Vintage sound

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Otis12062002
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Vintage sound

Post by Otis12062002 » Thu Oct 13, 2022 5:29 am

What’s the best plug-in (or mixing technique actually) to make your tracks sound vintage (40s-70s) that doesn’t break the bank?
Is iZotope’s vinyl any good?, because I’ve used that in the past.

All the best

Otis

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Re: Vintage sound

Post by AlanHall » Thu Oct 13, 2022 5:47 am

Otis,
There's no one-size-fits-all solution to the 'vintage sound' problem. Every era, every style, every generation of recording equipment, every studio (!) leaves their fingerprints on the audio record that is produced. I think you'll get better traction if you start the discussion with a specific example of the sound you're trying to recreate. Hope that helps!

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Re: Vintage sound

Post by cosmicdolphin » Thu Oct 13, 2022 1:04 pm

Mono

Plate & Spring Reverbs

EQ matching

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Re: Vintage sound

Post by Telefunkin » Thu Oct 13, 2022 4:55 pm

Graham (UK). Still composing a little faster than decomposing, and 100% HI.

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Re: Vintage sound

Post by Paulie » Fri Oct 14, 2022 1:20 pm

I just did this for a listing (forwarded today). I put the track in Mono, then used the stock Logic EQ plug-in and selected the Megaphone pre-set. It was a little too harsh, so I just opened it up a bit. In a nutshell, vintage recordings were in mono, and they did not have a lot of clarity at the extreme ends of the spectrum. Not much bass, not much high end.
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Re: Vintage sound

Post by Tonebonemarone » Thu Oct 20, 2022 2:35 pm

A big part of the "vintage" sound of old recordings comes from the limitations in recording technology that were present during that era. For example if you're trying to emulate a 40s/50s type sound, most of those recordings were done with the band in a single, very dead sounding room with one or MAYBE two microphones that the band was positioned around to get the musical blend. That would have been recorded to tape or direct to vinyl, either of which would add it's own sonic signature. I had a client once who wanted to replicate this sound, so we did the session in his living room with a single ribbon mic to capture his 5 piece blues band. I made a video about the process that you can watch here:

https://youtu.be/9bG-DXF7ztU

Unfortunately I couldn't get my hands on a decent tape machine before that session so we recorded digitally but you can hear that the sound is definitely similar to the blues recordings of the 50s.

In the 60s recordings were limited to 4 or 8 channels due to the technology of tape machines so bands had to be creative with where their mics were placed and what was on each channel. Because of this you hear a lot of mono drums or drums and bass on the same channel and therefor processed together. Same goes for vocals and vocal harmonies; they were often recorded all together on the same channel of tape. Stereo was also a new experimental thing and in many cases was not utilized well (think of the old beatles records where the drums are hard panned left with the band hard panned right), so mono was usually the norm. Also worth considering (for us guitar players) is that the musicians equipment technology was less developed back then. Most of the musicians sound was instrument and amp, and that was it! Sure pedals are fun but if you're going after that 60s vibe you may want to leave them out of your signal chain.

Through the 70s, tape machine technology grew so bands could record 16 or even 24 channels separately (wow!) so productions got more complex as the technology advanced, however there was still the limitation of the Vinyl record itself; too much low end on a vinyl and your needle will skip right off the record, so even though they could use more mics and pick up more full, individualized sounds, you still won't hear a big boomy kick drum or a low rumbly bass guitar because it just didn't work with the medium. Records from this era still had a midrangy and bright (but not too bright because the tape and the vinyl would naturally dull that down a bit) sound. Digital reverbs were not readily available and if they were, they were massively expensive so delay was used mostly for ambience and if there was a reverb on the record it was a natural one from the room, or from an analogue spring, plate or chamber. Also on the technical side, console automation didn't really come around until the late 70s and wasn't commonplace until the 80s so any mix done in the 70s had as many people as could fit around the console all making minor adjustments that they had spent hours rehearsing beforehand for the sake of the final print. That means that if the guitars had to come down in the choruses and the keyboards had to come up, someone had to make that happen and it likely didn't happen exactly the same way each time around. The whole mix was analogue so if a studio only had 10 compressors in the rack, only 10 channels were getting compression and the rest had to be well recorded and performed enough to not need it. Also worth mentioning for the 70s is that synthesizer technology wasn't nearly as refined as it would become in the 80s. FM Synthesis wouldn't become a thing until the Yamaha DX7 came around in '84, so 70s keyboard tracks were likely hammond organ, moog, modular synthesis, rhoades/wurlitzer electric pianos etc.

The 80s were an interesting time for recording technology because there was big budgets for music creation. Studios got bigger and built in isolation booths for every member of the band, tape machines became more capable, new types of synthesis and instrument technology were coming around and because the big artists had a budget, they had time to experiment with it all. This is the era when the bright, glassy synths reigned supreme (who needs those clunky old organs anymore now that we have these sleek synthesizers?), guitar players all tried to out-do Eddie Van-Halen and the overall sound became very polished and pristine. 2 24 track tape machines could be sync'd up for 48 channels of recording (the future is here!) and automated consoles meant that you could get right down to the nitty gritty details of any mix and make it perfect! SSL Consoles were introduced with a compressor and a gate on every single channel so every element of the song could get VIP treatment! Digital Reverbs became lush and beautiful sounding so they got put on everything and every record had to sound brighter and cleaner and more "modern" (for the time) than the last one!

Then the 90s came around, Nirvana introduced Grunge to the world and everyone in the rock world wanted a gritty, dark, low-budget sound while the pop stars dialled back the reverb a touch and kept up with the polished glassy sound, bringing in more vocal layers to fill in the gap left by the 9 second reverbs they had just muted.

I guess that's the long way of saying that if you want to capture the sound of a certain era, be sure to consider the technology and limitations of the time. Even though we are all recording digitally with top-notch tools that would make the audio engineers of the 70s drool, if we keep those limitations in mind and find a way to incorporate or emulate them in our modern day workflow then nailing down the sound of any era becomes more achievable.

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Re: Vintage sound

Post by Otis12062002 » Tue Nov 08, 2022 5:51 am

Tonebonemarone wrote:
Thu Oct 20, 2022 2:35 pm
A big part of the "vintage" sound of old recordings comes from the limitations in recording technology that were present during that era. For example if you're trying to emulate a 40s/50s type sound, most of those recordings were done with the band in a single, very dead sounding room with one or MAYBE two microphones that the band was positioned around to get the musical blend. That would have been recorded to tape or direct to vinyl, either of which would add it's own sonic signature. I had a client once who wanted to replicate this sound, so we did the session in his living room with a single ribbon mic to capture his 5 piece blues band. I made a video about the process that you can watch here:

https://youtu.be/9bG-DXF7ztU

Unfortunately I couldn't get my hands on a decent tape machine before that session so we recorded digitally but you can hear that the sound is definitely similar to the blues recordings of the 50s.

In the 60s recordings were limited to 4 or 8 channels due to the technology of tape machines so bands had to be creative with where their mics were placed and what was on each channel. Because of this you hear a lot of mono drums or drums and bass on the same channel and therefor processed together. Same goes for vocals and vocal harmonies; they were often recorded all together on the same channel of tape. Stereo was also a new experimental thing and in many cases was not utilized well (think of the old beatles records where the drums are hard panned left with the band hard panned right), so mono was usually the norm. Also worth considering (for us guitar players) is that the musicians equipment technology was less developed back then. Most of the musicians sound was instrument and amp, and that was it! Sure pedals are fun but if you're going after that 60s vibe you may want to leave them out of your signal chain.

Through the 70s, tape machine technology grew so bands could record 16 or even 24 channels separately (wow!) so productions got more complex as the technology advanced, however there was still the limitation of the Vinyl record itself; too much low end on a vinyl and your needle will skip right off the record, so even though they could use more mics and pick up more full, individualized sounds, you still won't hear a big boomy kick drum or a low rumbly bass guitar because it just didn't work with the medium. Records from this era still had a midrangy and bright (but not too bright because the tape and the vinyl would naturally dull that down a bit) sound. Digital reverbs were not readily available and if they were, they were massively expensive so delay was used mostly for ambience and if there was a reverb on the record it was a natural one from the room, or from an analogue spring, plate or chamber. Also on the technical side, console automation didn't really come around until the late 70s and wasn't commonplace until the 80s so any mix done in the 70s had as many people as could fit around the console all making minor adjustments that they had spent hours rehearsing beforehand for the sake of the final print. That means that if the guitars had to come down in the choruses and the keyboards had to come up, someone had to make that happen and it likely didn't happen exactly the same way each time around. The whole mix was analogue so if a studio only had 10 compressors in the rack, only 10 channels were getting compression and the rest had to be well recorded and performed enough to not need it. Also worth mentioning for the 70s is that synthesizer technology wasn't nearly as refined as it would become in the 80s. FM Synthesis wouldn't become a thing until the Yamaha DX7 came around in '84, so 70s keyboard tracks were likely hammond organ, moog, modular synthesis, rhoades/wurlitzer electric pianos etc.

The 80s were an interesting time for recording technology because there was big budgets for music creation. Studios got bigger and built in isolation booths for every member of the band, tape machines became more capable, new types of synthesis and instrument technology were coming around and because the big artists had a budget, they had time to experiment with it all. This is the era when the bright, glassy synths reigned supreme (who needs those clunky old organs anymore now that we have these sleek synthesizers?), guitar players all tried to out-do Eddie Van-Halen and the overall sound became very polished and pristine. 2 24 track tape machines could be sync'd up for 48 channels of recording (the future is here!) and automated consoles meant that you could get right down to the nitty gritty details of any mix and make it perfect! SSL Consoles were introduced with a compressor and a gate on every single channel so every element of the song could get VIP treatment! Digital Reverbs became lush and beautiful sounding so they got put on everything and every record had to sound brighter and cleaner and more "modern" (for the time) than the last one!

Then the 90s came around, Nirvana introduced Grunge to the world and everyone in the rock world wanted a gritty, dark, low-budget sound while the pop stars dialled back the reverb a touch and kept up with the polished glassy sound, bringing in more vocal layers to fill in the gap left by the 9 second reverbs they had just muted.

I guess that's the long way of saying that if you want to capture the sound of a certain era, be sure to consider the technology and limitations of the time. Even though we are all recording digitally with top-notch tools that would make the audio engineers of the 70s drool, if we keep those limitations in mind and find a way to incorporate or emulate them in our modern day workflow then nailing down the sound of any era becomes more achievable.
Bro this is an insane reply! Thank you for taking the time out of your day to write this! Wow!!!!

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