Mix and master in digital, dump down to analog?

[paperhat]

I used to be an analog purist, recording album after album on a Portastudio 414. I used my Portastudios so much, they kept breaking because I'd wear out the tape heads, and at the time being a teenager, I rarely had money to get $120 repairs or to buy a new four track.

At one point, I got so frustrated (I was halfway finished with an album and living in a remote location far from repair places) that I said bye bye to four-track only recording and began using my computer with the four track as basically a pre-amp and a tape machine for special effects. I loved the freedom and ease of digital recording, although I have always felt like there is a lack of sonic depth and authentic ambience that I miss about analog. I really hate most modern music, and I feel like the move from analog to digital is a big element in why modern production sounds sterile and lazy.

I've always been a guilty digital user, although using the four track as the preamp definitely keeps a roughness and a fairly analog feel to everything, especially in the guitar sound. Having a larger number of tracks at my disposal enables me to fill my recording out a lot more (I'm a big fan of Magical Mystery Tour and Pet Sounds, which have too many layers to easily invoke on a four track as a one-man project.)

Currently, I'm working on a pretty ambitious release, cramming 60 short pop songs with experimental transitions into an 80 minute album, with each song influenced by one of my favorite artists (not ripped off, but used as a jumping-off point). Pretty much all of these artists are pre-1983 and thus were recorded in analog, and I'd like to capture that feel on the final output. The album is more than halfway done, so I'm starting to look towards the mixing and mastering phase.

My question for this forum is, would dumping my entire album down to, say, reel-to-reel after everything has been recorded, mixed and mastered in psuedo-digital, and then doing touch-up re-mastering for the final product be a good way to get the analog feel I want? Or would it likely just degrade the sound quality without adding significantly to the album's feel?

It's not that I dislike my current mixes at all, I just feel like genuine analog warmth would really get the sound I like in recordings. I personally like tape noise and roughness on recordings, and I don't really care about "eliminating noise" like so much of modern music producers do. Noise makes a lot of my favorite albums sound great and classic. But is such a post-production dumpdown really a good idea?

 

[cjacek]

Oh man, that's a tough one 'cause it all comes down to one's own personal taste, doesn't it?

My own personal feeling is that the "feel" of a recording is mainly due to mic selection, use thereof, room and the talent of the musicians and of course, the recording engineer. It is not to take away from tape and analog gear, quite the contrary, 'cause these add to the overall feel and many times it is the difference between one liking a recording or hating it. I love what tape does to my sounds. I am of the opinion, though, that aside from maybe a bit of tape hiss (depending which machine you use) and whether or not you record hot or not and the tape you're using, you may not get an appreciable difference by dumping your digital mix to tape. Most of the analog tape characteristics, which we all love, happen when we actually start off on analog to begin with and not the other way around, I'm affraid. Sure, you can add a bit of the tape effect but it won't sound like it came off tape originally. That's just my feeling. There's just no substitute for tape and a TASCAM 414, while nice, is just a hint what bigger tape formats can do.

I further think, that if you're not getting the sounds you want, you may be able to compensate by using similar outboard gear, rooms and techniques, employed by your music heroes, when recording to digital. That will make a bigger difference, IMHO.

 

[SteveM]

If you can mix it down to tape I would. I don't know about cassette, it'd be better if you had a half track though cassette would probably "improve" the sound or give it a better feel too. Shit, I'd try bouncing it twice to tape just too see if you can get some better harmonic response. As long as you can keep it somewhat clean sounding. Use noise reduction maybe.

 

[trancedental]

You could bounce individual tracks back & forth to tape to give a bit of contrast between them as well as mixing to a R2R recorder.

I would use a R2R stereo 1/4" @ 15ips only for mixdown, although individual tracks sent to cassette tape & back might be usable?

Quality of AD/DA converters could turn out to be an issue as well?

 

[paperhat]

Thanks for your feedback.

As far as dumping individual tracks to analog is concerned, I've done some of that in the past, and I have found that the problem is the tempos will never quite match up with the original tracks (meaning more digital editing). It may be due to slight variations in the tape mechanism, and possibly this can be solved by getting a higher-end machine. I don't know. At one point, I tried dumping one of my pre-vocal old albums to digital, putting the melodic instruments in the first track and drums on the second track. It took hours just to get one song to sync up between just those two tracks, and they were coming from the same exact tape recording!

If I were to do individual tracks, which instruments do you think would benefit the most from being dumped to analog? What about vocals?

Now that I'm in a more stable and giving financial situation, the primary basis for asking this question is whether I should look into purchasing an upscale reel-to-reel machine. I was hoping that buying a higher quality machine would avoid some of the issues that cjacek brought up. But would the added sonic depth from dumping mixes down be worth the cost of such a machine? I could probably also use it to do a lot of the transition pieces between songs. It's just an idea I'm floating, don't know if it's a good use of my resources.

 

[poopchute]

I recommend that if you like the results of the 414 cassette recorder then you should go for a decent reel to reel. If your upgrading always get more tracks than you think you need. Like if you think you can get away with 4 tracks I would get an 8 track reel to reel. I recommend a Tascam TSR-8. Great Machine and great sounding. But even with a decent or nice Reel to Reel you are still gonna get anal drift if you are manually dumping tracks one at a time. To solve that you could dump all the tracks in real-time or get something to sync the machine to your computer. That would solve the drifitng...

 

[trancedental]

"It took hours just to get one song to sync up between just those two tracks, and they were coming from the same exact tape recording!"

I've done this on a Fostex E-16 & on Revox PR99 MKIII machines recently but as most of the material has been under 4 mins I never came across this problem? Might be a problem with lower cost machines?

"If I were to do individual tracks, which instruments do you think would benefit the most from being dumped to analog? What about vocals?"

Most drum tracks apart from possibly the overhead & / or HiHat mics, Bass & Guitars recorded through amps, Vocals would depend on singer & style in most cases?

"But would the added sonic depth from dumping mixes down be worth the cost of such a machine?

See if you can borrow or hire a analog machine or hear it in action first! then you can decide!

 

[Hi_Flyer]

can you define "sonic depth"?

I know i've posted this before, but I'll mention it again: i would take 24 bit digital over cassette formats, especially if we're talking about a machine like a 414.


"If I were to do individual tracks, which instruments do you think would benefit the most from being dumped to analog? What about vocals?"

I would say drums, definitely. although I would track to tape first and then dump to digital and layer stuff on top of that. vox sound nice on tape too. I record mostly punk/rock, so sometimes I'll peg the tape pretty hard into the red for more of a deliberate distortion effect. sounds awesome though. if you back off a bit, you can get nice limiting and peak leveling without distortion artifacts.