Tubes are the way! Get a duel tube pre-amp to run your master through!
Digital recordings are dry and lifeless by nature in my opinion. Nothing sounds better than a new LP that was recorded on an analogue tape machine. Although I should note that unless it is a sealed LP from long ago, pretty much
every new record has been digitized at one phase or another. Even new LPs of old recordings. I know when they reissued all of the Beatle albums in LP format, in the mid nineties I think it was, the masters used on each record was the new digital one made for each CD. But they still sounded fantastic and much better than the CD did if played on a good system!
But anyway I feel even the best, most dynamic, and well mixed digital recordings lack something and I fix it by running everything I record through one of my tube preamps. They make a recording sound absolutely gorgeous and warm. At least mine do; I have a few varieties of preamps manufactured by the ART Company and they absolutely bring "life" back into a digital recording. And if you run them real warm, they can add a natural soft compression to the sound.
Pretty much every track, from drum machine to vocals, is run through a tube amp before it is even hits the mixer and is recorded. If I use any effects, or a compressor, I will first amplify the signal through one tube first, then run it through the effects chain and/or compressor, and finally through another tube before it goes into the mixer and onto my recording.
Even any busses I may use to add some delay or any other effect goes through the tube preamp before it goes back into the mixer.
When I do final mix downs, I take the recordings from my 8 track and run it through a stereo duel tube pre-amp (usually pretty warm unless it is a classical guitar track or something else that demands a "softer" sound) before I burn it to CD on my stand-alone CD burner.
I got a new ART preamp which has a dial with numerous several settings you can use to get different sounds and colorings. It also includes a limiter which is nice on many of those settings. But of course the limiter and colorings are optional. There is just a plain "tube" setting that adds no additional coloring and is not limited.
I tend to use this particular preamp for all of my mix downs as they go to their "phase 1 CD."
I then upload the song into my computer to tidy up each track with cool-edit pro and other software. I do some hard-limiting and get each song at similiar volume, then assemble the tracks as needeed to put together a final album which I burn from my computer onto the "
phase 2 CD" which is the final product.
Some digital purists may claim tubes add "noise" to a recording, but the hiss produced by tubes (at least mine anyway) is absolutely negligible and only audible during fade-outs if you are wearing headphones and looking for it. It's nothing you hear unless you strain and look for it. And you can easily fix that with a computer editor like cool-edit pro that has hiss filters.
I'll admit it's personal taste. I like the sound of analogue, and I love the warmth tubes provide to my recordings.
Some do not like tubes. But there is no right or wrong, though I'd never issue a recording that wasn't tubed at some point (or at many points
).
and feels 'warm and fuzzes' are way WAY down on his list of things to worry about, fire away.
