Everyones hearing begins to deteriorate from around the age of 30-40 years old........are we really in the best position to evaluate?

btw The Beatles was the music not the sound.

It was the music yep, but it was also the sound moosh, which at the time was, well.........new, fresh, full of energy and the foundation for the next 20 years.

 

Long live perfect, clean, flat sterility!

 

Horses for courses, I guess. I truly prefer the sound of yesteryear, including - yes - hiss, oversaturation, LCR panning etc etc. Just a matter of taste.

I'm not trying to start any drama, just respectfully giving my honest opinion.

I will put two quotes by artists that I like, along with links:.

in http://www.emusician.com/artists/1333/dan-auerbach-interview/63216

and

in http://www.audiotechnology.com.au/wp/index.php/king-gizzards-lo-fi-gut-feeling/

As I said earlier: Horses for courses

 

My 16 track ADAT recordings sound like feces compared with the converters that we have today. I was in heaven at 1200 bucks a pop back then and not worried about aligning heads or cutting tape to edit, but my ears felt like they were bleeding. Flash forward to 2017 and its hog heaven. 2400 bucks takes you much further down the sonic road and my ears have healed. Everything is quieter and I can play with 10s of thousands worth of synths and effects that there was no way that i ever could lay my hands on. I have the great mics and preamps to get me inside the box, my sweet guitars and I am happy as a sailor in a whorehouse after six months at sea. All I need is half a mind to write the tunes which is my current choke point, but still, it has never been better for me and the masses than ever before.

 

Actually I agree with you. In the digital realm not all plugins (or rather code) are created equal. But I've had many talks with many people about which tool they prefer from which dev (and usually it comes down to the 4 I quoted, which is why I quoted those : Izotope, Melda, DMG Audio and FabFilter), I've never been really convinced either way by what people put forward when they say this one or this one is better. I use a mix of those 4.
About the Mic and the telephone on the floor to get colors : why would I do that when I already have tools that are dedicated to do this job in much simpler means and with better predictable results ? That was kind of my point....Those tools have a simple purpose, not wanting or needing them is fine, but the other way around too.

 

It is a fetish, and as such, it deserves some respect.

I love my vintage guitar amp and my guitars.

 

Nothing comes close to a hot guitar through a good tube amp. Their working on it, but still no cigar.

 

My take on this is kind of the following:

1. some effects of analog/vintage hardware are pleasant to the ears
2. some not, even if we "old" people are used to it and it's sometimes hard to separate
3. there's plenty of hardware today that is basically a software implementation. My point being it's always better for a pro having something rock-solid almost-zero latency to avoid surprises.

Now, a couple of interesting debates I've had with pals.

Metallica's first album "Kill'em all" "garage-sound". a very good friend of mine who knows way way more about music than me told me the garage-sound was good, he missed part of it at least in other Metallica albums.
Several years later I read that the Metallica guys were totally pissed of with the "garage-like" sound quality. It seems their first mini-record company director was (he's) a piece of work.

Like two years ago I was debating the same thing with a guy who, again, knows more about music than me. He ended up making the comparison with old cinema classic "artifacts" when the tape is starting. I asked "so you'd rather prefer this artifacts in modern cinema"? He replied yes. No more questions.

PS. I'm not being modest. I know wayyyy more about sound/music technology than them lol

 

While I don't disagree on the overall premise. It's super fantastic that everyone has access yadda yadda.

Choosing The Beatles was a terrible choice of example. The Beatles were the first band to do the "full life cycle" that nearly every successful band has ever done. George Martin was a fantastic producer. Essentially they were the first to band to have more power than the engineers, they were allowed to fuck about with the equipment and get creative.

Got To Get You Into My Life > Despacito

In every way other than numbers of views on Youtube.

Maybe this is a "fairer" comparison... Even then it probably ages better than some of the stuff coming out today.

Production values are always going to be in the eye of the beholder. Comparing modern production values and technology to that of 50 years ago is pointless.

 

YES!

Some people still love the bombastic drums drenched in gated reverbs from the 80s (I don't). Some other people love the saturated sounds from the 60s and before.

And regarding The Beatles: for me, this still sounds edgy as heck, on par with any stuff produced today, regardless of differences in production values:

 

Wake UP painters, the photograph was invented almost 200 years ago.

I generally dislike everything "vintage". I couldn't give a fuck for example about how accurately a plugin emulates a specific piece of gear. But often less is better. We humans are very limited in our abilities, even the best of us. It's easy to lose focus on what sounds good when you have the possibility to record super dynamic, clean and balanced digital 24/192 sound. Many times in certain context "lofi" sounds better. Old gear / techniques, even virtual emulations can point you in the right direction.

 

Myendlesslittledebateabout production ?

have a good month every one & Happy Holidays !

 

Absolutely, and not only in these kind of choices. Some people want one truth, one voice ..

I always seen analog and digital, as complementary. Even though if you want analog quality you have to pay a very high price, while digital quality is more accessible.

 

Are we talking about painting vs. photo, or painting vs. adding "canvas" effect to a gif in photoshop?

 

I don't think this is an analogue vs digital topic, not all analogue is /vintage/.

This is about processors that try to emulate the sound of gear which at the time it was created was trying to sound as transparent as possible and claiming that those processes were intentional and desired at the time. Back in the day we were striving to get better SNR, cleaner, more balanced recordings, we wanted to hear what what went in come back out... it just seems counter productive to us that now people want to hear something crappier (subjective I know) coming back out, just so that they can sound like people who were trying to get the complete opposite of that.

In short sometimes it feels like us old guys wanted to move forward and it is confusing as hell when to us at least it seems like the young kids want to move backwards. What is also confusing is how much control 'artists' (man I hate that word in this context) are willing to give up over their final sound to a mix engineer, rather than recording what they want proper - instead of leaving it up to someone else and just having a pass / fail attitude about something that they should have worked out in their own heads and printed as they wanted in the first place.

Analogue processors still have a place and modern analogue processors are a different breed to vintage processors of yesterday. I like digital compression but it isn't the same. I love digital EQ but sometimes abusing the caps and filters on an analogue EQ give me something I want with much less manipulation and quickly than the more accurate and better sounding digital EQ.... TBH though the better the recording, and mixing the less that matters... but life is life.

As are the control rooms of today, silent and powerful A/C and fans that can keep not only a room, but racks upon racks to within .5 degrees Celsius of a target at all times of the day. Power supplies and AC/DC/AC UPS power conditioners that can keep voltages within +/- 0.1V of target with its own iso ground loop and no feedback... these things make a difference and its not only the possibility of having today, it is that they are affordable in a way that could only be dreamed of back then.

 

It's all subjective. Didn't Motown regularly put the horn sections in the shower or bathroom or something weird like that?

 

My Strat plays exactly like Hendrix ! Then I turn the volume up and quit gyrating at the mirror........all of a sudden it sounds like manure!

 

Blah blah blah.

People like imperfections. Particularly those of us who listen to "lo-fi" music and try to create something similar. Nobody is claiming that this imperfection was intended in the original. It's the same reason why you can buy pre-faded jeans, furniture with distressed wood, and artificially vintaged guitars. Who knew life is so complicated?