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[Signal]

ok heres my reply to all of your awesome information-
first off
<bows>
thank you all.  I have learned so much from just this post!  I think i will have to get a friend with a alishad rig to try the HEDD, maybe- (I wish there was a good Q- base way to do it )  Now I have just two last questions..


MOST  IMPORTANT:
one) Chris, I'm really interested by this bumping up trick you're talking about,  where can i learn it or try it? I would try it right now off my DAW if you could point me where/what i need to do it.   PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE post more on this.  ANYTHING we can do to push the CD medium is hot in my book, and I will  read volumes of anything you care to speak about.

(NOT SO IMPORTANT)
two) Why I think I can get tape sound from a digital medium, mainly a tasteless attack on eletrical and erik:

     Your fender denting analog is not only weak, its misleading reasoning.  A more appropriate analogy would be, If you had a ferrari that has a lot of acceleration, how could I get my car to be a ferrari?  Well the answer is you would have to work really hard at it, but in general you get that I'm asking how can I improve the road performance of my automobile, and there are many ways. A tape "sound" being subjective already, is possible via simulation software to an extent, and I think its also fair to assume that I wanted to know how close I could get before giving up and complaining the I don’t have a tape machine nearby.
      Why do I say these things? Physics.  I know there are a lot of different factors that go into how audio recorded to tape sounds, in fact, there are plenty of factors that go in digital as well, but we tend not to obsess about those, huh ? =).  Anyway- as far as I can tell, everything is under defined in these discussions so I will try to be specific with my reasoning here.
      The digital domain, as commonly used, is a method of taking many samples during a small moment of time for recreation later.  Considering that the general audio public at this time commonly has a CD player, and usually not a very good way to amplify said device, it could be argued that our audience will mainly be interpreting our final product from a CD source.
      Now when their little boombox starts recreating these samples we have taken so much time to tailor for their listening experience, it becomes less about "what tape machine did the use", especially when the whole thing is  processed a billion times over so that you no longer can tell, but "how did they get that sound?"
      In the context of this forum, I believe that most of the jargon is used to help convery this idea of "how did they get that sound (to me)." Analog versus Digital? Thats like saying did you draw or paint? they are not enemies, they are just different paths.  Now when someone asks the question about an AMPEX at 15 ips- He's really asking in context "My artist relates to this sound, how can i get that sound?"  Do i need a AMPEX at 15 ips?  No, for my particular mix, I may only need to EQ to get the sound, for WE as a group cannot understand WHAT artifact of that particular tape machine the artist loves, for all we know he liked the sound of the speakers he once listened to an album that an interview said a producer used said device.
      So thank you for everyone who gave me some advice on how to "get that sound," especially those who went into detail on the reasons why and their personal impressions of it.
      but booo to all of you who deal in black and white, and tell me to go buy a tape machine, because you are treating my question like a test, and not putting in any effort to interpret what I might mean. You're automatically assuming that If I don't hear every artifact concieved in your head of that machine I have failed in my attempt to "get that sound." Well you know what? I dont want flutter! I don't want every ounce on a ampex! I want to know how to get some of the things you hear when listening to one in the digital realm and HOW ELSE AM I GOING TO ASK FOR THAT? am i going to discuss fourier transformations of sound and articulate what frequency range i want to compress and fuck with? NO!
      but booo to all of you who deal in black and white, and tell me to go buy a tape machine, because you are treating my question like a test, and not putting in any effort to interpret what I might mean. You're automatically assuming that If I don't hear every artifact concieved in your head of that machine I have failed in my attempt to "get that sound." Well you know what? I dont want flutter! I don't want every ounce on an ampex! I want to know how to get some of the things you hear when listening to one in the digital realm and HOW ELSE AM I GOING TO ASK FOR THAT? Am I going to discuss Fourier transformations of sound and articulate what frequency range I want to compress and fuck with? NO!  why?

One of the greatest attributes of an audio forum is when you ask people how to make apple pie, you learn how to bake about 20 other desserts.

Well ok, you don’t literally learn how to bake but…
Nevermind.

I love you guys.  Please keep up the great work, and seriously chris how do you do that?
 

[electrical]

Signal wrote on Wed, 18 August 2004 16:12

(NOT SO IMPORTANT) two) Why I think I can get tape sound from a digital medium, mainly a tasteless attack on eletrical and erik:      Your fender denting analog is not only weak, its misleading reasoning.  A more appropriate analogy would be, If you had a ferrari that has a lot of acceleration, how could I get my car to be a ferrari?  Well the answer is you would have to work really hard at it, but in general you get that I'm asking how can I improve the road performance of my automobile, and there are many ways. A tape "sound" being subjective already, is possible via simulation software to an extent, and I think its also fair to assume that I wanted to know how close I could get before giving up and complaining the I don’t have a tape machine nearby.

My fender analogy is a shorthand for this paragraph:

You and a client are trying to achieve a certain sound. You and your client have (mistakenly, in my mind) attributed the sound to the particular tape and speed the sound was recorded on, ignoring the much more important things that made your client like it in the first place. You have asked how to simulate this sound. I assert that the parts of tape machine/tape recording that can be simulated (distortion, compression, frequency-response anomalies) are its failure modes, and are generally minimized in a properly-made tape recording. In short, you are asking to recreate artificially the parts of a tape recording that are least significant, not the part of it that works well and the reasons one uses tape recording in the first place.

I also went off on a tangent about what a fool's errand it is to try to re-create these artefacts, and how dumb the attemps sound to me, but that is of no importance. You might prefer the look of a dented Rambler, despite not going any faster.

Quote:

The digital domain, as commonly used, is a method of taking many samples during a small moment of time for recreation later.  Considering that the general audio public at this time commonly has a CD player, and usually not a very good way to amplify said device, it could be argued that our audience will mainly be interpreting our final product from a CD source.       Now when their little boombox starts recreating these samples we have taken so much time to tailor for their listening experience, it becomes less about "what tape machine did the use", especially when the whole thing is  processed a billion times over so that you no longer can tell, but "how did they get that sound?"

It is apparent, however, that people listening to CDs (or MP3s) on boom boxes or iPods or Segways or whatever can tell the difference between a good-sounding recording and a bad one. The differences and choices made have an effect on the recording, even when listened to at a lesser resolution, because under the same listening circumstances better recordings will still sound relatively better than poor ones. It is a mistake to assume that a reduced-quality end product makes upstream quality irrellevant.

Quote:

Now when someone asks the question about an AMPEX at 15 ips- He's really asking in context "My artist relates to this sound, how can i get that sound?"

I can play you 100 or more records recorded on an unspecified Ampex machine and 456 tape that sound nothing like the sound you are currently listening to. I say that without knowing what you're listening to, because I believe you have mis-identified the source of "the sound." This is a common mistake, and I don't blame anyone for making it -- I'm sure I have been guilty of it myself -- but it is a mistake.

Quote:

but booo to all of you who deal in black and white, and tell me to go buy a tape machine, because you are treating my question like a test, and not putting in any effort to interpret what I might mean. You're automatically assuming that If I don't hear every artifact concieved in your head of that machine I have failed in my attempt to "get that sound." Well you know what? I dont want flutter! I don't want every ounce on an ampex! I want to know how to get some of the things you hear when listening to one in the digital realm and HOW ELSE AM I GOING TO ASK FOR THAT? Am I going to discuss Fourier transformations of sound and articulate what frequency range I want to compress and fuck with? NO!  why?

Because unless you stop speaking in vagaries like "the sound of tape," nobody is going to be able to specifically address your concern, unless they too stoop to meaningless euphemistic babble. It depresses me when people who know better start using meaningless terms (albeit terms which are common parlance in amateur recording circles) in a forum that has the potential to cut through such bullshit. It's called "Reason in Audio," for George's sake, not "Meaningless Sales Pitch-Speak in Audio."

I'll admit to a brewing hatred for the perspective that analog recording somehow imparts "a sound" to music, and that this nearly-impeccable technology is being reduced to an effects box (or worse yet, an effects box is being used to simulate its weaknesses) for computer recording. This brewing hatred is for the perspective, not the participants. I enjoy talking about this stuff, and I enjoy seeing the veil of ignorance lifted from my eyes and others. This is the purpose of all such interchanges.

[chrisj]

Whoa, hang on, don't get too carried away there!
Futzing with the sampling rate in order to do a good SRC to get rid of illegal data isn't that big a deal. The most you should expect is to get rid of a bit of digital glare. The rest is stuff _I_ do in mastering and seeing as this is an ongoing learning process you should wait for WOMP III to be done, which I'm entered in, and see for yourself if you really like it or if it does nothing for you. Last year I didn't do so hot. I _have_ been working and will do better. This is stuff I do for money... admittedly not much, but what the hell.
The 'bumping sampling rate'? I'm on a Mac so this is what I'd do.
Edit a file using 'SoundHack', which is capable of rewriting the metadata for at least AIFF files. If you rewrite the bit depth you'll get noise but you can tell the file it is any sampling rate at all and it'll believe you. Pick something the tiniest hair off from 44.1K that you can get.
Load the file into 'Audacity', which has a damn good SRC that I'm always talking about. Pick the highest quality setting, or if you want to roll off more smoothly near Nyquist a lower quality that still specifies 'sinc interpolation', and convert the nearly-44.1K file to 44.1K proper by changing the project setting to 44.1K and exporting another AIFF, or whatever you use.
These two steps will force the file to be treated as if it is being converted from a much higher rate, and the sinc interpolation will be applied to all data, but the pitch differences could be almost arbitrarily negligible as long as it made the interpolation come on (44.1 to 44.1 export, it'll just write out the file as-is). When the interpolation is in effect, any data that is technically illegal like -FS to +FS in one sample should be altered to something that contains no data above 22.050K. I'm not sure if it will also fix stuff that is able to clip DACs (Gibb effect) but if there's anything produced through digital processing and amplification that would've been legal at much lower levels but becomes illegal data when amplified and hypercompressed/limited, this will make it go away.
Maybe I should try this on some full scale white noise to see how it goes- in theory it should make a difference and the difference should be (might be) observable under ABX conditions. Could give it a try.
Unless you are sensitive to DAC grunge through the reconstructed wave clipping the DAC, you should not be able to hear any difference. This SRC-trick is not supposed to be noticable. The ONLY thing you'll get is absence of DAC clipping- nothing else should be affected at all (though if your SRC isn't up to snuff don't even bother. I know the Audacity sinc interpolation SRC is good enough. Total stop-band attenuation and no artifacts at all. Computationally expensive, that's all.)

[Plush]

Dear Signal,

If you appeared at our studio wanting a certain "sound,"
we would give it to you. However, if you wanted to emulate the sound, one has to ask "Why?" The means to the "sound" are readily available although unknown to you.

If you continued to want to "emulate" the sound instead of taking the "real" sound, we would kick you out.

As you can gather from previous posts, dat's da Chicaga method.

Good Day,  

[ted nightshade]

electrical wrote on Wed, 18 August 2004 14:53

You and a client are trying to achieve a certain sound. You and your client have (mistakenly, in my mind) attributed the sound to the particular tape and speed the sound was recorded on, ignoring the much more important things that made your client like it in the first place.

Very much agree.

[David Schober]

electrical wrote on Wed, 18 August 2004 16:53

I can play you 100 or more records recorded on an unspecified Ampex machine and 456 tape that sound nothing like the sound you are currently listening to. I say that without knowing what you're listening to, because I believe you have mis-identified the source of "the sound." This is a common mistake, and I don't blame anyone for making it -- I'm sure I have been guilty of it myself -- but it is a mistake.

Steve, once again I couldn't agree more.  It's the very thing I'm talking about.... They are mistaking a rope for a snake.  That's why I raised the comment about wondering of those who make such claims in fact, had ever spent a reasonable amount of time on analog.  The most important things about why something sounds the way it does has very, very little to do with the format.  Back in the analog day there was the 456 vs. 226 vs 250 vs 499 vs ????? whatever BASF, AGFA.etc.   Then the issue of Studer A880 vs MM1200 vs JH16 vs JH24 vs Studer 827.  And oh yes, the killer of them all if you could keep it running with the guy in prison, the Immortal Stevens machine.  Shall I even discuss Dobly?  After all, Al Schmidt used it all the time!  And that's just the analog debate!

Why else can we have great engineers using such differing formats, and yet they sound great?  Just as an example of some I had the honor of assisting back in the bad old days....Schnee-JH16/456, sometimes 499.  Ladanyi 3M79/Agfa, Scheiner, digital.  At that time, Mistu X850, Puig-JH16/499, Schmidt-didn't matter...any analog, but when asked, 250 w/Dolby.  Shall I go on???   These guys were great becuase of their chops...not their format!  

By the way, 456, 226, 250, 499, Agfa, & BASF are various kinds of analog tape.  JH16&24, MM1200, 3M79. Studer A800&827, all analog tape machines, Mitsu X850, digital tape....That's info for any of the young 'uns!)

If the damn plugin sounds great, use it!  But don't suppose if you've never spent much time on analog that you have a clue about how it really sounds.  Like how analog sounds after a few hundred hours of use....nothing like when you tracked a month ago, now that all the good stuff is stuck on the heads and the Q-tips.  Don't think that you now have an "analog sound" since you have the plugin running.  As Steve said, just don't presume to think that analog can be reduded to a plugin.  It simply can't.  And even if it could, it doesn't mean what it's on somehow magically sounds good.  "The Wall," "Aja" "DSOTM" whatever....aren't legandary because they were recorded on tape.  It's a hell of a lot more than that.  To say anything else is an insult to the incredibly talented people who made it.  Those of us from the old days of analog can remember a ton of albums that sounded much worse than any digital album of today.  

Quoting Lance Armstrong again...."It's Not About The Bike."

Sorry about the rant.  I had a bit too much wine with dinner.....
(but it was a good cabernet!)

[groucho]

Steve wrote:
"In short, you are asking to recreate artificially the parts of a tape recording that are least significant, not the part of it that works well and the reasons one uses tape recording in the first place." (italics mine)

Steve, if you're so inclined I'd be interested to know what you consider to be the parts that work well, and are the reason one uses tape.

Not at all meaning to challenge - just curious.

thanks,
Chris

[Signal]

Dear Everyone, especially electrical,

        <bows in shame>
   
        you have made the better point, and im sorry for my ignorance, more-over, thank you for taking the time to explain it to me =).  
         We decided to track the rhythm section to tape btw, and we did it as transparently as possible and it sounds great! Thank you all btw.
       
         -Sig


p.s. dammmm i got skoooooooooooooooooooooled!
lol

[chrisj]

About the 'bumping' sample rate- see the 'Bumping' thread I've started. I'm going to ask George if I can post a set of files (I could do 'em message by message) to demonstrate my findings. I ran off some experiments today and found that while white-noise didn't contain enough extreme high frequency stuff to be ABXable (when you SRCed it to .00001 away from what it was), it was possible to make pathological cases that were obvious.

The demo files I made are actually audible changes being produced through UPsampling. It works just as well to upsample from 44.099K. The reason is- DAW output can easily contain data flat-out illegal by the rules of the Nyquist sampling theorem.

[Erik]

Signal wrote on Thu, 19 August 2004 09:33

p.s. dammmm i got skoooooooooooooooooooooled! lol

Nah, what you actually did was rethink some assumptions and then, oh my god, gave the client what he wanted.  Always the right decision, even when it's wrong.

Getting schooled would be losing the client, having him go to another studio, and getting the result he wanted there.

Keep tracking!
--Erik

[maarvold]

BTW, sampled shakers seem to be able to clip the input side of the Phoenix TDM plugs (adding a lower freq 'splat' to the sound).  Lower the input trim to get rid of it.  

[J.J. Blair]

OK, this reminds me why I shouldn't get so busy that I don't read the forum for a couple of weeks.  What a fucking can of worms!  I guess I'll roll my pant legs up and jump in.

Let me state a couple of opinions:
Why the hell is everybody so enamored with 456?  I have been using 499 from the day it came out and have always found it vastly superior in terms on noise floor,  head room and frequency response.  GP9 is ever better.  Why emulate something that makes your music sound less clear?  And I'm sorry, dolby just has never cut it for me.

As far as 15 ips, the only reason that I would possibly want to record at 15 rather than 30 (which especially on 456 will raise your noise floor), is to achieve making the low end head bump an octave* lower.  (It is an octave, yes?)  Is this what the client is thinking of as the charcteristic of 456 at 15 ips?   Isn't this a phenomenon that could be relatively simulated by using program EQ?  His request leads me to suspect that somebody told him "this is what sounds good" and he probably doesn't know what he's talking about.  If he knew what he were talking about, and that specific sound were so important to him, he'd probably do the project on 456 at 15 ips in the first place, instead of making outlandish requests tantamount to "make my Quarter Pounder taste like Kobi beef."

And while I agree with Steve in general, I have to take issue with "tape compression" not being a good thing.  While in many instances, I would tend to agree, I have to say that "tape compression" has been a wonderful thing on kick and snare for me, provided that I listen back through the repro head when setting levels to make sure that I avoid distortion.  Additionally, I find that why I love 2" 16 trk specifically is that I can achieve more compression/saturation with less/no distortion.  But that's just me.

[Erik]

I've been saying this for years, ever since the Magneto and McDSP shit came out.  All this 'tape is toobz' thing is people talking out their ass.

Right above me, JJ says he saturates (distorts), but does it with some sort of voodoo calibration that "avoids distortion."  He even utters the "Repro" catch phrase, the same bullshit that mixerman claims enables him to get those super special drum sounds.

I hate this shit.

Admittedly I'm just a knucklehead, but here's how I understand the process.  First you calibrate the tape machine.  Then you send it a fucking signal using the slidey or turney things on the console.  If it distorts, you pull the fader back.  If you want more distortion, you're an idiot.  And you push the fader up.

The way you'd 'surf the sweet saturation wave' if indeed you even do it is also by using the turney/slidey thing.  You do not need to turn input trimpots on the tape machine, that's why you've got a console.  And get this -- as you send the tape machine different levels, it sounds different coming back.  99% of this is loudness differences, but sure, there's a tiny bit more to it than that.

I suppose you could use multiple tracks and switch to repro, and carefully A/B the differences with matched levels hitting the speakers.  Never seen that happen in 7 years at my place, but hey, what the fuck do I know.  Didn't see Mitchell or Tchad or Sardy or Beinhorn do any of this saturation stuff either.  But they're just a bunch of digital pussies, they don't know all these cool analog tricks.

Here's what I have seen:

People hang the mics, monkey bangs on the drums, we're in sync or input the whole fucking day, once or twice it sounds like shit on a hard hit, we check it on repro after the take and it sounds fine.  Me and Jerry Finn, Ampex 456 at 15ips, Blink 182 and the porn chick on the cover.  Sold 5 million.  No tape saturation in sight, certainly nothing intentional.  Occasional baboon lapses notwithstanding, of course.

Also, 15 ips is more than just the head bump.  There are frequency response differences, of course.  And think about the mechanical: it changes every aspect of the machine, wow and flutter, scrape flutter, etc.

--Erik

[J.J. Blair]

Erik, just so you know, I don't do "voodoo calibration".  I do regular calibration with an MRL tape and by recording tones just like we all were taught.  The technique I described was while adjusting signal gain to the machine, not at the machine; I find where it distorts and then back it off.  I've described this technique in various posts the last few months, if you don't believe me.  Since I never even mentioned calibration in the post, I thought it was understood that I was talking about signal level to tape.  The technique you described is what I and any trained professional engineer does.  When getting levels on instruments where I hit the tape hard, I listen to repro.  You've somehow imagined some technique that I did not describe.  I never mentioned trim pots, which considering I mostly use my 827, would be stupid if I did.  I do normal calibration, and as you say, "surf the sweet spot".  I reread my post, and since I state the same techinique that you described, I don't know what you mean by "I hate this shit."  

Look, a lot of us have played critical roles in records that have sold very well, using whatever technique we use.  So, before you hang on any of the countless records you have taken part of, I can think of a couple albums that I think sound like the crap black face ADAT that they were recorded on, that still sold 20 million units.  I think sales is a poor yard stick to measure our part of the recod making process.  I don't think that the reason a record ever sold as well as it did was because it was sonically superior to any other record.  (I'm not saying that you are claiming that, btw.)  We're all lucky if we get to help an artist get their idea across to the listener without being embarrassed about how bad something sounds, because admittedly, every single one of us has struggled with recording a sound at some point or another, if not every session.  Anyone of us uses whatever technique we do, not because it is the "right one", but because that's where we are comfortable and we have gotten good results consistenly over the years by using it.  

My preference is to not use 456, mainly based on noise floor and the fact that 499 and GP9 are more forgiving to sudden spikes in the signal's dynamic.  I'm not claiming any voodoo.  As I stated, I gave my opinion, which is I can't understand why people like 456.  I understand that they, like myself, use that with which they are comfortable.  Hey, some people still mix on NS10s and make great sounding mixes!  But I don't get why given the choice of several tapes, some people seem to like that one better.  It would be a more interesting discussion if you told me why you thought 456 at 15 ips sounds better to you than 499 at 30 ips, because hearing about how many records someone's sold when using it comes off a little rockstar-ish.  

So anyway, reread my original post.  All I said was: a) Why do people like something that I think doesn't sound good?  b) If I were to use 15ips, here's why. But here is why I don't like 15 ips.  I never made a broad statement about why everybody who uses it does so.  c) I disagreed with Steve's assertion that "tape compression" is a bad thing, and this is how and when I use it.

Next time, before you get all over something I said, make sure I said it, because I I told Brian just Monday that I might pop in your place this week, and we rarely have to apologize for what we didn't say.  Not that you owe me one, but it's never fun to realize that we attributed words incorrectly to somebody, because we didn't use restraint of tongue and keyboard.  Let's leave the vitriolic posts to the poltical forums.  Unless you fucked a friend of mine over, sand bagged my gig or stole my chick, I can't think of any reason why any one of us should be impolite to each other.

[ted nightshade]

I haven't used anything other than 456- machine is set up that way and it's some trouble to get it recalibrated just to try something. I wonder though, if I did, if there's something that would sound so good I would use the tape machine more.

Mine doesn't go above 15 ips.