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

[steelyfan]

And make some pretty mistakes...... gosh! Where's the glory!?

he he he.

But really!

[steelyfan]

Or at least some attractive and ovious hard edits. Where's the fun people, I mean if we can all do it perfect....... then why bother? I dare someone to mix a vanishing kick drum due to phase issues but make it random and artsy.



steelyfan

[Macky]

Originally Posted by steelyfan

Or at least some attractive and ovious hard edits. Where's the fun people, I mean if we can all do it perfect....... then why bother? I dare someone to mix a vanishing kick drum due to phase issues but make it random and artsy.



steelyfan

[spectrasonics]

Originally Posted by TerraVibe

What is the recipe of the great clarity and 3-dimensional sound of the 70's? Modern recordings with big budgets sound muddy and shallow and when you crank up the volume...it gets even worse...you know what I mean!

Some producers say it is the musicians...no I don't think so, there are many great musicians all over the world now days. Some say it is the vintage analog consoles and gear, however, many big studios still use them. So what the heck is it?

1. Is it the tape

2. The analog consoles and gear

3. The engineers and the mix methods

4. Something else?

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

Is it possible?

One area is dynamic range,(headroom), via hand-built discrete circuits and high quality iron. IC chips, due to their low cost and ease of application, led to the evolution of circuits that produced poor overload characteristics and distortion. It is common to find recordings of this period with dynamic range approaching an order of magnitude greater than the best efforts of today.

[vonrichter]

Originally Posted by FireMoon

For instance. I adore Kate Bush's The hounds of love... but Never Forever kicks it's ass sonically into a cocked hat... If i want to impress someone with how good a recording can sound, that's the one that gets stuck on the turntable..

Sonically, Never For Ever on a decent playback system puts any modern mainstream album I've heard to shame. One can get lost in that depth and clarity, artistry in the arrangement. Color everywhere. Wide dynamics, bass.

But in defense of Hounds Of Love, some of it sounds pretty darn good in it's own very different way. But yeah great as the album is musically, it's not in the same league sonically as NFE.

[cannonsville69]

Eagles, Steely, Toto , Little River Band , Fleetwood Mac , Led Zep , ... no one even has a decent system to play stuff on anymore . You don't see a good stereo as part of the modern living room anymore . . .

[Jim Williams]

Originally Posted by spectrasonics

One area is dynamic range,(headroom), via hand-built discrete circuits and high quality iron. IC chips, due to their low cost and ease of application, led to the evolution of circuits that produced poor overload characteristics and distortion. It is common to find recordings of this period with dynamic range approaching an order of magnitude greater than the best efforts of today.

Not because of circuit limitations but recording techniques. Dynamic range is all but absent in newer releases because of the people, not the gear.

Yes, some older discrete circuits did have extra output levels over standard opamps running on + - 15 volt rails. However, that extra level exceeds + 27 dbu and is therefore useless in modern productions as no tape recorder or ADC can deal with those elevated signals.

Others delt with this back in the 1970's by the use of current boosting discretes hung on the outputs of + - 15 volt powered opamps, some running at elevated psu rails of + - 24 volts like some older dbx designs.

Today those limitations have been relaxed. Modern opamps are now below 1 nv noise, that increases dynamic range significantly due to the lower noise floor, signals can be kept lower and away from the clipping point which increases the system's dynamic range well beyond what was achievable in the 1970's.

All we need to do is educate to stop squashing everything to death.

[Bill@WelcomeHome]

Yeah, just might have had something to do with the education, experience, and abilities on all of the people on both sides of the glass. Given the current state of equipment, it is embarrassing to me what gets released as professional recordings and the only reason that I can see sits squarely on the shoulders of the people doing the work.

[cinealta]

No it is not possible.