Neve consoles with built-in VCA/Gate?

[soundispatch]

Hey all,

A question that I can't seem to answer myself. I was in a discussion with an engineer who worked with Island records in the U.K. for awhile (recorded some Pulp hits amongst other stuff), and we were talking about how to capture a great room sound. Well, in the discussion, he was talking about the use of gates on virtually everything, then sticking room mics in all four corners of the room, so that the ambience could be separated from bleed for more control, etc etc.

Anyways, to cut a long story short, he said that one of the reasons that alot of old recordings (we were talking specifically about live room, mostly classic jazz recordings) sound great is that the old Neve consoles used to have VCAs, or more specifically, gates, built into the channel strips. I kind of doubted this, but I haven't personally torn up an old Neve (or done the research) to check this out for myself.

Is this true? If so, how would they be used, and with what kind of threshold and release? To me it just seems somewhat odd, considering the great sound of alot of classic jazz recordings, and the horrible sound of 80's 'gated' music (especially those nasty drums...). Was it simply reducing noise when musicians weren't playing, or actually gating? I'm still skeptical. Can someone enlighten me?

Thanks,

Cal

[soundguy]

Cal-

I cant help you on the neve specifics.

there are a lot of ways to use a gate, the 80's gated reverb thing is one of many.

What your friend said is perfectly sensible. Think of it like this:

Youve got room mics.

Youve got close mics.

Lets talk about an isolaed drum kit in a big room. You want a really ROOMY sound on the kit. So, here's one way to think about it-

the room mics are the sound of the kit. They are the core of recording and you'll want to have them up as loud as possible.

Now, the close mics, they are just detail. And they are never gonna be louder than the room mics. But, you may want to say, really compress all your close drum mics. If this is the case, if you have say, six open mics on the kit, with a lot of compression (or not) you are going to be bringing up a whole lot of room in the close mics. Now, if you didnt have the room mics, this could make for a cool sound (and it could make for a cool sound with the room mics up as well) but if you are after the clean room sound, having the room in the close mics can add a lot of muck and garbage to the clarity of the room mic.

So you've got a nice sounding drum kit in the room mics, but you want to give it that little OOOMPH to get it over the edge. so you gate all your drum mics so those mics are only open when the drum is being hit. Now, here's the catch, you bring those gated mics up UNDER the room mics, so the room mics are always thhe loudest thing. If you have the room mics playing the dominant source, the close mic is the color and if you can mix well, you'll never hear the gates opening and closing, you'll just hear a nice room sound with defined stick hits.

when you talk about the 80's, it was the exact opposite of that scenario, those records were generally mixed with gates as an effect so you would HEAR them closing and opening. Totally different idea. If you set up your mix as stated above, you'll have a real airy sound, but you'll have that under the microscope definition where you need it and none of the noise where you dont.

The concept of this is the primary goal of production sound for picture, a good production mixer will mix dialogue in exactly the same fashion using a wider image on a boom pole as a bed and bringing up a wireless mic under an actors shirt for the lines. Most movies mixed by guys worth their name are these days, done like that. We dont use gates though...

dave

[@?,*???&?]

VCA = Voltage Controlled Attenuator

The SSL Console uses a VCA to adjust fader levels when automating a mix. The VCA's themselves are actually made by dbx on the SSL Console. A newer company called 'Thats' apparently started making replacement VCAs sometime in the mid-90s. If you pull out an SSL Channel strip, the VCA is on the left side, toward the bottom back of the card.

The charm of the older Neves is that they have no VCAs related to fader components. The V Series consoles do have a compressor/gate section just like the SSL Consoles and Neve added those to compete with Solid State Logic's design.

Gating a room mic or room track using the snare drum as a key for the gate can be fantastic. The Phil Collins song "I don't care anymore" is an excellant example of that. The Power Station's "Some like it hot" is another prime example of an era gone by.

[soundispatch]

Hey guys,

Thanks for the responses. I guess I should have been a little more specific and said that I was sort of interested in the guts of the 1960-70s consoles, and whether what this guy was saying is in fact true. I understand the principal, and realize gates can be used in more subtle ways, but I simply can't believe this is how many classic jazz recordings were recorded back in the days. This is also the first time I heard of VCAs being built into an old Neve (other than a retrofit). Jeff, do you know when the V-series was first being manufactured?

Thanks again,

-cal

[cgarges]

I could be wrong, because I wasn't there, but I hardly think that "Kind of Blue," "Giant Steps," "Time Out," or "Study In Brown" were recorded with Neve consoles. To what "classic jazz" albums was this guy referring?

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[soundispatch]

Hi Chris,

Well, I think in our discussion, we were referring to albums recorded by Teo Macero in the late '60s and early '70s (i.e. Miles Smiles, Bitches Brew). It's always somewhat loaded to say 'classic jazz' --- I'm of course interested to know if these consoles around this time had gates, but perhaps more than that, whether the great 'room sound' recordings (maybe including Kind of Blue and A Love Supreme) captured room sound first, then used close-miking with gates for detail, as Dave was describing. It would certainly change alot of my perceptions about recording techniques from that era.

-cal

[Hitronik]

I read about david bowie having his voice recorded on something like three or four tracks...a close vocal mic, then mics at distances in front of david. each mic would be gated with a treashold so that as david sang louder he would open up another mic, hence another track with each volume increase...more room noise. That's all I remember, make sense.
With those new ifrared noise gate they use in live sound you cold set up a gang load of mics and have th singer dance around like dance dance revolution USA!
that would be great

[cgarges]

Hitronik,

Yeah, that's a very clever trick that Tony Visconti came up with. I beleive it was on "Heroes" if I remember correctly. I think he decided to print it to tape that way because he only had one track left for the lead vocal. Ah, the good old days...


Soundispatch,

Sorry for the misunderstanding. When I think of classic, roomy jazz albums, I think primarly of the work of Rudy Van Gelder and Tom Dowd.

I pretty sure that the Kepex gates were developed some time in the early seventies. Alan Parsons has admitted to the Kepexs (Kepexes? Kepexi?) huge affect on the sound of "Dark Side Of The Moon," as these units were all the rage at the time.
Of course, Alan Parsons was also a big advocate of not compressing everything to tape, either.

In any case, you've got me thinking. I'm curious now, too. Anyone have any insight into the history of the noise gate?

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[joel hamilton]

The first neve i worked on with gates was the VR series. Those most certainly DID NOT exist in the 70's.

[tactics]

Try gating your room mics so they trigger from a snare or kick.I heard about this from an interview i read with Bill Price, English dude who recorded The Clash,Sex Pistols and numerous others.Rather nifty technique.

[Fletcher]

Gates didn't exist for Neve? desks in the 60's... I forget the model number for the 'noise gate' module... I wanna say 2057 but I think that's wrong... but it would not have been fitted to every channel of the desk. There might have been a module or two installed in the 'correction unit section' of a 70's era desk... but the "correction unit section" was generally only 8 slots... and no one I know of had ever filled one with all noise gates.

[cgarges]

Thanks Fletcher. Do you know of anyone who was making gates before Valley's Kepex?

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[soundispatch]

Hi Fletcher,

Thanks for your detailed response. I doubted it, but simply didn't have the knowledge in this area --- thanks for clearing it up.

best,

-cal