A whole can of worms

[jonathansorensen]

I'm sure I'm opening a can of worms but . . .

In the last 6 months I've become more and more satisfied with my mixes. A sense of space and balance. Sounds that compliment the song. However, I find that I can't listen to my mixes for too long before they start to grate on me. There is a harshness or a hardness to them. I started experimenting again with busing back out to my D/A converters, into the A-designs Hammer Eq and yesterday suddenly, I found the magic setting and when I a/b'ed, eq channels in/out there was a huge difference. The hammer actually cut the volume a little because I was carving out at least 3-4 DB of mids at 1.6k but bass and hi's were even. But even without resetting the volume I was shocked at how warm and punchy the sound was without losing clarity. I went through a bunch of mixes and same thing. Straight digital signal was clear but quite harsh and once I began to really go back and forth and this remained true and significant across everything I played.

This started me thinking alot. I grew up on analog and tape. 100% of my studio time as a guitar player was on analog boards and recording to tape. I didn't go digital until I started writing, mixing and recording my own stuff. Analog is my style. I like messy, organic energetic music. A lot of what I hear now is super clean, every beat lined up, every note exact and it's great but it's not my style and it's not how I work. When I was 12 years old, I used to take two boom boxes, record a rythm track on one, then play it back and solo over it while recording on the second.

So here are my questions for any and all who have an opinion on it:

Do engineers ever master to tape and then go through a/d one final time to burn to CD? If so, how is that done?
Would just mastering out to some other unit, even if digital (going through the hammer) get me some of that sound that I want?
Would it be possible to rent an adat machine or some other unit to be able to experiment? I'm happy with my setup and don't want to spend any more money unless I know it's going to count (I'm a songwriter and don't intend to ever build a professional studio)
I'm also curious as to how much you do in or out of the box.

This has really thrown me for a loop because over the past month, I've really started to hate the harshness of that sound. I'm working or writing 8-12 hours a day and my ears are getting more and more sensitive to it. I'm very interested to know how this works for the rest of you. Thanks all.

JS

[musicliner]

Try this, it just works for me (especially "Modern Tape" setting)

FerricTDS - Tape Dynamics Simulator
http://www.kvraudio.com/developer_chall ... hp#dc09_29

[eeoo]

I have a friend who's a mastering engineer, lots of great analog gear, old Neve broadcast console, massenberg eq, rack of classic comps & limiters etc, etc. He also has an insane collection of high end plug-ins. For him it totally depends on what he's working on, no set rules, sometimes going out through his analog chain is magic, others keeping it in the box works best. I think once again the only rule is there are no rules, if it sounds good it is good! eo.

[Len911]

There are so many great plug-ins there is really no need to. At least before you try a few. Here are a couple of links with products that you can download demos for free. I believe most are either mac or windows, but if after trying a couple of these it doesn't warm you up, you might have to do something else. If you have an ilok you can demo the softube plugins. Most let you demo for 14-20 days, so you can try b4 you buy if you wish to. No more guessing and taking chances.

PSP
http://www.pspaudioware.com/plugins/

Stillwell audio
http://www.stillwellaudio.com/?page_id=68

[ckbarlow]

Thanks, Len - I'm going to download those demos asap.

I'm definitely interested in a more vintage, warm sound because right now I'm working on a movie soundtrack for which the director wants a lot of oldies-soul type songs (lots of different scenes where the main character flips on her favorite oldies station).

And as Eo says, it depends on the song. I think the crisp, even brittle digital sound is great when you're doing certain modern a la's, but for me, right now, it's making things sound a little... soul-less compared to old Smokey tracks!

[cardell]

I have to agree with you.

I find that this is VERY good for those problems:
http://www.softube.com/tubetech_cl1b.php

...and this is also EXCEPTIONAL (if you have the CPU power):
http://wavearts.com/products/plugins/tube/

Stuart

[Len911]

It may not necessarily be digital harshness,but rather peakiness, that makes the signal seem harsh, so I would try the demos of the psp
oldtimer compressor and/or the stillwell rocket compressor, try one of the buss presets, it is a shortcut to determine if that might be what you are hearing. The psp oldtimer is $99 if you decide to buy it and the rocket is $49. They both sound great, the stillwell seems a little sweeter to me, and I've got a sweet tooth,lol, but i would audition both. Somehow I missed the wavearts stuff, I probably thought they were a part of those expensive wave suites.

[billg1]

wow Jonathan, you just landed on my planet!

I spend almost as much time trying to "de-harsh" my mixes as I do tracking and mixing . . . true story. I've tried everything . . . most of the plugins mentioned here do help some, opto style compressors help some, going out of the box through good outboard gear helps sometimes and sometimes it seems like nothing helps.

I have a theory that some folks have analog ears and some digital ears . . . depends on what you're used to I guess. I always find analog recordings sound better to me, and many digital recordings (even "big" ones) sound like crap to me. whatchagonnado?

If I had kept some of my good outboard stuff I'd be mixing out through it into a Masterlink.

[Kolstad]

I have a friend who's a mastering engineer, lots of great analog gear, old Neve broadcast console, massenberg eq, rack of classic comps & limiters etc, etc. He also has an insane collection of high end plug-ins. For him it totally depends on what he's working on, no set rules, sometimes going out through his analog chain is magic, others keeping it in the box works best. I think once again the only rule is there are no rules, if it sounds good it is good! eo.

+1 on this

I tend to agree, but I also think it's about sorting things in the right boxes.

You don't say what kind of level your digital setup has, but compare it with high end analog stuff.

Like in the analog world, there are huge differences between vst's. I think we tend to use too much cheap crap, and expect too much from it. Yet, good analog gear costs more than x10 what vst's cost! I think that explains most of the differences.

Are the sounds you are using produced, raw, and are you using real instruments or vi's?

I don't think the fact that you used to be more reative with sounds (like the boom boxes), has anything to do with the digital-analog discussion. That about you, not coming out of the box when using digital. There are numerous possibilities, of recording your own audio samples in real good quality with recorders like the Edirol R-09, and tweak it in creative ways, and put on the amount of processing your ears prefer. Yet, we tend to buy cheap (compared to real quality instruments) boxed things that are overproduced, for convenience, and then complain our mixes are not up to analog quality.

I can accept that ears can have different preferences, but won't base that on a comparison of apples and peaches.

There are natural reactions and counterreactions.

Digital was partly a reaction on noisy, expensive, unflexible analog gear, but you know when you solve one problem.. There's no need to throw out all the good practices from using analog gear, just because you are going digital, so natually we will also counterreact.

The quality of components, the immediacy of a physical thing, the feel of something really solid between your hands are all inspiring in order to really PLAY.

I'm much like many others. I tend to do more and more in the box:
- because that's what a&r wants
- because it's faster
- because it's more flexible
- beacause it's cheaper
- because it's smaller
- because music is a numbers game

I often wish I could take a walk, sample some sounds, get back and tweak them into my own library, but I can't find the time nor the incentive. I often would like to record drums with my own drumkit, but I can't find room for it, and can't afford the number of quality mic's to do it properly. I would like to record more with my tube amps, but I don't have an isolation booth, and can record into the ampsim with earbud's when my wife and kid are doing other things.. ect. ect. In the end, bigger computers means more juice!

With digital we may have lost some of the feel, but hopefully not the touch

thefewcentsI'veleft

[mojobone]

Yeah, that WaveArts plug got quite the nice writeup in TapeOp; it's rather CPU intensive, but great for de-digitizing a track at a time. There are lots of ways to skin this particular cat; most involve small amounts of harmonic distortion, judiciously applied. Analog summing boxes, UBK Fatso, Neve Portico actually has real tape heads in it, Cranesong HEDD/Phoenix, various software solutions, too. Really, I think it's just that there are frequencies the human ear jes' doesn't like. Once you've identified the frequencies, you can take 'em out with a linear phase EQ surgical strike, or better yet apply EQ dynamically, so you don't lose punch. The cheapest way I know is to use Blockfish with the compression turned down and the saturation knob cranked to taste. I jes' hooked up my ancient Aphex Aural Exciter today to get some extra analog juice happening; I love what the Big Bottom circuit does to the low end, heh.