My advice to newbies is: dont believe the hype! do the best you can with what you got and dont feel bad about not having racks and racks of gear, and dont think that if u had all that, your 'talent' would improve.. coz it wouldnt.if vintage gear is so great then howcome the 80s sound crap?
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- KVRist
- 161 posts since 10 Nov, 2003 from australia
OK, i've had enough. Through years and years of listening to hype about vintage this and vintage that, and hardware being so much warmer, fatter, and fuller then software, and how vintage hum is great, and how noise is characterful, and all this CRAP, i feel now a line should definitely be drawn. Let's go back in time a couple of decades, to the 70s and the 80s when software or when any of this new so called "harsh digital" technology didnt exsist. and what do we have? a whole lot of CRAP sounding songs. Mind you, I'm not criticising the songs, i'm criticising the production. If new technology is so bad, then how come it sounds better then the stuff all those years ago? And while we're talking about the 80s, how come it didnt occur to ANYONE that the majority of songs lack BASS?? Ignoring trends for a moment, why is it that a professional sound engineer with decades of experience behind them did not question things like "hmmm u think the bass levels should be increased a little bit?" whereas today even a novice would be able to pick up things like that. On a different note, I am also fed up with purists. Over the last few years i have come accross some incredibly mind numbing stupidity being spread around, all thanks to these morons. These are the people with racks and racks of gear who have been 'making music' for decades, yet if u asked to hear one of their songs, you'd find out that they either 1) have never finished a single song or b) they make experimental music with lots of noise and blips and pops and crackles. Which in turn would make u realise that these people are just plain nuts. How dare anyone specialising in crackles and pops make degrading comments about 'quality' and stuff like that!? These are the people that put CDs down for their 'harsh digital' sound. err.. i think u get my point. I could go on and on but i think thats enough for one post My advice to newbies is: dont believe the hype! do the best you can with what you got and dont feel bad about not having racks and racks of gear, and dont think that if u had all that, your 'talent' would improve.. coz it wouldnt.
My advice to newbies is: dont believe the hype! do the best you can with what you got and dont feel bad about not having racks and racks of gear, and dont think that if u had all that, your 'talent' would improve.. coz it wouldnt.-
- KVRAF
- 1959 posts since 10 Aug, 2004 from Valencia, Spain.
have you listened to...
Front 242
Skinny Puppy
Depeche Mode (black celebration, 1986: does it sound bad to you?)
Nitzer Ebb
...?
do they really sound bad to you?
Front 242
Skinny Puppy
Depeche Mode (black celebration, 1986: does it sound bad to you?)
Nitzer Ebb
...?
do they really sound bad to you?
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- KVRian
- 854 posts since 14 Jul, 2003 from Netherlands
What you have to bear in mind is that music tastes change. One could also argue that todays songs are too bass heavy and overproduced. I think what people like about vintage gear in general is the unpredictiveness, the side effects of it which does create 'character' and which does lend the music that extra bit of liveliness. To give an analogy: if you removed all the small extra sounds such as fret noise from a guitar solo it would soon sound too clean.
But I agree that you can too much emphasize vintage gear. And that clean, precise sound a digital recording has can be very cool. Mixing those is probably the best way forward.
But I agree that you can too much emphasize vintage gear. And that clean, precise sound a digital recording has can be very cool. Mixing those is probably the best way forward.
"...Everything we see or seem is but a dream, within a dream."
MySpace site: http://www.myspace.com/MarcJX8P
Virb: http://www.virb.com/marcjx8p
MySpace site: http://www.myspace.com/MarcJX8P
Virb: http://www.virb.com/marcjx8p
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- Beware the Quoth
- 35475 posts since 4 Sep, 2001 from R'lyeh Oceanic Amusement Park and Funfair
easymode quoth my advice for newbies is : dont believe mark77
I disagree with some of what he says, but the very last thing he said:
The rest of it has glaring logical flaws, and is full of suppositions and assumptions, but that last bit, that should be on the top page of every thread at KVR.
I disagree with some of what he says, but the very last thing he said:
was almost completely and utterly spot-on.My advice to newbies is: ... do the best you can with what you got and dont feel bad about not having racks and racks of gear, and dont think that if u had all that, your 'talent' would improve.. coz it wouldnt.
The rest of it has glaring logical flaws, and is full of suppositions and assumptions, but that last bit, that should be on the top page of every thread at KVR.
An idiot on Set Theory:
"In some cases there is an object called red that contains everything that is red. In much the same way a pot is a plate."
"In some cases there is an object called red that contains everything that is red. In much the same way a pot is a plate."
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- KVRist
- Topic Starter
- 161 posts since 10 Nov, 2003 from australia
I agree with Marc JX8P, a bit of both is the way to go. My problem is mainly with people who are completely tunnelvisioned and one sided, and therefore make things sound as if there was no other way, or that the other way can only be shit. Thats what bothers me the most. If we only looked at the past and admire how great it was, we'd never movie forward and new technology wouldnt exsist.
With that kind of purism.. we might as well say the horse and carriage was way better than a mercedes because.. despite lacking in features, it was more earthly. This purism thing has been spiralling out of control for ages and i want an end to it.
In reply to your post easymode... dude.. if you're gonna make a comment like that, make sure u back it up with something otherwise it has no weight, which in return makes your point nonexistent.
With that kind of purism.. we might as well say the horse and carriage was way better than a mercedes because.. despite lacking in features, it was more earthly. This purism thing has been spiralling out of control for ages and i want an end to it.
In reply to your post easymode... dude.. if you're gonna make a comment like that, make sure u back it up with something otherwise it has no weight, which in return makes your point nonexistent.
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- KVRAF
- 6937 posts since 4 Jun, 2004 from Utrecht, Holland
I agree to some extend. Then we wanted to get rid of the noisefloor and get a flat frequency response, now we put a VintageWarmer and TapeSaturation in the master chain. Grass is always greener at the other side.mark77 wrote:Through years and years of listening to hype about vintage this and vintage that, and hardware being so much warmer, fatter, and fuller then software, and how vintage hum is great, and how noise is characterful, and all this CRAP
Because they were initially mastered for vinyl singles or LP. Any more bass would cause the needle to jump. 12" @ 45 rmp could handle a tad more.mark77 wrote:how come it didnt occur to ANYONE that the majority of songs lack BASS??
And its a taste thing. Since the ninetees we want more of that booming bass.
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- KVRian
- 604 posts since 7 Jul, 2004 from Somewhere between the 2nd and 3rd dimensions.
What I first got into writing and producing my own stuff, I spunked away around two grand on vintage kit - most of which I no longer use.mark77 wrote:dont feel bad about not having racks and racks of gear
Still, they look great sat in my studio gathering dust. I should sell the lot really (except my mint-condition Juno-106, that's a keeper).
Analogue or digital – which is better? There's only one way to find out... FI-I-IGHT!!!
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- KVRer
- 19 posts since 10 Dec, 2004 from Sydney
Too loud bass makes needles jump, especially on turntables using a too heavy counterweight or with incorrect tracking. So until the mid-80s it was common to make sure the bass was well under control. Now that vinyl is sold mainly to DJs with professional equipment, the issue is not important.
The other big thing that makes much 80s music so horrible is that analog synthesizers all converged to using the same chips (from Curtis or SSM) with basically the same design, and Yamaha brought out the DX. Suddenly people just used synthesizers as glorified organs, just using the presets.
In the 70s, when synths were made from discrete components or with general-purpose chips, they each had a more individual sounds than the 80s synths, IMHO.
Cheers
Ricko
The other big thing that makes much 80s music so horrible is that analog synthesizers all converged to using the same chips (from Curtis or SSM) with basically the same design, and Yamaha brought out the DX. Suddenly people just used synthesizers as glorified organs, just using the presets.
In the 70s, when synths were made from discrete components or with general-purpose chips, they each had a more individual sounds than the 80s synths, IMHO.
Cheers
Ricko
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- KVRAF
- 3096 posts since 3 Nov, 2002 from Kettering UK
So, totally different these days with VSTis thenricko wrote:people just used synthesizers as glorified organs, just using the presets.
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- KVRAF
- 25035 posts since 12 Jul, 2003 from West Caprazumia
mark77 wrote:OK, i've had enough. Through years and years of listening to hype about vintage this and vintage that, and hardware being so much warmer, fatter, and fuller then software, and how vintage hum is great, and how noise is characterful, and all this CRAP, i feel now a line should definitely be drawn. Let's go back in time a couple of decades, to the 70s and the 80s when software or when any of this new so called "harsh digital" technology didnt exsist.
What are you on about?
During the 80's digital technology was in the worst state of its infancy but it was totally hip to use it.
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machinesworking machinesworking https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=8505 - KVRAF
- 8059 posts since 15 Aug, 2003 from seattle
God I hate that reasoning!mark77 wrote: b) they make experimental music with lots of noise and blips and pops and crackles. Which in turn would make u realise that these people are just plain nuts. How dare anyone specialising in crackles and pops make degrading comments about 'quality' and stuff like that!?
Sorry, agreed for the most part with the rest of your post, but that left me cold. Your personal music taste, not everybody's, repeat after me, " I have every right to judge other people's music as something I like, or do not like, but placing a value judgment on the merits of art is an idiotic thing to do."
We are not building faster cars here, it's all subjective.
I hate Winger, I don't care if the bass is booming, or if the vocals are recorded with the lowest noise floor out there, the music isn't what I like, in fact give me some guy recording pure noise over Winger ANY day, subjective viewpoint.
Hardware analogue gear..... The bass from my Moog is somehow thicker than most all the soft synths I have. Whenever I want a really fat bass, I turn to the analogue. The 80's had crap bass because everybody was using high end to sound "clean", listen to things like My Life in the Bush of Ghosts by David Byrne and brian Eno if you want to hear a great recording IMO.
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- KVRer
- 4 posts since 17 Apr, 2004
I agree in that the 80s was a horrible decade soundwise - ugly treble to sum it up in my ears. The 70s was better and the 60s - well just say it was charming:)
This is the HYPE age now. I've just finished a 6 month stunt at a studio with a owner who litterally was covered in old tape recorders and plates and preamps from the old days. The owner preferred the old stuff since his computer rebooted in the middle of sessions. Looking into it I found Norton/virus apps/other cpu stealing stuff wich I offered to remove but no go! hehehe! You can't show a blind man the way - you have to walk with him. I told him to take advantage of the HYPE age and sell the old stuff and to get a decent DAW instead.
Now there is good hype and bad hype. Good hype is a word of mouth thing concerning the actual performance of a hard/software while bad hype express itself by "the more expensive - the more better" kind of talk.
Doesn't anyone use their ears anymore? Let's face it - today you can produce yourself with any imaginable sounds - be it anywhere at the dirty/clean fat/thin dynamic/loudness continuum and I love it. It doesn't tax your wallet as it used to either. This is good times as long as you take notice of bad hype.
As for the bass - on vinyls you actually EQ out bass from the mastertape in order to avoid the wide swinging grooves and the pickup amp restores this by a RIAA curve.
Just my 2 cents here.
This is the HYPE age now. I've just finished a 6 month stunt at a studio with a owner who litterally was covered in old tape recorders and plates and preamps from the old days. The owner preferred the old stuff since his computer rebooted in the middle of sessions. Looking into it I found Norton/virus apps/other cpu stealing stuff wich I offered to remove but no go! hehehe! You can't show a blind man the way - you have to walk with him. I told him to take advantage of the HYPE age and sell the old stuff and to get a decent DAW instead.
Now there is good hype and bad hype. Good hype is a word of mouth thing concerning the actual performance of a hard/software while bad hype express itself by "the more expensive - the more better" kind of talk.
Doesn't anyone use their ears anymore? Let's face it - today you can produce yourself with any imaginable sounds - be it anywhere at the dirty/clean fat/thin dynamic/loudness continuum and I love it. It doesn't tax your wallet as it used to either. This is good times as long as you take notice of bad hype.
As for the bass - on vinyls you actually EQ out bass from the mastertape in order to avoid the wide swinging grooves and the pickup amp restores this by a RIAA curve.
Just my 2 cents here.