Full video available exclusively on mwtm.org/jc_ta... Tape vs Digital Recording by Joe Chiccarelli. Become a MWTM member and access 500+ interviews and hands-on mixing/recording tutorials.
It took me many years to realize the frequency range that I hate most about digital. It took multiple years after that for me to realize the best way to tame those frequencies and achieve a nice warm analog curve. This is the ear-bleed generation especially for those who try to listen to music with earbuds...digital hihats and sibilance from digital vocals + that ugly bright dynamic high mid range of un-needed clarity is ruining so many mixes however those who get the balance right are achieving some of the most clear and present vocal performances ever(without the vocal sounding like its awkwardly popping out of the song). Everybody should have an opinion on this yet so few people know to in this age of home studio digital mixes.
@morenazo952 Im 2 years late seeing this but heres a few tips for anybody who reads this now & still need help. (part 1)Analog gear with pleasant saturation has been the solution used by professionals however in the home studio, analog emulated vsts & their saturation helps though its not quite the same but close enough to be used similarly. De-essing with more prejudice between 2k & 7k on vocals where that ugly clarity is can be helpful but quickly choke a sound. Changing the bit rate on certain instruments & really pushing the saturation helps. Saturation has a way of shrinking/compressing the harmonic peaks in a pleasant way...sometimes multiband saturation targeting an area is helpful but you pretty much want to touch the whole signal with saturation & use corrective EQ afterwards. Using less literal compression & simply relying on automation & analog style compressors for color & minor compression only will help you avoid choking & distorting. We def should be using plenty tape, la2a, tube-tech, fairchild, & retro console emulation vsts on just about every bus & rendering them to avoid overloading your cpu. We have to develop recipes so to speak...work chains that get us there quickly that are organized in such a way that we can recall & redo later when we screw up(thats to say if I later hate what I committed to when I rendered my vocal, I should be able to have a protocol in place where I can pull up the file before I rendered it & load in the presets as it were then & thus change what I wish to & then commit & render again w/o undoing everything I have done since nor chasing my tail in the mix). We pretty much have to digitally imitate the way things were done in the past while taking advantage of the luxury of working in the box so to speak. Using shelves & filters have a way of helping but its minuscule compared to effectively using saturation first. De-essing hi-hats & synths can be effective. When done effectively, you can have super bright & present vocals that dont offend the ears for example listen to the song "Something About You" by Majid Jordan...it breaks the analog rules while conforming to them. Drake's "Nothing Was the Same" album often did this(Im presuming Noah 40 Shebib is responsible as he also did that Majid Jordan song). Drake's 0 to 100 song is a perfect example as it is mastered to be extremely loud & yet sounds good & balanced for the most part despite that which is hard to achieve w/o knowing what youre doing to the lows opposed to the highs. Big Sean's "Dark Sky Paradise" album maybe did it to the most extreme Ive heard it done w/o it sounding bad at all EVER though to taste it might be too present for some(despite sounding both IN the mix & super present, bright, & in your face in the highs WITHOUT earbleed frequencies due to an interesting analog curve that looks like it was achieved via multiband compression, clever use of an exciter, & a high shelf cut). Multiband compression can help & the effective use of an exciter can be a life saver when you mix things to be super warm. Basically my whole mentality is "dont achieve bright balance but seek warm dull balance so that at the very end of the mix you have room to brighten things up IF you even need to". We are used to imitating the past but we are doing it wrong. We often are accepting the already digital brightness or worst adding to the brightness by boosting things when in truth that should only be a practice done in the analog era of super duper warm mixes where as we should be doing the opposite while noting we have the digital advantage of clarity already.
@morenazo952 (part 2) I know Im doing good when I have a present vocal that sounds like its drowning in the mix but not choking. Its moments like that where I finally get to brighten things & even then I dont dare boost the highs but rather I use an exciter hence "a life saver". Its sort of like Bruce Lee saying the art of fighting w/o fighting...this is the art of having a bright clear mix w/o (trying to)having a bright mix. Its not always the highs & the mids neither that cause the awkward sound of a vocal not sounding like its in the mix. Often the floor of the lows & low mids can have that roomy sound & can make a vocal sound awkwardly present even when the mids & highs are mixed very well & sound warm. Again, this is why multiband tools can help so you dont undo things you like etc. A saturated vocal can often sound like it has too much room noise in the low mids...so much that simply EQ cutting cant fix(especially if the signal is already thoroughly compressed via saturation because the more you cut, the more you lose that warm balance or worst, you lose presence too). Ive learned that its good to go hard with saturation in the mid to higher frequencies where as in the lower you should only use it to compress harmonic peaks & help the signal cut through the mix...but overkill will bring up the low mid bg noise aka roomy noise not unlike parallel compression is notorious for doing. I find my fav professional reference mixes in this era are able to achieve balance because they leave the lows & low mids of the vocal somewhat dynamic or extremely dynamic but then they shelve hard & cut deep while achieving a level signal via automation & minimal use of compression so that the peaks are present & boomy but out of the way & not in danger of clipping all the while doing this of course keeps the floor tucked deeper in the mix & thus the vocal sounds present yet out of the way & thus "IN the mix". I swear by this technique for digital bright & present sounding vocals..its simply keeping the low mid noise floor tucked low(the frequencies we call muddy that often contain room ambiance & unwanted bg noise) & keeping those lower harmonic peaks very dynamic yet tame by low shelving & cutting(in other words, killing 2 birds with one stone). The point being that if you dont & you just saturate the whole vocal like crazy, youll end up with a more classic retro analog style compressed signal where those once louder peaks in the lows are then hit the hardest & thus are severely tamed all the while stacking up harmonics in the floor & thus bringing up the noise & adding strange density that makes the vocal sound on TOP of the mix unless you gain stage again & push the vocal down(unless the music is already competing heavily there which it usually isnt hence the low mid mud area is so key ). We often hear how saturation adds volume w/o adding dynamic range volume but we forget that its doing these 2 things: shaving aka compressing transient peaks while actually boosting the floor which of course removes dynamic range. So its actually lowering the volume of the peaks but boosting the volume of the floor so to speak which can sound horrible especially in the lower mid frequencies hence the common "mud" EQ cuts needed after using saturation. This is why super compressed vocals like that almost always have to be treated like older 60s/70s analog era vocals(not as present as digital era) where as dynamic digital vocals were always able to sound both loud/present(while sounding tucked into the mix in the low mids) & analog warm(in the highs via the analog curve & tamed harmonics because they quickly found out retro compressor saturation treated vocals better... ...hence they never stopped using them EVER when music slowly began going more digital in the 80s/90s on up....though the 2000s home studio never got the memo & thus earbleed mixes & earbleed vocals with too much damn clarity lol). Hope this helps...I swear I will start doing tutorials by the end of this year.
@morenazo952 (part 3) Ive obsessed over this stuff like a mad scientist for over a decade lol...Ive chased my tail in my mixes like a madman stuck repeating the same day over & over(Bill Murray "Groundhog Day" style). Ive listened to many crappy rap mixtapes & wondered how music got so sonically crappy by people supposedly making millions. I explored the world of Phil Spector "wall of sound"...i reinvented the wheel.... .....been to audio Hell & back & saw modern digital music steal my act before I debuted it(the extreme use of 80s style reverb like the lex 224 style you hear in most music...perfect example being The Weeknd's last album where the whole album from vocals to background music damn near sounds like the reverb used in Jidenna's "Classic Man" etc). Just sharing my credentials as a weird home studio guy who swears hes a black belt in this ish. My journey began when I was told home studio mixes couldnt sound as good as a studio but I saw time & time again there were exceptions to the rule & so few explanations that made sense when I simply wanted to do THE VERY BEST I could, not be deterred from the entire race itself & shamed into paying fat cats who act like politicians & car salesmen to use their studios. In fact, I remember when NOBODY even spoke on the importance of saturation...back when i was achieving analog curves using multiband compression heavy on the highs(while choking the hell out of my mixes lol). Thats why I red pill people with everything I know...Im adding "balance" to the universe by being the exact opposite of the jerks of yesteryears. I freely share my recipes so to speak...no BS answers like "it depends" lol(though that answer is valid though insincere if not elaborated on with insight that grants understanding). -Weird Home Studio Black Dude(fighting cabin fever with log replies lol) (bonus references that taught me alot: Michael Bolton's "Never Get Enough of Your Love" & "Save Me" mixes, Mariah Carey's "Anytime You Need a Friend" & "Cant Let Go"(& all her songs that sound like that...melodic & dark with all that reverb lol), Bebe & Cece's "I O U Me",... ....late 80s & early 90s Disney ballads(especially Aladdin & Beauty & the Beast lol), Beach Boy's "Pet Sounds" album(Brian Wilson was a genius back then), Lenny Kravitz produced Vanessa Paradis retro style song "Be My Baby", modern metal mixes like Red's debut album vs early 2000s Pop Punk mixes, early 2000s trance music like the Japanese Cyber Trance series featuring the best trance artists of the word back then, & many other songs from various eras(especially J-pop music & 2013 upward digital rap mixes vs 90s analog rap mixes)... ....that I listened to on repeat while dissecting them in izotope & doing google searches on what i was hearing & how its achieved(usually to no avail) while eventually playing with analog saturation emulation vsts when people finally pointed me to solid answers that made sense). My final verdict is that digital music has no excuse to sound bad if we understand saturation & how analog era mixes ended up sounding as they did. This is the digital wild west & opportunity is anywhere & everywhere we're willing to build something new that makes sense. I hope these words inspire someone....it felt good typing them in these crazy times during a brand new decade that seems to mark the beginning of the end of everything. Where as music also seems to be getting worst & incapable of doing something good w/o imitating the past, I am seeing some resurgence in creativity every once in a while... ....(for example artists like Shiina Ringo seem to be dull today where as her early albums including her band Tokyo Jihen were amazing & you dont have to speak Japanese to know it(I dare anyone listen to her 3rd album from start to finish w/o skipping a track)... ....where as bands like Korn never really resonated with me growing up unlike their recent album "The Nothing" which was pretty amazing at times in light of the famine in creativity in most every genre from Japan to USA, the top 2 music industries in the world which have both gone to crap in many ways imho though not sonically hence no excuses for them nor for us in the home studios).
It isn't only the sound that's better with analog, it's the physical process. It's the difference between writing or recording music with another person or group of people together in the same room, or sitting alone in a room and sending bits of information over the net to another person. The first is human, personal, organic and alive. The second is inhuman, impersonal, sterile and dead. If you're a well developed musician or vocalist, you don't need overdubs. If you're a band of musicians who've developed command of their instruments and are well rehearsed, you are far better off recording live, together one or two takes, and capturing the spontaneous feel. Most players and singers can't even imagine being able to accomplish that today.
The things I miss most about the analog years... the songs were better, the musicianship was better, the singers were better, the vibe was better, the fans were better....oh wait that has nothing to do with the studio. I have never heard a decently recorded digital audio song, that was a GREAT SONG and thought to my self wow listen to all that jitter, or jeez those converts suck, or the vocal seems to present. This is the problem today, to technically focused. what happened to the vibe of the song. I was recently listening to some super old Fleetwood Mac (before Nicks) and it was oblivious that the engineer did not give a fuck about the music he was tracking. Every mic was slammed, yet it is one of my all time favorite recordings, why??? because it is a great song with VIBE, FEELING and great PLAYING. The spirit of ART is what is missing in music today. Digital Audio recording allows any inspired capable musician to create art in his own home. We should be awash in great music, yet the industry (look up definition of industry) denies us. Its CORPRATISM that controls everything, that has destroyed a once colorful, artistic, expression of humanity and turned humans into lifeless creatures. AI is here and humans are OUT, 50 years from now everything will be completely changed.
Digital recording is not cold, but it's just too clean and accurate. Art is supposed to be more sentimental while going digital gives the feeling of too much technical.
I dont know but in my opinion tape are not that quality compared to digital but tape seems tô caption energética soul of musician its more easy tô feel what the singer was thinking when he did the sound and The digital it seems tô be just this vocal not his energy, but I agree that digital are more accurate. Maybe what I like in tape could be just imperfection
Chris Wang is right. The soul of the instruments and sounds in the songs are also in the transients that can interplay with each other, and mixing those together creates a certain feeling and mood for the song. Most plugins don't handle those transients well.
A company needs to make a 2020 revision Analog (reel to reel?) Recorder of some sort with all modern improvements and make the best analog recorder the world's seen. Surely it's possible? Surely there's a market for it? Why isn't anyone doing this?
My thoughts exactly! Yes most people agree that digital is smart and techy and better, but is it? I think in this day in age it stands to reason that with all the technology available the kinks would have been worked out and come out with the console of all consoles. Super charged and excellent for all the tasks.
I can tell you exactly why. If they were to make it affordable it would be no where near the quality of vintage gear. If they wanted to make it the best recorder of all time it would be far out of most people's budgets. So on one hand it's affordable but everyone will claim it's garbage so no one will buy. On the other hand it's expensive and quality but no one can afford so no one buys. When both paths lead to no one buying then it will never be done.
@@levijessegonzalez3629 For a good studio quality two track, you might be able to do it for that price, maybe, but that might be low. But only if you can sell several hundred or more to recoup the deign costs. A new 16 or 24 track machine probably would come in at well over $60,000 and maybe closer to $100,000. I actually did a paper design and those were the numbers I found. Also there is a pretty healthy used tape machine market that hasn’t run out of machines yet. I’d love to be able to build the machine I have all of the drawings for, it’s a 24 track, but the money just isn’t there. For now I build the tape motion control system and upgrade existing machines.
I'm going to add the WA-2A to my signal chain and see how that warms and softens things up. I may pay to have final mixes bounced to tape, moreover (at 1979 in Nashville).
It's digital u can emulate anything! Like photoshop for photos, after effects for videos and daw with some special emulating plugins for audio but u need to know how to emulate! This is the magic of digital! U can emulate everything 99% if not 100%!
If you want to WHY the tweeters are taped, it's probably just to keep the dust out of them (since it's difficult to clean the drivers due to the grille).
No- it’s not to keep them clean. Those are Yamaha NS10’s. Originally hifi type speakers that made their way into the studio- they have a very pronounced/harsh mid/upper mid range. The first incarnation of them was so harsh sounding that they would tape tissue paper over the tweeters to make them a little easier on the ears. To tame the harsh frequencies a bit.
whats funny is this guy is using ns10s and saying "I seem to be taking out more of the harsh mids when working in digital" lol it's probably just the ns10s.
Sorry, but for me I want the live sound, warts and all, it makes it sound real to me. If you like the other, then soften it. But if the sound it's there to begin with, you can't get it back.
the iremediable loss of information throgh digital to analogue conversion is a problem; what we need is better analogue recording technology...digital has had its day
"....at 96k or 192, all that [analog] information is still there" - yeah but now it's digital information. We still like analog to analog to analog. We know it's not digital and that's ok.
Definitely different sounds especially on lower fidelity tape; and way different workflow. Our band uses the 388 too, pretty full sound on just the 8 tracks; love the machine and the whole process has been productively inspiring. @sodasunmusic & an example if you're curious: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-0tQIoZOMYLs.html
