Put distortion ("color, warm up or saturate the signal") on the channels and buses.

[Pedro V]

Bob,

I asked him and he told me that he doesn't do it:

- Put distortion ("color, warm up or saturate the signal") on the channels and buses.

I have heard his work, using some Mackie as well as the Behringer ADA8000 and it is great as is his advice:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lfve...CLW3Xc&index=3

https://lonbronson.com/cd/

http://www.sawstudiouser.com/forums/...using-ADA8000s

What causes me curiosity and great doubt are some tape recordings from more than 40 years ago that sound equal to or better than the best of our days.

For example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ueivjr3f8xg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GesEA9MJuII

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cs6G...Nu6vtp&index=1

In my studio mixing practices I have used PSPaudioware plugins and I think they can work well to improve the mixes with a little of that "distortion" that could rather be considered correction from my point of view.

It is clear the good work of those involved in these recordings of yesteryear, but also the use of tape machines.

What do you think?

What do you guys say?

[cgrafx]

The thing to understand about the recordings like the steely dan albums is they don't sound that way because of the recording equipment, they sound that way because of the musicians, producer and recording engineer.

A classic example of this are the Beatles who moved from a studio using tube mixers to a then state of the art transistor based mixing desk and it didn't have any effect on the end product. It's still un-mistakeably the Beatles. That transistor based mixing console would pale in comparison to a cheap modern digital desk.

I've seen this so many times. If I just had this brand of guitar, or this amp, I'd sound like XYZ musician. And yet put that XYZ musician on a piece of crap instrument and they still sound like XYZ musician.

The goal of the mixing desk and recording system is to capture as flawlessly as possible the sound source provided, not to color the sound unintentionally.

Producers and sound engineers my intentionally choose to add distortion (and in this case I'm defining distortion as anything that modifies the sound source - EQ, Reverb, etc) in order to accomplish some specific goal, but its almost never to color the sound of every single track on a recording.

The time Bob spent creating the mix engine for SAW Studio/SAC wasn't about coloring the sound it was about capturing the input source, mixing those sound sources together and outputting them as faithfully as possible. The reason for using integer math for the engine instead of floating point math was specifically to fix the inherent rounding errors that occurred with the floating point engines of the time.

[Pedro V]

I agree, I understand all that. But what I don't believe is that Steely Dan's mixing and/or recording engineer can obtain that result using only SAWStudio without plugins or hardware that in some way emulate some sonic conditions. Because I think they have a use: they create another condition or form in the sound that can help. A tool that I find interesting that Bob has discarded.

[jmh]

I think Becker, Fagen, Katz, and Nichols (whoever those last two guys are) would have loved the clarity of digital audio and SS. At the time they probably extracted this fidelity from analog gear as much as ever had been done before. You will see videos of Bill Schnee saying aja was mixed in a straightforward session - but there was a lot of lot of production work that went into so many aspects of those songs in addition to having the best session guys on it.

I forget which song it was, but when I was last listening to the Aja album I was wondering if they had maybe played a keyboard or sequencer on top to create an amplitude envelop to modulate one of the bass tracks. I am well aware that the great players will utilize unique techniques that will create novel sounds. Anyway I think they were using plenty of studio tricks that they didn't advertise. Also there may have been some that were just too much work for others to copy.

[Pedro V]

That clarity of today's digital and SS audio... I can't be precise: But the use of specific plugins emulating channels from analog consoles of yesteryear and things like that is high. I think most professionals don't have digital clarity or don't know how to use it. Channel by channel they put plugins for "dirty" purposes. Also in the buses and in the master long chains...... they use external hardware and adders. Then comes the mastering guy with the same theory. I think the song you are referring to is I.G.Y by Donald Fagen.... I read that they used 2 basses, one of them was a 16 bit synthesizer.... I don't know about you, but I think that song sounds so cool. It seems from the future not the past. That's what confuses me, I love the way it sounds and that was more than 40 years ago. What are we missing? The world is crazy, I have no doubt about that. And God took the vacation that Bob talks about. But long. Ha ha ha

[Dave Labrecque]

Pedro, have you tried out the UAD stuff? A big part of their philosophy seems to be exactly what you're talking about. "The Neve sound," etc. It'd be interesting to hear if that gets you where you want to go.

My personal view is that there are so many dimensions to audio that I don't know that many of us can even tell which dimension(s) is/are giving us that "thing" that we love. Is it the tube distortion? The limited bandwidth? The room it was tracked in? The esthetic created by the engineer and/or producer (in who-knows-what way)?

I, personally, have no where near enough experience--and maybe even simply lack the in-born "talent"--to make those distinctions. But I sure know it when I like it.

[Pedro V]

Dave,

I haven't tried UAD but I don't find it appealing at all. Among other things, they use DSP, I don't like it, I feel something similar about that company to the one I feel about Waves.

You have good reflections, and points: Aesthetics...

I have read unique things about the tube, but I don't remember anymore.

Don't think I'm very experienced...

I am first following Bob's method (Trying to learn), in fact I have opened old sessions and have been removing PSP Audioware plugins, which are the ones I liked, and forcing myself with methods to make the mix as clean as possible, using the basics. To then see what else may be necessary.

This company also catches my attention: https://www.apulsoft.ch/

[cgrafx]

Lets get some basic functionality cleared up

DSP = digital signal processor. All in the box solutions (meaning software that runs on a computer) are DSP audio chains (That includes SAW Studio). It doesn't matter if there is a dedicated DSP chip or if that processing is done on a general purpose CPU it's still the same functional process. (Its all the same math)

ALL software plugins are DSP audio chains. The only way to get a non-DSP based audio chain is to use analog outboard gear. (preamps, compressors, etc.)

Pretty much all analog mixing desks since the 1970's are transistor based. Very few designs used Tubes as the maintenance on a multi-channel desk would be crazy, not to mention the heat it would generate. What they did do on high-end gear was try to match part values and use narrow tolerance parts to get each channel strip to match as closely as possible.

Board/equipment engineers generally spent most of their effort attempting to build the most transparent circuits they could within the budgets allowed.

Most of what you talk about when discussing warming up a channel or buss is just nonsense nostalgia. There are some workflow differences when working with digital audio chains that probably account for 80-90% of the miss-informed comparisons between the old and new.

The biggest difference is going to be when audio is pushed into clipping, where digital will simply hard clip (sounds like ****) and analog will break into a different clipping modes before hard clipping depending on the circuit design. Transistor designs break into odd harmonics and tubes and FETs break into even harmonic distortion which sounds better to human ears.

The generally accepted process of optimizing the audio chain when working with analog gear in order to keep accumulated noise at the minimum was to drive all audio as hot as possible and very often particularly with dynamic content, some of it would be pushed into clipping during peaks.

This is where Digital audio chains have to be managed differently. You NEVER want to clip a digital audio chain. Modern 24-bit audio has noise floors that are so quiet it's completely unnecessary to push everything hot in order to manage the noise floor.

So when you say you don't like some plug-in because it uses DSP, that is meaningless. There are NO plugins that don't use DSP.

There are clearly some desirable ways to modify audio. Various compressor and delay effects have been used and some specific equipment has demonstrated a consistently positive outcome.

But there isn't a one size fits all process and there are a multitude of ways to accomplish the same general outcome.

Adding Salt or Sugar to food will enhance the flavor, but its not the only way to create a tasty dish and when you stop using the salt and sugar you may find you enjoy the taste of the other ingredients more.

[Pedro V]

Yes, yes, they are basic things... I know, I was referring to the fact that they are plugins that use external hardware to carry out processes, if I am not misinformed about it with Apollo, etc...

[MMP]

UAD plugins now also come as VST3s that don***8217;t require their DSP chips any more.