new commercial CD's, digital or Analog ??

[gypsyscreamer]

Hey everyone i just want some feedback here, I am curious to find out if modern commercial albums, cd's are recorded on Analog tape or digital ? The genre i am interested in the most is raw straight ahead rock, Buckcherry, Velvet Revolver, Jet, Guns & Roses. that type of music.
It does not tell you on the CD sleeves if it was recorded Analog or Digital. So, i am curious as to what the the Pros are laying the big budget recorded albums on ?? I do know that they are of course editing everything in 'Pro Tools'. But what format are they recording it on 'Analog or Digital ?
If any of you happen to know Please give me your feedback, thanx.

[pipelineaudio]

It depends

If its pop40 its going to be chewed up in digital for sure, but still may have been tracked to analog tape
or digital tape

maybe tracked to a daw (not necessarily pro tools)

Maybe tracked to RADAR

Maybe mixed on a console, maybe mixed ITB, maybe mixed with a mix of both


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[SouthSIDE Glen]

Yep. Just like Gina Gershon, it swings both ways. It totally depends upon the desires and budget management of the producer and the equipment inventory of whatever tracking studio they book.

G.

[Massive Master]

Personally, I'm a big fan of pulling directly off the repro heads.

[Rokket]

I have Buckcherry 15.. good back-to-basics rock. The singer has a unique voice.


It sounds like it's probably mostly digital, though... a lot of processing on the guitars.

[WhiteStrat]

Originally Posted by Rokket

I have Buckcherry 15.. good back-to-basics rock. The singer has a unique voice.


It sounds like it's probably mostly digital, though... a lot of processing on the guitars.

You're right about Buckcherry 15. Great straight ahead hit 'ya between the eyeballs rock and roll. Here's the weird thing about having older kids ('cause I had em so young--not 'cause I'm old ). My son and I share a lot of musical tastes (he's 17 BTW). He's into the 70's and 80's rock--Boston, REO, Styx, Doobies, all kinds of 'em.

So we tend to like the same current stuff too. He gave me Buckcherry 15 for fathers day last year. Pretty cool... (to me anyway). Oh yeah, and he went to Van Halen with me. Rush is next.

Back to the topic though--I'd agree it's digital.

[Ironklad Audio]

a lot of it's probably straight digital, but i know it's pretty common for projects with decent budgets to be tracked to tape, then the tape tracks get dumped into PT and mangled/processed from there

you could always look up the album credits to see what studio it was recorded in, and see if you can find a website for them...

[Nbudinich]

This may be stupid. But, wouldnt digitizing and analog recording into PT defeat the purpose?

[Nbudinich]

Originally Posted by WhiteStrat

You're right about Buckcherry 15. Great straight ahead hit 'ya between the eyeballs rock and roll. Here's the weird thing about having older kids ('cause I had em so young--not 'cause I'm old ). My son and I share a lot of musical tastes (he's 17 BTW). He's into the 70's and 80's rock--Boston, REO, Styx, Doobies, all kinds of 'em.

So we tend to like the same current stuff too. He gave me Buckcherry 15 for fathers day last year. Pretty cool... (to me anyway). Oh yeah, and he went to Van Halen with me. Rush is next.

Back to the topic though--I'd agree it's digital.

It's funny how that works out. I hated my dad's music growing up. As i got to be about 15 I started to like it. Now I'm 27 and have seen Rush twice, Van Halen, ZZ top, and MANY others with him. It's still hard to turn him on to newer stuff, but thats okay. He's an old guy so I give him slack.

[Farview]

Originally Posted by Nbudinich

This may be stupid. But, wouldnt digitizing and analog recording into PT defeat the purpose?

No. Not any more than recording everything to tape and then putting it out on CD.

[WhiteStrat]

Originally Posted by Nbudinich

It's funny how that works out. I hated my dad's music growing up. As i got to be about 15 I started to like it. Now I'm 27 and have seen Rush twice, Van Halen, ZZ top, and MANY others with him. It's still hard to turn him on to newer stuff, but thats okay. He's an old guy so I give him slack.

That's very kind of you to cut us old guys some slack!

My kids were always telling me to turn it down. They've always liked the same music as me (my daugther's first "real" concert was taking my ticket to Styx when she was 12 and going with Mom 'cause I couldn't make it!), but they were a little embarassed by how passionate and loud I was about it all. But as they grew up, (they're 22 & 17) they saw their own friends wanting to come over in case I was jamming, or just to hang in the studio.

So now they're okay with it all.

It's cool to see music bridge that generation gap, isn't it? (Wait a minute--I thought music was the generation gap! Hmm...)

[SouthSIDE Glen]

The wider and deeper one's musical palate, the less generational things become.

I can - and have done so - driven my 87 year old mother to the doctor in the afternoon and visited my friend's 16-yr-old daughter in the evening (with him and his wife there too, you perverts ), and found common ground between them in music that was produced anywhere from the 1930s to the 2000s.

Now, my mother still hates a lot of rock music, but I have been able to find plenty of the less raucous stuff that she actually likes. My friend's daughter, OTOH, seems to have very little she doesn't like. Being brought up in a family of musicians, and now being interested in musical theater herself, she digs just about everything from Basie to Coldplay.

G.

[TimN]

The Shins recorded their last record to tape--I think they mixed in Pro Tools, and then transferred it to tape, and then got the master from that. I'm not sure about the sequence, but I know they used analog tape in there somewhere.

[Ironklad Audio]

This may be stupid. But, wouldnt digitizing and analog recording into PT defeat the purpose?

no, because you get a sound from recording to tape that isn't quite(yet?) possible from recording straight to a digital medium. then you run the tape tracks through high-quality converters, which will give you an almost exact representation of what the tape tracks sounded like.

this is really the best-of-both worlds approach, and one that i know many studios/engineers are using - especially the old-school guys who know the value of both analog and digital mediums, and the strengths of each. shit, if i could afford a tape machine, i would start doing the same myself...

[Nightfire]

I think a common aproach is to track through the board ex. Neve; straight into protools, then mix ITB, and then mixdown to tape.
By the way, my dad is more into the newer music and I am the one trying to get him into Neil Young and Bob Dylan. He did however instill in me a deep liking for Johnny Cash.

Mike

[NL5]

Originally Posted by TimN

The Shins recorded their last record to tape--I think they mixed in Pro Tools, and then transferred it to tape, and then got the master from that. I'm not sure about the sequence, but I know they used analog tape in there somewhere.

Yeah, I was just in that studio and talked to the owner. It was recorded to 2". Bounced into pro tools. Mixed on an API legacy. Recoded to 1/4". Freakin' love that album.

Originally Posted by Nightfire

I think a common aproach is to track through the board ex. Neve; straight into protools, then mix ITB, and then mixdown to tape.

While this is getting more common, I'd say it's still far from the norm. Most major label releases are still mixed on an analog console. Probably more record the 2 track digitally than record to tape.

[xstatic]

Tracking to tape, then bouncing into a DAW and mixing through a console from the DAW to either tape or back to the DAW is still a very common method and in my opinion the best method (assuming all of the outboard including the console are good).