To saturate or not to saturate

[oobesan]

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...

I agree with all that. And yet, Disclosure makes, exclusively, electronic dance music and lays down a ton of saturation all over the place, including drum busses, bass, and, yes, the 2-bus. Maybe not a one size fits all?

[oobesan]

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.

Why do you keep insisting that modern electronic music sounds "flat and dead" compared to old albums? It simply isn't true. Maybe you are simply referring to the loss of dynamics as the victim of the "loudness wars" of the 2000s to current? But that has nothing to do with intentional use of saturation, but aggressive limiting.

[legendCNCD]

saturate until the signal is unrecognizable, put the saturator on the master

Is this before bitcrush and jitter plugins or after?

[v1md]

More ideas are welcome.

I agree that cohesion, spectrum filling, and accessibility for casual listeners are all valid benefits.

I’d add that saturation isn’t just an “effect,” but a set of spectral and dynamic transformations whose value depends strongly on context. Subtle harmonic enrichment can support perceptual integration of a mix, but too much may obscure transient detail or compress the expressive range. The way saturation interacts with arrangement, loudness targets, and playback medium also matters; what flatters a pop production on earbuds may not serve an acoustic ensemble over full-range monitors.

It’s an area where practice, listening, and a sense of the musical goal all need to work together.

[_leras]

saturate until the signal is unrecognizable, put the saturator on the master

why?

On the one hand I think he's joking, but on the other hand martiu sometimes eludes to some quite weird types of music he makes. So on the other hand I could believe he does this.

I mean he could even be some weird bot... but odd noise music concrete could also be possible, and I have no understanding of that.

[Ah_Dziz]

There's lots of fun to be had massively distorting complex sounds like full mixes. Might make something great out of something otherwise crappy.

[whassup]

Yes, buy now!