Why Analog?

[nate_dennis]

At first, I thought of making this a poll. But I don't want easily catergorized answers.

Why did you choose to work in the analog world? I know there are a lot of reasons, and a lot of you don't work exclusively with tape. I'm really interested to find out your positions.

 

[sweetbeats]

I've told this story before.

I started in analog as a child. My brother and I used to record our own "radio shows" on my dad's Sony TC-630...sound-on-sound and an echo circuit. Too much fun for two young boys.

Became consistently active as an instrumentalist late in high school; had been around instrumentalists in my family (mom: and excellent concert pianist; dad: a wonderful classical guitarist and trombonist; brother: a synth guy and drummer and all-around technologist) but the bug caught up with me late in the teenage years. Almost coincident with the sudden and passionate interest in music came the piece related to recording. I had tech in my blood from computers to audio electronics. My dad had a monster set of Altec theatre drivers in the living room with a McIntosh tube amp...Ravel's Bolero and Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries were favorites as a tot. The Sony deck, my brother's audiophile interest...I can remember ads for the Teac 5 mixers in magazines my brother had though I had no clue what they were for.

I started doing my own recordings on my Onkyo cassette deck in college and yearned to be able to multitrack. Wasn't until after college that that dream came to a reality after scraping together the funds to get a locally sold Teac 3340S with some dbx units...can't remember the model number but they had barrier strips on the back for interconnects, two channels per 1U rackmount unit, and I had by that time an ART Phantom 1608 mixer. I had been playing for a number of years by this point and had been around mics and PA and recording equipment from bands I was in. My dream deck at the time was a Tascam TSR-8 but was WAY beyond my reach not even being present on the used market yet and still available new.

The digital age was booming and I found the inconvenience of the bulky analog gear an impediment as young man with meager means and living arrangements and I was lured by the "clean" sound aspects of digital. My brother had a Sony TCD-D7 portable DAT "Walkman" with which did a bunch of live recording. Quiet yes, but extremely harsh, brittle and squashed sounding, even to my "young" ears. I figured that better digital would sound better, even better than the Teac. The Teac did have some tape hiss but almost none at all using the dbx units. I shammed myself y'know? I remember tracking some electric bass into the Teac at 15ips and accidentally playing back later at 7.5ips and was shocked at the amount of smooth audio detail and information present at the slower speed...it was incredible...and in spite of that I jumped to digital because it was "perfect" and noiseless...and more portable.

I'll spare the detail but the next decade was filled with an ever growing pursuit to find the sound quality I expected in my head through digital equipment as well as a honing of a DAW system that worked for me. I found the DAW system that works for me but it was on a 2006 CD project, while mixing the drums, that I finally realized that I couldn't stand the lack of dynamic headroom...I felt like I had run out of options for trying to find the breath in the tracks. It was very frustrating. For the first time in years I started considering the "compromise" of going back to analog.

My response to that was to dabble in analog by getting a Tascam 238. The 238 I got was not operating as advertised and I ended up returning it, but even with 3 of the 8 tracks barely operating, the results of a riffed short song blew me away by the amount of warmth and dynamic flex in the medium. At that point it became a search for a 1/2" 8-track and shortly after finding that I came to realize the need for and value of an analog mixer. Over the past 3 years my ears and mind have opened up to a much greater understanding of how digital and analog audio work, where there strengths and weaknesses are and how that fits into what I like and what I do. I appreciate the power, flexibility and speed of digital tools, but I love the visceral and natural fundamentals of analog, so I consider and treat the analog tools as the hub of the studio with the digital tools as helpers.

 

[dodgeaspen]

99% of the music I listen to was recorded in analog. The pics of the engineer behind the console with the big reels recording all the music. As a young child I remember being amazed and in aw of the spinning reels. I started recording early on a Teac X-7R and was amazed at the sound quality (this was late 80's and the digital movement was on it's way. I always remember the digital sound was different but I couldn't explain why. To me it had lost the meat or the feeling to a song that was available in analog. I've always loved recording something and flipping the tape around to listen to it backwards like The Beatles and other favorite bands did years before. Now I would love nothing better then to produce an all analog product, but with MP3 players and things my goal is less obtainable. I love the sound my 38 gives me. I really love to turn the knobs and move the faders while tracking. In my limited experience recording in digital I believe their is a disconnection of something, like, I don't know, a separation from the music. I want to be able to hear what I'm hearing not see what I'm hearing. (If that makes any sense) I've heard that tape is dead, but I hope their are people like us that will keep it alive forever.

 

[Rich Smith]

Nate,

Analog = Draw a long "smooth continuous" line" on a piece of paper. (Smile)
Digital = Draw a long "short-dashed line" on a piece of paper. (Grimace)

Analog = Largely intuitive, user freindly, and compatable with human thought.
Digital = Mostly cerebral and usually requires those obnoxious clickity keyboards.

Analog = Service Tech's are now mostly old guy's... getting older.
Digital = Hardware/software follows PC model of perpetual upgrade and obsolescence.

Analog = Now an old-school "niche" process.... future uncertain.
Digital = It's the current and future process.... (sob, wail, cry)

I'm 62 and have confidence that ANALOG will still be around for the next 38 years.
My goals are meet.

Rich Smith

 

[leddy]

I started doing my own recordings on my Onkyo cassette deck in college and yearned to be able to multitrack. Wasn't until after college that that dream came to a reality after scraping together the funds to get a locally sold Teac 3340S

Crazy. Man I remember how excited I was in high school around 1985 when I had finally earned enough money to buy a Fostex X-15. Ironically, I sold it at a garage sale about two years ago. Still working great.

(Not that an X-15 is anything like a 3340S - just the obsession from a young age part of it...)

 

[DuddyGuy]

well... it started with these forums.

I had a digital set-up with an inadequate mixer and I bought a M-520, so I could have a board that would appropriately deal with my 16 track chained delta 1010 set-up.

I discovered a wealth of information regarding the various uses of this board here, thanks in large part to Cory's M-520 story.

I fell in love with the M-520 board.

I lurked here for forever and eventually I realised if you really want to know what your doing with digital recording equipment, you have to have a fundamental base understanding of analog equipment, as most digital technology is based off of the fundamental ideas and practices involved in analog recording. Studios have been recording in analog formats for a hundred years, digital has only been around for twenty five or thirty years. Once I realized this I also realized I could hear the difference between the digital and analog formats (particularly in the drums and the vocals) in recordings I listened to, and almost always preferred the sound of the analog machine. Any one and his brother can come up with a decent recording off of an unlimited track digital machine... but the guys who were making all the great recordings during the "analog only" era really knew what they were doing, working with mainly four-track machines, eight tracks if they were lucky!.

I decided I wanted to gain the knowledge of the masters from the past, and have been trying to eliminate as much digital gadgetry from my set-up as possible, I hope to eventually eliminate all digital from my system and work with a true analog setup.

This is why I choose analog.

 

[SteveM]

Crazy. Man I remember how excited I was in high school around 1985 when I had finally earned enough money to buy a Fostex X-15. Ironically, I sold it at a garage sale about two years ago. Still working great.

(Not that an X-15 is anything like a 3340S - just the obsession from a young age part of it...)

Same here. I still have my x-15! I had the little compressor too but I sold it.

The guitars and bass on this song was recorded on it way back when I got it.
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_songInfo.cfm?bandID=794987&songID=8205057

 

[Fuzzhead]

I was born in '89... just barely old enough to have memories of putting cassette tapes into my tape deck to listen along to children's music (Raffi anyone?) and kid's books-on-tape (*sound effect* "Turn the page!") The hiss, the wait for the leader tape to pass before the material started, the clicking of the mechanical parts inside the deck, the constant need to rewind and flip the tape over... it's all so nostalgic for me. I love those stupid little cassette tapes and how they sound... the compression and the squashed high-end just sound pleasant to me (apparently, I still had a good ear back then for sound quality). I just like the way music recorded onto tape sounds to me, and that's definitely worth the trade-off of convenience, occasionally broken equipment, having to find a blank cassette to use, etc.

Portastudios 4 Lyfe.

 

[Chilljam]

Well i started up a band when i was 15. We were just jamming and improvising and stuff not really too concerned with doing anything too productive. We were jamming for about 4 or 5 hours every week on a regular basis. After a few months we won a small band competition and the prizes were about 200 dollars worth of stuff.

We sold it all and decided to buy something we could record with because up until then we had been using a video camera and we didn't have laptops so we couldn't record on computer. After a bit of research, we found really the only thing we could afford with the $200 (australian dollars by the way so its about 100 us dollars) was a tape recorder. I searched all music shops and none had it so i searched on ebay and after a few weeks i found a cassette recorder that could record 4 tracks simultaneously! this was huge, we had guitar, keys and drums so this was perfect because we wanted to record live. So we bought the Fostex X-24 for the 200 we had and each of us got together all of the cassette tapes our parents and grandparents had and recorded our 4 or 5 hour jams every week for about a year. I still have all those recordings, safely stored on my hard drive, each jam session dated.

After a while we found a singer, started doing some cover songs, landed a few gigs and wanted a 'professional' demo so we saved a bit and bought a 16 track Roland VS-1680. Geeze we were pumped, now we could sound really professional and we weren't limited to 4 tracks anymore. We didn't really do any "live recording where you let the tape roll for the whole day and just play your instruments and not worry about the fact that you were being recorded" type recording and we stopped doing our regular jams and concentrated on learning cover songs and organizing more stuctured songs suitable for singing. We recorded dozens of cover songs and originals over the course of a couple of years using the trusty Roland digital workstation. About July last year, we worked out our best original songs, got together for 4 days and recorded an album, making it clean, clear and as professional sounding as we could. We were really happy with it, sounded great, proud of the songs.

Between the recording of that album in July last year and december of last year, we jammed a bit less, about once every 2 or 3 weeks... not really sure what to do next, i think it was because we sort of already got our shit together and made a properly cut album.
So there was a lot more 'listening' and looking back during that time rather just '"in the moment - ok that's done now lets move on" sort of thing.
We always enjoyed sometimes casually listening back to our old cassette recordings as it was interesting the stuff we came up with, but we really appreciated the character and qualities of that sort of style.

I also started listening to the recordings of some albums rather than just the instrumentation, vocals and lyrics of music. I really appreciated the sonic qualities and characteristics of The Doors' albums, especially liked the sound of Kind Of Blue and just how, although primitive technology one would suspect compared to digital, it sounded nice. Then when i heard Ryan Adam's music, i loved it, it was great and it sounded like it was all done on analog. His first album heartbreaker... there was no digital reverb, there was no keyboards, there was no digital effects, you could hear tape hiss, you could hear the tube distortion when he sang louder into the microphone, hell you can even hear him in the same room talking with the drummer and bass player seconds before the start of the songs. It actually sounded good, it was a professional album... appeals to the general public yet isn't crystal clear, sharp sound.

So here was a guy that was great, could have made the cleanest, heavily compressed, layered and complex recording out there but chose based on sonic qualities and characteristics not too.
We started looking around for a reel to reel recorder. We missed being a bit different just recording ourselves jamming. We bought a fostex R8... 8 tracks was the right amount for us, low cost machine, not too hard to maintain, very cheap and easy to find 1/4 inch tape. It's been working for us the R8, the roland 16 track got sold, sold it for about as much as we bought it. Been recording covers and originals on it with no problems, replaced the digital demo tape on our website for cover songs with cover songs recorded on tape.... sounds pretty much just as good but of course my recording techniques and knowledge has improved a lot over time but still... it's pretty good.

I fondly believe that among other things... the way you record your songs really not only changes the sound of your recordings,, but also the style of your songs... i noticed everytime we changed the way we recorded, we also changed the style of songs we wrote to sort of compliment the recording medium and style.

And to think that when we bought the Fostex X-24 when we were 16... not once did it occur to us to check the condition of the machine, to ask if it was maintained, to maintain it ourselves (clean the heads hey? umm what are the heads?) never even heard of demag or calibrate... what are high bias tapes....?
All we knew was that we needed something that had 4 inputs so we could plug 4 microphones in it, press record and just play... we still think those recordings sound great.... and here i am today recording a song in my room onto that same Fostex X-24.

 

[SteveM]

I tried digital for about 5 years, using a Roland VS workstation. It's decent but I was spending money like crazy trying to get sounds like my 2340sx and it was never going to happen. Not that there isn't better digital equipment, but why bother? I've heard many who use digital say you need to do all kinds of maintenance on a regular basis, upgrades, backups, so on. It's more convenient in ways but not really. Analog sounds better and it's what all the music I love was recorded on.

 

[jedblue]

Hmm, well now, my first audio recording setup was an analog eight track with a 16 channel board and a VHS stereo video for mastering, the second was a combo of 16 track analog, 32 channel board and DAT mastering. Then I stopped for a decade. Then when I got back into it there was the Boss BR1600 digital multitracker which I still have and still use a lot. Then there is the current acres of spacejunk.

The space junk was, ah, aquired, as part of creating the 'sound' of The Lonely Few which was built around a guitarist who used to be a drummer and had never played guitar in a band, a drummer who had never played in a band before and just wanted to bash the shit out of the kit and me doing everything else. Lonely Few instruments are all old, valve and analog (as are the members) so it seemed that if it was to record (which it always was going to do) then it also had to be analog.

So one thing led to another including sourcing an old Studer desk, a Revox 99 to record on and a bunch of old EV, AKG and Sennheiser mikes to do it with. And having recorded it then had to be mastered which led to another tape deck and a bunch of outboards like 5 band parametrics & 3 band limiters and all and that led to some more effects like an old flanger, a Nagra IV for tape echo and resurecting a Roland RX-100 spring reverb.

And having recorded and mastered the stuff and dubbed it off to cassette it needed some sort of distribution so that led to the micro cassette label and doing all of this hoo ha intrigued a few mates who now wanted to record their bands on tape so there was some more projects. Then the Lonely Few guitarist wanted to record his solo topical folk stuff so that went to tape first and then to digital and so on and so on and so on.

Getting back into all analog went back to a party at our house three years go when the drummer, who's youngest child is friend's with our youngest, said "I need to play in a band man" and me trying him on a few different genres and realising that he had no idea where (or what) the one was (or the two, three and four) so if something was to be done for him it'd better be something he can just bash away inside of and it not to be too much of a problem. Hence 'The Lonely Few' experimental crash bash noise band.

And if it was going to be all analog instruments and make up it's own creations and they were going to be recorded then there was only one way to do it and that didn't need to be multitracked - just live to two track TAPE TAPE TAPE.

And it sounded great.

So there you go.

 

[DuddyGuy]

I tried digital for about 5 years, using a Roland VS workstation. It's decent but I was spending money like crazy trying to get sounds like my 2340sx and it was never going to happen. Not that there isn't better digital equipment, but why bother? I've heard many who use digital say you need to do all kinds of maintenance on a regular basis, upgrades, backups, so on. It's more convenient in ways but not really. Analog sounds better and it's what all the music I love was recorded on.

I have to agree... I have a a-2340 (no s no x) but everything I have used it for sounds so good! I just came up on a Tascam 48 but I think my 2340 still will sound better (apparently it's all discreet circuitry with maybe one IC but I haven't been able to find it, any one able to confirm?) I wish it had the ease of use and availability of a digital set-up combined with the great sound of my 1970's TEAC. Still digging your stuff by the way Steve.!

 

[SteveM]

Yeah, Ryan Adams is good and his recordings. Ethan Johns produced him, Kings of Leon, Ray LaMontagne ....... All recorded on tape. Some of the best recordings of recent times.

Well i started up a band when i was 15. We were just jamming and improvising and stuff not really too concerned with doing anything too productive. We were jamming for about 4 or 5 hours every week on a regular basis. After a few months we won a small band competition and the prizes were about 200 dollars worth of stuff.

We sold it all and decided to buy something we could record with because up until then we had been using a video camera and we didn't have laptops so we couldn't record on computer. After a bit of research, we found really the only thing we could afford with the $200 (australian dollars by the way so its about 100 us dollars) was a tape recorder. I searched all music shops and none had it so i searched on ebay and after a few weeks i found a cassette recorder that could record 4 tracks simultaneously! this was huge, we had guitar, keys and drums so this was perfect because we wanted to record live. So we bought the Fostex X-24 for the 200 we had and each of us got together all of the cassette tapes our parents and grandparents had and recorded our 4 or 5 hour jams every week for about a year. I still have all those recordings, safely stored on my hard drive, each jam session dated.

After a while we found a singer, started doing some cover songs, landed a few gigs and wanted a 'professional' demo so we saved a bit and bought a 16 track Roland VS-1680. Geeze we were pumped, now we could sound really professional and we weren't limited to 4 tracks anymore. We didn't really do any "live recording where you let the tape roll for the whole day and just play your instruments and not worry about the fact that you were being recorded" type recording and we stopped doing our regular jams and concentrated on learning cover songs and organizing more stuctured songs suitable for singing. We recorded dozens of cover songs and originals over the course of a couple of years using the trusty Roland digital workstation. About July last year, we worked out our best original songs, got together for 4 days and recorded an album, making it clean, clear and as professional sounding as we could. We were really happy with it, sounded great, proud of the songs.

Between the recording of that album in July last year and december of last year, we jammed a bit less, about once every 2 or 3 weeks... not really sure what to do next, i think it was because we sort of already got our shit together and made a properly cut album.
So there was a lot more 'listening' and looking back during that time rather just '"in the moment - ok that's done now lets move on" sort of thing.
We always enjoyed sometimes casually listening back to our old cassette recordings as it was interesting the stuff we came up with, but we really appreciated the character and qualities of that sort of style.

I also started listening to the recordings of some albums rather than just the instrumentation, vocals and lyrics of music. I really appreciated the sonic qualities and characteristics of The Doors' albums, especially liked the sound of Kind Of Blue and just how, although primitive technology one would suspect compared to digital, it sounded nice. Then when i heard Ryan Adam's music, i loved it, it was great and it sounded like it was all done on analog. His first album heartbreaker... there was no digital reverb, there was no keyboards, there was no digital effects, you could hear tape hiss, you could hear the tube distortion when he sang louder into the microphone, hell you can even hear him in the same room talking with the drummer and bass player seconds before the start of the songs. It actually sounded good, it was a professional album... appeals to the general public yet isn't crystal clear, sharp sound.

So here was a guy that was great, could have made the cleanest, heavily compressed, layered and complex recording out there but chose based on sonic qualities and characteristics not too.
We started looking around for a reel to reel recorder. We missed being a bit different just recording ourselves jamming. We bought a fostex R8... 8 tracks was the right amount for us, low cost machine, not too hard to maintain, very cheap and easy to find 1/4 inch tape. It's been working for us the R8, the roland 16 track got sold, sold it for about as much as we bought it. Been recording covers and originals on it with no problems, replaced the digital demo tape on our website for cover songs with cover songs recorded on tape.... sounds pretty much just as good but of course my recording techniques and knowledge has improved a lot over time but still... it's pretty good.

I fondly believe that among other things... the way you record your songs really not only changes the sound of your recordings,, but also the style of your songs... i noticed everytime we changed the way we recorded, we also changed the style of songs we wrote to sort of compliment the recording medium and style.

And to think that when we bought the Fostex X-24 when we were 16... not once did it occur to us to check the condition of the machine, to ask if it was maintained, to maintain it ourselves (clean the heads hey? umm what are the heads?) never even heard of demag or calibrate... what are high bias tapes....?
All we knew was that we needed something that had 4 inputs so we could plug 4 microphones in it, press record and just play... we still think those recordings sound great.... and here i am today recording a song in my room onto that same Fostex X-24.

 

[SteveM]

Thanks Duddy.

The 2340 is a great sounding deck... and the 3340. My recordings kept getting better and better... and then I sold it and went digital. But then I bought another.

I'm not sure exactly what makes it sound so good but if you listen to Richard Kings recordings on his 3340 you can hear it in the cymbals there too. It's that quad sound!

You can still multi-track on the a-2340 right? It's just missing the extras?

I have to agree... I have a a-2340 (no s no x) but everything I have used it for sounds so good! I just came up on a Tascam 48 but I think my 2340 still will sound better (apparently it's all discreet circuitry with maybe one IC but I haven't been able to find it, any one able to confirm?) I wish it had the ease of use and availability of a digital set-up combined with the great sound of my 1970's TEAC. Still digging your stuff by the way Steve.!

 

[A Reel Person]

When I started,...

tape and recording were synonymous!
So,... what's to choose? Just started that way and stayed the course.
I've "chosen" a few digital recorders much later in the game for novelty effect.

 

[DuddyGuy]

Thanks Duddy. It's that quad sound! The 2340 is a great sounding deck... and the 3340. My recordings kept getting better and better... and then I sold it and went digital. But then I bought another.

You can still multi-track on the a-2340 right? It's just missing the extra things?

my belief is that the biggest difference is that the 3340 can take 10.5" reels, It's still a simul-sync unit. The transport system on the a-2340 is also not solenoid based and uses (I'm about to make up words here) a clutch based switching transport system which can be rather problematic, one of the major upgrades on the 2340 was the a-2340s (which had a solenoid based transport control) . But yes multi tracking is still possible, my simul-sync switches can be noisy and require a little tapping and finesse to get right, but the sound is awesome!. Please correct if I'm spreading misinformation.

I'm actually really Intersested in your recordings Steve, what type of mics, board and tape? As well as any positioning info or other etcetera knowledge. The sound you have got, is the sound I'm aiming for.

 

[Blue Jinn]

Well, as a kid I recorded me faking it on guitar or my friends talking or whatever on one of those old portable cassettes I think they used for dictation?

From that in HS tried to get the jam sessions with my buddies on to something. I once used an 8 track cartridge machine, played that back and tried to use that as a backing track. Problem was the speed was wrong so everything was out of tune.

Well then came college and the earth moved. I bought a Sony TC-277 at a garage sale, for more money than I really had, (bought two more Sony 1/4 tracks at the same garage sale.) This is about 1984? This Sony was a quad deck, but you could record two tracks ("Front") then record two more ("Back") and listen to the first two, so it had simulsync of sorts. I'm sure it wasn't intended for that, but it worked OK. I just sold that thing. Later on bought a JVC 6x2 mixer with a spring reverb. And mixed to one of the other Sony stereo decks. Another lucky break, got a old Buddy Holly electrovoice mike for free. "Hey throw that out it doesn't work." (The cable needed to be resoldered.) Not only did it sound pretty cool, it looked damn cool.

I bought consumer tape for the Sony: Maxell, because that was the tape I used on the ubiquitous Totally Awesome New Wave Compilation # 44...

No sticky shed, so turns out a wise choice.

A few years later, had a real income and bought a Tascam 38 off a guy who upgraded to a MSR-16. With the exception of a car, that remains my largest expenditure of money on a single item to date, so I'm not about to get rid of it until I get my moneys worth.

I was lucky enough to be around when analog synthesizers went out of fashion. I picked up a Mellotron for $350 at a pawn shop in San Diego and an ARP Quadra for $400.

Don't get me wrong. I also was around when vinyl lost out to CD's, one of the grumpy ones that was pissed off that they cost about $5 more and many of them sounded worse than the vinyl they replaced. So that soured me on digital technology as the be all end all and made me aware of its *limitations* that said, I have plenty of 16 bit samplers (hey offering "CD quality sound") which I find fine for what I'm doing.

Tape is easier to understand, no drivers to mess with, no blue screen of death, no 'buffer overrun' or bitrate error or any number of annoying quirks. However, I've never spliced a tape. The thought of that scares the crap out of me, and it is a lot easier to hit "Normalize" with a mouse, rather than try to get all the levels to match up on a tape. I don't mind using digital to finish something off that is going to wind up on CD anyway, and I don't myself own a record lathe, (although I did see one for sale once in Long Beach, CA and wondered where the hell I'd fit that thing....)

 

[ofajen]

That's what there was in the early 80s (unless your name was Peter Gabriel, and then it didn't matter what you recorded on, it would still be good).

I had a Nak cassette when I started recording music and soon added one of the suitcase style Otari MX-5050 1/4" 4-tracks. That was a nice machine. I used it for several years, and I wish I had kept it. Eventually I ended up with a Tascam 388 and used that for over a decade. I tried a DA-38 but didn't really like. Then I went into the glorious, wide-track world of 3M and Ampex. I still have a 3M mix deck, and I use a Teac 1/4" 4-track and Otari 1/2" 8 track I just got up and running. I also have a Yamaha standalone digital, but it doesn't see much use now that I have all the tape machines working.

I suppose the question is: "why do I still use tape machines?" and these are a few of the key factors:

1) I'm used to them, and don't need to change to get good musical sound.

2) They are designed for recording, not running spreadsheets. No latency.

3) VU meters reflect loudness while stupid, digital peak-only meters don't.

4) Tape multi-tracks and mixes will still be playable in their current form long into the future.

5) My musical nature can coexist with the operation of tape machines, but it pretty much vanishes near a computer screen (with the exception of MIDI on an old Mac laptop).

6) Tape is a shortcut to good musical sound. Tape provides recordings that are pleasant to work with and have stature. There is something about the sound that is viscerally satisfying, that can't easily be described or quantified, but I know it when I hear it.

7) I focus on music, not the latest plug-in.

8) Limited track count fosters decisions, commitment and productivity and encourages focused, minimalist recording practices.

9) Tape is a blank slate when it comes to time. No grids, no bars, no loops, no "clips". You can add that if you want via tape sync, but tape is comfortable with whatever you want to do... it doesn't try to push you into a fixed tempo with tedious looped tracks: the scourge of our musical time.

10) With tape, you will know it if you suck. You need to be able to play some stuff, and pretty much all the way through.

11) Even when they aren't working exactly right, they usually still sound great.

12) They are really cool and fun to tinker with.

13) I like to see the reels turning.

14) I like knowing I can fix my gear if it has a problem, maybe with a little help from my friends.

I'm sure there are more reasons, but you get the idea.

Cheers,

Otto

 

[SteveM]

My set up at the time I recorded the 2340sx songs that are on my Soundclick page was the 2340sx and an M35 mixer. I have both again now. I also used a Traynor YBA 1 bass head on my vocals and bass direct into the M35.. but not really a good idea to do that as I later learned. It didn't blow anything but it can fry your mic amps in the mixer.

I actually might have been going direct into a dbx compressor. Because those amps did get fried.

I had very basic stuff.

I used sm 57 on acoustic guitar and beta sm 58 on vocals plugged into the YBA. I recorded guitar and vocals at the same time on one track.

I used the beta sm 58 hung above the kit as an overhead, sm 57 on the snare and an unknown omni mic on kick. A mic I liked a lot but it broke.
I also used a Dolby unit as effect on the overhead and snare. But I don't really think that's necessary. I think the 2340 really makes the drums sound good and the eq. I think the Dolby unit acted more as a preamp to drive up the signal.

I've saved all my settings. I can get the eq settings for you later if you want to try them out.


I had a method where I would use the same eq settings all the time for instruments, for convenience. And I'd track with eq and reverb. I used a Traynor spring reverb which I still have. The way I came about getting them was by getting the best sound I could get on drums and then went to bass and then to guitar and then vocals. Trying to find a niche for each by eq-ing them on top of each other. And then I just used those settings all the time. As time went on I'd fine tune it.

I have another song I wanted to put up because the recording sounds so good. But I don't like the song.

Getting a good sound on drums is the hardest and most obvious thing on a recording.

There are so many ways to go about it.

my belief is that the biggest difference is that the 3340 can take 10.5" reels, It's still a simul-sync unit. The transport system on the a-2340 is also not solenoid based and uses (I'm about to make up words here) a clutch based switching transport system which can be rather problematic, one of the major upgrades on the 2340 was the a-2340s (which had a solenoid based transport control) . But yes multi tracking is still possible, my simul-sync switches can be noisy and require a little tapping and finesse to get right, but the sound is awesome!. Please correct if I'm spreading misinformation.

I'm actually really Intersested in your recordings Steve, what type of mics, board and tape? As well as any positioning info or other etcetera knowledge. The sound you have got, is the sound I'm aiming for.

 

[dintymoore]

I used to have an Otari MX-5050 and I still think that it sounded vastly superior to the Mac based system I have now.

But the problem for me is that the final product (a CD or mp3) is going to be digital so I feel like I've got to try and get a good sound in that arena.

The basis of the problem, as I see it, is that analog is an arrived technology and digital isn't really there yet. The salesmen want you to think that iPods sound good but they really don't, but I'm hoping that someday digital will actually sound good! (what a concept!).