WHICH MIX DO YOU PREFER - digital, or through Tape ?

T

toymaker

New member
My gf and I just recorded this song and are trying to choose between two different mixes.

The first mix is the straight-up digital recording, mic->interface->DAW.

On the second mix, we ran every track through an old Roland RE-201 Space Echo. Some tracks are just run on to the tape and back in (no effects added), while others have some spring reverb or a bit of space echo delay.

We enjoy the clarity and lack of tape hiss on the first mix, but find the tape'ified one much 'vibier' with a nice feeling.

What do you think?

First mix - clean


Second mix - through tape



Thanks for your help!
 
I'm pretty much like you. The clean version is nice due to the lack of hiss. But the male vocal, and to a lesser extent the female vocal, have a little edge knocked off of them that makes it a little more pleasing. But that hiss is pretty nasty.
 
I'd probably cater to the audience: tape if you have more mature listeners, clean if you have younger ones. I don't think younger folks care as much for the tape sound.
 
If you had wanted to get a more objective perspective, it might have been better not to have identified which is which.
 
It's funny, I listened to the tape mix first and got annoyed at the tape hiss, then listened to the clean mix and got this sense of something being missing... I can hear little things in the clean mix (lip noises, incidental noises etc) that you could probably do some cleaning up of in both, but I found I wanted to hear some gentle percussion from about the place where you get into the woohs..
 
Personally, I'd say I like the tape version more. To me, it just sounds better. Maybe the hiss of it makes it feel older than it is (And who doesn't like feeling nostalgic these days?). The digital version sounds too clean. A good middle ground, to me, would be to take both versions and blend them. At most, I'd say maybe just tone the hiss down a bit, if possible. (Maybe blend the two? I don't know)
 
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