regebro
Insane Genious!
The more I've learned about the differences between analog and digital, the more I have been forced to this conclusion: Analog rocks, because it sounds "bad". Or rather, it sounds *inaccurate*.
When recording to tape, you will typically get a bit of tape compression, becuase you are pushing the tape to not get any noise. And with all narrowband formats you'll get humps and bumps in the lower bass. Your tape machine will not have an exactly flat frequency response, but will have add a gently swaying EQ on everything.
Then you run it through a mixer, that will have it's own little tricks running. It will have an EQ that will force it's particular sound onto everything you run through it (at least unless you bypass the EQ). And EQ's that are deemed "musical" are typically those that have a particular and distinct sound.
SO what's the result of all this? Well, the result is that both the tape machine, and the mixer, no matter WHAT you do, will shape and distort your signal. In effect, everything you have on that tape will be slightly compressed, with the tape nice mellow compressor (tape) and filtered a bit with some nice mellow filters (tape and mixer). The result: Coherence. Everything will sound a bit more "the same" than it did when it came streaming out as electrons from your mic preamp. And of course, your mics and mic preamps will help too (although that is true for digital too).
Digital however, either adds evil distortion, or is crystal clear! Garbage in - Garbage out. If you can't find that right mic/preamp combination to make the guitar sit right in the mix, you will have to use those crystal clear filters to find the problem. Tweak, tweak, tweak, and finally you just slap loads of reverb on the mix to get rid of the problem.
That's why it was much simpler to mix my stuff when I used a 4-track casette. I pushed those measly casette tapes as hard as I could, got loads of tape compression, and the el-cheapo Boss mixer I used makes everything sound exactly the same. No swaying levels, no frequencies that stand out and just doesn't fit in the mix. You record, put everything to the right level, and the mix is done, and it sounded great! Now I have an 8-track that is much more accurate, and I sync the synthesizers so they never go to tape at all. It gets harder.
Analog is just easier to get to sound right!
When recording to tape, you will typically get a bit of tape compression, becuase you are pushing the tape to not get any noise. And with all narrowband formats you'll get humps and bumps in the lower bass. Your tape machine will not have an exactly flat frequency response, but will have add a gently swaying EQ on everything.
Then you run it through a mixer, that will have it's own little tricks running. It will have an EQ that will force it's particular sound onto everything you run through it (at least unless you bypass the EQ). And EQ's that are deemed "musical" are typically those that have a particular and distinct sound.
SO what's the result of all this? Well, the result is that both the tape machine, and the mixer, no matter WHAT you do, will shape and distort your signal. In effect, everything you have on that tape will be slightly compressed, with the tape nice mellow compressor (tape) and filtered a bit with some nice mellow filters (tape and mixer). The result: Coherence. Everything will sound a bit more "the same" than it did when it came streaming out as electrons from your mic preamp. And of course, your mics and mic preamps will help too (although that is true for digital too).
Digital however, either adds evil distortion, or is crystal clear! Garbage in - Garbage out. If you can't find that right mic/preamp combination to make the guitar sit right in the mix, you will have to use those crystal clear filters to find the problem. Tweak, tweak, tweak, and finally you just slap loads of reverb on the mix to get rid of the problem.
That's why it was much simpler to mix my stuff when I used a 4-track casette. I pushed those measly casette tapes as hard as I could, got loads of tape compression, and the el-cheapo Boss mixer I used makes everything sound exactly the same. No swaying levels, no frequencies that stand out and just doesn't fit in the mix. You record, put everything to the right level, and the mix is done, and it sounded great! Now I have an 8-track that is much more accurate, and I sync the synthesizers so they never go to tape at all. It gets harder.
Analog is just easier to get to sound right!