Audio plugins, DSP software that imitates the sound character of some Reel-to-Reel Tape Recorders

[Jaxjax]

There is a very large market for emulation plugins. This extends from tape to console emulation. Even mic emulation.

You need to consider the amount of production done in the box (ITB) vs out of the box (OTB). Some people do not like the sound of digital ITB and may use tools like these to, dare i say "warm", the sound. You can also see this theme pop up in things as small as how an eq curve is computed--analog modeled eq curves vs digital curves. Personally, I prefer digital and no harmonic emulation, but tbh I could not tell you if recording A was mixed ITB with emulation or OTB on a neve classic.

I imagine there is high percentage of hybrid OTB/ITB going on in most modern studio's .? I'm not counting small home hobby studio's , What I always wonder is if digital emulation is so good then why spend 6- 7 figures on analog gear for hybrid systems ? Demand, personal choice or both.?

 

[jkess114]

A lot of varied feelings about that. Some extremely successful engineers that have long been analog proponents have gone fully in the box. That isn't to say they all think it sounds better. Workflow is very important for people making a living doing this and digitial gets it done. You adjust and don't expect emulations to perform exactly like the analog item they're copying.

I restored an Ampex MM1200 (24, 16, 8 track machine). I later sold it to a friend of mine with a killer studio outside of woodstock. To hear anything that gets tracked to that machine, even if it gets dumped into PT, is a lesson in euphonics. Most don't want to deal with the work flow and real extra expense involved to use it but it is glorious sounding. There is an EE in Alabama who has a heart of gold and a soft spot for MM1200's who has been making modern replacement components to future proof the decks. All the important control boards are now available from him with modern parts and he upgraded the tape handling to studer level. Its the machine to own for those who care. That deck sounds amazing.

 

[jkess114]

Sorry, got sidetracked.

I think with good converters, you can utilize outboard and realize sonic benefits. For some the benefits are worth the added hassle, for some they are not. For very busy mixers, and budgets being fractional compared to what they were, it just makes sense to keep things as in the box as possible to manage recalls, multiple delivery requests, etc.

 

[DanielT]

Speaking of tape players. According to Andy Edwards, this is the beginning of what we today consider HiFi. Or you could say that with these tape recorders the technical possibilities and recording quality was greatly increased and thus there was a demand to create better home HiFi systems. The last is my hypothesis, which I don't think is too far-fetched.

Whether Andy Edwards is right in what he says, I have no idea. You more knowledgeable people can figure that out, but I thought what he said was interesting. By the way, the whole video about these Sliding Doors scenarios was thought provoking so I can recommend checking it out.

Watch from 36:50 and a few minutes ahead:

From Germany after WW2, the Americans brought with them:

Based on that technology, the Ampex 200 was then developed with the help of Bing Crosby's money. It was the starting point for both modern recording technology and the development of HiFi (my hypothesis I mentioned above).

 

[jkess114]

There's a current hype around "spectral" processing i.e. getting frequencies over time with FFT, applying changes in frequency domain with some complex (or not so complex) algorithm and then rebuilding the sound back to regular audio. As such manipulation is now much more available due to more computing power in producers' and musicians' equipment - what is your opinion, can such techniques lead to any substantial innovation in music/production?

There is a process called spectral editing which is unrivaled for noise removal in audio that can do incredible amounts of noise removal without any degradation to the audio. I used it a LOT in mastering to remove clicks, noises that tracking / mixing engineers thought they were stuck with, often to their amazement. It is one of the most exciting advancements in audio processing I witnessed in my years maniacally interested in audio.

 

[dasdoing]

of what we today consider HiFi

I wouldn't call it Hifi, but modern production..which if you think about it is the abstraction of the art. Playback music stopped trying to represent reality and instead new imaginary realities were created.

 

[DanielT]

I wouldn't call it Hifi, but modern production..which if you think about it is the abstraction of the art. Playback music stopped trying to represent reality and instead new imaginary realities were created.

But one should lead to the other. If the recording quality increased, there should be a demand that the sound reproduction systems for home listening should be able to reproduce these recordings in a good and credible way. That's my hypothesis anyway.

 

[gwing]

A lot of varied feelings about that. Some extremely successful engineers that have long been analog proponents have gone fully in the box. That isn't to say they all think it sounds better. Workflow is very important for people making a living doing this and digitial gets it done. You adjust and don't expect emulations to perform exactly like the analog item they're copying.

I restored an Ampex MM1200 (24, 16, 8 track machine). I later sold it to a friend of mine with a killer studio outside of woodstock. To hear anything that gets tracked to that machine, even if it gets dumped into PT, is a lesson in euphonics. Most don't want to deal with the work flow and real extra expense involved to use it but it is glorious sounding. There is an EE in Alabama who has a heart of gold and a soft spot for MM1200's who has been making modern replacement components to future proof the decks. All the important control boards are now available from him with modern parts and he upgraded the tape handling to studer level. Its the machine to own for those who care. That deck sounds amazing.

"To hear anything that gets tracked to that machine, even if it gets dumped into PT, is a lesson in euphonics."

That I can believe. I used to have a lowly Akai 4 track and just passing the signal through it, without even touching the tape, made an amazing change. It always felt wrong to 'distort the sound' when we were supposedly seeking perfect playback but it sure sounded attractive.

Although the electronics improved changed the sound substantially it was also astonishing, by contrast, how close the recording was to that input signal but that's another story.

 

[TheZebraKilledDarwin]

there's a big market for them yet none sounds the same and none sounds like a tape machine TBH. I highly recommend Eric's Valentine channel if you want to see how much work can be put into the song production in general, but he also made a video specifically about the tape plugins emulation and hardware with sound examples

Great video. The snare from the tape sounds smooth as it should, while the one through the Waves J37 plugin annoyingly pokes the ears, not enough transient smoothing.
Watched the video to the end. This is a gem. At the end the vocal part I find even more impressive than the drums example. The plugin totally chokes the loud sillables like compressed to death, while the real machine compresses but adds sucha nice distortion, so that it does not sound choked, but like controlled blooming - just like a record.

 

[jkess114]

Physical tape recording is the worlds fastest compressor.

 

[dasdoing]

Physical tape recording is the worlds fastest compressor.

more like a soft clipper, isn't it?

 

[jkess114]

Yeah I guess so, similar. I think of hard/soft clippers as a digital creation, soft being a modified hard-clipper which is essentially an infinite ratio limiter without timing circuit, soft-letting some transients pass. Tape is non-linear in its effects though and Bass / HF gets hit first, depending on what is getting recorded. Soft clippers are more of a level dependent full-bandwidth gain (or bit) reduction scenario. Also the the harmonic component to tape compression is something that would make it different from soft-clipping unless that was coded into the process.

 

[dasdoing]

soft clippers as a digital creation

it depends on the concept I guess, any hard-driven analog gear will "clip softly". The digital versions of soft clipping are basically trying to reproduce this (often wanted) behavior.

 

[jkess114]

During peak level wars, some mastering engineers selected ADC's based on their soft-clip behavior, with Lavry Gold's achieving prominent status for the ability to sound good doing naughty things.

 

[dasdoing]

yea, that's where the "converters have a sound" concept really comes from. they all clip differently

 

[jkess114]

I think converters have a sound because of the analog stage designed into each, component choice, which conversion chip is being used (that is a huge part of it) and how they are being implemented. My favorite DAC is the Manhattan II, at least as far as mastering goes. Beautiful analog stage coupled with excellent implementation of a sabre 9038. For mastering it was 100% part of the work flow to find the best filter setting for the material getting mastered on the pitch DAC and that is a huge part of the sound too. Slow roll-off, fast roll-off, brickwall, massive change and presentation of the music changing filters. The majority of people using DAC's or ADC's are trying to avoid clipping.

 

[EERecordist]

In professional applications, tape was usually used with Dolby A, though DBX was a contender. Dolby A was a 4 band system, compressing 2:1 before record and expanding for playback. It would have the Dolby time constants. If you know where to listen, it can be heard pumping.

As Dolby and tape became vintage, some have experimented with using Dolby A or the last generation, Dolby SR, as a vocal compressor. Tape saturation, a form of compression, has very very fast time constants, as would imperfections in the tape electronics. A local studio recently told me that clients process their (multi-microphone) drum kit tracks through a tape machine.

In the modern day, the tape plugins are just another choice among thousands of in-the-box processors, hopefully used artistically.

 

[DVDdoug]

Physical tape recording is the worlds fastest compressor.

Limiting (which is fast compression) is also normally instant, affecting the peaks one half-wave at a time. But with digital files we can do better with look-ahead which is effectively negative attack time. Audacity's limiter uses look-ahead.

Clipping, the "worst" kind of compression, is also instant.

...I don't know how common it was to use tape saturation (in pro studios) in the analog days. Pro machines had some headroom and as the tape improved over time there was more headroom and more dynamic range. You could go "into the red" with very little saturation. VU meters went to +3dB and you'd look like an idiot-amateur if you were "pegging" the meters.

 

[jkess114]

In professional applications, tape was usually used with Dolby A, though DBX was a contender. Dolby A was a 4 band system, compressing 2:1 before record and expanding for playback. It would have the Dolby time constants. If you know where to listen, it can be heard pumping.

As Dolby and tape became vintage, some have experimented with using Dolby A or the last generation, Dolby SR, as a vocal compressor. Tape saturation, a form of compression, has very very fast time constants, as would imperfections in the tape electronics. A local studio recently told me that clients process their (multi-microphone) drum kit tracks through a tape machine.

In the modern day, the tape plugins are just another choice among thousands of in-the-box processors, hopefully used artistically.

The dolby vocal trick is to use the encode without decoding through a dolby A card (201, 301, 361, maybe others). It's a unique brightening effect and a lot different than EQ'ing but noisy, particularly if its amplifying tape hiss too. I don't believe SR was used as a vocal exciter since it operates so differently to type A though I am not positive about that. In my studio I had a Studer A800 and we never used noise reduction. +9 tapes, particularly at 30ips were quiet enough for just about everything that saw tape. When I switched to CCIR at 15ips I also felt like 15ips was quiet enough too. important to note that folks were not doing lots of flying tracks around on the tape and bouncing comps to tracks with the generational noise creep that was a bigger deal when needing to maximize space on the tape. Any project going in that direction just dumped to PT and finished tracking in PT (Pro Tools).

 

[jkess114]

Limiting (which is fast compression) is also normally instant, affecting the peaks one half-wave at a time. But with digital files we can do better with look-ahead which is effectively negative attack time. Audacity's limiter uses look-ahead.

Clipping, the "worst" kind of compression, is also instant.

...I don't know how common it was to use tape saturation (in pro studios) in the analog days. Pro machines had some headroom and as the tape improved over time there was more headroom and more dynamic range. You could go "into the red" with very little saturation. VU meters went to +3dB and you'd look like an idiot-amateur if you were "pegging" the meters.

Re Clipping: In practice, depends on the material, how much HF content it has and how much distortion is present pre clipping. Depending on how clipped, it can be the most transparent way to get loudness, or, can create masters that help drive the material towards the end goal tonally. All depends.

Limiters in practical mastering uses are never set to zero attack time (digital of course, analog are slower). Look-ahead is used to some degree, but, all you have to do is listen to what happens to the audio when that is employed heavily and you can hear the life getting sucked right out of the music. Back in tube days the Fairchild 660 and 670, and Telefunken U73's were about as fast as tube limiters got ... ~ 50 microseconds.

Tape saturation back in the day again varied. Some engineers smashed tape for effect, some like George Massenburg left a ton of headroom. VU meters are very slow and so a snare transient showing -6 on the meter was probably well into the red at its peak. Some engineers calibrated their decks to interface at lower levels also so they could hit their consoles harder, or, help steer them into not slamming the tape too much. You can calibrate a tape decks meters so that a 250nW/m signal shows whatever you want on the meter. Plus different decks had different responses in the electronics on both side of the tape recording / playback and hitting them in the sweet spot was part of knowing how to get the most out of your deck.