What I realized for myself - and the video below reminded me of this - is that in analog times I used to have to work much more precisely and prepare much better to get a good recording back in the day.

It was similar in analog photography/video. I spent many times more time preparing the composition of an image than in the digital age.

Today, relatively little effort is generally put into recording because storage costs almost nothing and we can record again and again. Then we put a huge amount of effort into improving poor recordings.

The video gets to the heart of this crazy situation:

What he says in the video is that it's not the hardware (only) that makes old recordings sound so fantastically "analog", but the effort that people made back then to deliver the best possible result during the recording.
Maybe this is (a part of) the solution to the question of how to get an analog sound

p.s.: and he's soooo right with connectors an cables

 

People like to use modern software, it makes life simpler and easier.

This modern software enables even beginners or non-experts to achieve useful results.

Today you really only need a USB audio interface - a MIDI keyboard controller to be creative on your PC/laptop.
Software synthesizers are cheaper, require less maintenance and last a long time, and you can save unlimited presets.

Even Ultravox singer Midge Ure raves about Melodyne, which can quickly correct discordant notes without having to re-record the track. Jean Michelle Jarre also uses virtual software synthesizers.

I listen to a lot of old music from the 80s and early 90s, all of which is recorded analogue, and as @twoheart said, it sounds very good. Some recordings from back then that have been processed using modern technology are also a pleasure to listen to.

 

absolutely true – I created anlog music from about 1968 to 1996, combined both worlds for a couple of years – and was too lazy finally (I'll be 70 this year) to carry on with the analog stuff. My conclusion is: It's never about the sound, it's always about the music that counts. But not just because of the effort – one just had to be able to really play an instrument (or two) to get a musical piece done. Today it's different, anybody can produce something sounding. And that's why the contemporary music is what it is ...

 

Storage back then was just as important, possibly more than a lot of people understand now. The tapes had to be stored in a completely non-magnetized and cool, but not moist area. The oxide goes after time anyway but they could not afford to let it go any sooner than under a good environment could maximize. Not to mention every time a drop-in or overdub happened it applied a tiny amount of wear and tear on the tape which also shortened its life over time, especially if the tape was full and it had to be done on every track.
This was also partly why so many studios literally insisted that bands rehearsed before they recorded, not during the session unless they had shitloads of money. Patchbays were all cable patchbays then, with every cable manually inserted, not a simple mouse click re-route to a bus.

Not to forget that many engineers were also electrical engineers then, and if a strip on the desk became scratchy and noisy, it was not unusual for them to say "Give me five minutes", and they'd have the desk channel ripped open re-soldering a dry joint or replacing a resistor.

 

Look at the new poster children for Revox...I guess that they're looking to find new, younger customers. At about $16,000 I'm sure that they are going to crack the market wide open!



https://revox.com/en/revox-news/new-the-return-of-an-icon-the-new-revox-b77-mk-iii-tape-recorder

 

In Yello's own words....."Oh yeah".I'm also old enough to have gone from all analog, to hybrid to all digital.
And yeah, I spent nearly as much time with a soldering iron in my hand as knobs and faders. And yes, the point
of being well rehearsed BEFORE entering the studio was essential. Studio time was quite expensive back in the
day. That fact drove me learn the art of recording. And it was much more of an art back in the day. There were
"one-knob" fairy dust plugins. And most early analog rack gear didn't have a bunch of presets. The whole process,
composing, playing recording all required skill, patience and, above all, genuine talent. While I might have some
nostalgia for the era, the gear and the process, I do enjoy the convenience of digital. One thing I definitely do
NOT miss about analog is editing tape with a razor blade!!

These days every kiddie with an iPhone fancies themselves a "producer". Anyone can crazy glue a bunch of
samples, loops & sequences together and call it music. But it aint in my book. That IS why so much modern
"music" is not only shiite, but cookie cutter shiite at that. But hey, that's just me. Some people like plastic
crap. YMMV.

 

Last edited: Jan 3, 2025 at 4:01 PM

WOW...
We humans seem to be inconsistent and sometimes strange beings. When Digital technology came into play, people were almost giving analog gear away. Go now full circle 40 years on and some of the analog gear is more expensive than when it was in its hey-day.
Triphammer above made the most ironic comment and one aspect I may have purposefully forgotten. While I loved a lot about reel-to-reel, and owning one of the Revox's would be nice if it was an 1/8th of the price, razor blade editing was the just the worst...

 

I think they want to serve exactly the market shown. People who played with Revox in their youth and now have enough money to buy the gadgets of that time at any price that remind them of their glory days.

p.s: The only things missing from the picture are the crutches and the private nurses in the background.

 

Revox is the new midlife crisis. I wonder if they'll make them in red? Maybe put some go faster stripes on it!

 

Anyway, As I mentioned in the other thread where this video popped up I still tend to try to work in an analog fashion on the digital equipment and have the best of both worlds. Lead vocalist gets one track with punches, we don't do 50 tracks and comp them together. When we're happy with that track, that is the track. I try to print drums down to no more than eight tracks generally. The smallest amount of "record it flat and dry and we'll figure it out later" we can get away with, that's what I like to do. We know the guitar is going to have that echo on it, let's just print that echo on it. Although I do like to leave options open for many things, it's a compromise.

 

Dieter Meier from Yellow sold almost all of the hardware from his studio a few years ago.

 

MIDlife? You charmer! Are they supposed to live to be 160 years old? Seems rather EOL

 

When young people read what old people write, many think of a museum for invented sound technology and the pensioners talk about the old days again.

The Siemens Studio for Electronic Music was the first programmable recording studio, which had a considerable influence on the development of electronic music, electroacoustic music within new music, the synthesizer and recording technology from 1956 to 1968.

 

Nah. It’s cool to see how things used to be done. I've always liked how studios came up with great techniques and made songs that still rock today. It's amazing.

 

Thank you @Key for the encouraging comment, then the old days are not lost after all.

Kraftwerk - Pop Art (documentary 2013)

A Brief History of Synthesizers

Wendy Carlos demonstrates her Moog Synthesizer in 1970

VODER (1939) - Early Speech Synthesizer

 

When old timers see comments from young people about what it's like reading comments from the old timers they have a good laugh because they realize that all the stuff that young people are going through right now is going to be the basis of all the same kind of old-timer stories of the future that the young people in 40 years will be making fun of them for talking about.
Seriously, you're just living through your own version of "back in the day" right now so enjoy it
Along the same lines, The Beatles were recording their most classic albums at the time I was born and nothing makes me happier than reading autobiographies of guys like Geoff Emerick and Tony Scott and George Martin and Tony Visconti about how it was back in the days 20 years before even I got into recording!

 

modern software is far from simple or easy to use, especially when compared to modern hardware. A digital recorder is easy peasy compared to a daw.
Humans are made for tactile devices, mice and keyboard are recent and rather shitty attempts to manipulate digital data, a kludge based on an analog typewriter and chalkboard pointer.

Most people use what they use, because other people use it. Monkey see, monkey do is a powerful pyschological rule that dominates marketing and sales and its victims thereof.

Arming a track, checking levels and verifying connections is very simple on a digital recording device, like a 24 track recorder. All music starts with "tracking", tracks are then mixed, modified, and mixed some more. Software allows one to endlessly mutate sounds and noises into "music", is it better, is it different, is it easier? Who knows, it all goes back to how much you know about what you are trying to do and what you are trying to make.

There is some "music" that would be difficult to make without a computer, that doesn't mean its better or worse, its just a tool.

Man makes tools to accomplish tasks, marketing makes tools to sell you something. Many chase the "eldorado" the city of gold, the "perfect plugin" that will turn dross to gold. One should not become a prisoner of their tools or their machines, that is the danger of putting all efforts into a mythic beast, an ill tempered mistress who always demands more time, more money, more attention, and gives you back frustation,empty pockets and broken dreams.

if you have all the tools in the world.
you still don't have all the talent
you still don't have all the time.

limit your tools and you increase your time and learn to use your talents.

music is the art of managing limited resources to produce wonderful sound that evokes emotion in people. Great music is hard, sometimes computers make it harder.

don't forget its not really about the tools, its about the music, the rest is just a means to get there.

 

you should have seen all the razor blade marks on my hard drive when I first tried digital recording....

 

It's not the hardware or the sound, it is the effort and time spent for properly preparing,rehearsing and... "Stops here".
(This may raise an uprising and a ton of thumbs down and disagreements, it did before why be different now, don't care.)
I kinda like the guy on vid and some others as sometimes they exhibit a rare passion for music, something that i can identify with.
But, i do have a couple of issues with what old school dudes in YT do. They misrepresent or speak half truths on purpose, perhaps not to piss a younger audience and get some more views (?)... What effort and blah blah. While it is a true aspect of analog recording and mixing, why should we play hide and seek i wonder. Like present the merits of analog recording procedure, sugarcoating what surrounds the truth, when the factual truth is quite more important and these, are all mere secondary details.
My first appearance on a recorded record release dates back to late 1984. The Studer A820 was brand new then, yet 40 yrs later sounds second only to properly curated live sound. I 've done AB comparisons to PT and Pyramix and any other -so called- pinnacle of digital recording/mixing with top Apogee or Grace or similar top notch ADDA converters literally dozens of times. One thing remains unscathed:
There is always an immediate apparent superiority to Studer's 2" tape machine. I can argue Otari 2" sounds better as well. Those who haven't took the particular test, should and discover for themselves what the fuss and endless "debate" is all about. I put quotes to debate, because to me it's kinda ridiculous, the Studer wins over anything digital from the first 10-20 seconds of the listening experience. It's larger than life.
And those who did the comparison and claim digital is better, all i can say is i feel sorry for you guys. Surely chances are, you might also feel sorry for my ass hahaha and i'm fine with that as well. Love you back too
See, at first i thought why bring this once more as i'm sorta too old for this but obviously since i did i'm not, so wtf, going analog is surely about the sound. The rest is semantics. There were sloppy musicians in 1984 too hehe. There will always be. Perhaps the convenience of digital has bred another, newer kind of sloppiness and laziness but there are still top notch musicians who will nail it first or second take max. An old friend of mine, Neil Frazer a.k.a Mad Professor up to 2015 (that i know of), used to record, mix and produce 2-3 albums per week and even find time to do live shows. For those who don't know, Neil is a big fan of the Motown paradigm. He managed to have the exact same thing in analogy, the proper studio and the in-house band with seasoned players on steady payroll ready to rock every fkn day. And boy has he rocked haha. Them dual 2"s don't sleep lol. So no matter how digital has affected musicianship and whatever adjectives surround it, at the end of the day, analog recording will always be about the sound first and foremost and everything else goes second. My truth.
Happy new year to you all.

 

Last edited: Jan 3, 2025 at 8:54 PM

I agree with an awful lot of what you're saying but in a backhand way you're also kind of implying that, say, Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde album (or whatever) would have been a heck of a lot better if only he could have recorded it to 2 inch tape on a Studer and I'm just not entirely sure that's the case