Mixing & Mastering a 100% analog session to vinyl

  • Thread starter Thread starter vinyvamos
  • Start date Start date
V

vinyvamos

New member
Hi,
You may have seen my other thread about aligning an MX70. Well the session we are about to start on is the recording of my punk band's 2nd album. The first album we did it on 24T 2" and then mixed to DAT/CD (in a pro studio) and pressed to CD. This time we wanna do it all ourselves here in the west of Ireland using my MX70 1" 8T, then mix it down to 1/4" on an MX5050 and then send it to GZ in Czech where they can cut straight to vinyl in PURE ANALOG from the master tape! We won't use digital in any way so the album will be 100% analog right from the performance to the playing of the record. It will be my first time doing this kind of project so I need some pointers for various parts of it. The main thing that I'm unsure about is the "mastering for vinyl". I have read a few threads on here and learnt alot but I still have questions:

For this type of mastering could I use an Orban Optimod 8182A for multiband compression? I understand that they LPF at 15KHz for broadcast but I need to do that anyway for the vinyl mastering. Otherwise could I make one of these monsters work well? The reason I pick this is because no.1, I don't own a multiband compressor and can't afford to buy one and no.2, I know of one or two broadcast engineers who might be able to get one on loan for me ;-). What do you guys think?

For vinyl mastering I have read that only a little compression should be used with no peak limiting. I must LPF at 15KHz and HPF at 40Hz. I must mono everything below 300Hz. I must de-ess the hell out of vocals. Any other ideas/do I even need to do all of this? I am in contact with the cutter himself so he's also giving me pointers.

If I'm doing test mixes onto say cassette (keeping the whole project analog!B-)) or CD will this give me the wrong idea of the sound of the finished vinyl? I have asked about a test pressing but am waiting to hear back from the cutter.

Thanks in advance for any advice! Hopefully I have posted this in the right section and hopefully I can make a really warm yet gritty-sounding recording from the gear I have!... Overdriven valve-powered springline reverbs etc!!!

Vinny
 
I'm looking forward to reading all about your process. I would love to see some shots of your setup as well. This is going to be great!

In speaking with the guy who will be cutting the vinyl, has he said you need all this gear? I would guess the process of putting the low end in mono and the RIAA EQ curve can, and should, be taken care of by the guy running the lathe. It's pretty standard equipment if you are cutting vinyl and was been standardized decades ago.

Likewise, skip the multi-band compressor and, if you want to compress the whole mix, use a more traditional unit on the mixbus. I would use it on an insert and mix through it from the start if you want the compression. When you are printing your mixes leave that setup in place and listen to the outputs of the 2 track to hear what the mix will sound like.

Seems to me that prepping the mix for vinyl will be nearly impossible for you to do well. The sound actually recorded to a record is miles away from what you hear though the speakers and with no way to listen to the final product how can you know if you've done it right or if it sounds Ok? Making a mistake on the low end, especially with something has dynamic as punk music, can make the needle jump right out of the groove!

If the people cutting the record can't do all the final processing for to make it vinyl ready I would look elsewhere or find a mastering facility that will do it for you. Maybe I'm being too conservative...

In any case, enjoy the process and if possible detail it here on the forum!

Robert
 
Yes, please do detail the process here in the forum. I would be interested in pursuing something like this in the near future also.
 
I would still take a digital safety copy before sending the masters off. Or an analogue one if you do have two master recorders.
For vinyl, I believe the usual arrangement was that the original master would be copied to a duplication master with the necessary compression and filtering applied then - you wouldn't apply it to the final mix.
That said, I remember reading that it's best to pan the bass centre when mixing the song so that it doesn't cause problems if pressing on vinyl. Though I do note that this was absolutely NOT done on the stereo mix of 'SF Sorrow' in the 60s (the bass actually flips from L to R during the beginning of one song).
 
Thanks for the replies guys.

sr71rules:

Yea I've been chatting to the cutter more and he said he can do the HPF and LPF and the mono bass isn't that critical. He just said to make sure that I don't hard-pan any bass, which I don't intend to do anyway. Yes I am still thinking of sending it to a professional who can master for vinyl. It will end up being pretty expensive though seeing as we want it 100% analog and onto a 1/4" master tape for the finish. I intend to use a nice PRO VLA vactrol compressor on the overall mix. I must admit that I don't have a posh range of processors in my humble studio. The raw sound from the 1" 8T is already sounding bloody wicked though and I'm laying onto it pretty hot so I hope that it won't need much post processing.

tapewolf:

Yes a digital safe copy is a good idea! Even the other day we had a scare where the tape lifter started playing up and we were laying down takes with the tape partly lifted from the heads! Not nice... But with this project we'd be better off recording the whole thing again rather than compromising by bouncing in a digital copy... Anal I know but analog is the only way here! :-)

For the mixing I'm using a rather battered A&H System 8 16:8:2 console onto an Otari MX5050 2 track machine. I intend to use an old 1970s PA head for reverb (looong springline!) plus maybe the reverb section of a Fender hybrid valve pre-amp that I built for the right channel. The main thing I want to achieve is a warm stereo reverb with a bit of delay too. I am also gonna wire my Tascam 48 with the repro head fed back into the desk so that I can get a form of tape echo on it. Obviously the tape speed will only give me some variation on echo time but it'll be fun messing with it! :-)

We're also hoping to bounce some of the tracks to the Tascam 48 1/2" and bring it to a local historic site where there's a long tunnel and the natural reverb is phenominal! Push it through some PA speakers and catch it at the far end or somewhere in the middle to get some totally natural reverb! I'm getting quite obsessive with this project as you can see. But I love it! I mean, natural reverb, what more could you want!?

I'll post some photos of the humble setup soon!
 
OK so just to dig up an old thread! Here we go! Finally, we did our first proper session onto the big fat Otari 1" 8 track a few weeks ago. Just a few songs from which we are picking two for a split 7" single in conjunction with a Liverpool band that we will be touring with in May. We have since added a 2nd guitar track and overdubbed the vocals with condenser mics and are now in the process of mixing and mastering. It's plain and simple loud poppy punk rock with no frills. I now have the studio set up in the way that I wanna do the mix-downs. Here it goes:

Otari MX70 playing 8 tracks into an Allen & Heath Mix Wizard (I must get a big analog console soon!)

Various "entry level" compressors on drums, bass and vox, with an ART Pro VLA tube opto compressor on the full mix.

Tape echo is being provided by 6 tracks of a Tascam 48, sending the initial signal to ch1, taking the Repro head signal out and then back into ch2 and so on. Each one is panned L-R-L-R-L-R to get a stereo bouncing echo effect. This takes up 6 channels of the desk.

Distortion to add thick harmonics and grittiness to vocals is done through a Bass Big Muff stomp box, fed to a Drawmer noise gate to kill the noise in between vocal spurts, then to a Tokai Analog Chorus pedal to create a stereo image. Back into desk on a stereo return.

Finally, reverb for the drums is created by feeding drums into a Fender Blues Deville/Twin hybrid home-made pre-amp, overdriven slightly with reverb up to max and then fed back into the desk.

All of this is going through the PRO VLA compressor and then pretty hot onto a Tascam 32 1/2" 2 track. I did the first mix like this at the weekend and I'm pretty pleased with it! I'll post pics of my setup very soon. An automated desk would be a massive help but I kinda like the "performance art" of a manual mixdown :-). As you can see my setup is humble but for the music we are creating, maybe we don't need much more...
 
Pictures and samples are a must! Can't wait to hear more about this setup. Sounds awesome!
 
vinyvamos,

I'm not clear on what you are trying to achieve by having a 100% analog chain. Releasing an album on vinyl is one thing. But removing any digital stage from the signal chain will make no audible difference to the final product.
The only difference will be that you can truthfully state on the record cover that the signal chain was 100% analog, which is meaningless to most people.

Tim
 
Move along Gillett! This is an analog forum.

And yes, a total analog chain has no digital artifacts. Get over it. And more importantly why the hell do you come to an analog forum just to make waves? That's all you've done since day one. Get off!
 
Hey, I can hear it too now that you mention it.

Herm said:
Sounds like Tim G needs to go see the audioligist
Click to expand...

Yeah Herm, me and the countless others (amateur and professional) all over the world who use digital audio in production and cant hear the digital artifacts. Us and the countless millions of consumers all over the world who listen to CD's, DVD's, digital radio, digital TV and cinema digital audio and cant hear the artifacts. None of us can hear the artifacts.

Tim
 
Tim, I really think it just boils down to a personal choice. Recording analog is a lot of fun for a lot of people. I don't like "looking" at my audio on a screen, and I don't enjoy mixing with a mouse. It's just a personal preference.

Just because something is more convenient doesn't mean doing it another way has no value whatsoever. If it makes someone happy to do it another way, then who are you (or anyone) to question that? (presuming, of course, they're not harming anyone else in the process)
 
Tim Gillett said:
None of us can hear the artifacts.Tim
Click to expand...

The fact that pretty much all of the most influential and highly regarded bands of the past decade (Radiohead, Arcade Fire, Foo Fighters, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Deerhunter, Ryan Adams and many others) all record to analog and most of there albums have been 100% analog (NO computers or digital processing) tells me that a lot of people prefer the analog recording whether they know it or not.

Of course you could argue that it's just the music and not the recording that makes them top artists... but then that just means they are recording to analog because they find the process easier or more inspiring - which is probably more important than the sound quality anyway
 
Yeah, RHCP, Foos, doesn't really matter what you record with if you're gonna master stuff like that. Might as well use a Mr. Microphone. Preferably one with the T-Pain effect to fix Kiedis :D

Note how SA vs. BSSM are pretty much the same pre-master recording chain and can be the same consumer format (CD), but one sounds quite a lot different than the other :(
 
Tim Gillett said:
None of us can hear the artifacts.
Click to expand...

Tim, the painfully obvious answer is that many people can hear the artifacts and others don't seem to be so sensitive to it that it interferes with listening on a conscious level. That's simply the answer and end of debate. You can continue with the vain babbling, but there is a correct answer and that is it. The mistake you and many others continue to make is to believe you and your limitations are representative of, “everybody else.”

Again, for the millionth time, the people that can witness a phenomenon have the advantage in a logical debate. Someone like Chuck Yeagar with 20/10 vision is a witness that there is something beyond that which you can detect with your poorer vision. When your senses are inadequate you have to ask someone else. That’s probably the best analogy and the closest to bringing this down to a 3rd grade level of comprehension I can manage without having a lobotomy or burning my brain to a cinder by dropping acid until I can’t dress myself. Logical debate isn’t simply whatever you decide to make up. There’s nothing mystical or confusing about it. The evidence presented is overwhelming… simply the sheer number of people in the civilized world that have consistently testified for decades to something objectionable and interfering with their enjoyment of digitally sampled (recorded) music.

There would be no controversy if the phenomenon didn’t first bother a large segment of the population and continue to do so.

For some reason there’s this irrational belief among many music people that everyone is somehow blessed with the same sensitivities when it comes to hearing. People are not wired the same in any of our physical senses. We are all quite different.

You don’t see people hanging their heads in shame because they must wear corrective lenses… glasses and/or contacts, but there seems to be this denial when it comes to audio perception. It’s irrational because it goes against everything we know about sensory perception in human physiology. And that is we are absolutely not created equal in how we are wired. People can share broad commonalities in large enough groups that the groups are quite distinct from one another.

Here’s the bottom line if you want to be correct rather than simply argue with no intentions of reaching any conclusions.

1. There are people who are bothered by digital artifacts and are consciously aware that certain digital processing is the source of an unpleasantness in music recording and reproduction.

2. There are people who are negatively affected to varying degrees by certain digital artifacts, but generally lack the understanding and vocabulary to connect the dots and verbalize the source of the unpleasantness. This category may be the largest category, and as a music professional you should be concerned about the impact on recorded music from either an artistic or purely economic perspective… or a bit of both. This segment is most likely to be controlled unaware… pushed and pulled to and away from certain genres based on subtle aural pain avoidance. Their listening habits largely depend on recording formats and processing.

3. There are people who really don’t seem to be bothered enough by digital artifacts to impact their tastes or enjoyment of recorded music.

If you fit into category number 3 you should be concerned about 1 and 2… those unlike yourself who can hear hash and crap in the music you create, record, produce, etc. Anything less and you really don’t care that much about your generation’s turn at keeping the music flame burning for posterity. In that case we also have a debate between people who don’t care and people who do. Maybe that’s even the larger context of this issue when it comes down to brass tacks.

If you really care about how your or your client’s music is received it’s going to be more important for you to actually be correct rather than appear correct, even if you stand corrected. I call that a professional attitude. Anything less is jacking off.
 
mshilarious said:
Yeah, RHCP, Foos, doesn't really matter what you record with if you're gonna master stuff like that. Might as well use a Mr. Microphone. Preferably one with the T-Pain effect to fix Kiedis :D

Note how SA vs. BSSM are pretty much the same pre-master recording chain and can be the same consumer format (CD), but one sounds quite a lot different than the other :(
Click to expand...

Rock and Roll seems to be more popular here than some "Pretentious" Grandpa Classical Music.

VP
 
Beck said:
Tim, the painfully obvious answer is that many people can hear the artifacts and others don't seem to be so sensitive to it that it interferes with listening on a conscious level. That's simply the answer and end of debate. You can continue with the vain babbling, but there is a correct answer and that is it. The mistake you and many others continue to make is to believe you and your limitations are representative of, “everybody else.”

Again, for the millionth time, the people that can witness a phenomenon have the advantage in a logical debate. Someone like Chuck Yeagar with 20/10 vision is a witness that there is something beyond that which you can detect with your poorer vision. When your senses are inadequate you have to ask someone else. That’s probably the best analogy and the closest to bringing this down to a 3rd grade level of comprehension I can manage without having a lobotomy or burning my brain to a cinder by dropping acid until I can’t dress myself. Logical debate isn’t simply whatever you decide to make up. There’s nothing mystical or confusing about it. The evidence presented is overwhelming… simply the sheer number of people in the civilized world that have consistently testified for decades to something objectionable and interfering with their enjoyment of digitally sampled (recorded) music.

There would be no controversy if the phenomenon didn’t first bother a large segment of the population and continue to do so.

For some reason there’s this irrational belief among many music people that everyone is somehow blessed with the same sensitivities when it comes to hearing. People are not wired the same in any of our physical senses. We are all quite different.

You don’t see people hanging their heads in shame because they must wear corrective lenses… glasses and/or contacts, but there seems to be this denial when it comes to audio perception. It’s irrational because it goes against everything we know about sensory perception in human physiology. And that is we are absolutely not created equal in how we are wired. People can share broad commonalities in large enough groups that the groups are quite distinct from one another.

Here’s the bottom line if you want to be correct rather than simply argue with no intentions of reaching any conclusions.

1. There are people who are bothered by digital artifacts and are consciously aware that certain digital processing is the source of an unpleasantness in music recording and reproduction.

2. There are people who are negatively affected to varying degrees by certain digital artifacts, but generally lack the understanding and vocabulary to connect the dots and verbalize the source of the unpleasantness. This category may be the largest category, and as a music professional you should be concerned about the impact on recorded music from either an artistic or purely economic perspective… or a bit of both. This segment is most likely to be controlled unaware… pushed and pulled to and away from certain genres based on subtle aural pain avoidance. Their listening habits largely depend on recording formats and processing.

3. There are people who really don’t seem to be bothered enough by digital artifacts to impact their tastes or enjoyment of recorded music.

If you fit into category number 3 you should be concerned about 1 and 2… those unlike yourself who can hear hash and crap in the music you create, record, produce, etc. Anything less and you really don’t care that much about your generation’s turn at keeping the music flame burning for posterity. In that case we also have a debate between people who don’t care and people who do. Maybe that’s even the larger context of this issue when it comes down to brass tacks.

If you really care about how your or your client’s music is received it’s going to be more important for you to actually be correct rather than appear correct, even if you stand corrected. I call that a professional attitude. Anything less is jacking off.
Click to expand...

Brilliant!

VP
 
Victory Pete said:
Rock and Roll seems to be more popular here than some "Pretentious" Grandpa Classical Music.

VP
Click to expand...

Once again VP you miss the point by several miles. All of those artists' recordings in the last ten years are rather terrible masters that people mostly heard sourced from CD. Yeah, some of them had vinyl releases, but relatively few people have heard them and the vinyl gets almost no radio airplay. When you hear "Around the World" or "Snow" on the radio, you're hearing digital, and a rather bad digital master at that, and that's what fans seem to like . . . they are great songs, even with Kiedis' vocals :D The funny thing is the equally analog production/digital CDs they did before 1998 sound great, even though the digital equipment should have been lower grade. So it's clear that bad sound has little to do with tools and much to do with method.

Yeah, the bands like analog (although Radiohead, for example, has a massively non-linear hybrid approach, and most of the others had hybrid production too), but the fans don't hear it. Just a few of the vinyl fanbois, and they are probably still hearing a vinyl master sourced from a (different) digital master or maybe a tape master sourced from PT that is a mix off of 2" that might be a recording of, among other things, digitally generated noises.

Which pretty much destroys Beck's argument about digital artifacts, because once introduced they cannot go away by using a process that is more linear. There is no such thing as a magic box that can remove distortion once printed. So most of those vinyl releases should sound like ass, according to Beck, but they probably sound pretty much like any other vinyl release.

Also, R&R *is* grandpa music. If you doubt that, I'll forward you some of the emails I get from their agents. Wanna book the "Teen Idol" tour? Nope, not Bieber: Noone, Dolenz, and Lindsay.

BTW do you like Radiohead, Foos, and RHCP (all of whose members are over 40 now)? Did you like Nirvana? You seem to like more dinosaur rock bands like Floyd from what you usually say.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top