to use a tape machine these days, since it's become more of a rare but enticing way to record..
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Post by noah shain on Jan 20, 2017 11:51:11 GMT -6
LOL this thread. I just wanted to know if people think it's viable to use a tape machine these days, since it's become more of a rare but enticing way to record.. I think it is svart IF you like the sound of tape machines and do good work with them. I agree with others on this thread that your work and the records that come out of the studio are your best promotional tools. I don't think the machines themselves will attract enough business to justify the cost and effort. If you use them to make spectacular recordings and potential clients HAVE to have your sound, then yes. It'll be a viable element of your promotion because you'll be providing a unique sound and recording experience. But you don't need tape to do that. I really just want you to get in to tape machines cause you're smart and you'll figure out some cool s**t...and teach it to me.
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Post by svart on Jan 20, 2017 13:05:27 GMT -6
LOL this thread. I just wanted to know if people think it's viable to use a tape machine these days, since it's become more of a rare but enticing way to record.. I think it is svart IF you like the sound of tape machines and do good work with them. I agree with others on this thread that your work and the records that come out of the studio are your best promotional tools. I don't think the machines themselves will attract enough business to justify the cost and effort. If you use them to make spectacular recordings and potential clients HAVE to have your sound, then yes. It'll be a viable element of your promotion because you'll be providing a unique sound and recording experience. But you don't need tape to do that. I really just want you to get in to tape machines cause you're smart and you'll figure out some cool s**t...and teach it to me. That's kind of my point, I don't know if a tape machine would pay for itself in any reasonable amount of time, thus my original question. I'm not rich, but investing in a tape machine would be a long term investment that I don't need paid back in a year.. I could weather a few years of using it sporadically to pay for it. I'm 100% sure I could adapt to the process, but I'm not so sure about the clients. I'd personally LOVE to get into tape, and then turn around and offer it at a reasonable price to the kids who'd otherwise never have any experience with it. However, that's the part of me that's still a musician and gear lover talking. The businessman in me worries that I'd spend a lot and get little in return since young bands these days are so used to the cut/paste lifestyle that it has just become the norm. I just feel a change in media options might make people look this way. Everyone has some kind of digital interface, and for most bands these days, they have no understanding of the differences between preamps, converters, etc. They just know that some marketing slogan somewhere says that they can get "professional quality" from some 199$ recording kit at GC, and that I charge a lot more for one song than they could spend on that setup.. But tape.. that's something they can't get at GC! The interest in an old and "magical" medium could mean a lot to some people. I still don't know though.
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