What should I dump to 2-inch?

[BenPhelan]

Hi. First post, longtime lurker. Love you fools.

I'm at the end of a recording project, and am about to hand it off to a mixing engineer. I was lucky enough to be able to track the drums to 2-inch tape (a Studer A80) and they sound great. Everything else was recorded straight to PT. I don't have any general complaints about the PT-tracked stuff, but I do have an opportunity to dump individual tracks to 2-inch, then back to PT before mixing. So I'm inclined to take the opportunity.

So the question is, What tracks should I prioritize? I realize it's probably impossible to generalize, since it depends entirely on the sounds I'll be dumping. But still. Can anyone provide some kind of rule of thumb? Which instruments tend to benefit the most from 2-inch? Which instruments the least? What kind of sonics should I expect to get out of the Studer? What should I put into it--how should I prepare the tracks, EQ-wise? I'm hoping for a tasty bump in the bass range. I should add that I'm definitely not an engineer, even by home-recording standards.

The record is basically fancy pop: strings, flute, horns of all sizes, synths, acoustic guitars, piano, wurly, rhodes... No heavy electric guitars; they're more on the fizzy side.

Thanks in advance...
Benjamin

[Snarl 12/8]

Dump stems of everything, why choose?

[BenPhelan]

time restraints

[Nick Sevilla]

My advice : DON'T.

The "benefit" of the tape sound VS the restraint of time, will not make it
worthwhile.

Plus, you admit to not knowing what you are doing.

Plus, what does the MIX ENGINEER want?

Cheers

[BenPhelan]

The engineer is interested in the tape transfer--it'll give him more to play with--but he won't be able to attend the dumping session. And we don't have that much time to strategize beforehand, so it's on me what to pick. He's really talented, but doesn't have any hands-on experience with two-inch. Which is why i'm interested in generalities.

Nick, did you put benefit in scare quotes because you don't think the transfer would sweeten up the sound, or even noticeably change it?

As for the time constraint--dumping to tape isn't a hardship in any way. I'm going to do it regardless, probably in a day, as an experiment. But I'd like the experiment to be fruitful.

[Gregg Juke]

I'd vote for drums (which you already have on tape), bass, and lead vocals; then perhaps guitars, then horns in that order...

Just guessing based on the little I know of saturation benefits; guitars are usually pretty high on that list, but you did mention they're not as pronounced...

It kind of depends on a number of factors. 2-inch is good-- what's your tape speed?

GJ

[BenPhelan]

Recorded drums at 15 ips, hoping for a bass bump. But i could run the transfers at 15 or 30, i suppose. Am i right that 15 generally pumps up the low end? And that 30 adds...umm...sparkle? Or something?

[The Scum]

I've vote to skip it, and instead spend that time doing things that will make a more directly tangible impact on the mix.

If you want a bass bump, EQ and compression are a more controllable way to get there.

Which is why i'm interested in generalities.

You really can't generalize in a meaningful way. There are too many variables.

The make of machine, how well it's been maintained, it's calibration history, the tape formulation all make a difference.

Studers are generally less colored than some other makes, though an A80 will have more impact than an A800. 15 IPS is generally seen as having more "tape sound" than 30, but is also hissier.

Jack Endino published a bunch of research on this on his website a while back, you might see if you can track it down.

If you've got the time and can afford to spend it that way, you might give it a try, and listen to the difference it makes. But nobody can make any guarantees that it will do anything beneficial. It might make a crisp, modern production sound veiled and slow.

But if doing the experiment comes at the expense of time spent mixing, I'd opt for more time to mix.

[BenPhelan]

Cool. Very helpful.

BTW, this isn't going to take away from mixing time. And there's no expense involved with the tape transfer. So as i see it, there's really no reason not to do it. I expect some of the transfers to add color, others to be neutral, others to sound crummy. If they sound crummy, we won't use em.

[kslight]

Have you thought about the potential sync issues in doing this process? Even the best machines are going to vary in speed a bit...just a limitation of the technology... This probably wouldn't be TOO bad if you dumped all the parts at once except the drums...then they just wouldn't necessarily sync exact with the drums anymore (assuming the drums have already been taken into Pro Tools). You do tracks individually then things are most likely going to get messy.


Me personally I don't think its worth it...I like tape but I don't like rework so much (re-cutting drums/etc for unnecessary sound effects).


So likely I expect you would at least end up spending more money for this process.

If the engineer isn't charging for it then I guess go ahead and try it and see how bad it is...it might not be so bad...but I'd hate to pay for it and expect one thing and end up with a turd sandwich.

[The Scum]

From my perspective, if you cut drums to tape, then you already have the thing that I think benefits most from tape: the hi hat and snare. They're the things that I find benefit most.

[Nick Sevilla]

The engineer is interested in the tape transfer--it'll give him more to play with--but he won't be able to attend the dumping session. And we don't have that much time to strategize beforehand, so it's on me what to pick. He's really talented, but doesn't have any hands-on experience with two-inch. Which is why i'm interested in generalities.

Nick, did you put benefit in scare quotes because you don't think the transfer would sweeten up the sound, or even noticeably change it?

As for the time constraint--dumping to tape isn't a hardship in any way. I'm going to do it regardless, probably in a day, as an experiment. But I'd like the experiment to be fruitful.

Hi Ben,

Yes, I did. There is such a misconception on getting things to benefit from tape sound.

Here's a little background:

When I started out, and every single engineer I have worked with, on 2" tape, has said this:

We try to make the sound recording coming back from tape to be as close to the real instrument as possible. Our original goal when there was no Pro Tools was to get as clean and pure a recording as possible. Given the constraints of tape, it was not an easy task. Now, of course, everyone wants to sound like those old records, with those IMPERFECTIONS and DISTORTIONS which a tape machine does give.

With this said, You need to absolutely know that those mixed albums from yesteryear, which were recorded onto 2" tape and then printed onto 1/4' or 1/2" tape decks, the tapes were played back HUNDREDS OF TIMES during the lifetime of the project. In fact we would often make "slave" tapes with a submix of the basic tracks, then overdub onto the new tape, and when it was all said and done, we would create one or two new "master" multitracks, especially when we KNEW that the tapes were going to be abused during long ass mixing sessions.

All that extra work, simply to avoid that tape sound. That hiss, that distortion. That loss of high frequencies.

This is something you don't ever see any engineer talk about now. Except for this post right now.

In order for you to really "get" THAT sound, you would need a lot more time playing and using your tapes, to better approximate the real world tape wear and subsequent distortions and loss of top end you would normally get when using tape only.

And since you say you do not have enough time, you can certainly try to do a "one pass" deal, but I know you will be underwhelmed by the results. Unless you get creative in your gain going into the tape machine by printing a tiny bit hotter than normal, you will not hear THAT MUCH of a difference.

Because, after all, you are using a Studer, and those machines are wonderful.

Your assumptions about tape speeds doing different things to the low end are only partially correct. It completely depends on the machine used, and how it is calibrated, and if it even works properly. 30 does NOT add "sparkle", it has less bottom end, and this is, in the case of the Studer A-80, not a lot. More than a newer machine, but not by much.

You stated this about the mix engineer:

"The engineer is interested in the tape transfer--it'll give him more to play with--but he won't be able to attend the dumping session. And we don't have that much time to strategize beforehand, so it's on me what to pick. He's really talented, but doesn't have any hands-on experience with two-inch. "

This is another reason NOT to do it. Both of you really do not have any first hand experience with tape, other than your recent one on this project. I think you both have a memory of what tape should sound like, but really do not have any idea, as you read my stuff above, of what it really takes to get that "classic" tape sound.

Everyone's Memory of What Was, is almost always exaggerated.

There are many tape emulation plug ins which can be used during mixdown, which will give you a more exaggerated tape sound, which should be closer to what you guys are looking for.

I recommend the Universal Audio emulation of the ATR 102 mixdown tape machine. It is really great.

Cheers

[BenPhelan]

Good stuff, Nick--thanks very much.

When we A/B'd our drum sounds--comparing the straight-to-PT version against the 2-inch version, with no other changes--I have to say I did notice a difference. It wasn't massive, but it was kind of profound. So I'm not after some washed-out, dull Rumours effect--as I understand it, they had to add tons of high-end back into the mix to compensate for tape wear and distortion. We don't want that! Not a bit.

So I'm not a tape fetishist; i'm not trying to make a period piece. I love all kinds of sounds. For example, we've bounced some stuff down to 1/4-inch for ADT-type effects (to an MCI machine), which sound pretty wonderful. And the results were somewhat unpredictable, which I like. But I also use soft synths. I'm trying to get soulful sounds out of modern tech, and soulful sounds out of old tech.

I'm not going after anything in particular. I'm just curious and have some free time on my hands.

I'm intrigued by what you say about printing a bit hot...

And my engineer has that UA plug-in. He's interested in AB'ing that against real tape.

Thanks for sharing your expertise!

[drumsound]

VOCALS!!!!

I remember when I got my first 2" machine and I had a band come in and did some comparisons. I always thought vocals sounded good to digital, until I heard them come off the tape deck.

That said, it happened MANY years ago with the holy grail of crap---ADATS so, ya know, it's quite different than 24 bit yumminess we have now.

[Nick Sevilla]

VOCALS!!!!

I remember when I got my first 2" machine and I had a band come in and did some comparisons. I always thought vocals sounded good to digital, until I heard them come off the tape deck.

That said, it happened MANY years ago with the holy grail of crap---ADATS so, ya know, it's quite different than 24 bit yumminess we have now.

Excellent example of what I was talking about :

A memory of a sound being remembered as being better than they possibly were in reality. Of course, anything sounds better than those ADATs.