dbx sucks... why?

[braindefault]

I don't really anything about noise reduction shit ("wait til its been mastered in dubly"...etc). Does anybody know why when dbx is turned on on my 424 portastudio it sounds like trash?

[Marc Alan Goodman]

because the way noise reduction like that works is that you have to record and play the tape back with it. If you're playing back recordings you did with the noise reduction off, or you're turning the noise reduction off during playback, it's just making things worse

either that or the thing's just broken. That's always a possibility.

[E-cue]

I don't really anything about noise reduction shit ("wait til its been mastered in dubly"...etc). Does anybody know why when dbx is turned on on my 424 portastudio it sounds like trash?

Does it sound sortah like Queen vocals?

[JGriffin]

I've also found that dbx only really sounds good on voice--and spoken voice at that. For music it kinda stinks. Dolby seems to let the music hold up better. I wish I could give a technical explanation for why that is, but I cannot. The studio I worked at where we had dbx we only used it on commercials and industrials.

[bobbydj]

Marcocet is dead right. You can't just switch it on after tracking - that will knacker your world completely. It will kill all the uppers and a lot of the mids too. You absolutely have to track with it if you're going to use it.

If you have a manual, it's all in there - the 424 manual is only about half a paragrapg long anyway. Definitely worth a read if you've got one, and surely worth hunting for some pdf version or whatever, if you haven't.

[Al]

That's because DBX encodes during recording, and decodes on playback, your better having it switched on all the time or you'll get tape hiss, i don't like DBX personally, i much pwefer dolby c..


Al

[braindefault]

i had it on the whole time, the problem isn't knowing how to use it, the problem is it SUCKING. but thanks for implying that i'm an idiot anyway. yes i've read the damn manual, in fact i've read it so much it fell apart and i had to tape it back together...it's sitting right here actually. the manual doesn't say "dbx sucks for this reason...." thats why i'm asking.....
ok sorry...it's early in the morning...

but anyway i'm talking about in general the recordings i've done where i've had dbx on sound much muddier than the ones i've done without-- and there's not even significantly less noise at the bottom.

[gyraf]

DBX works by compressing 2:1 when recording, and expanding 1:2 when playing back. A little more is involved, but this is the general picture.

This puts heavy demands on the recording path and media in order not to sound bad. Any tape level error will be magnified by a factor two when decoding, due to the expansion.

What you may have is a dirty, misaligned, or worn out tape mechanism, that simply isn't precise enough to work with DBX.

Jakob E.

[red cross]

Generally, I hate recording with dbx on. It does something funny to the top-end, always makes things end up sounding a little murkier. What the hell's wrong with a little tape hiss anyway for Christ's sake? The hiss on Kenny Burrell's "Midnight Blue" is just fucking beautiful. Anyway, by the sounds of it, it looks as if the dbx on your machine could do with some realigning. I don't know whether it's possible on a portastudio. What does your manual say?

[Punkity]

Yes braindefault, you are correct, the dbx on the Portastudio sucks. Why? I don't know. Probably because the 424 is a POS. Useful--yes, convenient--yes, worthy of love and praise--yes, but a piece of shit nevertheless. I've used dbx on reel-to-reel recorders before and it doesn't suck, not even on other Tascam rigs, but man, on those 424 machines it sure does. I just ended up never using it on mine. Just hit the tape with strong levels and you will be fine.

By the way, never ever sell yours. You will hate yourself if you do.

[bobbydj]

i had it on the whole time, the problem isn't knowing how to use it, the problem is it SUCKING. but thanks for implying that i'm an idiot anyway.

Sorry.

[Mason]

You might be able to salvage your work by playing back the tracks with the dbx switched off. If your rig is working (which seems to be up in the air), it will result in a 2:1 compressed sound on tracks that were recorded with dbx.

For the kind of music I do, I love the way it sounds. I do that shit on purpose. You get some god-like treble and it smooths out the performance a bit. It sounds to me like it was recorded in a studio in the early '60s, instead of my friend's kitchen.

[bobbydj]

Yeah but won't it give a deadly boost to the higher frequencies? That's what happens with Dobly.

[Tim Casey]

DBX is virtually transparent on a properly aligned/calibrated deck. If the deck is not properly aligned/calibrated, dbx will cause more noticable problems than dolby.

If you DO notice that it "sucks", then the deck is a little out of whack.

[evan]

I use DBX on my Yamaha MT120, and it sounds fine. It's maybe a little soft-edged on the highs, but nothing a touch of EQ can't fix. I've never thought it bad enough to "suck" though, so maybe it is your deck. Unless all my recordings on it suck, which is a possibility...