Sound quality "patina"/color for retro, old school, muzak?

[sperljam]

I've seen some listings in the last month or so that were looking for old school or retro. Also thinking about this new Muzak listing...

Do you use effects to make the tracks sound more "period?" Like playing with the EQ, maybe giving it a sound like it included vinyl samples or is being played on vinyl? Or would you say that it should have current sound quality and clarity, just using retro/old school sounds?

Similarly, would you use EQ/FX for the Muzak listing to make it sound different, or leave that up to the Editor or Engineer that is putting the track in a show? For example, I created an elevator music track for a school production a few years ago. In order to make it sound like it was played through a blown-out K-Mart-ish mono speaker, I crushed the crap out of the mix. Is that my job or should I keep it clear and clean and leave it to the editor to do that to the track if they want?

Thanks!
E

[Len911]

E it depends on what the particular listing asks for, but technically most of what you are asking has to do with post production.

I bought this several years ago, it has some usefulness, or should I say fun stuff,lol, it's a little expensive though,

https://www.audioease.com/Pages/Speaker ... phone.html

but the guitar amps, old record players, radios, are the probably the most useful

[sperljam]

Thanks, Len. That makes sense. It probably is post-production techniques I'm thinking of, in which case I should't worry about it. I'll focus on making clean sounding tracks in the requested style... And let the editor worry about making it sound like it's coming through a low-fi audio source like a jukebox or elevator ceiling speaker.

Thanks for the plugin suggestion, too. May pick that one up in the future.