My first week using REAL TAPE (vs plugins)

[Aloysius]

great thick bottom

[bmanic]

taking photo's of a mixer setup is a great Idea, I never thought of that back then, probably because you had to wait a week for your photos to arrive back from the shop unlike today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_camera

..this was used quite a lot.

my mixer was full of stickers to try and recall settings and it never sounded the same twice. so lucky these days with instant recall ability.

Indeed. It is the absolute best thing about digital by far and the top reason to NEVER go back to any kind of complex analogue chain of anything. The amount of recalls and tiny changes people demand these days would make it an absolute nightmare. Naturally the amount of changes and recalls people demand are a direct consequence of the digital revolution.

[digitalboytn]

Mmm...those stone age days before automation...

A few people primed like monkeys at the big console,trying to hit the china graph marks at the right time with another monkey pushing buttons on the outboard gear...

Getting the tape machines synced up was another thing...

Let's not forget the maintenance of the equipment and just lugging all of that analog crap around...

Road cases,racks and all of those funking cables !

Mmmm....those were the days....

Thank God for digital

[low_low]

Let's not forget the maintenance of the equipment [...]

Mmmm....those were the days....

Thank God for digital

... and how about choosing what channels to use on the mixer based on which ones didn't crackle when you moved them, or didn't work at all because the sliders were bad, or the connector, or the cable, or or or ... wait, where's that hum coming from ? is there a ground loop ?

[PatchAdamz]

For years I ran 2 systems that were hardwired and synced to each other.

One was a digital mutitrack recorder, the other was a HQ tape multitrack recorder.
Drums and bass went to tape, all others went digital (with exceptions such as dirty guitars, vocals, etc) .

The mixing console was setup to input both machines and a rack full of tube gear (Pultecs, UA 175B, etc...)
was wired in...

When the plugin emulations started coming out, they really didn't come close to the hardware (tube or tape).
Over the years they have improved.

As far as tape goes, tape compression is hard to top.
Saturating the magnetic particles has a quality all its own that emulations just haven't yet achieved.

For the rest of it....well, much can be accomplished on a DAW with the right techniques.

[herodotus]

I think what a lot of people misunderstand about tape, as it was commonly used in its heyday, is just how little coloration and saturation high end tape actually added when used properly.

A high end 2 inch recorder like a Studer A 820 was almost as pristine a recording device as a Lavry ADC. It wasnt used for effects like saturation, but to capture audio in the most accurate way possible. It was a remarkable machine, and a glorious tribute to analog technology.

You would have to find a marine chronometer made by John Harrison to see a similar example of the glories of mechanical engineering.

[digitalboytn]

All of the Studers were HQ work of art with a price tag to boot....

The Studer A870 was an excellent 24 track tape machine...

You only ran it at 30 IPS and those 2" Ampex reels went through fast $$$$

And with each pass,there was a slight degradation in quality...

Then you had to store the tapes in a controlled environment...

With 15 minutes of recording per reel,that was a lot of storage...

Mmmm....the glory days of tape

[digitalboytn]

I have a friend who is a professional photographer and the amount that those guys can spend on equipment is frightening...

When you using Hasselblads and Leicas etc,it's mind blowing money...

The analog purists will always be out there touting their thing,usually to justify to themselves why they are hanging on to ancient history...

Yes,it can be aesthetically pleasing,but not totally practical...

My friend still has some of that "old film technology", but as as a pro,he shoots in digital 100% of the time now for so many reasons...

He showed me some software that he uses to give him the emulations of different film stock and many other cool tricks...

This is basically what we have in the digital music world....

So many positive benefits,with so little downside

[SparkySpark]

I think what a lot of people misunderstand about tape, as it was commonly used in its heyday, is just how little coloration and saturation high end tape actually added when used properly.

A high end 2 inch recorder like a Studer A 820 was almost as pristine a recording device as a Lavry ADC. It wasnt used for effects like saturation, but to capture audio in the most accurate way possible. It was a remarkable machine, and a glorious tribute to analog technology.

+1
Well put! They REELy were very transparent.

Personally I couldn't afford such machines, but I had a Tascam 488 and I can assure there was nothing superior to it compared to digital recordings. (It was amazing for 1500 dollars though. )

[Aloysius]

I had a Fostex A8. It was not recommended practice to pin the needles into the red to get that 'warm analog saturation'. The meters were there to help you get a decent signal level (above the noise floor) and avoid distortion. I always finished writing my parts before attempting to record them to save the tape from wearing out. Demagnetizing, cleaning heads ... gates ... Anyone would think that people were trying to get the cleanest signal possible out of less than perfect equipment.

[legendCNCD]

Mmm...those stone age days before automation...

A few people primed like monkeys at the big console,trying to hit the china graph marks at the right time with another monkey pushing buttons on the outboard gear...

A few people primed like monkeys at the big synths, one trying to hit the arp key on JX3P in right time... because it kept going offsync for some unknown reason.. oh man, dont really want to go back there.

[makingmusic]

If the effect is comparable with vst plugins, and vst plugins are much cheaper than the hardware, then I'd say vst plugins have the advantage. It depends on the person I guess.

[CapnLockheed]

One was a digital mutitrack recorder, the other was a HQ tape multitrack recorder.
Drums and bass went to tape, all others went digital (with exceptions such as dirty guitars, vocals, etc) .

Yupper.....I did that for years myself before going totally digital. I don't miss anything about tape enough to consider going that route ever again. As has been stated, digital has improved quite a bit since the early days and the very ideas of maintaining a tape machine and editing with a friggin' razor blade makes me queasy!

[foosnark]

Now people want to go back to having to photograph the patches on their 1000$us modular synths //shrug//.

LOL, I wish my modular was just $1000.

I don't photograph my patches. It'd be futile, and I'm not really interested in recreating anything I have done before exactly. I enjoy starting from scratch with every patch, with just the knowledge in my head. I have a philosophy of always going forward, not back, and not spending my time endlessly tweaking.

I take notes about what I use in recordings -- both hardware and software -- without getting too specific. The goal isn't to recreate anything but to document what I used for my future curiosity, and to have an honest assessment of what gear is getting used a lot and what's not. Here's the complete notes for something I did Friday (pretty typical):

1: Helix sines switched in Dynamo by Helix output, through Helix LPG/folder; Ratshack, ValPlate, Permut8, TM, TU2, TBEQ, Presswerk
2A: Warps, Rings odd, FKFX spring, Rings feedback, MS70CDR plate; Megaphone (w/noise mix varied), MWaveFolder, SerumFX hyper/comp
2B: Rings even, Tensor; Ubermod
3A: E370 2x clouds8 stereo; Mslr, FogCon
3B: same E370 stereo; SpecOps, Echobode, Grungelator, ValPlate, EZQ
Sequencing by Marbles clocked by Teletype, with clock enabled/disabled. Marbles x1 self-patched to Steps for occasional slews.
Sub drone synthesized in Sound Forge & Detunized noise samples added.

More rarely I take notes about techniques or combinations that work especially well, but they're not exact either and I don't often look at those notes again.

[fluffy_little_something]

How much of that real tape sound is due to the machine vs the tape itself?

With cassettes, the cassette brand and model used could lead to different results on the very same deck.