HOORAY for the continued use of analogue recording techniques

[paulsherwin]

The big change in popular music over the last 40 years has nothing to do with the switch to digital recording or even the reduction in recording costs. It's down to people in the industry having worked out how to press the right buttons to appeal to particular markets and demographics. This is all very cynical and professional and a world away from the amateurish musical culture of the 60s, where the money men just tried to pick winners and market them. You could see the rot setting in with the Bay City Rollers in the mid 70s, followed by Stock Aitken Waterman and all the cynical boy bands of the late 80s and 90s.

This would all still have happened if digital had never been invented - in fact it might have been worse, as we wouldn't have had the whole dance / rave music scene, which like it or not provides an alternative to the mainstream pop sausage machine.

[ms660]

Interesting but not unusual comments so far, the usual stuff...

To a great extent it's a generation thing, what we listened to as teenagers is usually what we like to remember as great songs/music, a reality check is in order, there are some fine acts around today just as there were when I was a lad, some just refuse to believe it.

"What ever happened to P.F Sloan" (No links please)

Lawrence.

[julie_m]

But Stock, Aitken and Waterman were really only carrying on a tradition that had begun in the USA in the likes of Nashville, TN; the Brill building; and of course, Motown.

Of course it's cynical to find a group of people who have money to spend and sell them cheap records based on some heuristic. But the people who were around at the time must have enjoyed the music, otherwise they wouldn't have bought so many of the records .....

Of course there was a lot of forgettable music about. There always has been, and there always will be. But there were always some gems among the dirt. And our favourite recordings are still there to be listened to.

[dave walsh]

See the article in the Guardian G2 [Tuesday 24/2/15] by Tim Jonze "If James Bay is getting a Brit award, is it time for us to rise up and shout 'not in my name'. " The prize for the artist most likely to take 2015 by storm is going to yet another beige balladeer" This is much more to do with digital thinking than recording as others suggest. Meanwhile 73 year old Bob Dylan knocks bland Ed Sheeran from the top with an album of Sinatra tracks and it's still more original. Bob's an analogue man in spirit at least.
Dave W

[Diabolical Artificer]

Youv'e hit the nail on the head G6Tuniki, when you say there is lot's of great great creative music out there and that the way we buy/listen to it has changed. For serious music forget record companies and a major publicity campaign, it's four spotty blokes in their garage/bedroom or a dingy cellar with a laptop. Remind you of anyone? What's changed is now you can release your music straight to the audience; no sleezy suit ripping you off. Kid's still play guitars and make good music. (GT6 if your into shoe gaze {makes me laugh some of the genre titles} check out No Clear Mind - Dream is Destiny = haunting and beautiful or Low - Silver Rider)

Re mic's David, the Big Thing in recording land is large diaphram mic's preferably with a valve in it or vintage Reslo. Everyone wants that vintage sound! You can get decent mic's for less than £200- the Shure SM57 for £50 or pretty decent large diaphram mic's by Rode or AKG. Non of mine cost more than £100; I bought obscure mic's like a dual diaphram AKG and a great Teac condensor. Getting a good sound is a lot about placement and what you do with it, not there yet but learning. Yes a Neumann is better but I havn't got a spare £5000.

There is one thing I love about analogue recording and that's the consumer interface ... or switch. You press a button or flick a switch, the tape turns and off you go. With digital I spend a lot of time looking for the switch then have to decide what kind of switch to use and what colour I want it to be. And don't talk to me about the Maddingly Intricate Digital Interface , I prefer a real piano and a microphone.

Long live rock n roll, Andy.

[sp10mk11]

I think as long as people go to clubs and get off there faces there will always be a market for Trance chill etc go back to early 70s Tangerine dream etc.......but of course no 4/4 beat.

[TIMTAPE]

Originally Posted by Dr Wobble

Re mic's David, the Big Thing in recording land is large diaphram mic's preferably with a valve in it or vintage Reslo. Everyone wants that vintage sound!

Not sure about everybody but yes perhaps especially with mics there's much talk these days about "vintage sound", "vintage character", "vintage flavour" mics. The assumption seems to be that microphones are the key to the sound. But also that like old wines, furniture or cars, mics either had a certain acoustic "character" reflecting the era when manufactured, or like certain wines developed a "flavour" as the years rolled by.

But microphones werent generally manufactured as objets d'art or primarily for their visual appeal. They were tools of the trade made to a certain acoustic specification. It seems though that for those who dont relate well to the non-visual nature of sound, the "look" of a microphone can become all important. Perhaps it's the only thing many people can relate to. If the mic looks old and historic then surely it has a "sound" that reflects that. But that may not necessarily be so.

[SteveCG]

Here's a thought: If it takes effort and costs money to do something (like a studio recording) then only those with real talent will get through this fiscal reality check. After all, who is going to spend a fortune on a bunch of no-hopers, whose music will not sell?

Perhaps they might themselves - fair enough if they are paying; but for anybody else - I think not.

As for digital v. analogue recording, I think it is now the least important part of the music chain.

[MajorWest]

Originally Posted by Dr Wobble

Youv'e hit the nail on the head G6Tuniki, when you say there is lot's of great great creative music out there and that the way we buy/listen to it has changed. For serious music forget record companies and a major publicity campaign, it's four spotty blokes in their garage/bedroom or a dingy cellar with a laptop. Remind you of anyone? What's changed is now you can release your music straight to the audience; no sleezy suit ripping you off. Kid's still play guitars and make good music. (GT6 if your into shoe gaze {makes me laugh some of the genre titles} check out No Clear Mind - Dream is Destiny = haunting and beautiful or Low - Silver Rider)

I agree there is still good music and serious musicians to be found but I think here you're looking in Indie circles or non mainstream music.

As I see it one major issue here is there's a huge void between serious musicians and the audience today. This has always existed to a degree but today it's a far greater void. A significant number of music consumers tend to relate to very simple and loud tracks, banged out on car stereos. I hear it every night when I'm out walking my German Shep -85 per cent bang bang bang and spoken lyrics. You don't tend to hear melody or harmony.

Essentially there is a kind of special connection between artist and consumer. The consumers are supposed to demand and understand quality material The artist is supposed to try and compete to raise the level ever higher, (as Brian Wilson tried to put one up on the Beatles with Pet Sounds and so on). If the audience is made up of people who developed an ear for sound and maybe even play an instrument, the artist isn't going to get away with too much hollow material. Even The Beatles took the odd pasting if they ever let their music slip in the late sixties.

Today, my view is the mainstream pop audience out there isn't as fussy or as demanding as 20 odd years ago. The record producers know what sells. If you take an experimental track to a producer that's just different, it's considered and rejected only on basis of sales (in most cases). So, it's a vicious circle and the best musicians have been going to Indie labels where sadly the money isn't as freely flowing.

People often tell me my views on modern pop are stereotyped in a way that all the older generations say their music was better. I don't agree. I can see music of the fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties and a bit of the nineties was O.K. but today pop music just isn't as good. It's been dumbed down and there's a lack of cult status bands you can follow.

There's a book now out called Yeah Yeah Yeah that analyses the decline of pop and well worth a read.

Sorry for rambling on.

[sp10mk11]

I find it interesting that this thread started off as a discussion about the joys of Analogue recording and yet it has turned off subject into to a discussion about music today and to some extent digital recording formats.

Maybe a separate thread would be more appropriate.

Gary

[Nickthedentist]

Originally Posted by jjl

Apparently the 3 letter code fell out of favour in the early '90s, see here

Thanks, John, very useful to know.

Nick.

[MajorWest]

Originally Posted by sp10mk11

I find it interesting that this thread started off as a discussion about the joys of Analogue recording and yet it has turned off subject into to a discussion about music today and to some extent digital recording formats

I'll give it a go. Of course, discussions about music as a subject is still really interesting as it's connected in so many ways to audio, digital and analogue. Just I suppose comparing modern and vintage music is definitely a stretch too far off course.

[dave walsh]

It's hard to know whether music was a primary driver in the invention of audio recording but once it was there the development of the technology was certainly linked to the "product". It's a bit like Bing Crosby bank-roling Ampex Tape Recorders to get a high quality product that enabled him to stay on the Golf Course while his radio shows were broadcast. This was analogue of course but a step change in quality. I venture to suggest that the analogue approach through to the seventies was often restricted in a way that produced better results from it's limitations ie few tracks in use and no "drop ins".

From what I've read, the Dylan/ Sinatra LP Shadows [strangers] In The Night [p54*] was probaly recorded digitally [he has used analogue gear a lot] but it was more or less a one take all live and miked in the studio job with mimimal interventions, not 128 track mixing through the board-the spirit of the older equipment and "Mr Frank" I think. It's also a good 180 gram pressing with an intriguing photo on the back. It's not just all in the recording medium [ie analogue or digital]
Dave W

[SteveCG]

Analogue recording techniques may have a slight advantage when dealing with quiet passages over raw digital methods. This is by not having the curious intermodulation effect you get when a signal that on its own is weak enough not to even exceed the first digital quantization level suddenly has a slightly stronger signal added (strong enough to be quantized). If you are listening to the result then suddenly the first signal can be heard in addition to the second signal. One way around this rather disconcerting effect can be to 'dither' the input by adding low level analogue noise at about the first quantization level, so that the low level wanted signal's presence can always register.

[TIMTAPE]

Sure we can dither a file before burning the CD but many original analog recordings have so much tape noise that when transferred to digital files the tape noise more than does the dithering for us.

The fidelity jump from LP's to CD's was significant. In practice an "old fashioned" 16 bit CD gives much better fidelity for the consumer than the best specced analog record/playback system could hope to provide. For listening to properly produced recordings there is usually little justification for going any higher than CD quality.

[Radio Wrangler]

Dither is best done with random noise because that scrambles any artefacts so they too sound as featureless noise. It is possible to cancel the dither digitally later if the noise was made digitally in he first place, or was separately digitised. This isn't done much because it all depends on accuracy in getting exact cancellation. A more satisfactory way is to use band-limited noise and to then remove it by digital filtering after conversion. This needs the sampling rate to be fast enough to leave some spare space for the frequency range of the dither to be fitted in without aliasing.

Under some circumstances like the radios I've been developing, there is enough analogue noise anyway and dither isn't needed. In audio applications, the now you see it now you don't effect is demonstrable. It also produces strange additive noises in the background and you either need lots more bits or else some good dither.

David

[sp10mk11]

"The fidelity jump from LP's to CD's was significant"

yes provided they owned a mediocre rack system with a plastic turntable and not always with a magnetic cartridge some were fitted with ceramic cartridges. it is no wonder the CD players in those systems sounded better, mainstream manufacturers dumbed down turntables to such an extent that they became a rude joke if included

16 bit CD as you put it could never and will never give superior sound to a half decent analogue system in my opinion.

Gary

[G6Tanuki]

The other big fidelity-jump that CDs brought was repeatability.

Play a vinyl LP a few hundred times and it _will_ suffer degradation [unless you're using something unconventional like a photoelectric or laser pickup].

Play a CD a few hundred times and it'll be the same the last time as the first.

[SteveCG]

My experience of live recording - concerts - so no re-take, taught me that analogue recorders have their work cut out recording pianos. This is because of a short lived transient as the piano hammer hits the strings. Tape recorders with VU meters, which are a form of averaged level meters, such as those used in Revox A77s (and I believe in B77s as well) needed careful operation not to have a 'splat' sound on the recorded tape caused by the overload of the record amplifiers. The empirical rule was to keep the average VU reading to about -6/-8 dB. Clearly tape recorders with peak reading meters had the potential to perform better - although I never had one to try when making the recordings.

I've never tried using a digital recorder for such live music - so perhaps somebodyelse can advise on their performance.

Certainly tape recording anything off the wireless or an LP is easy in comparison - where transients and the dynamic range have already been compressed.

[sp10mk11]

True records do deteriate if played hundreds of times, I re-call a fuss in the late 80s/90s over CD discs losing the reflective part inside them making them useless aswell, if this got sorted then good but by this time I had already decided to go back to analogue having spent thousands on various players and DA boxes and of course discs.

Also any album I buy I record aswell and use that for general listening, as I have a good cassette deck and now the Elcaset I can experience no degradation of sound

I do hope we will still be able to discuss analogue on this thread?

Gary