Tonight I came across a box of old cassette tapes I completely forgot about. Played them and went wow! Even on crap type 1 tape, they sounded light years better than any digital mixes I’ve done of the same exact tunes.
Back story.....
For the last few years I’ve been transferring my tape multi tracks into protools and reaper and although I’ve gotten some pretty good results.
Most my early recordings were done on a MSR16 16track half inch machine with a Tascam M520 mixing desk. Not too much for outboard gear.... A couple of Alesis quadraverb multieffects units, an Alesis compressor, a midi verb. Your standard prosumer gear that was practical, worked, but not stuff that would make anyone drool.
For mics it was mostly a bunch of 57s, 58s, an old pair of Teac pencil condensers, and the prize, my 70s AKG 414.
The live room was decent, and the control room, although smallish, had no parallel walls. But here’s the kicker..... zero sound treatment. No bass traps no cloud, not even foam.
We never got anal about anything. Just set up mics, recorded and mixed by ear. When it sounded good, and the cassette tape sounded good in the car, you had a winner.
All mixing was done by fiddling with knobs.
Now with digital, it seems I’ve gotten so anal. Paying so much attention to detail, playing with eq compression ect.
But compared to earlier all analog mixes (even 4 and 8 track cassette recordings)
All my ITB stuff sounds like shit.
Either I was doing something right earlier on, or I’m doing something terribly wrong now. (Could be both)
Anyone else run into this?
Back story.....
For the last few years I’ve been transferring my tape multi tracks into protools and reaper and although I’ve gotten some pretty good results.
Most my early recordings were done on a MSR16 16track half inch machine with a Tascam M520 mixing desk. Not too much for outboard gear.... A couple of Alesis quadraverb multieffects units, an Alesis compressor, a midi verb. Your standard prosumer gear that was practical, worked, but not stuff that would make anyone drool.
For mics it was mostly a bunch of 57s, 58s, an old pair of Teac pencil condensers, and the prize, my 70s AKG 414.
The live room was decent, and the control room, although smallish, had no parallel walls. But here’s the kicker..... zero sound treatment. No bass traps no cloud, not even foam.
We never got anal about anything. Just set up mics, recorded and mixed by ear. When it sounded good, and the cassette tape sounded good in the car, you had a winner.
All mixing was done by fiddling with knobs.
Now with digital, it seems I’ve gotten so anal. Paying so much attention to detail, playing with eq compression ect.
But compared to earlier all analog mixes (even 4 and 8 track cassette recordings)
All my ITB stuff sounds like shit.
Either I was doing something right earlier on, or I’m doing something terribly wrong now. (Could be both)
Anyone else run into this?