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Author Topic: Does P-T lose bottom when you transfer from tape? Testing Mixerman's premise  (Read 45096 times)

Ron Steele

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How does Friday, November 18th, 7pm at CRC sound?
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Ron Steele

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Well malice, you may just have one extra day to wank off then, as it seems the date has been changed to the 18th.

Any chance you could make it?  We are going to have a wonderful deli trey there, and maybe even some chocolate muffins. Cool

Also pending the change of date, we have a surprise participant, unless of course he wants to chime in here as he really was not meant to be a surprise. Very Happy

But what the hell, let's just say we have an esteemed mystery guest who is going to bring alot to the table, and I'm not talking about the condiments for the deli trey.

Laughing  Laughing
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electrical

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I have offered to bring a 16-track master, a 16-track headblock and do the alignment of the analog machine myself. This will be a full band recording with lots of demanding low-end material.

I propose that we use 0vu= -15dBfs as the transfer level, as that provides a nominal equivalent in headroom to any good analog system.

I propose we meter the insert point of each desk channel for the alignments. This gets rid of any impedance mismatch or interface anomalies.

I propose we swap the input snake on the monitor channels for the A/B testing rather than use alternate inputs.

That's what I propose.

I also propose we go to the boats and play poker all night afterwards.
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best,

steve albini
Electrical Audio
sa at electrical dot com
www.electrical.com

RKrizman

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Excellent!  One more question.  Is there an agreed-upon mixdown format?  Presumably you want to distibute these results in some fair way.

-R
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Fletcher

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RKrizman wrote on Thu, 03 November 2005 15:11

Excellent!  One more question.  Is there an agreed-upon mixdown format?  Presumably you want to distibute these results in some fair way.

-R


From what I understand CRC has a set of Prism converters which can be employed to make a 24 bit 44.1 final recording of this material [if we can do it 24/96... that would be cool too... then we can do a sample rate conversion to 16/44.1 and/or [cough, cough] MP-3].

I'm in for poker at the end of this...

From here on out, the key will be to establish a methodology to which all parties can agree.

As I've mentioned to Ron more than a few times, we will have several different people working with varied agendas... so, if we can work out a step by step methodolgy to which everyone involved agrees then you can pretty well plan that the playing field is entirely even as each faction can not disagree with any of the other factions on the method.
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CN Fletcher

mwagener wrote on Sat, 11 September 2004 14:33
We are selling emotions, there are no emotions in a grid


"Recording engineers are an arrogant bunch.  
If you've spent most of your life with a few thousand dollars worth of musicians in the studio, making a decision every second and a half... and you and  they are going to have to live with it for the rest of your lives, you'll get pretty arrogant too.  It takes a certain amount of balls to do that... something around three"
Malcolm Chisholm

The Resonater

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Hey all,

Just wanted to take a moment to say thanks in advance to any and all who are taking the time and effort to do some testing, from which we all hope to potentially learn something.  I know that testing can be laborious, but I appreciate everyone's time on this.  It's gracious that CRC is allowing the facilities to be used as the testing site, and it's exciting to know that Steve A. will be there to provide some great recordings.  And Ron, thanks for initiating the idea and thanks finally to anyone else helping out on it.  The poker sounds like fun, but I'm just too far away to attend!
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The Resonater

Mixerman

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I can't tell you all how pleased I am to see that Steve Albini will be at this "party." With Steve and Fletcher there, I have all the confidence in the world that this will be done properly.

Enjoy,

Mixerman

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malice

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The Resonater wrote on Thu, 03 November 2005 22:17

Hey all,

Just wanted to take a moment to say thanks in advance to any and all who are taking the time and effort to do some testing, from which we all hope to potentially learn something.  I know that testing can be laborious, but I appreciate everyone's time on this.  It's gracious that CRC is allowing the facilities to be used as the testing site, and it's exciting to know that Steve A. will be there to provide some great recordings.  And Ron, thanks for initiating the idea and thanks finally to anyone else helping out on it.  The poker sounds like fun, but I'm just too far away to attend!


I'm glad too that Steve Albini could contribute. I'm confident now that this test is witnessed by someone who knows analog and that can provide great material to run it. I wish I could be there. This is loking less and less like a w... Very Happy

Whatever  Rolling Eyes

Best of luck with this Ron, sincerely. And thanx to Fletcher for hosting this in his forum and supervise.

malice

Eric Rudd

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Ron Steele wrote on Fri, 28 October 2005 14:15


1.My contact at CRC first thought would be to track a short 4 piece rock based thing to 2" and PT HD at the same time. This would allow for a comparison of the effects of tape versus straight to digital.


The proper way to do this would be to lock the two formats with timecode. Then bring up faders from each to the console....group and A/B playback from there.

What might be eye opening for some would be to monitor *on input* the two formats...i.e, compare to the source. We tend to forget that by the very nature of digital/PT we are already listening to the source converted twice. With the 2" on input, you're just listening to copper.

Quote:



2.Once a track was recorded, we would also transfer the 2" to PT HD to see how the transfer holds up in PT HD against the original 2".




Why? This seems unnecessary to me if test 1 was conducted properly. Unless you just wanted to hear a source that lived temporarily on 2" before finding its way to PT.

Quote:



3. We could then test the summing of PT stemmed thru a neve or ssl, versus PT ITB summing.



As for there being a drop of 6db at 50Hz with PTHD...a simply look at the signal with Spectrafoo or similar will tell you...not to mention your ears.

Ahhh...it never really ends, does it? I remember we did these tests with a Mitsu X-850, Sony 3324, and a Synclavier years ago.

Carry on.  Surprised

Eric
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CWHumphrey

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electrical wrote on Thu, 03 November 2005 19:47


I propose that we use 0vu= -15dBfs as the transfer level, as that provides a nominal equivalent in headroom to any good analog system.




Bob O.'s assertion was that this issue may be level dependant.  Wouldn't make sense to also test -18dBfs or -20dBfs?  And for the sake of accuracy, when Mixerman discovered this, where was his operating level at?

All in the name of science, of course.

-Carter
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Carter William Humphrey

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rnicklaus

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Great team of people, no doubt.

Although there is now a full band on tape, Mixerman was very clear on the 8 or 9 tracks of bass and drums as the test.

I believe that a full band, full tilt test will even be better, but it's not the original "challenge".

But hey, I think a full tilt 1/2" two track should show the problem as well, so test away.

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R.N.

Eric Rudd

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Eric Rudd wrote on Thu, 03 November 2005 22:39


2.Once a track was recorded, we would also transfer the 2" to PT HD to see how the transfer holds up in PT HD against the original 2".

Why? This seems unnecessary to me if test 1 was conducted properly. Unless you just wanted to hear a source that lived temporarily on 2" before finding its way to PT.




Nevermind......I read some more of this thread and now understand what MM is trying to do. Sorry for the bandwidth.

Eric
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Bob Olhsson

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R.Nicklaus wrote on Thu, 03 November 2005 16:56

Although there is now a full band on tape, Mixerman was very clear on the 8 or 9 tracks of bass and drums as the test.

I believe that a full band, full tilt test will even be better, but it's not the original "challenge".
8 or 9 tracks of bass and drums might indeed be a worst case challenge. Trying different lavels is important.

Curve Dominant

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CWHumphrey wrote on Thu, 03 November 2005 22:44

electrical wrote on Thu, 03 November 2005 19:47

I propose that we use 0vu= -15dBfs as the transfer level, as that provides a nominal equivalent in headroom to any good analog system.


Bob O.'s assertion was that this issue may be level dependant.  Wouldn't make sense to also test -18dBfs or -20dBfs?  And for the sake of accuracy, when Mixerman discovered this, where was his operating level at?


Hmm...My understanding is with PT, input at around -16dBfs = optimal use of the kit's headroom. Not sure if -15dBfs would yield a noticable detriment in comparison.

It would be in hitting the convertors significantly harder than -16dBfs which might yield the "lacking balls" effect which Mixerman claims to have heard. No surprise there: Digital likes headroom. "Loudness Wars," anybody? What's the first thing to go when we quash the headroom out of our mixes...balls, right?

What's one little dB, guys...how about you use 0vu= -16dBfs as the transfer level.

No biggie. Glad to see Mr.'s Kashiwa, Albini, Fletcher, et al going to bat on this. Happy hunting!

SuperBurtM

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I noticed the drop in the low end during a transfer 3 years or so ago before HD came out so I used the ad800se converters with an ardsync and I remember going where in the hell is the bottom! Sounded like a Hi pass to 50HZ.
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