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

[wagtunes]

I’d suggest you demo the plugins from goodhertz. They’re made by Devin Kerr, who’se a mastering engineer closely associated with the band vulfpeck. Here’s an example

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wvpLjcXU3hY

The goodhertz plugins have a sense of humor, which sounds odd but it works really well. They can go from barely audible to over the top. The sense of humor is off putting for audio people, who generally approach the whole thing with a tone of extremely high seriousness.

For example, try “wow control,” their tape plugin. It nails the soft highs thing, and the low end bump, and both are adjustable from nothing to extreme, and it adds wow and flutter in randomized ways. You can get it sounding like vinyl very quickly

Air windows tape plugins are similarly excellent and can go from imaginary subtle to who wrecked my cassette very quickly.

I just got completely fed up with Slate—the endless hype, the stupid rack, the constant sales pitching. But when I was using vtm and vcc “naive listeners” would generally prefer the tracks with slate on them. I once did an all airwindows/all slate comparison for a gypsy jazz band and they preferred the slate version while I preferred the air windows version very strongly. It was either the addition of noise or the fact that slate was really good at getting kind of canned familiar sounds

The whole slate analog thing is cumulative—the more tracks it’s on the more effect it has.


I know the quality you are looking for and I love it: I grew up on it. But I drive the carpool for my daughters ballet class, and the four 12 year old girls always play their music in the car. If I play the stuff I like, i can hear right away how it sounds wrong to them, clanky and rough and unpolished and amateurish compared to, say, “fight song” or Selena Gomez singing “it ain’t me.”

Thanks. Somebody who gets it.

I will definitely check out that company.

[Teksonik]

Music coming out of a DAW sounds clean and sterile.

No it's called "quality" and what you hear on old recordings is called Mud. No one in their right mind would spend time adding mud to a modern recording.

[momalle3]

Another extremely cool goodhertz plugin is Lohi, which is a combination resonant filter and saturating limiter. It sounds sort of odd, but put it on a drum track and choose the "fliptop amp" preset. Then move the resonant peak to around 6K. The result is and old school cutoff of highs with the resonant peak emulating the engineer's attempt to compensate for the loss of highs by boosting at @5k. Like Rudy Van Gelder would have done.

My point would be that the sense of humor and lack of respect for "high subtle-delity" is what makes it useful.

below is a drum clip from SuperDrummer2, first dry then with "lohi" set as above. It starts dry for two measures then lohi kicks in for two measures then dry, then lohi again

http://spokeshave.net/music/lohiclip.mp3

and here is the same clip with lohi and "wow control." Wow control is set to have a slight amount of tape "wow" varying randomly

http://spokeshave.net/music/lohiwow.mp3

[db3]

I wonder too: Did 45 reproduce as well as 33 1/3" I'm thinking not (we also tended to play them on our portables till we all heard Dark Side and spent our Christmas $ on some real gear )

No, 45s sounded like crap but mostly because the record players of the era didn't reproduce sound very well. Everything was treble, hiss and noise. And I loved it. When I heard my first CD I was like "WTF is this?" It took me a while to warm up to the "perfect" sound but it's still not my favorite. I prefer the dirtier sound of analog.

Also to add more confusion...Vinyl records don't produce the same quality for the duration. 45/33 speed aside, the outer tracks contain far more information per revolution that the inner tracks, plus you have the issue of a fixed pivot arm which doesn't stay parallel to the groove (see inner-groove distortion).

When CDs came out people were initially looking for the DDD (digital recording, digital mixing, digital transfer) code as a mark of the best possible sound. I recall a few electronic groups later decided to switch back from DDD to ADD.

[momalle3]

Music coming out of a DAW sounds clean and sterile.

No it's called "quality" and what you hear on old recordings is called Mud. No one in their right mind would spend time adding mud to a modern recording.

This is a defensible position though it's expressed in a ridiculous way. The clean quality of digital recording is sometimes very preferable. I gave the example above of my daughter's freinds, all 12. Tye love the sound of the selena gomez tune "it ain't me," which as I hear it is digital-clean and heavily compressed, both qualities not possible in analog. I don't like that sound, because I grew up on different stuff. but for them, it does all the things music is supposed to do for 12 year olds: all the things music did for me at that age.

[momalle3]

I’d suggest you demo the plugins from goodhertz. They’re made by Devin Kerr, who’se a mastering engineer closely associated with the band vulfpeck. Here’s an example

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wvpLjcXU3hY

The goodhertz plugins have a sense of humor, which sounds odd but it works really well. They can go from barely audible to over the top. The sense of humor is off putting for audio people, who generally approach the whole thing with a tone of extremely high seriousness.

For example, try “wow control,” their tape plugin. It nails the soft highs thing, and the low end bump, and both are adjustable from nothing to extreme, and it adds wow and flutter in randomized ways. You can get it sounding like vinyl very quickly

Air windows tape plugins are similarly excellent and can go from imaginary subtle to who wrecked my cassette very quickly.

I just got completely fed up with Slate—the endless hype, the stupid rack, the constant sales pitching. But when I was using vtm and vcc “naive listeners” would generally prefer the tracks with slate on them. I once did an all airwindows/all slate comparison for a gypsy jazz band and they preferred the slate version while I preferred the air windows version very strongly. It was either the addition of noise or the fact that slate was really good at getting kind of canned familiar sounds

The whole slate analog thing is cumulative—the more tracks it’s on the more effect it has.


I know the quality you are looking for and I love it: I grew up on it. But I drive the carpool for my daughters ballet class, and the four 12 year old girls always play their music in the car. If I play the stuff I like, i can hear right away how it sounds wrong to them, clanky and rough and unpolished and amateurish compared to, say, “fight song” or Selena Gomez singing “it ain’t me.”

Thanks. Somebody who gets it.

I will definitely check out that company.

this is a very nice description from Goodhertz in which Devin Kerr talks about tape and what tape does and gives a lot of examples of it

[foosnark]

Instead of considering the notion that he may have been possessed by some sort of acute psychotic episode, he doubled down and claimed that null-tests were an inadequate way to elucidate the effects of "sample blurring".

Sounds like this level of BS: The $485 Volume Knob

[wagtunes]

Music coming out of a DAW sounds clean and sterile.

No it's called "quality" and what you hear on old recordings is called Mud. No one in their right mind would spend time adding mud to a modern recording.

Maybe you should speak for yourself and not everybody who grew up in the 60s and 70s and actually liked the way records sounded.

[pdxindy]

Music coming out of a DAW sounds clean and sterile.

No it's called "quality" and what you hear on old recordings is called Mud. No one in their right mind would spend time adding mud to a modern recording.

Maybe you should speak for yourself and not everybody who grew up in the 60s and 70s and actually liked the way records sounded.

I like the way old recordings sound.

My take on why... sure there is the recording medium - Analog vs Digital which has its technical influence. Besides the technical, one of the things digital allows, is obsessive perfectionism. Now, one is able to 'perfect' the life out of it. Auto-tune away any 'flaws', splice bits of multiple takes with ease. There is the impression that digital is more sterile, but part of that is not the digital medium itself, but that it allows the perfectionist impulse to sterilize.

Second, these are very different times. Those days were freer, more organic. There was a different aesthetic and social vibration and that is reflected in what each time produces.

So to catch the aesthetic and character of yesteryear, we use microscopic perfectionist tendencies of today to somehow recreate it.

[plexuss]

I cant read through this whole thread, sorry. The sound of early recordings are an accumulation of many different issues in the process and how people approached audio at the time. So putting a tape sim and some preamp sims, even ones from the period, on your recordings is not going to get you that sound. Whatever that sound is. the best think you can do is to find a recording you like the sound of and then use tools you know will work towards getting you that sound. back in those days, it was a huge task to keep all the gear working properly and I think much of it was misaligned, worn tubes, broken wires, and tons of mechanical problems. at the time it was all leading edge and expensive gear. remember too the manufacuring approach was quite different than it is now: much more crude materials and mechanical design and assembly.

There are digital tools that can help you get the sound of early recordings if you put some work into it. as mentioned the goodhertz tools, XLN RC20, Nomad Garbage and the various tape sims but push their parameters into realms that make them sound like sh-t. etc.

[wagtunes]

I had to return to this thread.

I went to YouTube and watched yet another demo of yet another channel strip, one that I actually own. The EMI TG12345. I watched and he turned knobs and, as usual, I heard nothing while he talked about all the added blah, blah, blah.

I said, "This is bull shit!" I didn't buy this plug just to add to my collection. I knew there had to be a reason.

So I started my project and I put this thing on every instrument and started turning knobs. And I mean REALLY turning knobs.

Holy shit! I won't go into minute details but the difference in sound between dry and processed is like night and day. This thing really can kick ass.

So the problem is, these guys turn a knob a half a millimeter and declare gold and it's all bull shit. You want to hear changes, you need to turn knobs...a lot.

Yeah, sure, all those subtle changes WILL add up over the course of 40 tracks. But please don't tell me that turning the presence knob on a bass a fraction is going to do anything that you'll hear on its own until you add it all up and THEN you can hear a subtle difference. But all this "Wow this is amazing" stuff is just bull shit and I'm not buying into it anymore.

The only way I'm going to know if a plug actually does anything is to download the demo and try it myself. Because these people on YouTube are whacked with their "Let's switch from channel 1 to channel 2 and you can hear how much warmer channel 2 is."

Anybody who believes that, I've got some land to sell you cheap.

Everybody else can buy into the hype.

I'm done!!!

[plexuss]

You are correct, wag, that in general people are too quick to proclaim "gold" with these kinds of plugins and tecniques. the effect is subtle at best. people just seem to need to toot their horns about things. I think it makes them feel better about themselves.

It's also true that when it comes very subtle changes in audio not everyone can hear those changes. it takes a lot of practice and skill to be able to listen critically and to be able to listen to audio in real time and hear specific things because audio comes into our brains in a wash of everything. I can't tell you how many times I've helped people hear certain discrete details in audio only for them to proclaim "Wow! I didn't hear that before you showed me how to listen for it.". So one person may proclaim "gold" when they put a console emulation on a track where-as anther person wont be able to hear the difference even when there is a chance to AB and have someone point out what to listen for.

In audio for me its not the individual instances of things that matter but rather how they all accummulate together and sound. you know my mixes and you know they have a certain sound to them. that's the use of multiple instances of very subtle emulations being used to create a clearly audible accummulated effect.

So no, if you put slate VCC on a track and switch it on and off you shouldn't hear much of a difference. anyone tooting their horn about magic pixie dust and all that is just looking for attention.

[Googly Smythe]

I had to return to this thread.

I went to YouTube and watched yet another demo of yet another channel strip, one that I actually own. The EMI TG12345. I watched and he turned knobs and, as usual, I heard nothing while he talked about all the added blah, blah, blah.

I said, "This is bull shit!" I didn't buy this plug just to add to my collection. I knew there had to be a reason.

So I started my project and I put this thing on every instrument and started turning knobs. And I mean REALLY turning knobs.

Holy shit! I won't go into minute details but the difference in sound between dry and processed is like night and day. This thing really can kick ass.

So the problem is, these guys turn a knob a half a millimeter and declare gold and it's all bull shit. You want to hear changes, you need to turn knobs...a lot.

Yeah, sure, all those subtle changes WILL add up over the course of 40 tracks. But please don't tell me that turning the presence knob on a bass a fraction is going to do anything that you'll hear on its own until you add it all up and THEN you can hear a subtle difference. But all this "Wow this is amazing" stuff is just bull shit and I'm not buying into it anymore.

The only way I'm going to know if a plug actually does anything is to download the demo and try it myself. Because these people on YouTube are whacked with their "Let's switch from channel 1 to channel 2 and you can hear how much warmer channel 2 is."

Anybody who believes that, I've got some land to sell you cheap.

Everybody else can buy into the hype.

I'm done!!!

The TG12345 is one of my favourite plugins. As you say, you've got to drive it. I like it as much for the compression behaviour as for anything else. It's unlike any other compressor I have. Watch the gr meters while pushing it on a kick or snare channel to see what I mean.

[elassi]

It's also true that when it comes very subtle changes in audio not everyone can hear those changes. it takes a lot of practice and skill to be able to listen critically and to be able to listen to audio in real time and hear specific things because audio comes into our brains in a wash of everything.

Though not relevant to the topic and not really adressing your post... this reminds me to one of the first advices I got (and remember) when starting with music production. It was about the 'right' amount of FX:

Dial the FX in until you can hear it. Then dial back until it seems to be gone. Then use bypass (on and off). If you hear a difference, you're good to go. Otherwise repeat the steps.

Of course, this is obviously just one way to deal with FX and with certain styles you may want to abuse the FX on purpose, however, I still use this tipp every now and then when working with Reverb or EQ.

[wagtunes]

I had to return to this thread.

I went to YouTube and watched yet another demo of yet another channel strip, one that I actually own. The EMI TG12345. I watched and he turned knobs and, as usual, I heard nothing while he talked about all the added blah, blah, blah.

I said, "This is bull shit!" I didn't buy this plug just to add to my collection. I knew there had to be a reason.

So I started my project and I put this thing on every instrument and started turning knobs. And I mean REALLY turning knobs.

Holy shit! I won't go into minute details but the difference in sound between dry and processed is like night and day. This thing really can kick ass.

So the problem is, these guys turn a knob a half a millimeter and declare gold and it's all bull shit. You want to hear changes, you need to turn knobs...a lot.

Yeah, sure, all those subtle changes WILL add up over the course of 40 tracks. But please don't tell me that turning the presence knob on a bass a fraction is going to do anything that you'll hear on its own until you add it all up and THEN you can hear a subtle difference. But all this "Wow this is amazing" stuff is just bull shit and I'm not buying into it anymore.

The only way I'm going to know if a plug actually does anything is to download the demo and try it myself. Because these people on YouTube are whacked with their "Let's switch from channel 1 to channel 2 and you can hear how much warmer channel 2 is."

Anybody who believes that, I've got some land to sell you cheap.

Everybody else can buy into the hype.

I'm done!!!

The TG12345 is one of my favourite plugins. As you say, you've got to drive it. I like it as much for the compression behaviour as for anything else. It's unlike any other compressor I have. Watch the gr meters while pushing it on a kick or snare channel to see what I mean.

The drums on the track I'm doing sound like from another planet. They are so alive. The whole track is. I don't even have to bounce channels, though I can just imagine what that would do. This thing already sounds like out of the 60s. And I'm talking garage band 60s and not top of the line studio stuff. This is flat out nasty and I'm sure more people here will probably hate the way it sounds.

I love it!