To saturate or not to saturate

[kritikon]

And doing it 40 years ago means it's still done today? Extremely unlikely. Most of what was done back in the days we both were young and impressionable have been considerably changed. An awful lot of electronic music today will not have even passed through an analogue studio, let alone anywhere near an amp. I think you'll find quite a lot of electronic music producers would look at you very strangely to suggest they should even think about using mics, preamps, amps for any synth they're using - plenty of which will nowadays be sw anyway. Good ol' rock'n'roll has nothing whatsoever to do with almost all electronic music today. Especially it's methodology and practical recording.

Y'know, last time I looked at buying a mixer, I didn't even consider mic inputs and preamps? I'd happily have bought one that didn't have any. I bought for number of channels, Eqs, inserts, sends, maybe buses - preamps not in the equation at all. My interface has that and are very rarely used for mics, definitely for no instruments. Same with others for sure. As far as I'm concerned that's just paying for features I don't need or want. I understand that you do guitar stuff - that is an utterly different world to electronic, has been for decades now. I suspect a lot of electronic producers only use saturation plugins etc because they hear all over the net that they should, mainly from people like you who are not engaged with anything they produce. I grew up with all analogue gear - I discarded an awful lot of it, especially outboard because personal experience showed me analogue stuff is not at all needed for electronic. Of course I still use analogue synths where appropriate and when they sound different to digital (which is often). But I don't saturate/distort them, or at least not often. Your music and mine are different worlds, as are the methods of production. Yours does not apply to mine, no doubt vice versa...

[jamcat]

Well, OK. Firstly, I want to say your change in tone didn't go unnoticed, and I appreciate it.

But who says everything has to be viewed through the lens of status quo post-millennial electronic music? There's a lot to be learned from the way things were done in the past. Even amongst the electronic music producers here, the greats that are routinely name-checked are Kraftwerk, Vangelis, Jean Michel Jarre, Depeche Mode, Gary Numan. And every last one of them recorded synths in the way that I'm describing. Michael Jackson's Thriller was also recorded that way. The synths on Van Halen's 1984, were too. Back then, even "synth" bands like Depeche Mode and the Eurythmics and Tubeway Army (Gary Numan) viewed themselves as rock bands that played synthesizers, and they recorded their albums accordingly.

For starters, before MIDI and MTC (which allowed MIDI to be synced to tape with SMPTE), keyboardists were just another musician in the band who showed up to rehearsals and played their instruments with their fingers along with the rest of the band. Just like the guitarist. They were real musicians who could actually play their instruments. And to be heard, they played through keyboard amps or PAs (or in the case of Jon Lord of Deep Purple or Tony Carey in Rainbow, through a Marshall stack.) And when they showed up to the recording studio, how do you think they recorded their parts? The answer, of course, is exactly the way they played them in rehearsals.

So yeah, even for today's electronic musician who may be name dropping the greats who actually mattered, and wondering why their music sounds flat and dead compared to those old albums from those electronic pioneers they revere, those techniques ought to very much still be relevant, because they are the solution to the very problems they're coming here to learn how to solve. But if you consider disappearing into the safety of the herd to be a 'victory', then continue on with the status quo of today.

When talking about these techniques, by the way, I never said to run out and buy a mixer, or an amp, or a tape machine. The whole point is to emulate that equipment with software. That's why they make all of those plugins. I'm just saying, if you want to sound "analogue" then the best way to do that is to think about the signal path of an analogue studio from beginning to end, and try to recreate it.

[whassup]

My general suggestion regarding this and similar topics is to try it yourself.
How many times I was surprised when finally checking something out myself and understanding certain things that they were NOT as I THOUGHT THEY WERE.
I had ideas that made sense in my theories and they were wrong.
That took me ages, really some took me decades.
And the journey is still ongoing, yeah I know, surprise.

[lobanov]

Ditto.

Dito would be the correct Latin word.

'Ditto' means 'the same' and this corresponds to the context ("The same here").

Cambridge dictionary

Sorry, off topic...

[martinjuenke]

Ditto.

Dito would be the correct Latin word.

'Ditto' means 'the same' and this corresponds to the context ("The same here").

Cambridge dictionary

Sorry, off topic...

I already wrote, that depending on your country Dito or Ditto are used (what was new to me). We are all right and wrong at the same time. It‘s all about context.

[Sonic Illusions]

Synths. It works great on synths

[El°HYM]

Better keep it clean and let your Mastering Engineer do the dirty work.

[jamcat]

Better keep it clean and let your Mastering Engineer do the dirty work.

That’s totally and completely NOT the mastering engineer’s job. Saturation is a creative decision. The mastering engineer’s job is to stay true to the source material he’s been given.

[Gamma-UT]

I really liked the Audiodamage distortion Grind but it is discontinued - is Kombinat essentially the same algos but multi band?

Grind is wavetables for distortion. Kombinat is more conventional distortion with feedback (and multiband).

Kilohearts' ShaperTable is probably the closest to Grind at this point.

[whassup]

Better keep it clean and let your Mastering Engineer do the dirty work.

I disagree by 90%.

[El°HYM]

[legendCNCD]

I'd rather saturate on channels when needed, than on whole mix/master - but, sometimes even that works if the material is über clean.

[Ah_Dziz]

I really liked the Audiodamage distortion Grind but it is discontinued - is Kombinat essentially the same algos but multi band?

Grind is wavetables for distortion. Kombinat is more conventional distortion with feedback (and multiband).

Kilohearts' ShaperTable is probably the closest to Grind at this point.

Grind can still be used for free. I was using it today. It is very similar to shapertable, and also has algorithmic distortion and a filter. Handy for drums.

[El°HYM]

I'd rather saturate on channels when needed, than on whole mix/master - but, sometimes even that works if the material is über clean.

[aMUSEd]

I really liked the Audiodamage distortion Grind but it is discontinued - is Kombinat essentially the same algos but multi band?

Grind is wavetables for distortion. Kombinat is more conventional distortion with feedback (and multiband).

Kilohearts' ShaperTable is probably the closest to Grind at this point.

Grind can still be used for free. I was using it today. It is very similar to shapertable, and also has algorithmic distortion and a filter. Handy for drums.

Yeah but on Mac it needs Rosetta