As digital converters became more sophisticated, the differences decreased, but the romance and mythology of tape continued.īut tape also had a lot of limitations. After digital came into general use it became more of “You don’t know what you’ve got ‘till it’s gone.” Digital sounded cold and clinical. Of course, at the time it was just the sound to expect, the sound of tape. And it gave the track an ability to blend with other tracks. Tape and tape recorders contributed a slight, smooth compression and ever-so-slight harmonic distortion that gave a track richness. The contributions of the tape and tape recorder to the overall sound was/is significant.
When we discuss Softube’s Tape, I think you’ll see what I mean. Just using the plug-in slightly changes the sound for the better. Each effect in the InfiniStrip adds a little bit of color to the sound. I first noticed this when I was doing the review of PSP’s InfiniStrip ( here). So I think we’re going back to the time where components are becoming a valuable part of the sound of the recording, not individually, but as a part of the whole. In fact, normal gain staging created the analog sound that was generally accepted, and the analog tape machine and tape contributed a significant amount to that overall sound. Just a little bit on each component added up to the analog sound.
So when audio engineers referred to overloading or overdriving the circuits of a unit, they were doing very little overloading. If you set your volumes correctly, you got the desired sound. That means you needed to set the volumes to the optimal level so you wouldn’t cause unwanted distortion or noise. In the old days (pre digital), you had to gain-stage your gear and board. Mixing with Modern Emulated Analog Plug-ins But I’m seeing that we may need to adapt our mixing style to something that harkens back to the pre-digital days. Most of us couldn’t afford that, so we did the best we could.īut as plug-in development has matured this analog goodness has been brought back, and now the prices have fallen to an area where we can indulge ourselves without breaking the bank. They wanted to run their tracks through the Neave, Solid State Logic, or Trident console. And if they could afford it, they would mix in an analog recording studio. As digital recording became more common, people began to add tube or transformer preamps or compressors to their outboard gear. Of course you could go too far, but just a little bit of overloading the circuits created a more subtle form of that distortion the guitar players achieved. Mix engineers discovered they could overload tube or transistor preamps, compressors, EQs, and tape machines to create a more pleasant and compressed sound. Guitar players realized that when they turned up their amps, the sound was thicker, richer and more powerful. This compression also thickens the source sound. Another way of saying it would be that it subtly softens the beginnings of the notes. Soft clipping is a mild compression of the transients. Analog Saturation is a subtle distortion that brings pleasant-sounding harmonics, those harmonics being a byproduct of soft clipping. It is the sound we’ve yearned for since digital recording came into being.īefore we go any further, let’s establish what we’re talking about. And “analog” generally means “saturation.” What I mean is that analog brought us saturation, but we just called it analog.
It almost seems that every plug-in, no matter its function, has some type of analog simulation built in. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but analog is hotter than it has ever been.
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