VCC, VTM, Blah, Blah, Blah...What The Hell Is Wrong With Me?

[acousticglue]

if it's good they will listen.

Dan Auerbach Black Keys buys old gear and fixes it.

Had this argument recently on friends buying UAD for the Neve and latency factors.

If the mix isn't there what are you expecting mastering to fix? That is my presumption.

Choices of instrument to begin with. My Grosh guitars have nice creamy pickups. Not the ones I still loved but sold before them. (like Grosh necks which is another important piece in tone).

Next is pairing certain plugins to neutralize or add creamy sound for delay or reverbs. Some are sterile some add creamy. That is why there are choices.

EQ shouldn't have to be drastic because you shouldn't record something you have to extreme cut unless for filter effect. People fall in love with tube mics then cut the hell out of em.

[kvaca]

....So for 20+ years you tried to achieve clean sounds because you liked it clean? And then when you finally got it in plugins, what happened? did your taste flip over?

I have allways preferred it as clean as possible for some kinds of music/classical,jazz/, or slightly "hot" for others /rock/...and my actual preferrences are the same as they were 30 years ago...so my taste flip over only in case of analog modelling: at first I thought it will be usable for some of my /rock oriented/ music, later I gave up and started using hw again...

I guess the question I'm trying to answer is why people seam to want something only when its NOT easily available.

people always want something what is hard to obtain, thats our second nature...

[Aloysius]

It's kind of ironic that in the 80's when I was in my late teens everyone in the industry spent ton's of money on hardware that could clean up mixes, remove tape saturation, noise, etc. In this day and age everyone want to get back to the dirty by adding saturation

It's because many people seek the rare, the unobtainable. Not necessarily because the unobtainable is better. It's kinda funny.

I don't think it's that at all. Our brains prefer a less sterile, more organic sound. So for many people who work fully ITB, these old skool emulations help achieve that.

Well, they had it all in the 70s and 80s. Why did most of em go digital then? Old tape and analog gear was sold for very cheap. May be thrown away some times. No one wanted them.

No true. People like Stock, Aitken and waterman were buying up analog outboard to add some warmth back in to their recordings.

These days people are not so different. There are pleasing qualities about distortion etc that people like. What we want is to be able to control how much of the pleasing qualities get added. It's not about 100% replicating the reel to reel experience.

Having differently modeled channels can add width to stereo tracks as no two channels are exactly the same. Cross-talk can be useful. Etc.

[4damind]

I don't think that this plugins are developed to recreate the sound of the 70th. We have 2017 and people expect a different sound. This over-saturated and very "warm" sound is not the thing most people are interested in.
People often like this clean but not too digital sound and this plugins can help to achieve this. And yes, we don't speak about a 50% different sound with this plugins. The effect is sometimes subtle because it's used in this manner.

[kvaca]

Most of the charm of "tape" IMO comes from the diminished treble power. I must be getting old to enjoy hicut filters. The saturation should make up for some of that cut by distorting it and adding that density that's associated with tape.

Also important is tape's effect on transients, which obviously had a huge effect on drums on those old recordings

yes, but dont forget they also used towels frequently in these times - which has even much more hearable impact on sound of the drums

[kvaca]

I don't think that this plugins are developed to recreate the sound of the 70th. We have 2017 and people expect a different sound. This over-saturated and very "warm" sound is not the thing most people are interested in.

its all true...only please tell devs to correctly inform customers that their plugins are not capable of getting that very "warm and oversaturated" 70's sound when its not possible - but it should be possible, because same kinds of hw they model were used these times...

[budweiser]

that joke makes him serius money, so why not do it if we live in capitalism and most people care about certain hype more than about usable and decent things

You're absolutely true, although it's very cynical.

[VariKusBrainZ]

Most of the charm of "tape" IMO comes from the diminished treble power. I must be getting old to enjoy hicut filters. The saturation should make up for some of that cut by distorting it and adding that density that's associated with tape.

Also important is tape's effect on transients, which obviously had a huge effect on drums on those old recordings

yes, but dont forget they also used towels frequently in these times - which has even much more hearable impact on sound of the drums

How do you get the towel to effect guitar transients

[kvaca]

Most of the charm of "tape" IMO comes from the diminished treble power. I must be getting old to enjoy hicut filters. The saturation should make up for some of that cut by distorting it and adding that density that's associated with tape.

Also important is tape's effect on transients, which obviously had a huge effect on drums on those old recordings

yes, but dont forget they also used towels frequently in these times - which has even much more hearable impact on sound of the drums

How do you get the towel to effect guitar transients

you talked about drums explicitly - thats why I mentioned the importance of towels...
and now you jumped to guitar transients??
Ok, these can be tamed many ways, too - if you use decent ribbon mic instead of condenser one you obtain much more "tapeish" sound than with any existing tape plugin...

btw - I dont want to underestimate the impact of real tape deck to the sound, I just dont uderstand the hype about all tape plugins which sounds in certain occasions plain wrong /and the more driven the worse/...unfortunately only people which worked with tape for longer period of time can sometimes spot it, and it doesnt matter if they hear 20kHz sound or not

[S0lo]

It's kind of ironic that in the 80's when I was in my late teens everyone in the industry spent ton's of money on hardware that could clean up mixes, remove tape saturation, noise, etc. In this day and age everyone want to get back to the dirty by adding saturation

It's because many people seek the rare, the unobtainable. Not necessarily because the unobtainable is better. It's kinda funny.

I don't think it's that at all. Our brains prefer a less sterile, more organic sound. So for many people who work fully ITB, these old skool emulations help achieve that.

Well, they had it all in the 70s and 80s. Why did most of em go digital then? Old tape and analog gear was sold for very cheap. May be thrown away some times. No one wanted them.

No true. People like Stock, Aitken and waterman were buying up analog outboard to add some warmth back in to their recordings.

If some one was buying, some one was selling. And as far as I know, for cheap back then.

[jtrake]

I’m a musician who is in the process of learning to mix and master.
When I started to training mixing I struggled to hear any effect of these tape and console plugins.
The more I trained on mixing the more I started to hear the subtle changes that these plugins , and other plugins as well, introduced.
So for me it was a matter of training to listen in the mixing process that somehow opened my ears. Now when I test a new plugin I have no expectations of what the plugin might do with the sound in advance, instead I just sit down and LISTEN to what it does.
As a musician I was so used to tweak individual sounds, guitar mainly, to sound beefy etc. When turning a knob a big difference in the sound was expected.
I learned, the hard way, that this kind of tweaking does not translate to mixing. In mixing it is the small things that builds up the whole mix. Like these console emulations. They dont always drastically change a single instrument but add them to several tracks and one can hear a big differens.

Another rule I follow nowdays is. If you dont like or cannot hear any difference in sound when using a plugin. Don’t use it, even if the whole community praises it. Trust your own ears.

[elassi]

What did I hear?

Almost nothing.

Never mind. I've read somewhere (can't find it atm) that ears naturally lose 'capacity' in the higher frequency ranges the older you become. For me that's true, no doubt. Also I have severe problems to distinguish one compressor from another. I believe people saying that comp A adds this color and B adds another. However, I don't hear it.

After all, truly think that a good tune in terms of composition/arrangement/choice of sounds won't 'fail' because of a missing tape saturation or the choice of comp A instead of B.

[Ramm Darkened]

After all, truly think that a good tune in terms of composition/arrangement/choice of sounds won't 'fail' because of a missing tape saturation or the choice of comp A instead of B.

People of Gearslutz will disagree lol

[wagtunes]

I don't think this is really a question of whether a tune is good or not. Naturally, if the music sucks who cares what it sounds like.

But if you're trying to emulate a certain "sound" especially if you're doing a retro piece, you'd like to try to get that sound as authentic as possible. Otherwise, why don't we all just use our DAWs with what they come with and not buy anything at all?

How many of us actually do that?

[Scotty]

For sure there are retro sounding tunes out there and putting them into the same space and creating a feel that sounds authentic to the era is legitimate and I can see people going to great pains to get just the right kick drum and mic setup and perhaps the mixer board emulation to catch that vibe.

In terms of the broader topic of console emulation I am not sold that the brain or ears cares if the extra bit of saturation comes from a bunch of VCC or BX Console Ns or some saturation dialed in my hand using saturation plugins on a group. If you want to hear a bit more grit and noise it can be added anywhere of relevance in the signal chain. I think much of the whole authentic console emulation thing is overblown. Add some grit ... hit the compressor a little harder if need be but I doubt the listener cares or can perceive where that saturation came from or even where the EQ cuts or boosts originated if applicable.

I don't think this is really a question of whether a tune is good or not. Naturally, if the music sucks who cares what it sounds like.

But if you're trying to emulate a certain "sound" especially if you're doing a retro piece, you'd like to try to get that sound as authentic as possible. Otherwise, why don't we all just use our DAWs with what they come with and not buy anything at all?

How many of us actually do that?