Waves Abbey Road J37 Tape

[Compyfox]

But then the purpose of this emulation is kind of nill, don't you think?

On one hand, it's not a passive non-powered EQ, it's a plain digital active one now. And if it's gain compensated (like it is at the current state obviously), but missing the V72 (along with THD), then it's not really as advertised.

Sometimes over-analyzing things can reveal what's marketing buzz, and what's actually below the hood. And in this case, it's definitely not much.

[lfm]

So it's yet another digital EQ - that's only supplementary. And the chosen frequencies, even back in the days, were rather random than "musical" IMO! Again, Motown (USA) did a better job, and Europe (the UK in this case) were a bit behind on things.

But Rupert Neve is kind of legendary, still, wouldn't you say.

I bought this SoundCity Real-to-real DVD, story behind the studio that was based on this Neve board - and it's really something else. Dave Grohl bought this and made a new studio at his place from this.

Incredible stuff. I also bought the soundtrack CD from this. It sends you right to heaven, I promise....I just got my feet on the ground again.

England was behind, I'm not so sure.

[Compyfox]

I've seen SoundCity - nice documentary.

Still... USA and Europe literally battled against each other in terms of recording and broadcast technology for decades! Still do actually. Though now you only hear SSL and NEVE (both british roots!), not the actual pioneers in that section (USA, England, Germany).

Abbey Road involved a lot of technitians from nearby Europe. Namely Altec, Chandler and Siemens (to a certain degree, even Telefunken), to build their gear according to their specs. Nowadays Siemens and Telefunken is pretty much forgotten in the music industry. But they pretty much influenced a lot of gear evolution from the 40s/50s to late 70ies. Sometimes you can still find such gear in broadcast studios. But... that turned really rare.


Not saying anything against Rupert Neve, he was/still is in his own league. So was Abbey Road - they always wanted to do stuff themselves. Much like the old engineer wars, especially in the 60ies and 70ies. Where engineers literally locked themselves into the studio, were paranoid and did not even share their basic knowledge to musicians. Which turned into the "elitism thinking" in the 80ies throughout to the mid 90ies.

Then hell broke loose with Steinberg, Emagic and AVID making "the big three" affordable to the masses, and in early 2000s the other companies that catched up and aimed the budget musicians.



So... yeah.

[antithesist]

Chandler and Altec are American companies.

[Compyfox]

EMI (Middlesex, UK) got "somewhat" bought by Chandler Limited (USA) at a later state. Or better said, they let the EMI gear live on. EMI, Siemens and Telefunken helped Abbey Road to build gear.

EMI gear (most known, the TG console) was almost exclusively used and developed at Abbey Road. There were limited ammounts built (like the only 5 existing Tridents by Malcom Toft/Trident Audio/Toft Audio/Ocean Audio, UK). The most currently known TG12345 mk4 was modeled by Mike Hedges for Waves in NLS.

Yes, long explanation, but this is all I can remember off hand from the "Recording the Beatles" book, and doing some research.


ALTEC picked up Abbey Road's concepts later with certain gear (there are white papers by the BBC from Abbey Road's concepts!). Like the ALTEC 9063B. ALTEC is an American company, that is correct. And they were mostly active in the "consumer" section post-war and their bancrupcy. It is now ALTEC Lansing - JBL bought them.


Still, to get back to my former post:
UK/EU and the US had different evolutions in the recording technology. And a lot of them were loner. Still a pity that some gear survived and constantly ported, while other gear is pretty much forgotten these days.

[antithesist]

Sorry, I didn't read the rest of your post after the erroneous citations. Can't you guys at least try to keep it to tape machines in this thread?

[hibidy]

Or at least some cat pics here and there.

KVR is boring w/o cat pics.

[antithesist]

[hibidy]

lolzes!

[lfm]

I've seen SoundCity - nice documentary.

Still... USA and Europe literally battled against each other in terms of recording and broadcast technology for decades! Still do actually. Though now you only hear SSL and NEVE (both british roots!), not the actual pioneers in that section (USA, England, Germany).

Abbey Road involved a lot of technitians from nearby Europe. Namely Altec, Chandler and Siemens (to a certain degree, even Telefunken), to build their gear according to their specs. Nowadays Siemens and Telefunken is pretty much forgotten in the music industry. But they pretty much influenced a lot of gear evolution from the 40s/50s to late 70ies. Sometimes you can still find such gear in broadcast studios. But... that turned really rare.


Not saying anything against Rupert Neve, he was/still is in his own league. So was Abbey Road - they always wanted to do stuff themselves. Much like the old engineer wars, especially in the 60ies and 70ies. Where engineers literally locked themselves into the studio, were paranoid and did not even share their basic knowledge to musicians. Which turned into the "elitism thinking" in the 80ies throughout to the mid 90ies.

Then hell broke loose with Steinberg, Emagic and AVID making "the big three" affordable to the masses, and in early 2000s the other companies that catched up and aimed the budget musicians.



So... yeah.

Interesting input, thanks.
I have this book "Recording the Beatles", and I will probably learn a lot of history going through that. Just started though...

[Compyfox]

The mid section of this book is great, where they start to talk about the gear involved at Abbey Road. Though I don't remember a mention of the tape machine in the book (at least not detailed technic stuff). Neither the record cutting technology. Only what mixing consoles they used, some EQ's, the comps, etc. And later in the book, how they recorded everything.

I also should have written EMI/Chandler, Altec and Siemens (also Telefunken) rather than Chandler and Altec.

[Sparky77]

I wonder why they model a vintage tape machine again?

Why not model the characteristics of the very last high-end tape machines?

I'm quite sure that they're about to release the Abbey Road bundle (REDD + RS56 + J37) as I predicted on one of my previous posts (about 11 days ago).

Good point!

[djscorb]

I've seen SoundCity - nice documentary.

Still... USA and Europe literally battled against each other in terms of recording and broadcast technology for decades! Still do actually. Though now you only hear SSL and NEVE (both british roots!), not the actual pioneers in that section (USA, England, Germany).

Abbey Road involved a lot of technitians from nearby Europe. Namely Altec, Chandler and Siemens (to a certain degree, even Telefunken), to build their gear according to their specs. Nowadays Siemens and Telefunken is pretty much forgotten in the music industry. But they pretty much influenced a lot of gear evolution from the 40s/50s to late 70ies. Sometimes you can still find such gear in broadcast studios. But... that turned really rare.


Not saying anything against Rupert Neve, he was/still is in his own league. So was Abbey Road - they always wanted to do stuff themselves. Much like the old engineer wars, especially in the 60ies and 70ies. Where engineers literally locked themselves into the studio, were paranoid and did not even share their basic knowledge to musicians. Which turned into the "elitism thinking" in the 80ies throughout to the mid 90ies.

Then hell broke loose with Steinberg, Emagic and AVID making "the big three" affordable to the masses, and in early 2000s the other companies that catched up and aimed the budget musicians.



So... yeah.

Why do you say these US and European companies were battling if they were working together?

Firstly, SSL and Neve are English (which is British) so your assertion that you only hear about them and not the real English pioneers makes no sense and is contradicting itself. How anyone could say that Rupert Neve shouldn't be considered a true pioneer is frankly baffling! You say so yourself that he's in his own league later in the same post!

Secondly, if Abbey Road contracted in both German and US companies then that is collaborating and the opposite of battling. Plus, if they contracted in people from Europe and involved outside technicians, then your assertion that they wanted to do everything themselves is also a contradiction.

You seem to be trying to argue a point but I'm not at all clear what it is.

As kslash suggests, you should be more careful when paraphrasing things you've read and passing off stuff as fact. It might be better to link to the source rather than attempting to remember it and getting it wrong.

Cheers

Scorb

[Compyfox]

*sigh*

Dissecting thread posts - fun every day...

Why do you say these US and European companies were battling if they were working together?

History(!!!) showed that USA and Europe worked against each other.
Why do you think that there are so many, and of various flavours, mix consoles, preamps and you-name-it modules out there?

Take a dive into the history of recording technology, and you see what I mean. Heck, stuff like that was even mentioned in the documentary series "Classic Albums".

Firstly, SSL and Neve are English (which is British) so your assertion that you only hear about them and not the real English pioneers makes no sense and is contradicting itself. How anyone could say that Rupert Neve shouldn't be considered a true pioneer is frankly baffling! You say so yourself that he's in his own league later in the same post!

First and foremost, Rupert Neve (at least to what I could find) did not work for Abbey Road - so that part is not relevant. He is a pioneer in his section, no doubt about that. But the focus was on Abbey Road, not NEVE or SSL.

Second, I mentioned SSL and NEVE; since they're pretty much the only two BRITISH companies that are in talk these days. Rarely API (US), though UAD is currently on it's way to revive that a bit. But look around - do you see anything other than SSL/NEVE these days? And by that, I men "mass market" - software especially?

Secondly, if Abbey Road contracted in both German and US companies then that is collaborating and the opposite of battling. Plus, if they contracted in people from Europe and involved outside technicians, then your assertion that they wanted to do everything themselves is also a contradiction.

No it's not. Especially if they wanted to keep the "developed products" to themselves.

How many REDD consoles were available? How many TG consoles in comparison (14 is the count I know, I only know one engineer that made that public: Mike Hedges). Abbey Road was an elite environment. And even though they involved "outside techs", their gear stayed "in house" most of the time.

Or why do you think that Mike Hedges was like "hey, you got spareparts for this thing?" and Abbey Road be like "look out in the back" and the storage was still full of Abbey Road gear.

You seem to be trying to argue a point but I'm not at all clear what it is.

As kslash suggests, you should be more careful when paraphrasing things you've read and passing off stuff as fact. It might be better to link to the source rather than attempting to remember it and getting it wrong.

Oh... the "where the source?" think starting on KVR now...
Let's play along shall we?

- Book: Recording the Beatles, a book about "Mix Consoles" (I can't remember the name - it was from the library)
- video documentaries: amongst them "Classic Album", "Live at Abbey Road", several documentaries about producers, YouTube (man if I could remember how much contant I watched)
- internet sources (homepages dedicated to hardware, mix consoles, GearSlutz being among it, etc)

Oh and did I mention at one point that I started an emulation list here on KVR that had focus on exactly this topic?



To be honest, I clearly forgot what I'm currently trying to aim at. The topic took a totally different direction.

All I'm saying is, that I am pissed at Abbey Road's move to drop their plugin range, and Waves picking some of them up, rebranding digital code and selling it for three times the money.


With that said:
- I already have enough tape machines
- I called an Abbey Road "Waves Bundle" months ago already
- I'd love to see the RS124 again (but not "trimmed down" or overpriced)


Else... I'm out of here.

[macmurphy]

this thread sucks the joy out of music.