[Scott Dorsey]

Frank Stearns wrote:
Perhaps it's simply my classical and acoustic music background, but intentionally
going low (or lower)-fi when higher-fi is available never has made much sense --
unless you're trying to hide something.

There's always _something_ that needs hiding. If you haven't found it,
you're not looking closely enough.

That said, the sense of "blend" that a mixdown to analogue tape gives you
is hard to reproduce any other way, and I think for the most part it is
high frequency flutter that is producing that sense since it's greatly
reduced on the ATR-100 vs. an old 350. That sense of blending can also
screw you up completely and reduce perceived separation between instruments
too. It's horses for courses.

Perhaps the emperor is (musically) naked and some folks want to kick up a little
dust and grit as insurance against that ever being noticed?

That's an important part of what production is about.
--scott


--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Frank Stearns]

Mike Rivers writes:

On 7/25/2015 2:21 AM, Trevor wrote:
But it's simple to bounce that guitar track to tape and back without
affecting the rest of the sound. Or spending a fortune on tape.

The trouble with this casual approach is that the "sound of tape" that
people say that they love wasn't created casually. And it was created on
a professional tape recorder that was properly maintained and adjusted.
Patching the output of your computer's sound card to the TEAC that you
bought for $10 at a yard sale (it included some tape so you didn't have
to buy any) and then playing that back into your computer will certainly
change the sound. It may even be a sound that you love.

There's nothing wrong with that. When it comes to modifying sounds,
anything goes. But it isn't "the sound of tape." (quotes are significant)

The irony here (and you've obliquely touched on this with your reference to the $10
Teac) is that towards the end of the tape era things were getting pretty good (other
than tape costs and machine maintenance) -- ATR100s properly set up with good heads,
hot-rodded Studers and ATR124s and so on such that the identifiable "tape sound" was
becoming much less so.

So what is "tape sound" on a top-flight tape machine? For that matter, what is "tube
sound", assuming properly designed solid state or tube circuits, both running in
their linear operating range? Neither will (or should) have much of a "sound".

Frank
Mobile Audio
--

[Scott Dorsey]

Frank Stearns wrote:
So what is "tape sound" on a top-flight tape machine? For that matter, what is "tube
sound", assuming properly designed solid state or tube circuits, both running in
their linear operating range? Neither will (or should) have much of a "sound".

"Tube sound" for the most part is transformer sound combined with a lack
of transistor distortion. These days, transistor distortion is not a big
issue but back in the seventies when the tube vs. transistor debates were
active, it was. So the lack of transistor harshness, combined with that
transformer sound, is what characterizes most of that classic tube gear.

"Tape sound" on the other hand is a million different sounds, and I can
get a lot of them on the same tape machine with different tapes and setting
the tape up different ways. I can make it very transparent, I can also
limit the hell out of horns without changing their sound appreciably at
all. I can also make it very ugly too. So when people say they want
"that tape sound" they are basically saying they have no idea what they want.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Frank Stearns]

(Scott Dorsey) writes:

Frank Stearns wrote:
Perhaps it's simply my classical and acoustic music background, but intentionally
going low (or lower)-fi when higher-fi is available never has made much sense --
unless you're trying to hide something.

There's always _something_ that needs hiding. If you haven't found it,
you're not looking closely enough.

Eeek! Don't say that to some of my better classical clients. Some spend a lot of
time on technique to underpin the music; they want it ALL heard, every note. And
with some of the more brilliant compositions, I want to make sure every note /is/
heard. And if a note is bad and a retake isn't feasible (say from a live recording),
rather than hide it I'll do something to fix it from my end -- and still stay
musical, of course.

That said, the sense of "blend" that a mixdown to analogue tape gives you
is hard to reproduce any other way, and I think for the most part it is
high frequency flutter that is producing that sense since it's greatly
reduced on the ATR-100 vs. an old 350. That sense of blending can also
screw you up completely and reduce perceived separation between instruments
too. It's horses for courses.

Yup. With what I'm doing these days, I don't what that lost clarity from the get-go.
I've gotten fairly adept at using multiple flavors of reverbs to do B & O
(blending and obscuring) when needed.


Perhaps the emperor is (musically) naked and some folks want to kick up a little
dust and grit as insurance against that ever being noticed?

That's an important part of what production is about.

As you say, horses for courses.

Frank
Mobile Audio

--

[Frank Stearns]

(Scott Dorsey) writes:

Frank Stearns wrote:
So what is "tape sound" on a top-flight tape machine? For that matter, what is "tube
sound", assuming properly designed solid state or tube circuits, both running in
their linear operating range? Neither will (or should) have much of a "sound".

"Tube sound" for the most part is transformer sound combined with a lack
of transistor distortion. These days, transistor distortion is not a big
issue but back in the seventies when the tube vs. transistor debates were
active, it was. So the lack of transistor harshness, combined with that
transformer sound, is what characterizes most of that classic tube gear.

All true. But let's say you're capacitively coupled with the tubes, and using a
modern SS design, even good IC op amps, properly set up. I suppose there's less D.A.
from the smaller value caps used with hi Z tube circuits v. the higher values with
SS. But put a small value bypass on the electrolytics and you've evened that out.
Direct couple all the way through with SS and now SS probably takes a step ahead.

In that case it would (should?) be hard to tell the diff. Both have the potential to
be quite transparent, assuming proper power supply design and grounding scheme in
the circuits.


"Tape sound" on the other hand is a million different sounds, and I can
get a lot of them on the same tape machine with different tapes and setting
the tape up different ways. I can make it very transparent, I can also
limit the hell out of horns without changing their sound appreciably at
all. I can also make it very ugly too. So when people say they want
"that tape sound" they are basically saying they have no idea what they want.

Amen to that.

Frank
Mobile Audio
--

[geoff]

On 26/07/2015 12:40 a.m., Mike Rivers wrote:
On 7/25/2015 2:21 AM, Trevor wrote:
But it's simple to bounce that guitar track to tape and back without
affecting the rest of the sound. Or spending a fortune on tape.

The trouble with this casual approach is that the "sound of tape" that
people say that they love wasn't created casually. And it was created on
a professional tape recorder that was properly maintained and adjusted.

...... and could not be avoided if you wanted something else. At least
not without compromising something else .

geoff

[Trevor]

On 25/07/2015 10:40 PM, Mike Rivers wrote:
On 7/25/2015 2:21 AM, Trevor wrote:
But it's simple to bounce that guitar track to tape and back without
affecting the rest of the sound. Or spending a fortune on tape.

The trouble with this casual approach is that the "sound of tape" that
people say that they love wasn't created casually. And it was created on
a professional tape recorder that was properly maintained and adjusted.
Patching the output of your computer's sound card to the TEAC that you
bought for $10 at a yard sale (it included some tape so you didn't have
to buy any) and then playing that back into your computer will certainly
change the sound. It may even be a sound that you love.

Could be for some, but certainly not what I said.


There's nothing wrong with that. When it comes to modifying sounds,
anything goes. But it isn't "the sound of tape." (quotes are significant)

Why on earth do you assume you cannot use the exact same tape recorder
that you used in the past, or would have to use again if you wanted to
record the whole project to tape? That argument is simply a red herring,
and "the sound of tape" can mean whatever you want it to, since there
were so many different recorders and so many different tapes during the
years when that was all we had.
However I do love that one reel of 1" or 2" tape can be used over and
over now, and I don't have to continually buy more. :-)

Trevor.

[Mike Rivers[_2_]]

On 7/26/2015 2:17 AM, Trevor wrote:
Why on earth do you assume you cannot use the exact same tape recorder
that you used in the past, or would have to use again if you wanted to
record the whole project to tape?

Why on earth do you assume that i assumed that? However, to give you an
answer to your assumed question, it could be simply that you don't have
that exact same tape recorder any more. Or that you have it and it's
deteriorated and no longer sounds the same as it did.

"the sound of tape" can mean whatever you want it to, since there
were so many different recorders and so many different tapes during the
years when that was all we had.

But back when tape was all we had, nobody talked about "the sound of
tape" other than cursing it because it started losing highs after too
many passes over the heads. And for those who saw creative possibilities
from other aberrations - that the recording didn't sound exactly the
same played back from tape as it did in the control room when it was
being recorded - there were relatively few things that you could change
to get just the right "tape sound."

There were certain identifiable (to practiced ears) characteristics of
Ampex, Studer, MCI, and Otari models. Back in the days of the
multi-million dollar studios and quarter-million dollar project budgets,
you might record your drums on a Studer an your guitars on an Ampex, and
use a Studer for playback when mixing the project. If you didn't have
the right recorder for the track you recorded, you rented one. But there
were certain fundamentals that you couldn't change easily mid-project.
For instance if you decided that Ampex 456 was the right tape for the
project (or your standard house tape, for which your standard house
recorder was set up to use) you couldn't record drums on BASF 611 unless
you used a separate reel for drums and then synchronized two tape decks
for playback (which wasn't uncommon with big budget projects). And
although there's some room to adjust distortion and frequency response
characteristics of a given tape and tape deck combination by changing
bias and record EQ from their optimized settings, few engineers fooled
with a track's electronic alignment during a session.

And then there are the mechanical characteristics such as scrape flutter
that vary from deck to deck, and even from day to day.

Today, when someone wants "the tape sound" they use a plug-in model of
some tape deck with the parameters (and scope of adjustments) and
twiddle the knobs until they get something they like - which may
represent the sound of a tape deck that never existed.

So, what is this "sound of tape" about which you speak?

However I do love that one reel of 1" or 2" tape can be used over and
over now, and I don't have to continually buy more.

And, of course, it sounds exactly the same every time you use it, right?
Or do you just like, and live with surprises?


--
For a good time, visit http://mikeriversaudio.wordpress.com

[Les Cargill[_4_]]

Frank Stearns wrote:
Trevor writes:

On 25/07/2015 8:40 AM, geoff wrote:
On 25/07/2015 1:28 a.m., wrote:
mako, John Williamson:

And some artists may want the "tape" sound, even
when working in a fully digital environment. They
want their guitar to sound not like a guitar, but to
sound like one on tape. Emulating those curves
and saturation in the digital domain is the challenge.

But it's simple to bounce that guitar track to tape and back without
affecting the rest of the sound. Or spending a fortune on tape.
Better yet you can keep both tracks and mix them, cut between them at
different times, or simply drop the "tape" track altogether when you
realise that was a bad idea :-)

That would be my take (no pun). When you include scrape flutter and fuzz, phase and
response non-linearities, things are usually a little more difficult to mix (not
always, but typically).

Perhaps it's simply my classical and acoustic music background, but intentionally
going low (or lower)-fi when higher-fi is available never has made much sense --
unless you're trying to hide something.


Do you know any electric guitar players who are not purely acoustic or
Joe Pass clean tone players? Tactically, a lot of that
was to have a perceived larger sound.

Perhaps the emperor is (musically) naked and some folks want to kick up a little
dust and grit as insurance against that ever being noticed?


Nah. Certain styles of music have always used distortion and
nonlinearity as an effect.

For example, I still own a *cassette* based recorder w/ DBX, and it does
interesting things with drums, bass and guitars.

Haven't used it in a long while. Cassette used to have a sort
of ... democratic cachet.

YMMV.

Frank
Mobile Audio


--
Les Cargill

[Les Cargill[_4_]]

Frank Stearns wrote:
(Scott Dorsey) writes:

Frank Stearns wrote:
Perhaps it's simply my classical and acoustic music background, but intentionally
going low (or lower)-fi when higher-fi is available never has made much sense --
unless you're trying to hide something.

There's always _something_ that needs hiding. If you haven't found it,
you're not looking closely enough.

Eeek! Don't say that to some of my better classical clients. Some spend a lot of
time on technique to underpin the music; they want it ALL heard, every note. And
with some of the more brilliant compositions, I want to make sure every note /is/
heard. And if a note is bad and a retake isn't feasible (say from a live recording),
rather than hide it I'll do something to fix it from my end -- and still stay
musical, of course.


There are always different domains of obsession out there.

That said, the sense of "blend" that a mixdown to analogue tape gives you
is hard to reproduce any other way, and I think for the most part it is
high frequency flutter that is producing that sense since it's greatly
reduced on the ATR-100 vs. an old 350. That sense of blending can also
screw you up completely and reduce perceived separation between instruments
too. It's horses for courses.


This is mainly it, I think. The reduction of perceived separation of
instruments is what I think many people are after.

Yup. With what I'm doing these days, I don't what that lost clarity from the get-go.
I've gotten fairly adept at using multiple flavors of reverbs to do B & O
(blending and obscuring) when needed.


Perhaps the emperor is (musically) naked and some folks want to kick up a little
dust and grit as insurance against that ever being noticed?

That's an important part of what production is about.

As you say, horses for courses.

Frank
Mobile Audio


--
Les Cargill

[Scott Dorsey]

Frank Stearns wrote:

All true. But let's say you're capacitively coupled with the tubes, and using a
modern SS design, even good IC op amps, properly set up. I suppose there's less D.A.
from the smaller value caps used with hi Z tube circuits v. the higher values with
SS. But put a small value bypass on the electrolytics and you've evened that out.
Direct couple all the way through with SS and now SS probably takes a step ahead.

Modern solid state stuff is very different than solid state stuff of the
seventies. Back then, solid state electronics were designed like tube
electronics... capacitively coupled gain stages one after the other with
resistors for bias.

Solid state gear isn't like that... these days almost everything is biased
with constant-current sources, and DC coupling is the norm. You might find
a couple capacitors in the signal path of a console, but not the hundreds
that was common back then.

And yes, we've figured out most of the problems with electrolytics, and we
can get greatly reduced distortion using bypass caps or simply by increasing
the value by a couple orders of magnitude so there isn't so much voltage
drop through the capacitor.

On top of all this, we have a notion of audibility of distortion that we
really didn't have when I was in school. The THD measurement was very useful
in the tube era when distortion spectra were all fairly similar, but falls
apart when trying to compare different topologies. Designing gear for low
THD at maximum level in the tube era was a reasonable strategy.... in the
solid state era it became a recipe for disaster.

In that case it would (should?) be hard to tell the diff. Both have the potential to
be quite transparent, assuming proper power supply design and grounding scheme in
the circuits.

So, it's now possible to make pretty damn transparent solid state gear today,
and if you add transformers you can wind up with solid state gear that sounds
a lot like the older tube gear, if you want.

Then again, it's also entirely possible to make good tube gear today, that
is clean and transparent. Some folks still do.

People get all het up about technology when in fact they should be spending
more time worrying about how things sound. But I do get annoyed when people
buy fake tube preamps with deliberately misbiased tube distortion stages and
think that is how tube gear is supposed to sound. The first time I heard one
of those, I thought it was broken, but it turns out people want it to sound
that way. Go figure.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Scott Dorsey]

Les Cargill wrote:
Frank Stearns wrote:
(Scott Dorsey) writes:

That said, the sense of "blend" that a mixdown to analogue tape gives you
is hard to reproduce any other way, and I think for the most part it is
high frequency flutter that is producing that sense since it's greatly
reduced on the ATR-100 vs. an old 350. That sense of blending can also
screw you up completely and reduce perceived separation between instruments
too. It's horses for courses.

This is mainly it, I think. The reduction of perceived separation of
instruments is what I think many people are after.

And Frank will probably argue that a better solution for that is to record
real instruments in real rooms and let the room do the blending. He would be
entirely right about that if he did.

I do a lot of festival jobs, though, where I have record feeds off of PA
microphones, and the end result of the loud backline, bad tent acoustics, and
often lousy PA means that I'm forced to build the mix from pieces and use
something to blend them together. This is by no means an optimal environment
for a good record, but that's what makes people hire me instead of some
other cheaper guy.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Frank Stearns]

(Scott Dorsey) writes:

Les Cargill wrote:
Frank Stearns wrote:
(Scott Dorsey) writes:

That said, the sense of "blend" that a mixdown to analogue tape gives you
is hard to reproduce any other way, and I think for the most part it is
high frequency flutter that is producing that sense since it's greatly
reduced on the ATR-100 vs. an old 350. That sense of blending can also
screw you up completely and reduce perceived separation between instruments
too. It's horses for courses.

This is mainly it, I think. The reduction of perceived separation of
instruments is what I think many people are after.

And Frank will probably argue that a better solution for that is to record
real instruments in real rooms and let the room do the blending. He would be
entirely right about that if he did.

Well, I'd certainly meet you half-way on that, even more in a good room with good
players. But I'd still have my section spots at the ready, however!


I do a lot of festival jobs, though, where I have record feeds off of PA
microphones, and the end result of the loud backline, bad tent acoustics, and
often lousy PA means that I'm forced to build the mix from pieces and use
something to blend them together. This is by no means an optimal environment
for a good record, but that's what makes people hire me instead of some
other cheaper guy.

At least conceptually we're doing much the same. I've done a lot of classical
recordings in mediocre rooms where the spots played a critical role. The stereo pair
was brought down and the room heard in the final mix was "faked" via multiple layers
of the appropriate reverbs. Mute those FX returns and suddenly the whole thing
collapsed and became rather unpleasant listening.

This current mix project (more pop elements -- rhythm section plus brass and other
knick knacks) was recorded in the arranger's home studio on mid-fi "economy gear",
with the arranger engineering. Low ceilings, little control of the room sound. It's
taken some acrobatics to get this to settle in somewhere between mid-fi and hi-fi.

The single biggest contribution I've made this project was getting the guy to quit
recording right to 0 dBFS. I said, "With the gear you're using, take it down to at
least a -20 dBFS, maybe even -25." He's done that, and the subsequent tracks have
sounded oh so much better -- another solid notch toward hi-fi.

Frank
Mobile Audio

--

[Trevor]

On 26/07/2015 9:08 PM, Mike Rivers wrote:
On 7/26/2015 2:17 AM, Trevor wrote:
Why on earth do you assume you cannot use the exact same tape recorder
that you used in the past, or would have to use again if you wanted to
record the whole project to tape?

Why on earth do you assume that i assumed that?

Because of what I replied to, and apparently you see the need to snip it
so it does not make you look too stupid. Unfortunately for you, anyone
can simply read the previous post to see what I actually replied to.


However, to give you an
answer to your assumed question, it could be simply that you don't have
that exact same tape recorder any more.

And how then do you record the whole project to tape???? After all my
statement was that simply bouncing one or two tracks to tape was better
than recording the whole thing to tape!


Or that you have it and it's
deteriorated and no longer sounds the same as it did.

A very good reason not to record the whole project to tape in that case!
keep it all digital! :-)


"the sound of tape" can mean whatever you want it to, since there
were so many different recorders and so many different tapes during the
years when that was all we had.

But back when tape was all we had, nobody talked about "the sound of
tape" other than cursing it because it started losing highs after too
many passes over the heads.

Exactly! And at least a dozen other reasons to curse it of course!


And for those who saw creative possibilities
from other aberrations - that the recording didn't sound exactly the
same played back from tape as it did in the control room when it was
being recorded - there were relatively few things that you could change
to get just the right "tape sound."

There were certain identifiable (to practiced ears) characteristics of
Ampex, Studer, MCI, and Otari models. Back in the days of the
multi-million dollar studios and quarter-million dollar project budgets,
you might record your drums on a Studer an your guitars on an Ampex, and
use a Studer for playback when mixing the project. If you didn't have
the right recorder for the track you recorded, you rented one. But there
were certain fundamentals that you couldn't change easily mid-project.
For instance if you decided that Ampex 456 was the right tape for the
project (or your standard house tape, for which your standard house
recorder was set up to use) you couldn't record drums on BASF 611 unless
you used a separate reel for drums and then synchronized two tape decks
for playback (which wasn't uncommon with big budget projects). And
although there's some room to adjust distortion and frequency response
characteristics of a given tape and tape deck combination by changing
bias and record EQ from their optimized settings, few engineers fooled
with a track's electronic alignment during a session.

And then there are the mechanical characteristics such as scrape flutter
that vary from deck to deck, and even from day to day.

Today, when someone wants "the tape sound" they use a plug-in model of
some tape deck with the parameters (and scope of adjustments) and
twiddle the knobs until they get something they like - which may
represent the sound of a tape deck that never existed.

So, what is this "sound of tape" about which you speak?

MY statement about the MANY variations of "tape sound" is still there
above. I've NEVER wanted "tape sound", and was glad to get rid of it a
couple of decades ago.


However I do love that one reel of 1" or 2" tape can be used over and
over now, and I don't have to continually buy more.

And, of course, it sounds exactly the same every time you use it, right?
Or do you just like, and live with surprises?

Yep, ONLY do it to keep someone else happy, and they haven't got a clue
or they wouldn't want it in the first place! (and the reason of course I
don't use a plug-in, since they will turn their nose up at that, whether
they can tell the difference or not!)

Trevor.