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

[DuX]

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.

You have to take in the account that the whole generation of people have been "sterilised" into their listening habits from the music industry. Their ears have been tuned into listening to "loud" crap, distorted and flat, and thinking "this is good". It's rather remarkable what the music companies have accomplished. They managed to make people believe that crap they sell sounds good. It is a remarkable accomplishment.

Now, slowly, we have to re-teach the new generations what real music sounds like. "Thanks" to the music industry and incredibly flat sounding and distorted pop-hits who have no actual musical value at all, we have to reverse-engineer people into recognising the real musical values and be able to recognise the real sound.

Coming from someone who makes industrial noise generally, I think it bears even more value.

When I get sober I might post about my recording process and some examples. I LOVE ANALOGUE and I think analogue is the most natural way music should be produced. We live in times when analogue has become so much better than anything in the 60s or whatever. These days analogue gear sounds really, really great!

I've tried for so long to achieve the same sound as in the x0s with the plugins without success. I gave up lately and started buying analogue gear again. For me, it's much easier to work with it and it sounds like it should!

The most important thing is to record everything *properly*. It doesn't sound so bad to use plugins on your well recorded tracks, but these well recorded tracks do have to go through some analogue hardware on their way in, at least. It's a bonus if you have some really good analogue hardware to master it with.

Then you have the best of both worlds. That's my philosophy these days. No matter the "lost generation". Their ears are fu*ked. We have to point out to them that this overcompressed and distorted shit they're listening to is incredibly wrong.

Cheers!

p.s. please be considerate in bashing me. I'm not 35 any more. And nobody's opinion is going to sway me since I've been mixing ITB for 15+ years and I've spent way too much time trying to recreate what I like to hear with the plugins. They just don't do it for me. They're not useless, though. Just that doing it ITB for me is not possible. Getting the sound I want.

[DuX]

NO, no plugin can really emulate the real sound of hardware these days. Sorry to say that, but I've spent way too much time trying to convince myself otherwise. I have no doubts it is possible, but maybe in 2025? I don't know. I know I don't want to waste more time doing it ITB with plugins only. Mixing with plugins is alright, but what I record in must be processed at least a little bit through some hardware outboard on its way in to get the results I want. Plugins are convenient and nice, but them alone don't get me the results I want.

[JoeCat]

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.

Interesting stuff - TY

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

This thing already sounds like out of the 60s. And I'm talking garage band 60s and not top of the line studio stuff.

The funny thing is that is the Abbey Road and Dark Side of the Moon console. Both very hi-fi, and top-of-the-line Studio sounding albums. That particular console is widely believed to be the reason why Abbey Road records after 1969 sounded so much better than anything before.

[plexuss]

NO, no plugin can really emulate the real sound of hardware these days. Sorry to say that, but I've spent way too much time trying to convince myself otherwise. I have no doubts it is possible, but maybe in 2025? I don't know. I know I don't want to waste more time doing it ITB with plugins only. Mixing with plugins is alright, but what I record in must be processed at least a little bit through some hardware outboard on its way in to get the results I want. Plugins are convenient and nice, but them alone don't get me the results I want.

I agree. Having worked with analogue before all this digital crap. ITB has a very different sound than analogue. And I am using a lot of analogue model software tools. I can get a sound that at least mitigates some of the poor aspects of digitalITB but I can't get a convincing analogue sound. However I have shared my work with some professional engineers and they felt it sounded analogue. But they are ITB/hybrid and younger too so I question how well they know analogue.

[wagtunes]

This thing already sounds like out of the 60s. And I'm talking garage band 60s and not top of the line studio stuff.

The funny thing is that is the Abbey Road and Dark Side of the Moon console. Both very hi-fi, and top-of-the-line Studio sounding albums. That particular console is widely believed to be the reason why Abbey Road records after 1969 sounded so much better than anything before.

Well, push it hard enough and you can get it to sound good and dirty. I'm sure Abbey Road Studios never cranked these suckers up like this.

[jinxtigr]

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.

One thing to bear in mind, though, is different ways people hear things. I'm thinking of op-amps here.

I've seen a lot of 'debunking' videos about op-amps, with people swapping them around and then claiming there's no change in the sound. Funny thing is, often I hear it when they claim not to: I also know why they're having trouble.

Seems like all 'boutique' op amp choices have this in common: severely limited slew rate. Sometimes the 'sounds the same' replacement has forty or more times the slew rate. What happens when the slew rate is super compromised like that? With quiet sounds, maybe not much. The overall frequency response might not seem different (besides a small darkening overall). But the way a loud sound hits the op amp will be significantly altered, without changing the quiet stuff that much.

People sometimes just don't hear these things. If you're into old retro music stuff you're probably more inclined to pick up on it because your ear's tuned to midrange sonorities where these changes show up. If you're focussed on 'frequency response' it seems like there's no difference because in terms of frequency response there mostly isn't: it's a texture thing, and I think modern digital mixing tends to make textures all sound/feel the same.

It's pretty funny when people go for some plugin, which might actually be hurting the sound overall, and seek out these subtle differences! That said, it's possible to digitally mimic exactly this stuff. It might happen naturally through elaborate circuit modeling (if things like slews are represented in the model), and I've done quite a few things that directly restrict slew in a plugin without touching anything else.

Point being, sometimes the 'magic pixie dust' is just a matter of ear training. Rather than listening for frequency profile you gotta listen for texture and character, and then the differences might be more obvious. And then you seek out other listeners who've learned to hear that way

I recently got a ProCo Rat2 which has the original op-amp, sparing me the trouble of finding one. It's another one of those 'replacement has 40 times the slew of the original' deals. With the original chip, if you turn the gain way up, the texture gets much thicker and more hornlike than if the input gain is low, and this is because it's possible to drive the op amp really hard and stress out its inability to slew fast. If you know what's happening it's easy to highlight this stuff so anybody can hear it.

[DuX]

It's been quite a while since the last time I've seen a thread on KVR that makes sense like this.

Good work guys! Keep it up!

[wagtunes]

It's been quite a while since the last time I've seen a thread on KVR that makes sense like this.

Good work guys! Keep it up!

That I'm involved in it is even more of a miracle.

I'll be finishing my track sometime today.

[acousticglue]

Guess is I had my old stereo system that kicked butt from 1980 pioneer receiver with KLK tower speakers marble insert tops it would be all good but I don't. I do however remember distinctly getting rid of my vinyl for CDs and it was all good. Loved vinyl but hated warping, turning over records, scratches and hiss on some albums. The reverbs from 60s was real reverbs from real places. We wouldn't have half the cool crap we hear nowadays without virtual.

[momalle3]

It's so frickin tedious, the idea that the only good is the sounds of fifty years ago. I mean I grew up on these sounds and loved them, but the idea that artistic quality ad sonic beauty stopped the day digital appeared is just tiresome.

Yeah, riding a horse is unique and it's nothing like driving a truck but both experiences are valuable and useful. Sure, follow your analog signal chain to nostalgic glory. But why be the equivalent of the guy on the horse telling everybody "them trucks is no good?"

Nostalgia is the death of the soul, it really is.

We have a range of capacities at our fingertips that would make any engineer in 1970 weep. And yet threads like this are all about the bizarre idea that all that stands between my song and greatness is an analog compressor. WTF?

Driving my daughter and her 12 yer old friends home from class, and they are all grooving to Selena Gomez singing "it ain't me," and I dislike it, but they love it. Oddly, not one of them has ever wished that there has been analog compressor on the kick drum, or stopped enjoying it because there was a plugin eq used in the mixdown

[wagtunes]

It's so frickin tedious, the idea that the only good is the sounds of fifty years ago. I mean I grew on these sounds and loved them, but the idea that artistic quality ad sonic beauty stopped the day digital appeared is just tiresome.

Yeah, riding a horse is unique and it's nothing like driving a truck but both experiences are valuable and useful. Sure, follow your analog signal chain to nostalgic glory. But why by the equivalent of the guy on the horse telling everybody them trucks is no good?

Nostalgia is the death of the soul, it really is

I don't think anybody is saying that. There is a place for everything. If I'm doing an EDM dance track the last thing I want to do is make it sound like it was recorded in the 60s.

But not everything has to sound like it was recorded in a hermetically sealed mayonnaise jar.

[momalle3]

I don't think anybody is saying that. There is a place for everything. If I'm doing an EDM dance track the last thing I want to do is make it sound like it was recorded in the 60s.

But not everything has to sound like it was recorded in a hermetically sealed mayonnaise jar.

Well DuX was saying exactly that a few posts ago, but he also said he was drunk, so who knows.

Yeah agree nothing has to sound like everything else, so true.

Just the ridiculous high seriousness with which this is discussed! Like the analog comp is a sacrament you are offering to the analog gods and they will bless your track with magic. It's never about gear: it's always some complicated and overbaked moral critique of lifestyle passing as audio discussion, like X is more authentic because of this gear blah blah blah.

You could argue we should stop trying to make fish (digital audio) be bicycles (analog). Or you could argue hey look I put fins and scales on my bike! Or wheels on my fish! The quasi-religious purity stuff is tedious

[SHall1000]

"An EDM track that sounds like it was recorded in the 60s" Must have been done! Can anybody think of an example?

[wagtunes]

I don't think anybody is saying that. There is a place for everything. If I'm doing an EDM dance track the last thing I want to do is make it sound like it was recorded in the 60s.

But not everything has to sound like it was recorded in a hermetically sealed mayonnaise jar.

Well DuX was saying exactly that a few posts ago, but he also said he was drunk, so who knows.

Yeah agree nothing has to sound like everything else, so true.

Just the ridiculous high seriousness with which this is discussed! Like the analog comp is a sacrament you are offering to the analog gods and they will bless your track with magic. It's never about gear: it's always some complicated and overbaked moral critique of lifestyle passing as audio discussion, like X is more authentic because of this gear blah blah blah.

You could argue we should stop trying to make fish (digital audio) be bicycles (analog). Or you could argue hey look I put fins and scales on my bike! Or wheels on my fish! The quasi-religious purity stuff is tedious

Again, nobody is saying this. At least I'm not. I love all sounds. I love almost all kinds of music. Only things I can't stand are rap and reggae. Otherwise, I'm good to go. I've listened to everything from Carpenters to Kelly Clarkson to Beatles to Beastie Boys. And you can throw Bach, Dream Theater and Dragonforce into that list.

But I sure as hell don't want my Uriah Heep records to sound like my Schubert symphonies.

I mean my God, if everything sounded the same I'd probably slit my throat from boredom.

But when I want to do a retro style 60s or 70s piece, I want it to SOUND like a retro style 60s or 70s piece and not like Taylor Swift on a bad hair day.