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

[plexuss]

Although I do not have any practical experience to share, I will say that I think getting "thats 60s sound" is possible ITB but it will take some work and require a fair amount of skill to pull it off. I dont think you have to go out to external analogue signal chains. Careful application of EQ and saturation should do the trick. and an indepth understanding of the equipment they used then, their limitations and specifications and recording techniques will be useful too.But slapping a vintage analogue modelled plugin on every track and cranking it up is not likely to get you there.

[Daru925]

By 2249, human race evolved, we can now hear up to 450khz,200db, and separate sounds whose attacks are under 0.1 ms, so all layered effects/sounds/music is useless. Violin sounds like a chainsaw. The only way to enjoy ancient music masterpieces such as skrillex, David ghetto and Rebecca black is to listen at 12000bpm, with pristine equipment that carefully emulate the lovely vintage voice tones of yesteryear crappy humans and remove the hypersonic frequencies added when converting to i-mind, the standard apple format that is compatible with brain implants. Stop clinging to the past, Save money and prepare
your music for the future.

[wagtunes]

Well, I've been giving this whole subject a ton of thought the last couple of days and have decided to just abandon the whole idea of trying to capture my youth. If I want to make music that sounds like it was recorded in 1968 then I'll go find a recording studio with 1968 gear.

And as they say in the biz, that's a wrap.

[Neon Breath]

Well, I've been giving this whole subject a ton of thought the last couple of days and have decided to just abandon the whole idea of trying to capture my youth. If I want to make music that sounds like it was recorded in 1968 then I'll go find a recording studio with 1968 gear.

And as they say in the biz, that's a wrap.

Nostalgia is a very powerful phenomenon...

[Aloysius]

''That's an awfully hot coffee pot.''

That's a rap, as they say in the biz.

[thecontrolcentre]

Nostalgia is a very powerful hallucinogenic ...

FTFY

[db3]

If I want to make music that sounds like it was recorded in 1968 then I'll go find a recording studio with 1968 gear.

How about 1979?

[jancivil]

So bounce each track to a tape recorder, then back to the DAW. Someone suggested something similar earlier, recording the output through your speakers, and you said that's too much work.

[...] the only way you're going to "get reel" is if you actually put your sound through tape, just like the only way to get a real human voice is to record a singer. Otherwise, it's just a digital emulation.

My point is, you either have to go through the paces and recreate an analog signal path, which takes what some might deem too much work, or you can decide that the fake analog sound is good enough and be happy. I feel like our current tech allows for tape/tube emulation that's about as good as the way a virtual piano emulates the real thing.

There's no magical algorithm that's just gonna turn your static drum samples into a Glyn Johns drum mix.

No, in fact there is technology we use on a "static drum samples" situation (static samples, ok, but now there is cymbal swell modeling, BFD3) and technique where people that don't live at teh plugins forum will believe it. & that goes for 'signal path' modeling as well.

"We're close enough to the point that if you are enough of a purist to want the actual real thing (and to know why that is, beyond simple retro-spectacles and your brain chemistry fooling you into thinking that the "good old days" were in fact good), you will opt to use the actual real thing, even if it means extra work."
That doesn't track. We're close enough to what, again? To want to go to the trouble we used to have to, in order to do what, have bragging rights at a plugins forum? Well, people enjoy things as individuals, that to me will be a huge waste of time which only people in forum threads like this will ever care about.

I just used NI Replika XT 'Tape Reverb' and the channel sent to it sounds like tape. Done.

[jancivil]

Obviously not everything simply processed by such a thing will be anything necessarily but I spent a lot of time getting a whole sound, as a musician, as a composer going for a sound. That's interesting to me. Having and maintaining tape recorders (and acquiring tape in the first place) is not that interesting to me. I'm on records done on tape, it isn't anything really, it's *a* sound and we can get more sound happening today. Nostalgia is tricking people's minds methinks.

[wagtunes]

Obviously not everything simply processed by such a thing will be anything necessarily but I spent a lot of time getting a whole sound, as a musician, as a composer going for a sound. That's interesting to me. Having and maintaining tape recorders (and acquiring tape in the first place) is not that interesting to me. I'm on records done on tape, it isn't anything really, it's *a* sound and we can get more sound happening today. Nostalgia is tricking people's minds methinks.

Neh, not really a trick of the mind. I still have my old records and I still have a turntable. The stuff sounds different. Way different. Whether or not the sound is "better" or "worse" is all subjective and not a debate I even want to get into. But make no mistake about it, there is no nostalgia here. Stuff from 50 years ago sounded different than the stuff we make today.

That is simply a fact.

[rod_zero]

To emulate yesterday sound is very much possible, follow old methods (for example gain stage as if you were using an old console, preamps, etc), use vintage plugs, tape emus and so on.

For example look at sample libraries that sound "old", for example Addictive drums stuff, like the Vintage dry pack.

Stuff like XLn Retrocolor also can get you there faster.

[rod_zero]

quote="wagtunes"]

Tell me if it's an improvement at all.

https://soundcloud.com/steven-wagenheim ... -on-backup[/quote]

Yes it is, you are getting close, it needs less high frequency content (you might be not hearing it because as we grew older we loose high frequency hearing).

It is also very loud.

I would put u.he satin in every channel (or any tape emu) and busses, use a gain staging reference of -18dbFS, use plate reverbs, tape delay emus and simple compressors.

[wagtunes]

quote="wagtunes"]

Tell me if it's an improvement at all.

https://soundcloud.com/steven-wagenheim ... -on-backup

Yes it is, you are getting close, it needs less high frequency content (you might be not hearing it because as we grew older we loose high frequency hearing).

It is also very loud.

I would put u.he satin in every channel (or any tape emu) and busses, use a gain staging reference of -18dbFS, use plate reverbs, tape delay emus and simple compressors.[/quote]

Thanks for the tips, but like I said, I'm just kind of done with the whole thing. I would need somebody to sit with me in the "studio" and walk me through doing this and since nobody is going to do that, I'm just going to go back to making music and however it sounds, it sounds.

[plexuss]

Well, I've been giving this whole subject a ton of thought the last couple of days and have decided to just abandon the whole idea of trying to capture my youth. If I want to make music that sounds like it was recorded in 1968 then I'll go find a recording studio with 1968 gear.

Funny you should mention this. I just integrated my real tube tape echo into my DAW. So now I can run audio from soft synths through it and record the resulting audio back into the DAW for mixing. I used to use echoplexes back in the 70s and 80s. I had 3 of them at one time. Great machines but not very well made and quite noisy and inconsistent. Fulltone did a complete re-engineering and build with high quality design and materials - this is what I am using now. Here's a track I just did just experimenting with running DAW synth audio out and throught he tape echo and back into the DAW. the synth is Repro-1.

When I did this, my mind immediatly brought back a ton of memories from when I was a kid using echoplexes. Love that sound! I have many of the best software tape echos - they are close to the sound but nothing sound like the real deal.

https://soundcloud.com/plexus-productio ... -tape-echo

[Ramm Darkened]

Also check this one if you haven't yet: