Clarity and depth of the 70's vs DAW and hard drive: Is it possible...

[Mr.HOLMES]

Originally Posted by TerraVibe

Can we get this sound with the best converters, preamps, a Daw a drive?
Is it possible?

From the engineer standpoint:

Record a lot in mono / hard panning (LCR) / use saturationn during tracking.
Play with a real band. No Software Instrumets.

From the musicians standpoint:

Write a song in 60s to 70s style and try how far you can get.
May copy a song you like...

[Bob Olhsson]

Originally Posted by Mr.HOLMES

From the engineer standpoint:

Record a lot in mono / hard panning (LCR) / use saturationn during tracking.
Play with a real band. No Software Instrumets...

I've been doing exactly this with the real musicians but found little or no benefit from saturation.

[kirkhawley]

Originally Posted by steelyfan

Dave Mathews production style just doesn't do it for me I'm afraid. Hi-fi in a non flattering way to me ears.

Drums
Electric Bass
Acoustic guitar
Fiddle
New Age Saxophone

In words somebody attributed to Brian Wilson, "You've got a sonority problem there." This band will NEVER sound good.

[onemoretime]

Originally Posted by DJGoody

Any professional engineer working regularly in the 70's probably had 10x the skill level of the average working engineer today - and I personally feel that's an understatement.

Why?

[u b k]

Originally Posted by onemoretime

Why?

Nearly every working engineer back then apprenticed under a master and earned his stripes in a pro setting.

There were far fewer working engineers back then compared to now; the curve is now skewed heavily towards the middle and bottom.

Also, Pro Tools. Once upon a time, you had to be able to a) afford and b) maintain an analog tape deck to run a studio, and the information on how to do this was much harder to come by. Gear was not nearly as widely available, nor was advice or information on what to get and why.

The more arcane nature of the craft served as a gatekeeper, a filter with a high threshold for entry. Now, all you need is a pc and the internet and you're most of the way there.

Also, nowadays there are 80 million bazillion acts with music to record, so the market supports a far greater number of studios.


Gregory Scott - ubk

[camus]

"Saturation". Now that's one of the DAW era buzzwords that makes me want to puke every time I hear it.

[FFTT]

Some might say the sound was colored, but I really miss the warmth and fullness
of the older 2" tape recordings, yes with their mic bleed and natural distortion and all
the imperfections that came from recording a live band.

[TheEqualizer]

Tape hid a lot of mistakes and didn't let you hear every nuisance of everything on every track. This helped a lot.

Picture your favorite actress. Picture a close up of her in the soft light of the 40's screen era.
Now picture her up close in HD, wrinkles and all.
Which do you prefer?

[Mr.HOLMES]

Originally Posted by Bob Olhsson

I've been doing exactly this with the real musicians but found little or no benefit from saturation.

It was just my guesswork thats the reason why I wrote "see how far you can get" for sure there are more factors in the game.

The musicians.
The centurey they lived in.
The tracking room the mics the enginners-


Anyway Bob you know it better than me!!!!
You produced music in this way.

All I can say if I listen to old produced music waht jumps into my ear is the great sounds of the tracking rooms and that is a thing we cant rebuild within the DAW...NO WAY.

Sorry for my bad english....

[waxx]

i think there are several reasons:

better arrangment (not so dense like now is normal) it's like because you can record 96ch or so in your daw you've got to use them all these day's. Most of my own stuff goes about 12-24ch...
good gain staging (some 'engineers' still don't get it)
more instrument or even a whole band capting with one mic on the right spot in the right room and more room/less close micing
much less compression and limiting, especially on the masterbus and during mastering
better musicians (or you heared they sucked, no autotune, beat detective, midi and fast and easy editing like now).
better sound engineers (the machinery was very expensive and often more difficult to operate, so even for demo recording you had to have skills)

tape did also indeed hide a lot of details, so also the little mistakes. Digital is often too revealing. It helps to use a LPF with a 12dB/octave slope arround 14K till 16K on the masterbus to get the tape rolloff effect that hides a lot without loosing to much clarity (i do it often)

and don't forget, we only remember the good things of some era's of the past, I'm rather sure that in the 70's there was also a lot of shit-music arround (i wasn't until the end), you only don't remember it anymoree because it's not worth it. I also know a lot of lofi production of that time (i talk about a lot of reggae and afrobeat for instance) that's actually good music, but lo fi due to the lo fi budgets ... But the mainstream listeners may not know that. Not everything produced in the 70's was sounding better.

[Frisbieinstein]

I think the problem is the death of live music. A band can't make a living any more, and it takes years to get really good.

Listen to live recordings from the 60's. It wasn't the crummy recording gear that produced that sound. Like the Rolling Stones "Got Live If You Want It." Whoa. That band was popular and gigging all the time. It makes a difference.

Today it is garbage in, garbage out. I think recording is better these days.

[Frisbieinstein]

Originally Posted by N88

This has been a fact for a long time now. They test song bits on sample groups of listeners, tossing out the high and low scoring pieces. If there's nothing to turn you off, and no where else to go for something that turns you on, they wager you'll just stay put.

The whole system needs to be circumvented, and so far the various internet possibilities, which basically amount to user and support groups, aren't doing it.

I have heard more great music in Youtube in the past year than in the previous thirty years combined.

[steelyfan]

Originally Posted by Randall

IMO.. It's the over and misuse of digital compression and EQ that are screwing the mixes and sound of most of the modern day hopefuls... and then there is that over limiting and loudness thing

It's not digital that is the problem per-se.. It's the way most folks use it...

Yep.
It's amazing how good even average preamps sound going into a digital interface with average converters. Don't undertand all the over doing it stuff...... the source sounds shouldn't need all that salt and pepper.


steelyfan

[Karloff70]

More like Aspartame and Saccharin......put some real sugar on there if it needs sweetening......or some cane syrup

[digitrax]

It's gotta be the use of bell-bottom pants - something about the way the extra fabric absorbed the reflections off the real hardwood floors.

Seriously though, it required a serious investment of time and money to produce a record back then. If you were an amateur, you probably couldn't afford it. If you were a pro, you had to be one of the best of them (and under the tutelage of a top-notch one) to even touch the board. Most producers started as engineers; most engineers started as assistant engineers; most assistant engineers started as tape ops; most tape ops started as janitors. You had to earn your stripes.

Another point (made earlier but worth reiterating): there were a lot of crappy recordings back then, too. It just so happens that only the good ones are remembered or talked about now, hence the false impression that all recording was better then.

[DJamesGoody]

Originally Posted by digitrax

Most producers started as engineers; most engineers started as assistant engineers; most assistant engineers started as tape ops; most tape ops started as janitors. You had to earn your stripes.

Actually, most producers did not start out as engineers back then. There was much more separation of the two jobs from the 50's throughout the 70's and into the 80's, when engineer/producer crossover became more common.

Most producers back then were explicitly not engineers. Perhaps that's an overlooked difference.

[Bob Olhsson]

Producer/engineers developed during the '70s mostly as a result of the really bad pay engineers started getting after the unions went away.

Virtually every successful producer I'm aware of has a background working with a very experienced producer or in a very few cases, a really experienced engineer.

[automatom]

It's a total crock of engineering shit to think that people were more 'skilled' back then or that digital is in some way unforgiving.
Is it any coincidence that stuff sounded best when people were really doing things for the first time? It was George Martin's willingness to daringly mess about with his machines that dragged music forward. It was Buddy Holly having no concept of what rock and roll ought to sound like.
Complacency and an ugly idea that you make a 'product' out of music has killed the fun and the exploration. There is no right way or wrong way to record music! Throw away your rulebooks, never be self-important. Spend less time popping your phase in and out on drum sounds and the band might have more time to do takes! Getting to a place where every beat has been placed and every note tuned is just awful.
Taking risks isn't just down to the artist. 'Good vibes' in the studio create the kind of creative environment in which good things happen. Spending more time trying to be a righteous dude and less on your rig would probably be the best way forward IMHO.
Check out Battles and Sigur Ros and then tell me that music was better when.....

[Bob Olhsson]

The whole point of a recording studio is to allow the artist to take risks and reliably capture any magic that is produced as a result of taking risks.

In 1965 making any kind of a recording was taking a huge risk that you would sound like crap unless your songs, arrangements and musicianship were on a very high plane. In almost all cases ones songs, arrangements and musicianship got to that high plane as a direct result of being booed off the stage when one sucked.

The '70s combined better technology with the skills that had been required in order to just survive during the '60s. Unfortunately many stars of the '60s got lazy as technology started to allow mediocrity. Rising to an occasion of needing to be great was a huge component of most of the great recordings I know anything about.

[Jeffguitar]

Bah bah to all of it. My cousin went to Nashville to do some recordings a couple years ago, and when I heard the recordings I was blown away. the 3d quality, huge, yet delicate. I said, "My god, that sounds like that great 70's stuff, liek I haven't even heard that beautiful sound for years", and he said, "yep, it's hard to beat that 2 inch tape. Face it. 2 inch tape HAS NO RIVAL for wonderful, pro sound. You can make good recordings digital, but good and GREAT are two different things. Go listen to some recordings made on 2 inch tape and you'll quickly know what's missing.

[The Listener]

Not claiming it is great (yet ) or anything, but it sounds pretty 70's-like to me... :

A raw, unmixed example... I am currently starting to mix this jazz-rock album and I just finished "Nebulizing" all the elements before I even start the mix.
No EQs, no compressors, no reverb, no nothing on it, some crude balance and pan. It was recorded straight to DAW and now all the tracks have been put through Nebula AlexB Neve console emulation - MWC and a pinch of Virsyn Vtape on master bus.

[area51recording]

Originally Posted by automatom

It's a total crock of engineering shit to think that people were more 'skilled' back then or that digital is in some way unforgiving.
Is it any coincidence that stuff sounded best when people were really doing things for the first time? It was George Martin's willingness to daringly mess about with his machines that dragged music forward. It was Buddy Holly having no concept of what rock and roll ought to sound like.
Complacency and an ugly idea that you make a 'product' out of music has killed the fun and the exploration. There is no right way or wrong way to record music! Throw away your rulebooks, never be self-important. Spend less time popping your phase in and out on drum sounds and the band might have more time to do takes! Getting to a place where every beat has been placed and every note tuned is just awful.
Taking risks isn't just down to the artist. 'Good vibes' in the studio create the kind of creative environment in which good things happen. Spending more time trying to be a righteous dude and less on your rig would probably be the best way forward IMHO.
Check out Battles and Sigur Ros and then tell me that music was better when.....

WINNER WINNER CHICKEN DINNER!! Btw i think porn was better in the 70's as well. Unshaved women and guys who never took their glasses or black sox off...ahh, memories

[Joseph Egan]

Every style of music runs from it's primitive beginnings, it's development and then its redundancy, until it loses it's vitality. Pretty much all musical styles are redundant thanks to modern communication technology. The inherent excitement of doing something that's never been done before is what's missing from modern music; but, there are exceptions in bands that find excitement in mining the treasures of what's preceded them. But it's still not as exciting as the original discoveries. "Degustibus, non disputatum est"

[David Brown]

Originally Posted by redvelvetstudios

get one of these for the that "70s" sound mic pres and 8Chs of Analog Summing on a budget:

I had this console, an 8 track Otari, home made plate reverb, 4311's and a hand full of mics in my first studio in 1980 (no comps!). It was a constant struggle for the best signal to noise without print-through. I worked hard at gain staging, mic placement, etc. and managed to make some music that still kinda sounds cool today. It made me think hard about what I was doing and boy did you debate whether the lead guitarist could OD a better take.

db

[Dean Roddey]

Originally Posted by David Brown

I had this console, an 8 track Otari, home made plate reverb, 4311's and a hand full of mics in my first studio in 1980 (no comps!). It was a constant struggle for the best signal to noise without print-through. I worked hard at gain staging, mic placement, etc. and managed to make some music that still kinda sounds cool today. It made me think hard about what I was doing and boy did you debate whether the lead guitarist could OD a better take.

db

Think about Les Paul's early scheme though, sound on sound. The overdub would destroy everything recorded so far if it went awry. Talk about pressure.

[initialsBB]

Originally Posted by The Listener

Not claiming it is great (yet ) or anything, but it sounds pretty 70's-like to me... .

That sounds great! I dig it. The bass and snare sound a little too roomy to me to sound authentically '70s but it sounds good. Seems like direct bass and totally dead drum booth were more the order of the day. This has a cool, kind of late Soft Machine vibe though.

[Arksun]

It would be great to take some of the best sounding albums from the last 10 years, then magically remove all the limiting that's present on the final recordings and THEN compare those to the sound of 70's recordings

[Bob Olhsson]

You'd also have to remove the buss compression and then rebalance the music.

[Karloff70]

And remove a lot of aggravating top end and and and and and......

[u b k]

And pare down the arrangements so that there are half as many parts that fit together twice as well.

And add actual chord progressions and melodies.

And strip away the quantization on everything.

And bypass the auto-tune.


Gregory Scott - ubk