To use Dolby or not to use Dolby...

[Robert M]

... that's the question.

I've done some recording and also in this studio that I'll record my next album in, but this is basically the first time I'll record the basic tracks on 24-track analog tape. Technically I know how this is done, but now I've started to wonder should I use Dolby.

Music is retro-ish rock, in the style of Led Zeppelin, Mountain etc. and I'm kinda going for the type of sound that for example Wolfmother has on their album. So, in your face, loud & proud sound.

Is there disadvantages and/or advantages in using dolby?

Cheers and thanks!

[Sigma]

it's damn good on ballads and open tracks...no hiss

[Robert M]

Originally Posted by Sigma

it's damn good on ballads and open tracks...no hiss

There are three tracks on the album that are quieter, more ballad like, and on them I'll definitely use Dolby to reduce hiss.

But how about the loud tracks where hiss is no issue, is there any disadvantage to use dolby anyhow? I.e. does Dolby effect the sound in any other way than just reducing hiss?

[leaper]

If you're doing 30 ips, with care you can avoid Dolby A or SR.
If it's going to be 15 ips, then it gets trickier. Depends upon the tape machine involved.
A quick test recording with and without NR will tell you which way to go.
Remember that you can make definite hiss improvements by EQing high frequencies to tape rather than doing it on mixdown.
These hot tape formulas will also help you out.

[Robert M]

Originally Posted by leaper

If you're doing 30 ips, with care you can avoid Dolby A or SR.
If it's going to be 15 ips, then it gets trickier. Depends upon the tape machine involved.
A quick test recording with and without NR will tell you which way to go.
Remember that you can make definite hiss improvements by EQing high frequencies to tape rather than doing it on mixdown.
These hot tape formulas will also help you out.

Ok, thanks! I'll test it and then decide what to do! Btw I was thinking about recording with 15 ips, so it might just mean I'll use Dolby.

[Sigma]

30 ips non dolby on a dynamic "power ballad" type song and your gonna get alot of hiss..you try to lessen it by adding all the top you think you will need during tracking so your not adding it on playback/mix and bringing the hiss up more

people are so used to not hearing the hiss that it could be an issue with clients today

on the other side of the coin..if you are doing hard and "to the wall " rock and want to slam the tape ...it's best not to use dolby but to go non dolby

dolby worked best with levels operating in a given range at least that's what i remember from 25 years ago..

[joelpatterson]

Right, but this ain't your grandmother's Dolby!

[dbbubba]

If you run +9 at 30 ips you don't necessarily need dolby of any kind for anything unless it is awfully quiet stuff.

I did big band ballads and all kinds of quiet stuff without noise issues.
You just have to know how to deal with stuff and use muting.

I did away with Dolby in every studio I ever worked in.
It was Dolby A in all cases, but I by-passed it.
I didn't even want the Dolby units in line in the by-pass mode.

[Sigma]

Originally Posted by joelpatterson

Right, but this ain't your grandmother's Dolby!

LOL. during mixing.i use to use the old 361's to act like a high freq "sizzler" by running a bus from my background tracks to a pair..pass it thru non decoded and then blend that with the orig tracks

pappa used to futz witht the playback on the 2 inch to brighten up mixes right from the tape machine

CAT 22 /// K -9 cards

Dolby /// DBX.... LOL!

[Sigma]

Originally Posted by dbbubba

If you run +9 at 30 ips you don't necessarily need dolby of any kind for anything unless it is awfully quiet stuff.

I did big band ballads and all kinds of quiet stuff without noise issues.
You just have to know how to deal with stuff and use muting.

I did away with Dolby in every studio I ever worked in.
It was Dolby A in all cases, but I by-passed it.
I didn't even want the Dolby units in line in the by-pass mode.

never tried that i always ran 30 ips 370 nwb


patti labelle was soo dynamic that ya need dolby on her stuff other people i generally got away with not having to do all that alignment


ya gotta just not be a wimp on eq'ing... cutting dull and having to gank top while mixing wil ruin your day

[twotracker]

Originally Posted by Robert M

Ok, thanks! I'll test it and then decide what to do! Btw I was thinking about recording with 15 ips, so it might just mean I'll use Dolby.

especially with 24 tracks

[joelpatterson]

Originally Posted by Sigma

....pass it thru non decoded...

Isn't that illegal in several states???

[Sigma]

Originally Posted by joelpatterson

Isn't that illegal in several states???

yes and in a number of protectorates too

[adamcal]

if you do go non dolby remember, the hiss can be confronting during tracking because most of the tracks will be still wide open.

but once you start mixing, muting, automating and gating, it becomes less of a problem.

SR is awesome, but only if your machine is lined up very well, and indeed the SR is also lined up well (a lost art these days) the dolby system relies on known levels, if your tape machine is all over the place the dolby system will do strange things to your audio. worse than having the hiss in the first place.

but done right you get the benefits of tape without the noise with the added benefit of not having to hit tape so hard if you actually do want some transients.

also dont forget, there is a hard bypass switch for the dolby on each channel, you dont have to blindly have it on for all channels or not at all, you can be selective as you see fit. perhaps OFF for the slamming drum channels, but ON for the teeny tiny quiet guitar swells that will need loads of fx and be loud in the mix(and gating will be difficult), or dull rhodes that you just know will need a load of tops later. as an example.

[Sigma]

Originally Posted by adamcal

if you do go non dolby remember, the hiss can be confronting during tracking because most of the tracks will be still wide open.

but once you start mixing, muting, automating and gating, it becomes less of a problem.

SR is awesome, but only if your machine is lined up very well, and indeed the SR is also lined up well (a lost art these days) the dolby system relies on known levels, if your tape machine is all over the place the dolby system will do strange things to your audio. worse than having the hiss in the first place.

but done right you get the benefits of tape without the noise with the added benefit of not having to hit tape so hard if you actually do want some transients.

also dont forget, there is a hard bypass switch for the dolby on each channel, you dont have to blindly have it on for all channels or not at all, you can be selective as you see fit. perhaps OFF for the slamming drum channels, but ON for the teeny tiny quiet guitar swells that will need loads of fx and be loud in the mix(and gating will be difficult), or dull rhodes that you just know will need a load of tops later. as an example.

actually that's incorrect..in fact you mentioned the worse part of the hiss issue...the hiss is on the track and not masked significantly by content such as open and usually "out front" in the mix things like vocals ,solo flutes, etc..so when you do mutes especially section drops..you get a highly unatural drop in the backgound noise [ie hiss on content /hiss drops out at mute where no content present

i had to split a vocal track feed a 2-3 millisecond to it run it thru a gate then use orig signal to open the gate [allison research prob early 90's] i could only use it as a downward expander as anything over 3-6 db put an irratating pump on the hiss that was worse than if it played all the way thru

[vox were not cut at our studio and eng had no clue how to keep decent levels to tape on a highly dynamic vocal track]

SR is more forgiving than dolby A..A when aligned properly actually is as good as SR..it''s just that most studios weren't as anal as they needed to be in alinging the A's

i know this because dolby came in and did a comaparative at sigma and said as much because our dolby's were so well aligned that there was virtually no noticable difference from each systems playback of identical program material

[Robert M]

This has truly shed some light on the question, thank you very much everybody!

[adamcal]

Originally Posted by Sigma

actually that's incorrect..in fact you mentioned the worse part of the hiss issue...the hiss is on the track and not masked significantly by content such as open and usually "out front" in the mix things like vocals ,solo flutes, etc..so when you do mutes especially section drops..you get a highly unatural drop in the backgound noise [ie hiss on content /hiss drops out at mute where no content present

i

I was referring more to a situation for example, where a song starts say with a guitar and vocal, and the band kicks in later. while tracking you are unlikely to have muted the other 22-21 tracks, but there they all are contributing hiss in the monitor mix, and if you are new to analog recording you could be excused in thinking what hissy bunch of crap , whereas in the mix you will automate/gate them and only have 2 tracks open.

[dbbubba]

cut your rockin' stuff at 15 ips +6 and do the ballad stuff at 30 ips +6 or +9
You won't NEED Dolby A or SR.

Do you have to track on one day?

I never did much at 15 ips on 2"
too noisey for anything
the "sound" gained wasn't that great compared to the hiss issues

in my world 2" 24 track @ 15 ips what what low level budget studios ran
EVERYTHING that I ever got that was tracked at 15 ips on 2" SUCKED!!!!

There was barely even a spec or 15 ips 24 track as it was!

I did mix a bunch of production music that was 15 ips 2" 24 track about twelve years ago.
It was pain in the ass to deal with and it was Dolby A.
Some of it was blaring TexMex music or Tejano stuff that was once Taco Bueno spots and I mixed them WITHOUT the Dolby A in line!
It gave it a "mexican music" sound!
Especially the brass.... overblown TMPTS.

Just go 30 ips at +9 and be done with it.

If you can...... go 16 track instead of 24.
It opens more doors and even at 30 ips it sounds pretty beefy.
You can hit it really hard.

[adamcal]

the head bump is an octave lower at 15ips, or to put it another way, the lows roll off much lower.

could be thought of as fatter and more "analog" if you are looking for that (the reason you are using tape in 2008 in the first place)

but without mr dolby you will need all the tricks mentioned in the thread to combat the tape hiss.

[Jim Williams]

Originally Posted by Sigma

LOL. during mixing.i use to use the old 361's to act like a high freq "sizzler" by running a bus from my background tracks to a pair..pass it thru non decoded and then blend that with the orig tracks

Classic aural exciter = listening fatigue.

Dolby = music reduction. Even the bypass circuits mess up the sound. If I ever see these they are bypassed, fully.

Jim Williams
Audio Upgrades

[adamcal]

this makes good reading on the 15 vs 30 subject.

Response Curves of Analog Recorders

[theblue1]

Originally Posted by adamcal

if you do go non dolby remember, the hiss can be confronting during tracking because most of the tracks will be still wide open.

but once you start mixing, muting, automating and gating, it becomes less of a problem.

SR is awesome, but only if your machine is lined up very well, and indeed the SR is also lined up well (a lost art these days) the dolby system relies on known levels, if your tape machine is all over the place the dolby system will do strange things to your audio. worse than having the hiss in the first place.

but done right you get the benefits of tape without the noise with the added benefit of not having to hit tape so hard if you actually do want some transients.

also dont forget, there is a hard bypass switch for the dolby on each channel, you dont have to blindly have it on for all channels or not at all, you can be selective as you see fit. perhaps OFF for the slamming drum channels, but ON for the teeny tiny quiet guitar swells that will need loads of fx and be loud in the mix(and gating will be difficult), or dull rhodes that you just know will need a load of tops later. as an example.

When I was stuck using machines with dbx NR, that is how I would often approach it. (Of course, it seemed like there was always a dead dbx channel, anyhow, so it was kind of self-enforcing. )

If I recall correctly, Dolby SR was somewhat more forgiving about crashing levels or mistracking than dbx (which knew no forgiveness and showed no mercy to those who sent spiking transients into it). But, IIRC, you're going to want to be careful about not slamming any SR tracks. (I never had a lot of experience with SR, so you should pay attention to others on that. For sure.)

you mentioned the worse part of the hiss issue...the hiss is on the track and not masked significantly by content such as open and usually "out front" in the mix things like vocals ,solo flutes, etc..so when you do mutes especially section drops..you get a highly unatural drop in the backgound noise [ie hiss on content /hiss drops out at mute where no content present

You learn to mute/mix around this to some extent but it's a real issue. (Obviously automation helps.) You can hear the noise floor jumping around on some famous tracks. It's been a while since I've heard Nevermind, but as I recall, in addition to all those somewhat clumsy edits [I felt that they were an important part of the impact of the album, exciting in a disconcerting way], there are some real noise floor jumps from section to section.

[Sigma]

Originally Posted by Jim Williams

Classic aural exciter = listening fatigue.

Dolby = music reduction. Even the bypass circuits mess up the sound. If I ever see these they are bypassed, fully.

Jim Williams
Audio Upgrades

Amen..i hated that thing ... i had a client that liked the sound that's why i did the dolby thing at least i didn't get that weird phasey, hollow, non localized and grainy thing that pushing the exiter did


opps did i diss that gear?

[Sigma]

Originally Posted by theblue1

When I was stuck using machines with dbx NR, that is how I would often approach it. (Of course, it seemed like there was always a dead dbx channel, anyhow, so it was kind of self-enforcing. )

If I recall correctly, Dolby SR was somewhat more forgiving about crashing levels or mistracking than dbx (which knew no forgiveness and showed no mercy to those who sent spiking transients into it). But, IIRC, you're going to want to be careful about not slamming any SR tracks. (I never had a lot of experience with SR, so you should pay attention to others on that. For sure.)

You learn to mute/mix around this to some extent but it's a real issue. (Obviously automation helps.) You can hear the noise floor jumping around on some famous tracks. It's been a while since I've heard Nevermind, but as I recall, in addition to all those somewhat clumsy edits [I felt that they were an important part of the impact of the album, exciting in a disconcerting way], there are some real noise floor jumps from section to section.

... i remember hearing the DBX nightmares on Katy Lied..just found first hand account

QUOTE

Mixing was an absolute nightmare. Every song was mixed at least twice, and not because we were being fussy. In fact, we had mixed the entire record before we realized that there was a problem. We were using the new dbx noise reduction system, which was supposed to give us a better signal to noise ratio than Dolby, and for some reason the dbx units could no longer decode the mixes on tape. They sounded dull and lifeless and no one could explain why. After all, all of the equipment had been properly aligned for each session. This was especially puzzling since each mix was played back immediately upon completion. How could the sound deteriorate so quickly? Even if there had been some awful mistake it couldn't have happened the same way twice and certainly not more than twice.

Several of us formed a contingent to storm dbx headquarters. We packed up the tapes and the dbx units and Gary and Roger (and one or two others) boarded a plane to the East Coast. They confronted dbx and discovered that no one could fix it or explain it. The people at dbx built us a special pair of units with adjusting knobs that could alter the settings that are normally sealed inside at the factory. This too was a miserable failure. Could the tapes have been exposed to gamma rays? Why didn't any one else using that studio have a problem? And why only the two track mixes? The two-inch 24-track masters were still sounding good, so we decided to re-mix the entire record using Dolby.

plus as an aside lookat this

At this point it might be a good idea to read the back cover of the original record. There are some comments about bandwidth and transient response that should have new meaning now. However, the music is still on the tape and the tape is well preserved. The sound of the digital CD version on "Citizen" is better than any vinyl by far. It's interesting that after all these years there is finally a released version that sounds good.

[Sigma]

Originally Posted by dbbubba

cut your rockin' stuff at 15 ips +6 and do the ballad stuff at 30 ips +6 or +9
You won't NEED Dolby A or SR.

Do you have to track on one day?

I never did much at 15 ips on 2"
too noisey for anything
the "sound" gained wasn't that great compared to the hiss issues

in my world 2" 24 track @ 15 ips what what low level budget studios ran
EVERYTHING that I ever got that was tracked at 15 ips on 2" SUCKED!!!!

There was barely even a spec or 15 ips 24 track as it was!

I did mix a bunch of production music that was 15 ips 2" 24 track about twelve years ago.
It was pain in the ass to deal with and it was Dolby A.
Some of it was blaring TexMex music or Tejano stuff that was once Taco Bueno spots and I mixed them WITHOUT the Dolby A in line!
It gave it a "mexican music" sound!
Especially the brass.... overblown TMPTS.

Just go 30 ips at +9 and be done with it.

If you can...... go 16 track instead of 24.
It opens more doors and even at 30 ips it sounds pretty beefy.
You can hit it really hard.

95% of the sound of philly gamble and huff stuff was 185 or 250.. 15 ips dolby

on both 2 inch and 1/4 inch and later 1/2 inch 2 track..but that was a differnent time and different music

[rufus13]

Originally Posted by Jim Williams

Classic aural exciter = listening fatigue.

Dolby = music reduction. Even the bypass circuits mess up the sound. If I ever see these they are bypassed, fully.

Jim Williams
Audio Upgrades

Last June, I had a pair of well-preserved Dolby 361 with cat.22 (Dolby A only) cards on the bench. After a deep cleaning, they revealed their good build quality. These made-in-UK 1U rack units (c. 1971 and 1975) would have made any hi-fi manufacturer proud of the materials/workmanship, and the original retail price was commensurate with this. The problems are the same that any 30-year-old piece of gear has: caps dry out, connectors get dirty, values of components shift.

The fun begins in the service manual where Dolby recommends factory service ONLY on Cat.22 cards. Most companies like to pretend that "proper" service can only be had at the factory, when it's only a matter of a couple DC measurements and a distortion check. But not for a Cat.22! The only place in the world where Dolby would do a repair/alignment on a Cat.22 card was in England.

My suspicion is that using Dolby A is an "effect", and it's some kind of black magic to be able to do the effect exactly in inverse to get the music back from the tape. This might have been worth while when Scotch 111 was a "modern" tape, and only NACA and NORAD had digital recorders.

There seems to be a change in the sound of jazz recordings that started about 1965, coincidentally when Dolby A started to be installed in the best-funded studios. To paraphrase JW, the sound is a little extra fog and sizzle, when compared to the best recordings of 1963. I pick on jazz records of the period because low track-count and minimal overdubbing style lets you hear through to the real noise floor. Re-issues on cd/sacd/DVD-x from original tapes without modern digital "de-noising" can show this well.

What use does a 361-Cat.22 have to offer in the modern world of 115dB s/n 24 channel 4U digital recorders that cost $1500? Some folks use them in "circuit-bent" form as a 4-band vocal comp/eq effect only on encode. They have decent line amplifiers, and line transformers, and might improve the interface quality of a box like PT Mini or 002.

I was tempted to strip the transformers and connectors (nice XLR's), and re-purpose the powersupply and rack bits, but instead got $100 each. Done.

Cheers.

[Sounds Great]

Forget the Dolby. Slam the tape. (456 is my preference). The best compression money can buy. The sound of rock and roll. thumbsup

Go put on Tom Petty's 'Breakdown'. Yes there is hiss. And no one cares. It sounds great.

[David R.]

I'll chime in with a word of caution. If you are going to record with dolby, make sure the place you mix has the same kind and the same # of channels.

Nothing like encoding with A and finding out the mix place only has SR.

That being said, it has been forever since I used 2", but I did like SR when used it.