Rehearsal Recording

[Rumple]

In the okd days we would record rehearals on a ghetto blaster placed at the back of the room onto a C90 tape, I dug some out recently and they sound better then any of the digital recordings we have done be it with a laptop or digital recorder, the old tape recordings seem to have blended the sounds of each instrumens together where the digital stuff you can hear each intrumen distinctlyt,


The question is is it old school tape saturation that makes cassrtte recording nice to listen to or is there more going on? can I improve (or the opposite maybe) any digital recording?



Cheers



R.

[Bilbo]

Is it a mono stereo thing. IIRC, most old tape recorders had single condensor mics? Its also important to note that you are probably not comparing like with like i.e. different rooms etc. BUt I agree that, sometimes, old school solutions are best. Like all the efforts of the electronic keyboard industry to replicate a real piano. There is now an electric piano out there that costs £6K and weighs as much as, you guessed it, a real piano. What was the point of that!!

[cheddatom]

You seem to like the kind of mix i'd call "mushy". Personally, I like being able to hear each individual instrument, in fact that's half the challenge when mixing! I'd suggest you switch your digital recordings to mono, squash them with a compressor, and EQ the mids up.

[fatback]

I wonder if you're getting occasional distortion on the digital that's soaked up nicely by the analogue?

[Low End Bee]

[quote name='Bilbo' post='914977' date='Aug 4 2010, 02:28 PM']There is now an electric piano out there that costs £6K and weighs as much as, you guessed it, a real piano. What was the point of that!![/quote]

You can plug it straight into a Marshall stack

[Rumple]

Thanks for your input.


You can hear the individual instrument on the tapes they just seem to mix together more like they do at the rehearsal. a bit hard to explain.


I'll try the mono thing, and some compression, might even try a cheap mic.

[51m0n]

There are a squillion differences in the recordings though

Tape saturates gently, compressing the signal in a very pleasant way true, but you've also got a different ickle mic and mic-pre, that is also probably on its limits recording a band, often those little ghetto blaster and mono tape recorders had simple limiters on the inputs to help cope with loud input too, they will also be doing changing the mix. Tape tends to have less top end, (and often less bottom) and the inescapable hiss (even on metal with dolby) also changes things.

Are you in the same room even?

Are you using all the same gear?

Nevertheless if you take your digital recordings and master them you will probably make a huge difference with some careful buss compression and a half decent tape saturation emulation, and maybe a bit of eq, even a touch of stereo widening (oo-errr).

PM me and I'll do one for you if you like, best if you can send me an example of what you're after too (love a bit of audio mucking about me)....

[Rumple]

[quote name='51m0n' post='915083' date='Aug 4 2010, 04:04 PM']There are a squillion differences in the recordings though

Tape saturates gently, compressing the signal in a very pleasant way true, but you've also got a different ickle mic and mic-pre, that is also probably on its limits recording a band, often those little ghetto blaster and mono tape recorders had simple limiters on the inputs to help cope with loud input too, they will also be doing changing the mix. Tape tends to have less top end, (and often less bottom) and the inescapable hiss (even on metal with dolby) also changes things.

Are you in the same room even?

Are you using all the same gear?

Nevertheless if you take your digital recordings and master them you will probably make a huge difference with some careful buss compression and a half decent tape saturation emulation, and maybe a bit of eq, even a touch of stereo widening (oo-errr).

PM me and I'll do one for you if you like, best if you can send me an example of what you're after too (love a bit of audio mucking about me)....[/quote]


Not the same room or equipment it would be a sad case if it was

Got a new drummer so I'm going to try out recording the next session in September and will have a mess about with the results in Audacity or Cubase, I might give you a shout if I fail miserably.

[BassMunkee]

Actually I dug out some old cassettes from years back the other day which were recorded exactly as the OP describes - (from when I was deep in my Goth/Industrial/Grindcore phase) - and even though I'm all about the PC nowadays, there still a certain je ne sais quoi about the old stuff that I really rather like...

[Rumple]

[quote name='BassMunkee' post='915706' date='Aug 5 2010, 10:42 AM']Actually I dug out some old cassettes from years back the other day which were recorded exactly as the OP describes - (from when I was deep in my Goth/Industrial/Grindcore phase) - and even though I'm all about the PC nowadays, there still a certain je ne sais quoi about the old stuff that I really rather like...[/quote]



I'm glad it's not just me