State of digital saturation today (reel to reel update)

[Kingston]

Thought I'd post an enlightening example of good saturation on a multiband drum-mixdown, inspired by a recent saturation thread. These are both unmastered obviously, drumbus soloed from a track.

The first example is your average "protools" mixdown, with great sounding EQs and compressors throughout, on the bus as well. Generally you hear this kind of sound on rock music allover the place.

http://www.michaelkingston.fi/files/king-clean.mp3

Something missing?

The second example is the exact same mix, but with saturation added, in several forms. I tried to RMS-match the two by ear so I wouldn't affect any of the compression driving in the mix. Sounds about right as far as I can tell.

There's Voxengo TapeBus on dry snare and kick, hit so it won't distort too much. There's also TLS-SaturatedDriver on drum bus. There's my own plugin RetroBand (although technically not saturation) on both dry kick and snare and drumbus. I left the overheads, ambience and hihat tracks clean.

http://www.michaelkingston.fi/files/king-saturated.mp3

Now who says you can't get a good saturated drumsound on a DAW? (well I did actually, on several occasions, but anyway)

I wish I had access to a tape machine so I could show you guys what it's really about. Then again, one cannot get as much exact control over the type of saturation with reel-to-reels. Oh well, such is life, you get and you give, even with mixdowns.

[shamann]

Hey, you moved! Went to reply, but you weren't there any more.

I'm not so in love with the saturated mix. The kick seems overdone to me.

I always liked Nick Whitehurst's Mymag saturator. It's fairly subtle, but I always find it gives a nice boost to the sound. I ran the king-clean mix through it just to see what it would do (I'm reasonably sure I've compensated for any gain boost, did it all freehand, so I may have been off). Have a listen to see what you think:

http://www.sighup.ca/test/king-mymag.mp3

[Kingston]

The kick seems overdone to me.

The kick isn't overdone; you just need to hear it in the context of the mix. It's sculpted to drive a sidechain of a dub type (but a tad more distorted) bass, and needs the "flap" to be heard.

I always liked Nick Whitehurst's Mymag saturator. It's fairly subtle, but I always find it gives a nice boost to the sound. I ran the king-clean mix through it just to see what it would do (I'm reasonably sure I've compensated for any gain boost, did it all freehand, so I may have been off). Have a listen to see what you think:

http://www.sighup.ca/test/king-mymag.mp3

That's an almost perfect example of the cheap waveshaper sound of oldschool plugins. Good thing that you added it here for reference.

[shamann]

That's an almost perfect example of the cheap waveshaper sound of oldschool plugins. Good thing that you added it here for reference.

Cheeky!

I think I must be partial to the old school cheap waveshaper sound.

[Kingston]

Cheeky!

It's not a good comparison in all fairness, You'd need the multitrack stems with my compressors and EQs to get equal "drive". Note, that none of the saturators was used last in the chain. The last one in my bus was a compressor, driven by TLS-saturatedDriver, and there were others on the individual tracks before that (with compressors inbetween).

[shamann]

It's not a good comparison in all fairness

No, I knew it wasn't, since it was on a full mix and post-mp3 compression.

Still, at least now it can serve as your Exhibit A.

So when is RetroBand going to be available?

[Kingston]

So when is RetroBand going to be available?

Urgh. Shouldn't have mentioned it. It's waiting for a page on my website (for the third month in a row! ). I'm at the mercy of the webmaster/designer on this, and there's little I can do to speed things up. I can't to HTML/CSS even if I try.

[KingofBeers]

Hey guys, Kingston I put your clean loop though my soft saturation(subtle) process..to emulate a Console channel...(not drive the thing to death - I know you did it in context)..the eq's/comps and tape plugs can do that later.

http://www.mediatypes.freeserve.co.uk/king-kob.mp3


Cheers.

[jmh]

How about telling the truth instead of trying to turn your view on the matter into such by repeating it in public...

Oh, that's right, none of the beta issues with different hosts, things that required attention from SynthMaker coders etc. wouldn't have existed.

And surely, the first mention of an installer was a couple of days ago.

But hey, if it makes you feel better.

There is a difference between having an opinion and believing it to be the one and only truth in a matter.

[shamann]

Now, now boys, play nice.

So jmh, you designed Kingston's site? You do nice work. You should have more at bombsquad.org, though, show off your stuff a bit.

[Kingston]

How about telling the truth instead of trying to turn your view on the matter into such by repeating it in public...

Oh, that's right, none of the beta issues with different hosts, things that required attention from SynthMaker coders etc. wouldn't have existed.

And surely, the first mention of an installer was a couple of days ago.

But hey, if it makes you feel better.

There is a difference between having an opinion and believing it to be the one and only truth in a matter.

beta issues were only with ableton. nothing to hinder the release, since early may. There are no plans for installer (dunno where you got that from, my hideout musings?). Let's face it, you are impossibly slow. I've known this long enough to look for alternative solutions for some while.

[jmh]

Ain't nothing like a selective memory, it seems.

Every time you have a fit, you conveniently forget so much it's beyond amazing.

But like said earlier, if it makes you feel better.

Given all the time and the recent happenings, your execution on those alternative solutions seems somewhat hilarious - but that must be the memory thing again...

[Kingston]

And on to more pressing issues,

OK, this is where it gets difficult.

One of the files is the original DAW mixdown export. One of them was driven through Otari MX5050 mastering reel to reel tape machine. It was driven as hard as the mixdown could take without going to saturation mush-land. One of the files is Voxengo Tapebus matched to the Otari sound.

These are not mastered, and they should be pretty well RMS-matched

Which one is which?

http://www.michaelkingston.fi/files/shootout1.mp3
http://www.michaelkingston.fi/files/shootout2.mp3
http://www.michaelkingston.fi/files/shootout3.mp3

Yes it's subtle, but the tape was actually hit pretty hard. Next stop was mush, right here:

http://www.michaelkingston.fi/files/shootmush1.mp3
http://www.michaelkingston.fi/files/shootmush2.mp3

One is Otari, one is Voxengo TapeBus, carefully matched at 96khz. It's in mono due to gain mismatch when driving the Otari originally. I would have to conclude, based on this, that Voxengo TapeBus is pretty damn good. Heck, even I can't tell the difference now!

[jmh]

Shamann Thanks Unfortunately, the way things are, there'll be less to see in the near future.

Right now corporate whoring doing unbelievable shite is the main priority

[shamann]

Right now corporate whoring doing unbelievable shite is the main priority

Ah, good old corporate whoring. No finer way to pay the bills. I know that path well.