EQ For tape-like feel

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PHILANDDON

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I know that tape doesn't have the same dynamic range as digital, so, if you're tracking to digital but want to mimic that analog vibe (putting aside the issue of tape effect/compression), where should you roll off your lows and how much and where should you roll off yours highs and how much?

Thanks.
 
Buy a reel, run everything through the tape and record it to wherever you planned on doing it
that would be the most realistic thing to do, although pricey i suppose. i dont know if thats what you meant though. good luck
scott
 
It's a noble thought, but I don't really think it works quite that way.

:D
 
I got a question: What if you take your master mix and run it to two track reel to reel and back into the computer. Does this add any warmth?

This should probably be its own thread. I just was wondering since we're on the subject.
 
Cuzme said:
I got a question: What if you take your master mix and run it to two track reel to reel and back into the computer. Does this add any warmth?
Click to expand...

It depends on what your definition of "warmth" is.
 
one cheap way is to run your final mix to VHS video recorder then bounce that back to digital. I know a few guys on here do that.

There's a lot of older high end video recorders on ebay for cheap with seperate audio in & out...some even have a recording level ajustment and meters. The Sony I use has S/PDIF out so I can connect it to my Delta 1010 and come back into the computer that way.

You can clip it a little on the way in to beef it up without the fear of horrible digital distortion

YMMV
 
My bad...I remember a thread touching upon just that...

Please allow me to rephrase:

Would it add or take away any qualities to the sound?
How would you describe these qualities?

In your experience, is this something worth doing to a final mix? Pre mastered or Mastered?


Here's why I ask. I have a 2 track TEAC quarter inch reel to reel,. It is clearly not enough to multi track for the recordings I have coming up but it would be enough to send the final mix through. The catch is that one channel is not working totally and I am trying to figure out how high a priority fixing it is on my list of things to do.

Thanks a lot Chessrock. Much love,
Cuzme
 
Cuzme said:
Would it add or take away any qualities to the sound?
How would you describe these qualities?
Click to expand...

If you think about it a little ... what you're doing is degrading the signal to a certain degree. You're basically putting it through 2 digital conversion processes and, subsequently, two generational losses. You will be decreasing your signal to noise ratio through both subsequent transfers, plus the added tape hiss from the tape.

What you will wind up with is something noisier and somewhat lower in fidelity. If these are qualities you like and want to have in your music, then by all means, I would recommend the method highly as a means of doing that.

In your experience, is this something worth doing to a final mix? Pre mastered or Mastered?
Click to expand...

I don't, personally. In certain instances, I might recommend it as a compression effect for a drum submix. If you drive the input of the tape player in to the red, it can do some cool things, particularly to the kick drum and/or bass. But for a final mix, you might find other more suitable (and quieter, higher fidelity) means of getting some final mix / master buss compression.

By the way ... the whole VHS tape thing is a myth. It doesn't work the same way that more standard analog tape formats do. You're not going to get the saturation / compression effect. You can watch some cool movies with it, though. :D
 
I don't really buy this concept of running a finished two track digital mix through tape for an "analog vibe". The whole thing about mixes are how the tracks get glued together. That's different with analog than it is with digital. It's the "glueing" process that's important, not just some sort of coloration that's added after the fact. So for an analog vibe I would suggest mixing analog, or at the very least send busses out of the computer for summing.
 
I have a hard time with all this "analog vibe" stuff.

I didn't know that recording formats had "a vibe." :D When people attribute this kind of stuff to a recording technology, they're really showing off their ignorance. I'm sorry, but they are. I would bet a thousand bucks that if you were to take two sessions ... one recorded to tape and the other to a hard disk ... provided the a/d conversion was of good quality and the tape deck was well-maintained ... I would guess maybe 10% of the people on this board, if that, would be able to tell you which one was which.

And not one would attribute any sort of "vibe" to either one; at least that would be magnetic or non-magnetic (or linear / non-linear) related.

If your recording has little vibe to begin with, then no media format is going to help. In less-than-ideal circumstances, analog recording can work against, you, making everything sound even muddier and less detailed, and can even add a nice layer of hiss to boot.

.
 
chessrock said:
I have a hard time with all this "analog vibe" stuff.
Click to expand...

Just imagine all the "warmth" and "vibe" you'd get out of this:

Studio Projects TB-1 --> ART Tube MP --> Behringer T1950 Tube Warmer --> Behringer T1952 Tube Composer --> Computer running the AOpen AX4b-533 Tube Motherboard --> T-Racks Tube Warmer Plugin --> Steinberg Magneto Tape Emulation Plugin --> Cassette Tape.

That would be massive analog tooby goodness.

;)

:D
 
nkjanssen said:
Just imagine all the "warmth" and "vibe" you'd get out of this:

Studio Projects TB-1 --> ART Tube MP --> Behringer T1950 Tube Warmer --> Behringer T1952 Tube Composer --> Computer running the AOpen AX4b-533 Tube Motherboard --> T-Racks Tube Warmer Plugin --> Steinberg Magneto Tape Emulation Plugin --> Cassette Tape.

That would be massive analog tooby goodness.

;)

:D
Click to expand...

Studio Projects TB-1 --> ART Tube MP -->Cassette Tape would be a much better chain IMHO.

The VHS thing may well be a myth, Chess..it's something I've done only a few times when I was looking for that particular lo-fi sound and maybe I just got lucky but it worked.

Someone mentioned running drums n bass to tape, I've done this also...tracking the kit and bass to a half inch TR8 then dumping that back to the computer and recording the rest digital. I always mix back out of the box through an analog desk and bounce back in on the same pass to digital again, that seems to be working for me for now.

Does it degrade the signal? probably! but it works for me, tape hiss or analog hiss is your friend. I hate beat perfect, note perfect, autotuned sterility. A performance with vibe while not perfect beats the pants off a perfect performance without
 
chessrock said:
I have a hard time with all this "analog vibe" stuff.

I didn't know that recording formats had "a vibe." :D When people attribute this kind of stuff to a recording technology, they're really showing off their ignorance. I'm sorry, but they are. I would bet a thousand bucks that if you were to take two sessions ... one recorded to tape and the other to a hard disk ... provided the a/d conversion was of good quality and the tape deck was well-maintained ... I would guess maybe 10% of the people on this board, if that, would be able to tell you which one was which.

And not one would attribute any sort of "vibe" to either one; at least that would be magnetic or non-magnetic (or linear / non-linear) related.

If your recording has little vibe to begin with, then no media format is going to help. In less-than-ideal circumstances, analog recording can work against, you, making everything sound even muddier and less detailed, and can even add a nice layer of hiss to boot.

.
Click to expand...

I remember reading a study done a few years ago. It was posted over at the DIgiSite. If I remember it all correctly people were given two mixes to listen to. One was done with all the neato analogue stuff and the other was an all in the box mix.The tester tried to duplicate the mixes as closely as possible etc etc. As I recall the ITB mixes were the favs most of the time. Don't ask me for details because it was too long ago to remember. It was interesting though.
 
edyer said:
I remember reading a study done a few years ago. It was posted over at the DIgiSite. If I remember it all correctly people were given two mixes to listen to. One was done with all the neato analogue stuff and the other was an all in the box mix.The tester tried to duplicate the mixes as closely as possible etc etc. As I recall the ITB mixes were the favs most of the time. Don't ask me for details because it was too long ago to remember. It was interesting though.
Click to expand...


Some software seems to be getting the MITB thing a lot closer to analog summing these days. Kids growing up with all digital see no need for analog for one reason I think..... Starting out they couldn't or wouldn't (if they could) shell out the cash for a high end analog system. Any analog they do hear and compare to is low end, entry level recording gear.

A mix of analog and digital tracking, digital editing, plugins, outboard gear,analog summing and a mix of analog & digital mixdown work for me. In 20 years time my guess is everything will be digital and most people won't even remember how good analog sounded. Maybe that's just the direction a lot of music is taking.

You can't beat a good 4 piece rock band recorded to tape, but why rob yourself of the luxury of digital editing to get to your end product? It's all music at the end of the day, the media format is just a formality.
 
I just remembered that Acoustic Mirror has an impulse called "Analog Tape." I played with it a little and it wasn't too shabby. The Shure mic impulses are really cool.
 
I have an little otari machine that I run final mixes through sometimes, but as mentioned this leads to generational loss when it comes right down to it. But I do love the sound of analog...so I found the perfect plug-in to get a little extra warmth and some hiss to my mixes without bringing up the noise floor too much.

Antares Tube

Not only does this plug-in sound killer on a bass, but it pretty much makes anything that you want to have an old-school sound sound good. check it out if you can

that is all..
 
chessrock said:
I have a hard time with all this "analog vibe" stuff.

I didn't know that recording formats had "a vibe."
Click to expand...

People used to have this kind of discussion about tape formulations.

I personally don't care for the word "vibe". But when we are talking about recording formats as dramatically different as analog and digital, then I think there has to be some acceptance that these formats will indeed sound different. And they do.

A good mix will sound good no matter what the format. A good analog mix will sound good. A good digital mix will sound good. Okay, we got that out of the way.

I started recording back when we used 2" 24 track tape machines, cutting blocks for editing, big huge all analog consoles, etc. I've also done completely in the box mixes, where the signal goes digital and never comes out until it hits the speakers. So I've done both and can say that I think there are advantages and disadvantages to both formats.

I also have my preferences, which are just that, my own personal preferences. I use a hybrid approach. I use my DAW as a multitrack machine and editor, I mix analog, and then record the mix back to the DAW using an excellent quality converter. This is after *much* experimentation with different methods over the course of years. Again, my own preference of how I like to work and how I like things to sound.

I don't think you could say that recording in Digital Performer has a different vibe than ProTools, or that Sonar will have a different vibe than Logic. But analog versus ITB digital, there are greater differences there. But for me it may be as much the process as the final result. I like the hardware, I feel I get better results easier and quicker in analog, I like the body of the sound better.

It's just this concept of running an ITB mix through a tape deck that seems a bit silly to me. It's an ITB mix, a completely digital process for the audio and the engineer, so the tape machine is just some coloration. The actual process of mixing electrical signals has not taken place, the mix has been done by number crunching. So beyond the appeal of whatever the tape coloration might be, as far as getting an analog mix vibe (whatever that is, chessrock) the ITB mix through a tape deck is basically the bandaid approach in my opinion.
 
SonicAlbert said:
IThe whole thing about mixes are how the tracks get glued together. That's different with analog than it is with digital. It's the "glueing" process that's important, not just some sort of coloration that's added after the fact. So for an analog vibe I would suggest mixing analog, or at the very least send busses out of the computer for summing.
Click to expand...

"Glue" and "glueing" and "gluey" are now the official buzz words tagged to mixes. Everywhere I got everyone's talking about "glue." When I think of glue I think of sniffing it (as in Lloyd Bridges "Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue") or helping my kids with the Elmer's for a school project.

I'm personally pushing for "floss" and "flossing" and "flossy" as my own personal buzz words.

Anyhow, Albert, I'm not dogging you. I enjoy your posts moreso than most others. :)
 
Yeah, good call on the "glue" word. That's getting as overused and underdefined as "warmth".

There's just something about how mixes come together for me in the analog domain as opposed to ITB digital mixes. I find the process and the results more pleasing when mixing analog. Again, it's a personal preference thing and for many others doing ITB mixes makes a lot of sense due to the complete recallability.

I do find that it is much easier to slip into the "mixing with your eyes" syndrome when doing ITB mixes. I mean, it's all about looking at the screen and tweaking little virtual knobs and sliders with a mouse. Control surfaces have helped, but there is still an overuse of the wrong side of the brain in my opinion.
 
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