Recording style results vs money

[EERecordist]

"There are people who pursue the vintage sounds, but they use $10,000 microphones, $20,000 tape machines, and $50,000 boards, so they get this shiny, modern version of old music. They're always perplexed at how to sound like Dead Moon or something. It's so easy: You give $100,000 to charity, then you buy $500 worth of equipment, and you make your record. You have to have songs but, technically speaking, the reason you can't get that sound is because you have too much money."

I have many friends who have had great success in lo-fi recording, artists, recordists, and labels. Many greats like Prince and Billie Eilish were bedroom rockers with lo-fi equipment. The art outshines the equipment.

Once you have the tracks, the re-recording, mixing, managed by the producer or artist self-producer, takes a much time and money as you like.

Of course I believe as listeners we need the most accurate system we can afford to listen to the lo-fi as the artist, producer, and mastering engineer intended.

Punk band Dead Moon is a long running husband-wife and band project. They played through the husband passing away at age 69, and the wife 76 still sometimes performs.

Sonny Smith in Conversation with Andrew Gerhan

Sonny Smith, of Sonny & The Sunsets, has been called a "San Francisco garage rock hero" by Pitchfork and "an institution" by SF Wee

tapeop.com

Terrible recording captures the band.

 

[Ifrit]

I was recently in one of the biggest names studio, with the board that’s probably an order of magnitude more expensive than what you quote in starting post, and that board did not have a single pot or fader that did not produce pops, crackle, noise, or other calamity in one way or another. Couple of strips just plain didn’t work.
Sure, it’s an old board. Sure, you’re selling name more than anything else, it’s the only way to stay in studio business nowadays. Sure, good tech is hard to find. Sure, you have to lose booking time.
But WTF? Is expecting stuff to just work too much?

 

[RexrothPigeon]

rip fred