gecko zzed
Grumpy Mod
I heard of this effect in relation to vinyl. The inherent noise (though faint it may be) of a stylus tracking manifests differently in left and right, giving a sense of wideness beyond that of the program material.
Is Analog Summing Important If Sending For Mastering Anyway?
- Thread starter BigEZ
- Start date
I heard of this effect in relation to vinyl. The inherent noise (though faint it may be) of a stylus tracking manifests differently in left and right, giving a sense of wideness beyond that of the program material.
RawDepth
New member
*LIKE*I dunno....I output 24 channels from my DAW through my analog mixer, and before I ever mixdown to a 2-track tape deck, just at the stereo output of the mixer it already sounds bigger/wider than what I was hearing in the DAW sum.
Last time I said that someone (maybe it was here on HR) spent a lot of time trying to convince me it was probably because something was "broken or wrong" with my analog mixer setup.
OK...but I still think the "broken or wrong" stereo image is bigger/wider...and better.
Yeah, I don't know if my analog sounds wider, but I like it better. To my ears, it sounds cleaner and more focused. I can more easily pinpoint instrument positions in the sound field. Near-and-far positioning seems more apparent. ...and the low end seems to be slightly fatter and richer.
Tim Gillett
Banned
On a well set up tape deck there should be little or no difference in "soundstage" between input and output. If there is, something's wrong with the tape machine. (repeating myself, arent I Miroslav)
It relates to the phase agreement between left and right channels. Well aligned tape decks running at say 15ips stereo 1/4" have pretty good phase alignment between left and right. It gets more critical the higher the frequency, but a good well aligned machine should be OK out to its maximum frequency of say 15 to 20khz.
So phase agreement between left and right can be pretty good although without timecode, analog tape machines struggle to maintain absolute long term time accuracy. But that's a different thing.
The real critical test is if you sum left and right to mono. If there's problems, you will lose highs, as they cancel each other out. The worse the error gets, the more it travels down even to the midrange. But kept in stereo form, small misalignments arent nearly as audible as a true electronic sum - which is a brutal test. At worst, comb filtering all over the place.
I use as a classic example of analog tape misalignment, the big selling 1969 CSNY album "Deja Vu" and especially the track "Teach Your Children" by Graham Nash. Much of the track is fine but the vocals and maybe some instruments appear to have been mixed in with a left/right phase misalignment (Dont ask me how they did it. Normally it would have been mono tracks mixed to 2 track anyway. Must have bounced them from a stereo pair on a multitrack, and which was misaligned with itself). The track sound "OK" in stereo but summed to mono, you get a bad cancellation which eats right into the clarity of the vocals. Sounds all phasy. Plays terribly in mono. The rest of the track is fine. Doesnt sound so bad on AM radio because much of the highs are shaved off.
Doesnt matter if you're listening to the vinyl (which I still have) or the Joe Gastwirt CD remaster. Same thing.
It's good to understand what creates a "wide soundstage" in the first place. Humans locate left/right sounds by two methods:
1. Difference in volume between left and right.
2. Difference in arrival times of sound between left and right ears. The earlier arriving sound "seems" to be the louder one.
Usually the two work together, since a sound heard on our left side will be louder than in the right ear anyway, and it will arrive at our left ear earlier than the right ear.
Early stereo demo records used to do "tricks" by recording a sound in mono but pan it partly to the left channel (louder on the left than the right). No big deal in that. But then they flipped the phase of one channel and not the other. Now the sound appears to be coming from way left of your left speaker .
Of course it's just as easy if not easier to achieve this in digital as analog tape. On one of the two channels just select "reverse phase" . It's also easy in digital to build in a deliberate delay between left and right - of whatever length you choose - simply by moving one channel forward or back in time on the screen.
Often in production we "flip phase" but for the opposite reason, to avoid phase conflicts between left and right. Put simply, a super wide stereo image is often more a liability than an advantage. It has poor mono compatibility. You end up losing instruments and detail if the end user hears it summed to mono, or even partly summed to mono. Also after a while even in stereo it can make your ears feel funny.
FM radio stations, and even more AM where everything was monoed were careful to achieve good stereo/mono compatibility, such as when the FM signal fell to the point where the car radio defaulted into mono rather than have noisy stereo.
Skilled recording engineers were careful about achieving good mono compatibility so the product still sounded good in mono. Super wide stereo images played havoc with this.
I'm not saying there's no place for super wide stereo images. There definitely are. But it's good to understand the reasons for them in the first place and the pitfalls.
Good analog tape machines do not of themselves create a wider stereo image unless the machine is accidentally or deliberately misaligned. Neither does summing through an analog mixer normally widen the stereo image, unless again there is a problem with the mixer.
Ironic to see some people these days glorying in the alleged "wide soundstage" of an analog tape deck. When analog tape was everywhere and my full time job was servicing them, people paid me to fix that problem in their machines!
Ironic too that at this moment, some on the venerable Analog Only forum are getting very anal about aligning your 2 track stereo machine to the highest standards, including using the correct calibration tape. Great, I'm all for it.
And once you have done that repro and record calibration of your machine to the highest standard, I can guarantee that now you will have removed all possibility of a recording with a wider stereo image than what entered your tape machine's inputs....
But if you really want a wider stereo image, pull your tape machine apart. Twiddle those trimmer pots and head azimuth screws all over the place, preferably blindfolded. Totally mess up your careful alignment. Destroy the careful aligned congruity between left and right channels. Now we're cooking. Now you are guaranteed your wider stereo image...
And to think these are supposed to be HR's resident analog tape experts... more like the blind leading the blind.
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gecko zzed
Grumpy Mod
When I'm recording by myself, I plug headphones directly into the interface. From this I get a good stereo image; everything is where it should be and appropriately spread out. When I am recording others, I plug into the headphone amp so that I get an idea of what they are hearing. I noticed one day that I was hearing it in mono. So I did a number of checks to make sure that I hadn't done anything dumb (such as setting Reaper's master output to mono). All was in order, and I discovered through this process that it wasn't actually mono, but a very narrow stereo image. I'm not sure why this should be, and my interim conclusion is that it's to do with the circuitry in the headphone amp. For monitoring, it is only a mild annoyance, and of no real consequence.
However, and importantly, I don't want my gear to behave in uncivilized ways. I don't want to have to adjust mixes, for example, to allow for artefacts introduced by downstream devices. I want these to be invisible in their influence on the sound. This means I neither want wide or narrow, nor warmth or coldness, nor dull or bright. I want it to come out as I hear through the monitors.
I understand that widened stereo images can result from misaligned tapeheads, and that they can be created using either analog or digital trickery. I don't want this either, specially if some of these tricks compromise the mono sound.
I can understand that the 'invisibility' of any device depends on the skill involved in its design and build, and I expect that poor separation between left and right is most likely a consequence of poor design.
What I can't understand, though, is how any well-built device can actually widen the image (which is why I asked the question). I did some googling on the subject, and discovered that some devices can give the impression of wider images by virtue of some intrinsic aspect of their operation, such as noises on vinyl or tape.
However, and importantly, I don't want my gear to behave in uncivilized ways. I don't want to have to adjust mixes, for example, to allow for artefacts introduced by downstream devices. I want these to be invisible in their influence on the sound. This means I neither want wide or narrow, nor warmth or coldness, nor dull or bright. I want it to come out as I hear through the monitors.
I understand that widened stereo images can result from misaligned tapeheads, and that they can be created using either analog or digital trickery. I don't want this either, specially if some of these tricks compromise the mono sound.
I can understand that the 'invisibility' of any device depends on the skill involved in its design and build, and I expect that poor separation between left and right is most likely a consequence of poor design.
What I can't understand, though, is how any well-built device can actually widen the image (which is why I asked the question). I did some googling on the subject, and discovered that some devices can give the impression of wider images by virtue of some intrinsic aspect of their operation, such as noises on vinyl or tape.
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I do the same
Guitargodgt
New member
Call me a nay sayer but I think spending $1400 on the summing stage is silly. YMMV of course.
B
Beck
Guest
Even between analog devices, mixers and tape decks there will be different perceptions of stereo width. In that case there is a known factor, which is crosstalk. A tape head with better crosstalk spec will have better separation and thus a more accurate soundstage. So even an analog deck with poor crosstalk will shrink the soundstage compared to how it sounded through the console. Thankfully tape head design only got better, so that problem was remedied pretty early on.
When I mention Scholz and Boston’s music, of course that kind of width is an effect using delay, chorusing and layering. It’s an illusion he wanted to create. But if he didn’t purposely create that wider effect it wouldn’t simply happen because he used tape. Everyone used analog tape then.
The problem occurs when you have everything right where you want it on an analog master tape. Everything is panned and in its place from right to left. All you have to do is direct transfer the master tape to a CD recorder and all your careful placement has narrowed. This affects levels and the aural cues that tell you this instrument is over here and that instrument is over there. People heard it transferring to DAT, and still today transferring analog tape to current digital devices.
But the problem also occurs when you have everything where you want in through an analog mixer with no tape involved. I have yet to use or own any digital recording device that doesn’t shrink the soundstage on playback to some degree. With digital its not crosstalk as we know it with analog, but its something. Scholz called it, “Digital phase angle distortion” and said he could hear it since the first reel-to-reel digital tape mastering machines. Whatever is happening is easily heard in a hybrid analog/digital studio like mine. It’s not subtle either.
To say that tape has too wide a soundstage would not be correct because any stereo master that you mix and have it like you want it is exactly right, no matter if it’s analog or digital. If you mix on analog and your digital transfer turns out narrower or different in any way that’s just another way that digital is not transparent. The shrinking of the soundstage is a digital artifact. Not the type that hurts peoples ears but a digital artifact nonetheless, because it is not as they say, “What goes in is what comes out.”
One frustrating thing about spec sheets for digital devices is they still speak in analog terms. Digital has its own anomalies that are kept in house and you don’t see them on spec sheets. The spec sheets are still comparing line by line with analog. 0.001% THD… yeah we get it… it’s undetectable. It doesn’t even need to be on the spec sheet anymore. 10Hz – 22kHz, ±0.25dB… yeah we get that too… flat as a pancake. Dynamic Range: 110dB… yep… lots of elbowroom.
But what of those measurements unique to digital? We don’t know because they don’t say. In the case of digital presenting a narrower soundstage, that may have to do with how an algorithm interprets and recreates the soundstage rather than like analog where you have two physical tracks separated by shielding on a tape head. There will be subtle differences between DAW interfaces, CD recorders and DAW software. There are so many variables. I even chose my DAW for it’s ability to play nice with analog and do the least harm. Whatever we might call it the one thing for sure is we can hear it. It’s been a topic of discussion among my peers since about 1989. But as I mentioned in time past many people said, yeah I hear it but there are so many other pluses to digital it’s ok. But to others it was not ok and they didn’t and still don’t like it. I don’t like it. IMO the trend to ITB has made it worse and also given newer/younger recordists less opportunity to even be aware of the phenomenon.
Some music and some environments it doesn’t matter though. It doesn’t matter in the car. It doesn’t matter in a club. It matters for those of us who still sit in the sweet spot between our speakers in the den. It kinda matters if you have a decent computer sound system. It maybe matters while listening to your iPod through ear buds, but sorta not… because audio quality is obviously not the focus there. That’s hard to make any worse or any better.
Anyway analog summing was just a new term to reintroduce analog mixing to a generation that has mostly known soundcards. Truth is you’d be better off buying a vintage or contemporary analog mixer of some kind, but if manufacturers can get you to pay more for a device targeted to the DAW only user of course they will.
When I mention Scholz and Boston’s music, of course that kind of width is an effect using delay, chorusing and layering. It’s an illusion he wanted to create. But if he didn’t purposely create that wider effect it wouldn’t simply happen because he used tape. Everyone used analog tape then.
The problem occurs when you have everything right where you want it on an analog master tape. Everything is panned and in its place from right to left. All you have to do is direct transfer the master tape to a CD recorder and all your careful placement has narrowed. This affects levels and the aural cues that tell you this instrument is over here and that instrument is over there. People heard it transferring to DAT, and still today transferring analog tape to current digital devices.
But the problem also occurs when you have everything where you want in through an analog mixer with no tape involved. I have yet to use or own any digital recording device that doesn’t shrink the soundstage on playback to some degree. With digital its not crosstalk as we know it with analog, but its something. Scholz called it, “Digital phase angle distortion” and said he could hear it since the first reel-to-reel digital tape mastering machines. Whatever is happening is easily heard in a hybrid analog/digital studio like mine. It’s not subtle either.
To say that tape has too wide a soundstage would not be correct because any stereo master that you mix and have it like you want it is exactly right, no matter if it’s analog or digital. If you mix on analog and your digital transfer turns out narrower or different in any way that’s just another way that digital is not transparent. The shrinking of the soundstage is a digital artifact. Not the type that hurts peoples ears but a digital artifact nonetheless, because it is not as they say, “What goes in is what comes out.”
One frustrating thing about spec sheets for digital devices is they still speak in analog terms. Digital has its own anomalies that are kept in house and you don’t see them on spec sheets. The spec sheets are still comparing line by line with analog. 0.001% THD… yeah we get it… it’s undetectable. It doesn’t even need to be on the spec sheet anymore. 10Hz – 22kHz, ±0.25dB… yeah we get that too… flat as a pancake. Dynamic Range: 110dB… yep… lots of elbowroom.
But what of those measurements unique to digital? We don’t know because they don’t say. In the case of digital presenting a narrower soundstage, that may have to do with how an algorithm interprets and recreates the soundstage rather than like analog where you have two physical tracks separated by shielding on a tape head. There will be subtle differences between DAW interfaces, CD recorders and DAW software. There are so many variables. I even chose my DAW for it’s ability to play nice with analog and do the least harm. Whatever we might call it the one thing for sure is we can hear it. It’s been a topic of discussion among my peers since about 1989. But as I mentioned in time past many people said, yeah I hear it but there are so many other pluses to digital it’s ok. But to others it was not ok and they didn’t and still don’t like it. I don’t like it. IMO the trend to ITB has made it worse and also given newer/younger recordists less opportunity to even be aware of the phenomenon.
Some music and some environments it doesn’t matter though. It doesn’t matter in the car. It doesn’t matter in a club. It matters for those of us who still sit in the sweet spot between our speakers in the den. It kinda matters if you have a decent computer sound system. It maybe matters while listening to your iPod through ear buds, but sorta not… because audio quality is obviously not the focus there. That’s hard to make any worse or any better.
Anyway analog summing was just a new term to reintroduce analog mixing to a generation that has mostly known soundcards. Truth is you’d be better off buying a vintage or contemporary analog mixer of some kind, but if manufacturers can get you to pay more for a device targeted to the DAW only user of course they will.
miroslav
Cosmic Cowboy
You seem to not read posts that you then respond to or allude to...
This is what I said (same as in the past):
My tape deck hasn't even come into the equation, and the mix is already improved.
When I do add the mixdown tape deck, it yields a more cohesive quality to the mix...or "glue" as many folks say...and it removes some of the edginess (you can call it clarity if you like) off the digital audio.
So that entire lengthy post you made about the pitfalls of tape decks and stereo images...etc, etc, etc....has NOTHING to do with what I said and what I have experience more than once with an OTB mix.
The stereo image sounds bigger and wider mixed/summed OTB than it does ITB.
I don't say the digital stereo image is bad...it just has a more boxed-in sound.
Now feel free to talk about everything that is wrong with my studio gear that makes the OTB image sound bigger/wider....more cohesive...and IMHO, better.
Not if your looking to replace a mixer u summing device can be quiet useful .
Tim Gillett
Banned
You seem to not read posts that you then respond to or allude to...
This is what I said (same as in the past):
My tape deck hasn't even come into the equation, and the mix is already improved.
When I do add the mixdown tape deck, it yields a more cohesive quality to the mix...or "glue" as many folks say...and it removes some of the edginess (you can call it clarity if you like) off the digital audio.
So that entire lengthy post you made about the pitfalls of tape decks and stereo images...etc, etc, etc....has NOTHING to do with what I said and what I have experience more than once with an OTB mix.
The stereo image sounds bigger and wider mixed/summed OTB than it does ITB.
I don't say the digital stereo image is bad...it just has a more boxed-in sound.
Now feel free to talk about everything that is wrong with my studio gear that makes the OTB image sound bigger/wider....more cohesive...and IMHO, better.
Miroslav,
The post which I was responding to was that of Gekko's short question, "why is that?", not yours. Yes I also made a reference to you, in that you recently said that someone said some time ago that if your stereo image was wider on your tape deck then there was something wrong with your tape machine. Yes that was me who said that.
I was reminding the readers and you that it was me who said it. I'm saying it again. And I wont be the only one, I suspect.
On this issue generally, why dont you as a Moderator put it to some of the very experienced people on the forum, or who act as consultants, such as Tom V and Farview who have contributed Articles which are well regarded here. I'm happy to listen to what they say as I'm sure are most others.
OK, since you mentioned an analog amp, without a tape stage even in the loop, I'm happy to offer that that amp stage wont widen the image or narrow it in any audible way -unless there is something wrong with it. Just as with the tape machine.
Now, since you've said it, what happens if you are happy with your mix the way it is before it goes through any more stages. If the extra analog stage did widen the stereo soundstage, wouldnt it be altering the mix you had just made and been happy with?
In any case, is a wider soundstage better? Always better? In whose opinion? What if it was originally a mono recording?
I dont know what your gear is. I have no way of testing it or listening to it. All we have to go on is your word that what comes out sounds "wider" than what came in. On that basis, I can only suggest that either:
1. you are imagining it
2. the two channels are not matched in terms of time accuracy. There is a delay happening on one channel only, or in one channel more than the other. Wider soudstages happen because of phase differences between the two channels, or other differences. It's not necessarily a bad thing. If that's what the engineer wanted, it's a good thing.
But it's not the job of left and right channels of stereo amps to be different from one another. They need to be matched left and right. We pay good money for that matching.
Between two channels of a stereo amp, preamp, or a stereo A/D or D/A converter, or a tape deck, or the summing engine inside a DAW, crosstalk should be at inaudible levels.
On the one hand the two channels should be totally independent of each other in terms of being deaf to each other's signals.
And they should be totally faithful to what is fed to them. What goes in is what comes out. That was the ideal 100 years ago as it is the ideal today.
(Did you know that the best separation a stereo vinyl record could manage at 1khz - it could be much worse at other freq's -was about 25db? Stereo pro tape decks killed that and good amps are even better)
I just checked the crosstalk spec on an M Audio Audiophile PCI card I use. Crosstalk in record is 130db! Can someone explain to me how that degree of separation would narrow the stereo image?
If it is a wide sound stage on the way it's the same wide soundstage on the way out. If it's dead in the centre on the way in, it's dead in the centre on the way out. That's plain old fashioned fidelity, even if it's never completely realized.
But if I'm wrong on this let the experts correct me.
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chuckduffy
Well-known member
It just doesn't matter to me. If you are on analog, and you take the best mix you have ever done in your life there's probably someone who could mix it better ITB. And vice versa. Just tools. That is all.
miroslav
Cosmic Cowboy
I'm not just "adding an extra analog stage". I'm mixing in analog...the whole enchilada...console, outboard processing and mixdown to a tape deck.
If I'm imagining it...well then I've imagined it dozens of times, as it always happens going from ITB to OTB mixes.
I simply take my DAW tracks and bring them out individually to my console via 24 channels of A/D.
As soon as I do that and before I even apply any outboard processing...just setting basic pans/levels based on the pre-mix I had in the DAW...it always sounds bigger wider/deeper/taller, aka "more 3D" with the OTB mix.
The rest of my analog mixing chain doesn't ruin that...no matter what else I add with outboard processing or the mixdown tape deck.
I will also add that when I then bring that final stereo mix back into the DAW and churn out some digital files...I then hear the mix become more confined...pretty much like it was during the ITB pre-mix. It's nothing extream...but it is audible.
Unless you actually heard both...either the ITB or OTB mix would sound fine on their own.
Now...you can type a hundered more posts talking about why that shouldn't be or why there must be something wrong with my gear...
...but that's the reality of how the mixes sound (and not just my imagination).Based on some of your posts where you talk about your own studio rig...I have to ask, how much have you actually used a substantial analog setup with console and lots of analog outboard gear and tape mixdown deck...to compare it to whatever digital rig you now have...?
What are you actually basing YOUR comparisons/views on....?
I've only heard you talk about a basic digital rig...but other than when you mention tape to digital transfers, I've never heard you talk about actually working with a robust analog OTB rig at any point for tracking or mixing.
I'm not asking that just to get into a gear showcase...but really, if you don't or haven't used specific analog gear or any full-tilt analog studio rigs...you can't factually talk about it or make comparisons or come to hands-on conclusions.
And I'm not knocking digital or ITB mixes...but while lots of the world these days is ensconced in digital and ITB (mainly the result of cost and convenience), there is still a good portion of pro and home users that do the analog/tape thing for a reason.
Let them enjoy their work.
miroslav
Cosmic Cowboy
I agree.
We can only work within the context of our own environment and with our own tools.
Comparing theoretical situations is not relevant.
What works for one person may not and does not have to work for someone else.