Yes, topic says it all.

What are your tried and tested methods to create that analogue-ish sound using plugins? If you use any, what is your set up? Would love to hear your opinions.

@Adrianus Antonius @Von_Steyr @WillTheWeirdo @One Reason @Andrew @RMorgan @quadcore64 @SineWave @Kwissbeats @Evorax @MrAnonymous and @all please.

Thanks for your input in advance.

 

IMHO Using real musical instruments and the saturation is a good start.

 

Last edited: Mar 1, 2016

Console emulators, tape saturators, parallel compression on drums, convolution reverb to impose real room space. Careful attention to panning information in both the mid and side. Slight distortion on specific elements. Vinyl crackle. Small amount of white noise with compression to gel harmonics with basses.

 

Please explain what analogue-ish means.
Tape hiss/bias? Surface noise? Even harmonics distortion? Saturator?

 

In lieu of trying to emulate the analog consoles, it's not better to enjoy the digital world? Analog emulators are usually just some imperfection and noise adders to the clean signal. What is the beauty of blemishing?

Natural means saturation and hearing crackles?

I think the pure DAWishers would not so think about that and this is just the qualm of the people who use DAWs mainly as record machines or living in the past.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Mar 1, 2016

Agreed.

The best way to make your songs sound natural and feel analogue is to use real instruments, played by real people, using full takes without any comping, preferably recorded live, in the same room.

That's what people did back in the analogue days; It's way more important than the analogue equipment itself.

A lot of people nowadays seem to believe that the gear was the one responsible for the "magic" itself, not the talented people getting together to actually play music.

There's no way to emulate the complex and dynamic interactions that happen when talented people get together to make art; A cold and sterile song will still sound cold and sterile even if you run it through the most expensive console and tape machines.

This elusive analogue sound people crave for nowadays is not the sound of gear...It's the sound of the chemistry between real human beings being as real as real can get.

 

Last edited: Mar 1, 2016

Recently I saw a tutorial about analog and organic feeling. when you make a sound quieter you should reduce decay,too. cause in nature is is that way: the louder the sound the longer the decay of it. the quieter the sound the shorter the decay of it. just try it on percs and stuff. you will see very fast, that it is much more organic and interesting for your ears and brain. a lil trick for all "in the box" producers.

saturation: sometimes. not so much, because it makes the track moody.

just pick the analog sounds? nothing sounds more analog than analog sounds for example spectrasonics or kontakt libraries and stuff.

dont waste your time trying so make the sound of a massive or a hive software synth analog as much as possible. it will always sound a lil bit digital. thats not bad, but it is the way it is. u know.

 

Sir, this is the reason why I posted this topic. Analogue-ish as a word doesn't exist, as processing does. I have seen some youtube videos on this topic so I thought starting a discussion to see if anything close to this is possible or not. More interesting will be the set up (if it exists) and the plugins.

 

Last edited: Mar 1, 2016

Im assuming plugins that add some form of colouration to the sound, either subtractively or additively via saturation/distortion/noise, that makes a sound less "digital" or pure tone, adding additional artifacts to a sound.

 

The best method is ears, I remember some years ago being asked how do I get my sound so "warm", I was like "what do you mean warm? I just tweak things to my liking, that's it, I do nothing to get it warm". lol So for me it was an amusing question, because I never thought about it myself and just used ears to tweak until it sounds right in terms of level, sound position in the mix.
Sound starts from the chosen source and ends in how you fit it into a mix, to get it analogue-ish you have to have a feel for what you want. At least that's how it is in my case.
Handling it at the source is the best thing to do, you have to know how you want a particular element to sound in the mix, and to achieve that you can use whatever you want starting from faders level to EQ's, compressors and what not.

 

Analog-ounding VSTi: free-running oscillators, detune.
Real (human) feel: smart envelope design to emulate real instruments (require solid experience), variable velocity for the midi notes, some notes slightly out of the piano-roll's grid.

 

Tape emulation plays an important role but not as important as these things;

1.First rule,buy a keyboard midi controller,ditch the piano roll/mouse for creating sounds,use it wisely only here and then for smaller parts and fx if needed.Playing a melody yourself will make it a lot more humane.
2.Dont quantize everything leave small imperfections for more dynamics and again a more humane feel.
3.Most vst libraries are already very compressed,use light compression.
4.EQ;dont boost,rather carve out if possible,boosting makes the whole picture a lot worse in the digital environment.
5.Insert Satin in the beginning of a project on a mixbus.
6.Use a lot of VST analog emulation synths like OP-X PRO II in your projects that will always help a lot.
7.Use additional Tape Emulators like Slate or Satin on group buses.
8.Do not use already created midi tracks for drums,improvise,e-drum set or even a pad controller will make a huge difference.
9.Listen to a lot of music from the 70s and 80s,listening to only modern production is a trap.
10.Find your own sound,dont try to please everyone,tailor it to your personality.
11.Adding a lot of analog hardware gear can ofcourse help,though most people work ITB with no analog hardware.

See its the whole concept,you cant expect to get a more analog feel by adding 5 different tape emulation plugins on a synth that already sounds very thin,compressed and undynamic.Its about decisions you make and eliminating shitty samples.
Its the whole picture that will get you that desired result.

 

Low pass or use a tape emulator to soften the sound, increase the 200hz (bump area) to have more body in your mix (analogue style) not to much or it will start to sound boxy

 

Everything said, but really study music, not just your style bit everything.
Anythign that different is rich and most people avoid.
Some never study erudit music, native ir disco because they play rock.
New music maybe not the best bur new technics of manipulations are.
Breath controller is a time saver,seaboard arise and ribbon controller are killer... But you must be master. Nothing like the people that buy ribbon controlllers and use them only as a gigant pitch bend.
The difference to produce a good and a bad band is huge. The first record fast and spend more time in production, the other is the oposite, need more edit and need more production but their brains burned in the first stage...

 

This is a great advice, it will give you that feel I was talking about, when you work with your own material.

 

Record/mix/produce in Studio One 3.2 through Console Shaper.

 

Lol. I don't understand this "analogish" curiosity among some music makers these days. Is hissing, crackling, popping and distorted warm(more low passed actually) sound better than the clean and bright digital sound? At the old days, people would want to get today's clean sound, today people wanna have the old dirty sound. Interesting! Mankind will never be satisfied with what he has!

 

It's the beauty of human nature. Imperfection. I know this will be sore for my EDM mates here, but looped, rhythmically perfect beats that bounce schizophrenically in perfect pitch at the sound of autotune lack vibe. Of course, good EDM incorporates random imperfections here and there to counter the sterile nature of the genre (I guess it's their secret sauce for success and the reason why "analogish" sells a lot).

There's a reason why people massively keep saying that there's not good music in airplay anymore. Of course, old timers listen to music with nostalgia more than anything, but the Justin Biebers of today are missing the point with cookie-cutter production greatly handled a la Pensado. They sell the lie that the envelope is pushed by squeezing the shit out of compressors into music progress. It's not better. It's different and yet to prove its endurance in the history of music.

 

he he, we built digital technology to emulate analog technology.

 

The quality of the signal (analog or digital) does not determine the major quality of the song.

Unfortunately today's many composers of popular musics do not come to it after mastering the central tenets of music arts and sciences. They just simply omit the concinnities and subtleties of real music knowledge.