Home Recording's Dirty Little Secret

[iamjethro]

an IQ of 7 in a human would most likely indicate a lack of being able to even live past about a minute and a half or so, as there would not even be the ability to breathe... 70, is also below the average for someone considered mildly retarded, which would probably even be below the capacity to use a computer, maybe enough to shit ones self and drip spit bubbles from the corner of the mouth. You're attempt at humour is paltry at best, and leaves me scratching my head as to how a human brain decided it to be humorous to say such things. (translation.... duhhh that was a dumb joke deerrr)

I might have you know that you do not know of what you speak of friend. I'd stop before you make yourself look like a total idiot. You're caught up in an argument that could only be successfully had almost a decade ago without people looking at you as if you hadn't touched a piece of audio gear in almost as long. Regardless of what you believe the community is chatting about, they certainly aren't spending time talking about how digital is "ruining music"...unless they simply cannot write music well enough to save their life anymore (has beens) and need something beside themselves to blame for their lack of success.

FYI, it makes no difference if it's a virtual synth or a DAW software, if you can accurately model an analog circuit you can do it...regardless if it's meant to playback a waveform, effect it, or generate one from scratch. Again, you show that you only really know of older digital gear when it comes to the process of recording, with every word you say, proving it more and more. What the fuck difference do you think is in an effects box that is digital vs software, just the fact that you have a few noise generators (a cable and interfaces on both ends) in between the signal and destination.

They couldn't make magic with a portastuudio because that is severely below any level of quality that could produce something passable as anything other than, a portastudio recording... again, you date yourself... welcome to the land of computers...they're great little inventions...think of them like an abacus on speed, to use terms that you might be familiar with. Believe it or not, but all those wonderful little digital recordings coming out these days use something that isn't a portastudio, and magic is attained on a regular basis, whether it uses analog tape or not.

Analog quality has declined, sure...but I must tell you that the quality of digital gear has gotten insanely good, and is getting better all the time..there are innovations every day (such as Pianoteq...an 8mb physically modeled piano that has fooled quite a few people in my experience as to if it was a real piano.."Oh i'm so glad you got a real piano for that part...you just can't capture the emotion with sampled pianos" <-- actual quote lol)

WHEN I WAS YOUR AGE!!!

Check your WISC-R scores on that retarded classification. 70 is in a functioning range that would be quite above drooling and not being able to repress bowel movements. I am sure a person with your confidence in being correct knew that and was just attempting humor that was not gotten and left others scratching thir heads.

He was lightening the mood and trying to keep things on a friendly, social discourse level. Nothing wrong with that.

 

[mwthompson]

"I only blame digital in as much as it is to blame for substandard performance."

Is this supposed to mean that digital allows "substandard" musicians easier access to recording facilities? Or, is "substandard" in reference to all the "digital snakeoil" being sold (or given away, in many cases)?

 

[TexRoadkill]

Punk, rap and heavy metal were all backed by record labels and their huge budgets.

Have you actually listened to early recordings in those genres? It was all done on 4 tracks, often cassette. I wouldn't say Sub Pop had huge budgets by any means.

But you still ignore the main fact that if it wasn't for budget recordings then many bands would never be heard. I'm not saying Sears is wrong. I'm just saying it's unrealistic elitist bullshit that ignores the actual state of the industry.

Have any links to amazing analog home recorded stuff that obviously blows away the shitty home recorded digital music?

 

[TerraMortim]

In humour there often needs to be some degree of exaggeration of the truth in order for it to maximize the funny result. Exaggerated physical movements in physical comedy, to exaggerated language and concepts in more verbal forms. So yes again, comic effect in in play here. (as in the case of calling that guy mr. smear, instead of sear)

He was more like pasting stupid quotes by misguided elitist bastards, who probably changed their mind later anyway (that's the funny thing with quotes... you get quoted as saying something and then for the rest of your life people think that's exactly, and the only way you think... of course people never change their minds, or grow)

 

[TerraMortim]

Have you actually listened to early recordings in those genres? It was all done on 4 tracks, often cassette. I wouldn't say Sub Pop had huge budgets by any means.

But you still ignore the main fact that if it wasn't for budget recordings then many bands would never be heard. I'm not saying Sears is wrong. I'm just saying it's unrealistic elitist bullshit that ignores the actual state of the industry.

Have any links to amazing analog home recorded stuff that obviously blows away the shitty home recorded digital music?

woah...I missed Beck's statement that you quoted. LOL No the weren't! Not in the early days. Rap couldn't even get radio play for a long time... only a small group of punk bands which were trying capitalize on the scene had more than a few dimes to rub together, and very very few (still to this day) metal bands have big budgets..There's like maybe a dozen bands in the entire genre that even have a major deal.

ANd...I agree with what Tex said... almost all of that music was originally recorded on 4 tracks of tape. Even some of the bands that are considered something of "gods" in those genres didn't have much in the way of facilities for recording something expensively... notoriety absolutely doesn't always come with money.. that's a myth about the "glamour" of this business... yes, there are plenty of very famous people who are even poorer than the average working person. I know a few, and with how poor I am, they are even worse off.

Anyway that smear guy is a douche if he actually believes that misguided moronic concept. Perhaps he is a very shitty engineer if he can only work one way to get it to sound good... of course he couldn't bruise his precious ego to admit that maybe digital sucks to him because IT'S MORE DIFFICULT! I love how these analog guys try to pretend they are gods amongst men in comparison to primarily digital guys, when in reality it's just much easier to get a good result in analog, and takes a bit more knowledge, skill, ears to get something similar in a digital system. Any old monkey can get a pretty decent result on a tape machine, even by mistake. They're very forgiving of mistakes... that might be some of why certain people are so set on analog being better.

 

[noisewreck]

Well, that depends if one is actually "playing" the electronic instrument. Even midi programming takes considerable skill. Sure, turning knobs on a softsynth doesnt take much skill, but there are many types of electronic music. Good arrangements take considerable skill.

I agree, its very difficult recording "a band". A lot of music out there is a hybrid. Even using something like drumagog is a hybrid. I try to do a combo of real and fake on most tracks. Drums especially, I could never get the sound or the player that I can with samples unless I spent a small fortune.

You're right. I should've stated that given good performance skills, it is much easier to get pro sounding electronic music, simply because of the much simpler recording chain, and the elimination of the acoustics of the recording space.

 

[TerraMortim]

You're right. I should've stated that given good performance skills, it is much easier to get pro sounding electronic music, simply because of the much simpler recording chain, and the elimination of the acoustics of the recording space.

but...I would consider it much harder to mix the two elements together than to do either by themselves... it's very difficult to get guitar, bass, live drums, vocals to fit over an electronic arrangement without making one of them sound like it's barely there.

 

[Beck]

Have any links to amazing analog home recorded stuff that obviously blows away the shitty home recorded digital music?

Sure… Boston’s debut album, recorded almost entirely on Tom Scholz’ “semi-pro” Scully 12-track reel-to-reel in his basement studio… an album that is currently 17 times platinum and counting. But do you need a link? I didn’t think so.

You seem to misunderstand something. I’m not Walter Sear and I don’t agree with his perspective in toto. In fact, I’ve been one of the most outspoken proponents of so-called semi-pro equipment on this bbs, which is clearly reflected in my original contribution to this thread. I simply quoted something Sear said that I agree with.

I might also quote other people, like Scholz, but just because I think he makes a good point on a certain subject does not make me a vegetarian. By the way, if you didn’t already know it, Scholz is a vegetarian. I can share views with Sear or Scholz without joining the church they attend… if they attend a church. Make sense?

Tex, I lived through Heavy Metal, Punk and Rap. Everything starts with a demo, or so it did at one time. But all those genres gained the backing of major labels and went mainstream. By the way, there were no multitrack cassette units in existence in the early days of heavy metal or punk.

It’s a shame you are joining the bipolar member in this shark attack. You can do better than that.

If you want to discuss differences in perspective in an intelligent manner like Southside Glen is doing, my mind is wide open. But I’m not going to try and reason with uninformed terramortim type hysteria. I don’t consider that kind to be representative of the forum, although they may be talking (yelling) loudest.

 

[mattkw80]

Sure… Boston’s debut album, recorded almost entirely on Tom Scholz’ “semi-pro” Scully 12-track reel-to-reel in his basement studio… an album that is currently 17 times platinum and counting.

I love that record!

That was done in a home studio?

I know he was an MIT genius or whatever - but that gives the rest of us something to strive for with our home studios.

 

[Yonce N Mild]

I started recording at home as a hobby a way to release some creative energy. I'm a geek and a hack musician so home studio stuff is a perfect hobby for me. I never hoped for anything more than to get a resonable aproximation of what was in my head to come out of someone else's speakers.

What actually inspired me to get started is I was at a club and heard drum and bass for the first time and my buddy casually mentioned that "all this is is hip hop beats sped up and chopped up on a computer". Obviously I now know there is a little more to it than that now but my first thought was ..... hey I have a computer! All downhill from there.

You're right. I should've stated that given good performance skills, it is much easier to get pro sounding electronic music, simply because of the much simpler recording chain, and the elimination of the acoustics of the recording space.

Very true. I started recording electronic music and thought I was pretty good at this producing thing for a part timer........ then I tried to record the band I'm in now. BIG difference. Recording vocals? My first attempts were miserable failures. Recording guitar how hard can it be? Al lot effing harder than it looks that's for sure. Drums? Jesus ....... still no real success there I'm still using an electronic kit for recording.

That being said I didn't learn how to use midi and how to use synths, samplers Daw software and all the other stuff I used to make electronic music overnight either. Maybe there's hope for me yet.

 

[Bob's Mods]

What the old days had, tight bands that recorded together.

For all the difficulty in getting to those great sounding mixes in the digital world, I must say that I am happy. I could never add horns, violins, synths, keyboards, drums, etc to any music I record if it weren't for the digital wonder box. That goes for many others too I'm sure. I like the idea of being able to record my own creations without haveing to be in with others that play the instruments I don't. I just don't have the time or desire to do the band thing but home recording suits me fine. By the same token, I could never consider a PortaStudio a viable tool. Its too restrictive where digital (for all its hot air) helps me to do what I could never do otherwise....record completed songs with all the bells and whistles. A purely analog world would just not work for me no matter how much better it may or may not be.

Another point I would like to make...before the digital box became the standard, road weary bands would go into a tape based studio and record their tunes as a complete unit. They were tight from the years of playing on the road. The core of the song was done in a fell swoop. The double tracked stuff was just iceing on the cake. Today, the digital wonder box makes it too easy to record tunes one track at a time. I feel the music can suffer because of that. Its that tightness of a road worked band that brings life to a tune. The band is groovin in the studio as a unit throwing cues to each other. When the basic core groove of a tune is recorded in layered tracks, well the feel just ain't same. I layer tracks at home because thats all I got and I do the best I can with it. I've heard some great artist stuff that was layered and it was pulled off pretty good but nothing can replace a tight band laying down a tune as a unit. Les Paul, the father of multitrack, made a similar observation. Bands need to get tight and record as a unit in the studio and not use the ease of digital multitracking as a crutch for being lazy and not perfecting their chops. The digital box makes it too easy stay a second rate player. Tape forces you to up the ante and hone your craft. I see that as the compelling reason for tape.

Bob

 

[Beck]

I love that record!

That was done in a home studio?

I know he was an MIT genius or whatever - but that gives the rest of us something to strive for with our home studios.

Yeah, it was one of those pivotal albums in music history, and Scholz is certainly an inspiration.

You might be interested in one of his most recent quotes concerning digital and analog. (For the people that think we only had problems with ancient digital and that everything is fixed now, you might want to close your eyes while reading this).

I work only in an analog studio, so I hear music at its very best. I mean, there's nothing like the sound of an analog multitrack recording playing back. You'll never hear it sound so good again because it actually is the real thing. It's the real music by the real musicians, the phase hasn't been all screwed up by the A/D conversion, and the high end isn't all messed up trying to fit a 16-kHz tone into three pieces of a 44-Hz sampling rate. In an analog studio, you're hearing pristine, real-world sound - the way it would sound if it was coming through the mikes, and you were listening to them in headphones right there in your room.

24-bit digital sounds pretty good to me. But as soon as you make the conversion to 16-bit, it sounds like crap. [laughs] I have a hard time listening to CDs after working on an analog original because of what they do to the depth perception. The phase-angle errors caused by the A/D conversion really bother me. They bothered me the very first time I heard digital next to an analog original. I was always amazed that people didn't perceive that something that once sounded like it was located way beyond their speakers now sounded like it was on a flat plane...

...That's what digital does. It changes the audio waveform. People think digital is an accurate representation of music, and it's not. And because of the phase-angle error, all the things that your ear and your brain do normally to figure out where sounds are coming from to form a mental aural map, if you will, of your audio surroundings - it takes that and completely fools it. It turns something that had enormous depth and was recorded in a natural, beautiful hall and puts it into a little flat thing in front of you. So, as you can see, I've hated digital from the beginning. But it's cheap, and it's got a lot of features, and that's what sells.

- Tom Scholz
Sound & Vision Magazine – Nov, 2006

 

[mshilarious]

The first time he heard digital? What was that, 1978? Plus if he considers himself a golden ear, he has a lot to answer for (Rockman)

The comment about 16kHz tone split into 3 pieces, phase errors . . . this smacks of early digital technology, not anything in the last 10 or even 20 years. Back in the day with an analog brickwall filter . . . yeah, that could be ugly, but it was an ANALOG filter.

Good article involving actual tests rather than unsupported listening notes:

http://www.audioholics.com/educatio...ick-wall-digital-filters-and-phase-deviations

Sorry, but this stuff is really easy to measure. I can loop signals D/A/D all day long and measure the signal integrity. It's not complicated to do that with an analog medium either. Tape might be euphonic, but it's not more accurate.

It reminds me of the whole analog summing debate. I used to build analog summing cables. I thought it was clever, deconstruct a summing box to its simplest parts, the resistors. As it reduced the signal chain to a 12" cable, it was also the cleanest possible circuit. And I used relatively low-value resistors to keep noise to a minimum.

The rest? Same as digital summing, with some added noise and interference.

 

[Bob's Mods]

Interesting quote from Sholtz there Beck. Certainly I'm no stranger to the two dimensional flat sounding plane of digital recording. Its a pain to get your your mixes to sound three-D without a doubt but the problem can be reduced. On top of that my monitors were reviewed and judged to have very two dimensional sound as well. Two wrongs don't make a right (hah). The use of a respectable reverb and that widener plug I mentioned earlier help out a lot. I have to fix that two D problem synthically where a great sounding room with that tape moe-chine would generate a more natural sound. The phase issue Tom talked about was something I was not aware of. There are probably plugins that will help you to realign the phases of each track. I need to take a look at that. There I go again....fixing another problem.

Bob

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

If I remember right, Scholtz also spent something like a year and a half in post on that album learning the ropes before he finally got it right. He was absolutely facinated with his new FFT spectrum analyzer (hardware), sounding for all the world like a Har-Bal sales rep in that he believed that device was the answer to his mixing prayers. Not exactly the thoughts and actions of someone who I'd reference as a defense . Though, yeah, I agree, the results were quite nice. But even a stopped clock is right twice a day; Scholtz's clock took a year and a half to get it right

Also, his complaints about digital sound half like they're coming from someone using inferior SRC and clocking; the complaints about depth perception and downsampling to 16-bit are classic SRC and clocking issues which can be addressed simply by throwng some money at the hardware and software, and half someone who knows just enough to get himself in trouble (phase angle errors caused by A/D conversion? Excuse me?)

G.

 

[Bob's Mods]

There appears to be an inherent 2 D sounding problem with digital from my experience and I've got a good clock source. It seems reasonable to believe that phase relationships could play some type of a role in this 2 D problem. The article was dated Nov 2006. Certainly not in the cave dwellar days of digital.

 

[DavidK]

The digital box makes it too easy stay a second rate player.

Playing an instrument at the very top level has nothing whatsoever to do with recording. Never has, never will.

 

[robin watson]

Playing an instrument at the very top level has nothing whatsoever to do with recording. Never has, never will.

Absolutely, David. But I think Bob's referring to the general level of musicianmanship, say, in Rock and Pop as a result of recording technology, etc., not the top level players to which you refer (and indeed belong, may I add).

 

[Supercreep]

Cool thread, guys.

 

[DavidK]

Absolutely, David. But I think Bob's referring to the general level of musicianmanship, say, in Rock and Pop as a result of recording technology, etc., not the top level players to which you refer (and indeed belong, may I add).

Thanks for the compliment, Robin.

What I am trying to say is that my experience in the real world is to the contrary. I find players in all genres just getting better and better, regardless of the crutch that technology may give. Maybe the technology has made it possible that more people are involved, so the common denominator level may be low.

Throughout history, in any genre, there has always been a musical generation gap that assumes the next generation wont be as good as the current or past. It's never happened and never will, its contrary to humanity. The one thing that might be different: we are not HEARING the good music. Thats due to the suits.

Other genres are thriving: broadway has had some spectacular shows in the past 10 years. Film scores are great and well done, country has some killer players. Vegas has great playing, shows like Celtic Women, Riverdance etc do too. Orchestras are WAAAAY better than they were when I started playing in them 25 years ago. The quality goes up every year.