So, let's talk about this. It's more complex than you'd think!
Before the advent of the tape machine, records were made direct to disk. There was no editing or overdubbing possible - everybody had to be playing together, at the same time. Mixers were archaic vacuum tube devices with very few channels (no more than maybe 4-6 channels) - there was no "close miking" other than maybe vocalists.
So what did that mean? The musicians had to be on top of their game. The engineers did too - there were no do-overs or fix it in post. The medium itself has severe limitations on loudness and low end.
By the time we get to the early 50s, we have tape machines with two or even three tracks. This was a
gigantic leap in fidelity (seriously - listen to late 40s jazz records vs mid-50s, it's not subtle!), but ultimately the only real changes were that you could splice different takes together and overdub a little bit (maybe a vocal on top of the band, for example). The track count barely changed. Les Paul did some cool things involving layering with two machines, but it was still fairly limited (it did directly inspire George Martin and The Beatles, though - more on that later). Still not much compression being used. The other thing, of course, is tape is
much more forgiving about pushing it a little too hard. It compresses a bit rather than having the cutting head jump or overheat.
By the
late 50s, some studios (Atlantic Records, with Tom Dowd, in particular) were starting to have as many as 8 tracks available on their reel-to-reel recorders. Now we're starting to have the ability to mix things a bit. But we're still not really close miking anything - EMI, for example, had
strict limitations on how close the engineers could put the microphones to a source.
It isn't really until the mid 1960s that putting mics close to anything became a thing - mostly from EMI engineers like Geoff Emerick breaking studio rules! But we're
still limited pretty heavily by track count. The Beatles, for example, did all of their records until the White Album on 4 track machines, and the mixing reflects that. A lot of stuff was pre-mixed and summed down to one track. Mixers have become higher channel count by this time; the EMI REDD.51 consoles of the early to mid 60s were able of recording up to 10 channels at a time (summed down to 4 tracks), and UA 610 consoles were around the same channel counts in the US.
By the time we reach the late 60s to early 70s, we're looking at 16 track tape machines, with closing miking becoming ubiquitous. Now mixing starts to be less about just balance and slight tonal adjustments and more a part of the production itself. Consoles from companies like Neve, API, and MCI become commonplace, with high channel counts (24 or more) starting to become the norm. Overdubs are now commonplace, and it is downright
normal to put a dozen mics on a drum kit. Heavier use of compression has become more the norm.
For some examples...
1940s, to disk:
Early 1950s, to tape:
Late 1950s, to tape but better:
Early-mid 60s, starting to have close miking:
Late 1960s, channel count starts to go up:
Early 70s, close miking and overdubbing becomes the norm:
???
That's 1954, details on the Deltawave chart:
View attachment 460040
I see perfectly good 30's and the nicest sloping FR extending all the way up.
Stereo bass too.
Sounds like it too, it's a really good work.
The top/bottom end myth is probably coming from low-end productions.
It's
very normal in pop recordings of the era for it to be quite band limited. Go listen to the first Elvis record, it has no low end or top end to speak of.
I believe the 50s U47 had tube preamps inside of them.
Yes - all condenser mics of the time period used tube head amps. It wasn't until the late 1960s that the FET-based U87 and C414 came about.
theaudiophileman.com
Tape saturation is a magnetic phenomenon and digital is just a number. And 0dBVU isn't necessarily calibrated to 0dBFS.
www.pbs.org
