cjacek
Analogue Enthusiast
Hehe, good point. Still, you could always hide that 4 tracker and show pictures of a 24 track Studer and say it's off limits.
4 track cassette only good for demos, while real records are made on 2" Studer?
Hehe, good point. Still, you could always hide that 4 tracker and show pictures of a 24 track Studer and say it's off limits.
Herm
Well-known member
Ok thought I would stir the pot today with some sound samples.
Here is a 1 minute file mp3 at 320kb. One song is recorded on my tascam 38 and 312 mixer cheap mxl v67 mic with dbx. Same band on the other song is done on 2 inch 16 track mci machine and large format mixer (dont remeber the model and name) at a pro studio in the area.
My hearing is shot so maybe it will be clear to you guys which is which.
Let me know
Have fun
Here is a 1 minute file mp3 at 320kb. One song is recorded on my tascam 38 and 312 mixer cheap mxl v67 mic with dbx. Same band on the other song is done on 2 inch 16 track mci machine and large format mixer (dont remeber the model and name) at a pro studio in the area.
My hearing is shot so maybe it will be clear to you guys which is which.
Let me know
Have fun
cjacek
Analogue Enthusiast
Stirring the pot is right Gary 'cause most music today ends up on CD / MP3 anyway. It took me several listens to somewhat make an educated quess which one is which and THAT is trouble 'cause most regular folk (consumers) would find it hard to be able to tell a difference and I dare say, many here, would too (including myself). I say the first song was recorded on the 2" MCI and the 2nd on your TASCAM 38. I will say, though, that what really stood out, more than the tell, tell signs of superior sonics from one machine over the other, was that the 1st cut seemed to have a bit more polished mix and THAT was more significant than picking out one recorder from the other. Case in point, take the same exact performance, in the exact same place, simultaneously recorded on the TASCAM and MCI and you'd need to be listenning from the master tapes, very carefully, to tell the difference, however large or small it may be. But yeah, the bottom line is that I think the 1st cut, sonically speaking, is a bit cleaner and rounder than the 2nd cut, has more "beef" to it. The 1st cut was made on the 2" 16 track. Am I correct?
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FALKEN
*************************
the tascam 38 should be pretty close to the MCI anyway, the difference being that the MCI has better electronics plus I'm betting the rest of the gear in the studio was better. Your clips prove exactly what is repeated on HR.com every single day as a mantra. Its not the gear its the ___ . (person running the gear, the performance, the song, whatever). The 2nd clip has more noise, something is out of tune (the guitar?), while the 1st clip has way more stuff in the background (bells), so probably had more tracks available, and the background singing is more "on". Overall the same basic tonality and stereo spread is there. But its clear that you wouldn't be recording the next #1 hit in your basement, whether its the gear, or whatever. Nice work.
G
Good Friend
New member
formats
I used to be heavily into all analog and i hated digital. Then my big reel broke. Then my little reel broke. Then my cassette 4 track broke. Then i bought a digital setup and learned how to record things the way i want things to sound.
I use old dynamic mics and ribbon mics. I run everything through an M30 mixer at the point just before it distorts. I seriously cant believe how long i went believing the world would end if i switched to digital. But now i dig the sound of my recordings. It doesnt sound like futuristic cold crap to me. It just sounds like music. It actually sounds more vintage now. My friend always asks me how i got it to sound so "old". My brother told me the recordings sounded "old school", like a 60s record. Meanwhile, its a Tascam firewire POS hooked into my crap computer, which is half filled with porn.
I figured out that it doesnt matter what records you. What matters is how much control you have over the results, how much time it takes you to try creative things, and who is controlling and making those creative decisions.
But if you are competing in a fidelity war then thats a whole other story.
I used to be heavily into all analog and i hated digital. Then my big reel broke. Then my little reel broke. Then my cassette 4 track broke. Then i bought a digital setup and learned how to record things the way i want things to sound.
I use old dynamic mics and ribbon mics. I run everything through an M30 mixer at the point just before it distorts. I seriously cant believe how long i went believing the world would end if i switched to digital. But now i dig the sound of my recordings. It doesnt sound like futuristic cold crap to me. It just sounds like music. It actually sounds more vintage now. My friend always asks me how i got it to sound so "old". My brother told me the recordings sounded "old school", like a 60s record. Meanwhile, its a Tascam firewire POS hooked into my crap computer, which is half filled with porn.
I figured out that it doesnt matter what records you. What matters is how much control you have over the results, how much time it takes you to try creative things, and who is controlling and making those creative decisions.
But if you are competing in a fidelity war then thats a whole other story.
Herm
Well-known member
Well now you have me thinking maybe I should get rid of my Analog recorders cause if you can do it Im almost sure I can make descent recording with some of those new Firewire recorders
Anyway boys the first song is recorded with my 38 in my basement.
I also used two Alesis 3630 compressors on everything, Somethings even twice. And the reverb was a Fostex spring unit.
FALKEN
*************************
Well, I am in shock!!
Most of what I said still holds true...that its not the gear its the ___ . But I think maybe you COULD record the next #1 hit in your basement!! In addition, you should go back to the guy with the MCI and get your money back! Too noisy!
cjacek
Analogue Enthusiast
cjacek
Analogue Enthusiast
the first song is recorded with my 38 in my basement.
I also used two Alesis 3630 compressors on everything, Somethings even twice. And the reverb was a Fostex spring unit.
This bears repeating twice, I AM IN SHOCK TOO!!
trancedental
New member
I thought both songs were well recorded & performed, but assumed that the 2nd song was made on the 2" 16 track because of the thicker bottom end, (I've heard many 2" 16 track recordings in progress so maybe can identify the sound?) The 1st track sounds clearer in the highs maybe because of lighter bass?
There is not that big a difference in sound qualilty that I can tell anyway!
Have you mastered any of the above tracks? I'm wondering how much difference mastering makes to "professional" recordings?
Maybe we should not be comparing different recording machines unless they are using the same mixing consoles though?
I do know of bands that have had very successful album releases & only recorded a few songs on 24 track 2" & all the rest of the album tracks on a Fostex E-16!
There is not that big a difference in sound qualilty that I can tell anyway!
Have you mastered any of the above tracks? I'm wondering how much difference mastering makes to "professional" recordings?
Maybe we should not be comparing different recording machines unless they are using the same mixing consoles though?
I do know of bands that have had very successful album releases & only recorded a few songs on 24 track 2" & all the rest of the album tracks on a Fostex E-16!
trancedental
New member
G
Good Friend
New member
Yeah yeah
Of course i am not one to say analog stinks or anything cause thats just not true. Its fucking fantastic. Its real. Its a real piece of magnetic material and not just bits of information. Anyone would choose smooth reality over sterile 1s and 0s... but the real reality is that analog recordings, for someone who wants to create as much as they can and write as much as they can without taking alot of money and time, are difficult.
Lets take a quick example. I dont always like my sounds to be generic or straightforward. Sometimes i like the sound of a casio keyboards brass setting split into three seperate tracks and two of those tracks to be altered in pitch so that it plays the same take and sound but on 3 different octaves. Sometimes i JUST WANT TO TRY TO SEE IF IT WOULD SOUND "RIGHT" for my song idea. A tascam 38 does not have half speed setting. And buying a decent pitch shifting device for 200 bucks just to hear occasional things at different octaves is not practical or smart. But in digital its as simple as setting up a track or project template that gives me instantly the things i want to hear and that i reach for often. THINGS I REACH FOR OFTEN CREATIVELY. That means i can work how i want. Thats what everyone wants in the world of art. To be themselves and be creative and stand for something unique and not just garden variety and bland. "Control" provides this for you.
Do i prefer 1s and 0s? No. Never. But at this point in my life (i am now 27) i am getting tired of beating to death things that dont matter. There is no reward for holding out on concepts that are held in "ideal" situations. You will wait for your entire life for someone to give you validation for "staying true" to something that the world basically regards as a matter of opinion. You will go ten times farther impressing people with your determination.
I heard Beck (not friggin Jeff) say something once about how he would play anything, it didnt matter. He would play a vintage holy grail guitar with a ton of "mojo" or a cheap mass produced junker with zero soul. Thats the real attitude to have. Thats the attitude that will free the home recording world. It freed my mind up so much more to hear him say that then to hear him say he only uses "so and so" mics or "so and so" cables or whatever.
But also there is another side. Some people may get the bigger thrill out of handling and working with analog machines and knowing all about how they work and doing their own repairs. And thats great. Valuing the past and steering clear of the thought process that anything new is better is refreshing and not nearly in as much supply as it should be these days. So i salute you. The whole point of this rant is that id just like some people who want to record and write well to know that digital isnt as bad as people can make it out to be. It is what it is, but it isnt as bad as some have made it out to be. Its the last factor in the line of determining how good your music will be. Your idea is everything. Even your talent is second to your idea, or vision. Dylan didnt have the worlds best voice but he had great ideas.
I saw a shirt that said something about how digital sucks. I kinda agree, but id bet my left nut that the guy wearing that shirt doesnt record anything worth anything in the world of passion and creativity. His passion is equipment and his opinions OF equipment.
But i do wish everyone luck in getting the sounds they want to be hearing to come out in their tunes. I know how hard it can be getting your idea into reality no matter what type of recording method. People who spend their time recording things just to listen back are my kind of people. Ten times better than the fuckers out there trying to bomb each other over tiny differences in religious beliefs.
Of course i am not one to say analog stinks or anything cause thats just not true. Its fucking fantastic. Its real. Its a real piece of magnetic material and not just bits of information. Anyone would choose smooth reality over sterile 1s and 0s... but the real reality is that analog recordings, for someone who wants to create as much as they can and write as much as they can without taking alot of money and time, are difficult.
Lets take a quick example. I dont always like my sounds to be generic or straightforward. Sometimes i like the sound of a casio keyboards brass setting split into three seperate tracks and two of those tracks to be altered in pitch so that it plays the same take and sound but on 3 different octaves. Sometimes i JUST WANT TO TRY TO SEE IF IT WOULD SOUND "RIGHT" for my song idea. A tascam 38 does not have half speed setting. And buying a decent pitch shifting device for 200 bucks just to hear occasional things at different octaves is not practical or smart. But in digital its as simple as setting up a track or project template that gives me instantly the things i want to hear and that i reach for often. THINGS I REACH FOR OFTEN CREATIVELY. That means i can work how i want. Thats what everyone wants in the world of art. To be themselves and be creative and stand for something unique and not just garden variety and bland. "Control" provides this for you.
Do i prefer 1s and 0s? No. Never. But at this point in my life (i am now 27) i am getting tired of beating to death things that dont matter. There is no reward for holding out on concepts that are held in "ideal" situations. You will wait for your entire life for someone to give you validation for "staying true" to something that the world basically regards as a matter of opinion. You will go ten times farther impressing people with your determination.
I heard Beck (not friggin Jeff) say something once about how he would play anything, it didnt matter. He would play a vintage holy grail guitar with a ton of "mojo" or a cheap mass produced junker with zero soul. Thats the real attitude to have. Thats the attitude that will free the home recording world. It freed my mind up so much more to hear him say that then to hear him say he only uses "so and so" mics or "so and so" cables or whatever.
But also there is another side. Some people may get the bigger thrill out of handling and working with analog machines and knowing all about how they work and doing their own repairs. And thats great. Valuing the past and steering clear of the thought process that anything new is better is refreshing and not nearly in as much supply as it should be these days. So i salute you. The whole point of this rant is that id just like some people who want to record and write well to know that digital isnt as bad as people can make it out to be. It is what it is, but it isnt as bad as some have made it out to be. Its the last factor in the line of determining how good your music will be. Your idea is everything. Even your talent is second to your idea, or vision. Dylan didnt have the worlds best voice but he had great ideas.
I saw a shirt that said something about how digital sucks. I kinda agree, but id bet my left nut that the guy wearing that shirt doesnt record anything worth anything in the world of passion and creativity. His passion is equipment and his opinions OF equipment.
But i do wish everyone luck in getting the sounds they want to be hearing to come out in their tunes. I know how hard it can be getting your idea into reality no matter what type of recording method. People who spend their time recording things just to listen back are my kind of people. Ten times better than the fuckers out there trying to bomb each other over tiny differences in religious beliefs.
A Reel Person
It's Too Funky in Here!!!
The essence of a good recording isn't exclusively in the medium.
There are numerous other factors, many of which have been detailed above.
There are numerous other factors, many of which have been detailed above.
B
Beck
Guest
Sometimes we just need to rant… and as rants go, yours wasn’t bad. However, when all the smoke clears the recording medium is just as important as any other factor in music… talent, knowledge, experience, mics, pres, acoustics, monitors, quality instruments, etc.
Often, pointing to other aspects of recording is just a diversion from having to examine the pros and cons of the medium. But ultimately we have to examine it, or be remiss in our pursuit of recording excellence.
The recording medium still stands or falls on its own merits. Choosing one’s recording medium with care is no different than any other aspect... and a poor medium can ruin an otherwise good effort.
I was an early digital advocate. My informed choice of using analog now over any digital medium, past and present, is not about nostalgia. If that were a motivation I’d be using an Alesis ADAT from 1991. Now those were exciting times. Even though the promise of digital didn’t pan out it was fun while I still believed we were at the forefront of a new age in recording… ah, the memories.
Most of my peers continued on the digital crazy train and are still having the same conversations about next year’s technology fixing the current shortcomings.
The grand illusion! Yes there are labels and settings that give you the feeling you have greater control… but there are algorithms and processes working beneath the apparent that are only emulations and approximations of what you think you are accomplishing or would be accomplishing with analog. What you’ve got isn’t what you think you’ve got. For example, digitally recording (sampling) a synth and converting it up an octive is not the same as playing that synth voice an octive higher from the keyboard, or via MIDI.
At 27 you and millions of others, some a little older, completely missed the pre-digital age of MIDI and synchronization. And although it’s often so intertwined with features on the typical DAW, MIDI has nothing to do with digital recording. MIDI stands on its own and can be implemented with any recording technology or none at all.
Open a music magazine from, say 1988 and the subject wasn’t analog vs. digital, but real tracks (analog) vs. virtual tracks (MIDI). With MIDI you can do everything you describe with your Casio without committing tracks to analog or digital until the mastering stage. It doesn’t get any better than that.
Easy manipulation isn’t a good reason for going completely digital. As I stated, you can accomplish your above experimentation with MIDI, or even use digital hocus pocus as an effect while reserving critical things like vocals, drums, electric/acoustic guitar and mastering for analog.
And back to those “How to fix digital” conversations I used to have with my peers… the content of those conversations hasn’t changed much since 1989 (converters and resolution ad nauseum) except that they’ve added a topic or two, like, “What happened to the music recording industry, like in where did it go?” and, “Why does everything sound like crap?”
It reminds me of an alarming study a few years ago that revealed a large number of inner city youth didn’t know sex causes pregnancy.
Musically speaking, many otherwise bright musicians and recordists are just as naive and unsophisticated.
T
Tim Gillett
Banned
I'd stay clear of the typical cassette deck, for serious work, but anything higher, why not release a commercial album with?
I urge anyone, who has recently bought one of these units (making only sure they’re mechanically / electronically sound), to dub their favorite CD or LP onto it and play it back. It may sound simple and moronic to listen to my type of reasoning but doesn't it make sense? Are YOU perhaps the only reason your stuff doesn't sound as good as your fav records?
Look, if my 246 or 388 can playback my dubbed, fav CD / LP, near to or dead mirror image to the original, then I know it's not the machine which is the limiting factor.
D
Dont know if this has been covered. Dubbing a finished CD or LP, or even a radio broadcast to a portastudio is quite different from recording live material. The main difference is the dynamics have been controlled whereas with live material they usually havent.
Even with a consumer cassette deck it's possible to make a good copy of many CD's, LP's and radio broadcasts simply because the work of controlling dynamics has already been done for you. That's why many home recordings of commercial recordings can sound great but the same machine used to capture a live performance often sounds hissy and distorted.
For many years I did location recording of guest speakers using first a portable reel to reel and then a cassette recorder. For cassette I always used Dolby NR and some sort of compresser /limiter on the way in. Of course some guest speakers were far less of a problem as they spoke in an even tempered tone. Others of the more dramatic type would far exceed the dynamic capabilities of the tape, hence the use of a compresser/limiter plus Dolby when recording to tape.
dbx can normally well and truly handle most live material but then if the tape was to be duplicated the encoding would have to be decoded and then a separate stage of dynamics control applied for the sake of the copies which was more acceptable to the listener than is undecoded dbx.
Any serious live recording medium, be it analog or digital must be able to handle the dynamics of the signal fed to it.
Professional recordists either had recording media that could handle the dynamics, or used outboard compresser/limiters so that the dynamics were now within the abilities of the medium.
Would I use a Portastudio or similar to record live material? If it had dbx or perhaps Dolby C, probably yes. If not, probably not.
Cheers Tim
cjacek
Analogue Enthusiast
Yes, certainly, dubbing a commercial release, of a finished product, to a cassette portastudio or the so called "semi-pro" gear, is indeed different to recording live material (to any medium) but it is generally a given that the recordist would take into account compression, mic choice / placement, EQ, acoustics, reverb and a variety of techniques used to make these commercial releases, not to mention talent. Thus, it is not neccessarily the medium, cassette or whatever, which is the limiting factor and THAT is the crux of my message.
The "dubbing" example simply shows, in a very easily demonstrated and telling way, the power of a small footprint recorder, being capable of printing whatever is being fed into it, enough to make a successful commercial record, outboard gear, space, the ability to use these, talent, recording knowledge and technique being the only limits.
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cjacek
Analogue Enthusiast
YeshuasFan, in an earlier post, hinted that a TASCAM portastudio was used for the commercially released album "Underground" by Phil Keaggy. Indeed, I just received a prompt and detailed reply from Phil himself. Here's the email, somewhat edited 'cause the list of songs included for the underground album were not in text format. (Comments thereafter by yours truly):
My comments: I had a chance to listen to the "Underground" album and it really does dispel the myth that you can't make a commercial, great sounding album on a cassette 4 track. You certainly can. It is possible to make rich mixes, which sound damn good.
Incidentally, the 144 TASCAM was the version with Dolby B (not the superior dbx on later 244 / 246) and undoubtedly suffered, not necessarily by earlier bouncing, to create a larger mix but by further transfer to the 2" machine and then to a 2 track master. Still, the masterful production and sound, still shine, despite the seemingly endless bounces.
I have not heard any 388 production, by Phil Keaggy, but if the earlier cassette stuff is any indication (and I'm certain it is), then it'll sound killer.
I'll try to post an mp3 snippet from the Underground album.
My comments: I had a chance to listen to the "Underground" album and it really does dispel the myth that you can't make a commercial, great sounding album on a cassette 4 track. You certainly can. It is possible to make rich mixes, which sound damn good.
Incidentally, the 144 TASCAM was the version with Dolby B (not the superior dbx on later 244 / 246) and undoubtedly suffered, not necessarily by earlier bouncing, to create a larger mix but by further transfer to the 2" machine and then to a 2 track master. Still, the masterful production and sound, still shine, despite the seemingly endless bounces.
I have not heard any 388 production, by Phil Keaggy, but if the earlier cassette stuff is any indication (and I'm certain it is), then it'll sound killer.
I'll try to post an mp3 snippet from the Underground album.
P
Paulie
New member
I did this bands album on my 80-8 and three of the songs are featured in the new National Lampoon movie. Check the news and music part of their website.
http://www.ameranouche.com/
http://www.ameranouche.com/
FALKEN
*************************
wow that sounds awesome. did you use any noise reduction, or compression, or anything else while tracking?
SteveM
New member
Interesting. I don't know how I knew you were from the New England area. I heard the gypsy music in the background of the preview. Sounds good!
Edit: I heard the actual clips now. Sounds great! Quite the guitar work.