Fletcher wrote |
------- Keith, before you blow a vein / have an aneurism... there are commonly referred shortcuts [vernacular] in every field. The "aligned to +6" [etc.] thing was a common abbreviation as it was generally understood [at least until the late 80's early 90's when the real "riff raff" started to filter in from the 'cordin' skools] that "+6" implied 3db>250nWb/m with far fewer sounds to recite.
Same with the +4 / -10 thing... it was well known that the difference was 12db and change [that is until the "riff raff" started to filter in]. I guess I was just a bit lucky and got into the industry when there were real and actual professionals still involved on the music side of things [they were always in film... because that's where the money was... the "music studios" could only provide "a living" and access to show passes and the key to the tech room where the drugs were consumed].
Peace.
|
yeah, I get ya.
The trouble (and my sensitivity to button-pushing!) began for me when 'Webber' started to market test tapes in the UK. -They were available at either 200nWb/m or 250nWb/m.
We originally had an Ampex 185nWb calibration tape which I checked against the Webber when we bought it to replace the Ampex. -I couldn't make them agree very closely, but I shrugged it off, and put it down to the Ampex probably being knackered.
-But then we started getting tapes from clients with no tones on (this is probably about the mid-1980's by now) and notes like "line-up to plus four" on them... and nothing more.
This made my life hell. We'd also bought a 250nWb Webber, and the discrepancies with the other Webber and the (now elderly) Ampex meant that we didn't trust anything. -We eventually bought a 250nWb MRL. -Guess what? -It agreed with the Ampex.
Webber could go to hell for all I cared, but they were cheap, and now we had other studios springing up who had bought Webber tapes... and just about nobody quoted WHICH reference level they were referring to, on
any of the boxes.
This drove me to a near apoplectic rage on at least one occasion. -Clients who were not just too cheap to use a decent studio, but also too cheap buy enough tape to print tones, and then the studio engineer not knowing what the hell to tell me when I call and ask what level they calibrate to.
Here's my recollection of a phone call to an owner-operator-engineer-chief-cook-and-bottle-washer from a studio in the Yorkshire area which had sprung up and had set about taking clients from us, helpfully sending them back to us for mixing, (since he
"didn't believe in [translation: couldn't afford]
automation, man!")
"Hey, this multitrack doesn't have any tones on it... and it just says to align to..."
"Plus four" he finished my sentence for me.
"Plus four
over WHAT?" I asked.
"Plus four over the test tape" He said (implying the -
"Duh!"-as if I was a moron for asking).
"Yes, but WHICH test tape?" I pressed.
"The Webber" He'd tell me, as if people should be BORN knowing this fact.
"Yes, but WHICH Webber do you use?" I urged.
"The Multitrack one" He said.
".... (the creaking sound of my knuckles whitening as my grip tightened around the telephone handset)... What. Is. The. Reference. Fluxivity. Of. Your. Test. Tape." I hissed through clenched teeth, praying that the divine, almighty and ever merciful lord would grant me the patience to not purchase a cricket bat and go around to modify his smile for him.
"Zero VU". He told me. "-But we line up to plus four over that." He added. "...that means you make it point to MINUS four." He explained, after hearing silence for several seconds.
...
If there were tones printed (you know... like you're SUPPOSED to do... in the real world... where all those "professional" people live!) this became a non-issue. They could print
"plus nine over forty one and three-quarter femto-Quarads" on the box, and it simply wouldn't matter... you could just point the needle to zero VU, and trust that your playback would match whatever effort they had made on the originating machine.
-But even WITHOUT tones, you could have a CHANCE at being somewhere NEAR right... within the ball-park.
But when people started just using the dB number (in the mid-1980's was my darkest hour for being asked to psychically divine what level people had actually recorded something at) then I began my seething rants, occurring whenever people would start using decibels without the reference. -My blood pressure would soar, and my face would generally go past mere 'scarlet', and on to the shade of crimson which always seems to give interior decorators a nice warm feeling in their catalog pile around late September.
I noted with admiration that tapes from Air, from Abbey Road, From the Town House, and any number of other righteous studios used to be marked "+6/250nWb" or similar. -This used to gladden my heart, and grateful tears would well up in my eyes, crowning my quivering lower lip, as a tidal wave of gratitude overwhelmed me. -I swear that shafts of light would beam down from the skies, illuminating the box label and bathing me in a reflected golden glow, while entire string sections would spontaneously assemble themselves, and immediately launch into swirling, rhapsodic, uplifting themes, whenever I read a properly labeled box.
So... yeah... I do get overly wound up, but I'm trying to teach Nicholas IN PARTICULAR, but also anyone else who has picked up the 'enough-to-be-dangerous' habit of learning the "plus x dB" habit... that they MUST know the number.
-And -at least until you've made enough mistakes to call yourself a 'real' engineer- the best way to make SURE that you know the number (in my opinion) is to get in the habit of SAYING the number.
Please accept my apple-hoagies for ranting, and know that all in the name of getting people to think about things to the point where perhaps one or two who read my demented ramblings maybe start to 'get'
WHY it matters.
-Cheers,
Keith