fatter tape saturation / help me warm a mix

[drumsound]

heh.. hard to emit and detect sarcasm on the internet!

who are these tape opers who do good mastering with nice analog boxes? and how much is not much money? I figured the going rate was $100-150 a song?

thanks

try Carl Saff at www.saffmastering.com. He's in Chicago and can run your mixes out of the digital domain, through all kinds of nice analog/tube gear and then back into the box for the final files. And he's just insanely waaay cheaper than the $150-per-song you had expected. You can explain to him what you're looking for and he'll give you some ideas.

Cheers,
Adam

True true true. I was just there Thursday and Carl did a great job. Check out his room and rates.

[drumsound]

This is a really open ended question. There are a million variables. You say you went to tape. At what level, on what machine, at what calibration, what tape formula? Pushing the level might add some pleasing distortion (that what saturation is), though depending on many factors it might not.

Totally, I guess it was a minimally-guided crapshoot. My ignorance shines when it comes to tape machines, the more I find out tonight (when we give it another go) the more I can share.

The levels were peaking only slightly above 0db when I used the stereo outs after playing a normalized and compressed WAV of the song through SoundForge.

Tonight, I want to crank the sucker. Also, I think if I play with the EQ of the wav file, I'll get better results .. I noticed the tape sucked a lot of the low and high end out.. but if I hype it on the computer before it goes into tape, I think it might get more of what I'm looking for.

NO NO NO!!! Send your mix from the mix bus not from a normalized, compressed "mastered-ish" file. Take the stereo output from your DAW to the deck.

If the tape is sucking low end from the mix your machine is not calibrated correctly.

[majortom]

Yeah, Carl saff...

I just got my cd project back from him last week. I had a long conversation over the phone about things to pay attention too with carl, what a nice guy!

At the beggining when I sent him my mix I talked to him about wanting it to sound "warmer" more "saturated" you know all those nice gooey words. When I got it back he told me it sounded too muddy in places...I was thinking "what the *&%& are you talking about?"

then I listened for a looong while and what I heard spoke volumes to how I can and will improve my monitoring environment. The songs sounded clean transparent and very nice, but not "digital" just good.

My point is I learned it's important to have things mastered, and to trust when you have someone who listens to you, that they will make the right decisions, especially in a room that may be much better than yours.

AND he'll do a song for FREE, send him your worst subject and see what happens.

I guess the long winded point I'm trying to make is allow for everything before jumping on the "saturate it" wagon, nothing wrong with that, I love that sound, but, I got schooled just recently and I'm very glad I did. My CD sound great! Tom

[Mane1234]

I'd like to say something nice about Carl as well. I sent him a song from a client to consider for mastering. We got it back within 48 hrs and I thought it sounded great. The client disagreed but I guess that's the way it goes. I asked Carl to critique my mix and he sent back some really great info for me from his perspective as a mastering engineer

[MoreSpaceEcho]

what didn't the client like? not that it's any of my business whatsoever. just curious, cause for me it's been the opposite the few times i've sent stuff out for mastering...the client likes it and i think it's too compressed usually.

anyway that's awesome that carl gave you feedback. the last time i sent something out i was like PLEASE give me any critique you can, as harsh as possible would be great. he didn't say one single thing at all, good, bad or otherwise. i asked him what he did to it and he didn't tell me that either. twas a bummer.

[Recycled_Brains]

another kind word for Carl Saff. i posted a link in the "listen to my stuff' forum to a project i worked on that he mastered. he did a great job. really nice fella as well. very tasteful sweetening, and left the dynamics intact. and for what he charges, you really can't go wrong. he's definately the type of guy that's not happy until the client's happy too, so that speaks volumes to his committment to helping you reach your desired result.

the mix was fairly dark sounding to begin with. i recorded pretty much everything with ribbons and other dynamic mics. i've found that choice in microphones to yield less harsh results. also, in regards to drums, i've found that some subtle shelving or low-passing of the overheads at the higher frequencies helps take some of the edge off.

recently i've been experimenting with running my mixes through a stereo tube pre and back, hitting the inputs kinda hard to get some second harmonic distortion going on, and i've been enjoying that sound.

your mixes sound nice by the way. good separation as you said. everything is in a good place.

-ryan

[Recycled_Brains]

i thought you might be interested in this thread over on Terry Manning's forum at the R/E/P forum. discusses the benefits of tracking at lower levels in DAW to avoid some of the pit-falls of digital recording. i think there may be some info. in there that you may find relevant to this discussion....

http://recforums.prosoundweb.com/index.php/t/15038/0/

-ryan

[joel hamilton]

thanks for all the suggestions so far!

I guess what I'm seeking is a gel. An overall ambiance that some of my favorite CDs sound like. It needs a bit more character, if you will.

I know there's no quick fix, just wondering what folks do when they approach this, from wherever they are on the gear/experience spectrum. I'm appreciate learning with ya'll!

It happens in the mix. If you have one really bright thing, you have to either dumb it down to the rest of the sounds, or mix everything else UP to that level of HF info...
What you are looking for in a mix is a consistency that comes from balancing evrything. Everything. Not just levels and FX. everything. Balance. True balance, sounds really good, tape or not.

Having one really surreal element, like an acoustic guitar that is WAY out front even quiet, or esses on the voice that mae it rip across the tweeters even though you turned it down and automated the shit out of it with some compressor plug in or whatever: tape will not make this type of stuff all "gel." nor will a buss compressor no matter how many thousands of posts on gearslutz there is about what two buss comp to use for jazz rock with a 5 foot 2" tall singer on tuesday...

It starts with the tracking, happens in the mix, it gets polished in mastering. there is not one single step that is more or less important.

[stevebozz]

man am I glad I asked! the diversity of experience and knowledge on this board always impresses me, this thread is no exception.

We mixed down to tape a bit hotter -- it sounded better... but definitely not a finished product. glad to hear mastering can be affordable from some folks on this thread.

I'm thinking a lot now about EQ'ing the high end down on more tracks.. I usually leave the high end alone unless there's hum or other unwanted stuff going on.

thanks for sharing.