gororbs said:
I'm just curious as to where you analog guys send your 2 track mix. Computer? 2-track reel to reel? cd recorder?
And how loud is your stereo mix when you send it to your mixdown deck?
Just curious
I mix (at least historically!) to 1/4" 2-track, though long ago I mixed a lot of stuff to a Nakamichi cassette and borrowed a 1/4" machine only occasionally. These days, I generally run 15 ips IEC1 on my tracking machines and my mix decks. The M-79-2 does 30 ips, which sounds great, but I'm old enough now that 15 ips sounds about the same on the high end and perhaps better on the low end, plus it saves me big bucks on tape cost.
I'm not sure what you mean by loud. It means a couple of things to me. As far as tape levels, I usually calibrate to 355 nWb/m (+6) on modern tape, even though I use 996 some, which can take 500 nWb/m (+9). My old machines would need some tweaking to properly erase and bias at that level, so I just run a little more conservatively. I've sometimes used the old style Ampex 631 and I calibrate to 250 nWn/m (3 dB too hot and it doesn't sound good to me if I push it) and go easy on the meters. Right now the M-79 is set up for BASF 911, which was their equivalent to Ampex 456, and I'm running it at 355 nWb/m.
If you mean signal level, I mix through a little Mackie mixer, so I turn the recorder gain up about 6 dB, so that a -2 dBU signal from the Mackie gives me a 0 VU signal on the recorder, rather than +4 dBU. That keeps the signal level down on the Mackie outputs, so it sounds less strained and has more headroom.
if you mean loud as in squashed of all dynamics, I don't have Dorrough meters so I can't tell you the peak to average level ratio, though on my projects it's often far greater than abysmal commercial norms, in part because most of my music is not seeking loud as a goal. I would guess 14 to 18 dB would be typical, which is toward the quiet side these days. Loud was a goal on a project with a teenage punk band a couple of years ago, so we ran the levels pretty hot.
If you mean loud as in monitoring volume, I try to maintain consistent loudness and not at ultraloud levels, but I don't have it calibrated to a standard monitoring level yet.
It looks like some of these tape machines will disappear in the near future, but if I have occasion to mix analog tracks in the future, I want to compare mixing down to my little MicroTrack to mixing to tape. It'll really annoy me if
the MicroTrack sounds as good as the tape. ;-) I suspect I will have a 2-track for a while, because I'm not likely to sell my old M-23 unless my friend Mitch Easter wants it. The questions are, will I still have a tape machine for tracking, and will I mix from it or port things over to the computer?
Now that I'm starting to record in Live 5, I'm going to have to get used to a new mix set up, too. I'm not quite sure how that works...
Otto