Studio Pics

  On 9/25/2016 at 8:56 AM, Chesney said:

High fidelity is less legit sounding. It's weird how it works out when it gets to the listeners ear.

 

totally agree! some tracks simply need lo-fi-lization 

 

 

 

  On 9/25/2016 at 12:58 PM, xox said:

 

  On 9/25/2016 at 8:56 AM, Chesney said:

High fidelity is less legit sounding. It's weird how it works out when it gets to the listeners ear.

 

totally agree! some tracks simply need lo-fi-lization 

 

 

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https://soundcloud.com/notein/i-would-space-for-you

 

 

 

My MO lately is to get a pretty hi-fi mix going (I mean, relatively hi-fi, I'm still using a lot of semi shitty gear  before it hits the converters) and then when I've gotten that where I want it I dump the whole thing out onto cassette or VHS, maybe through some kind of mid grade old home stereo equipment, to kind of simulate the "produced in a real studio, distributed on a consumer medium and then played back on consumer equipment" sound. Since pretty much every modern playback device is relatively neutral (other than the speakers of course) there's all sorts of potential for creating an entire imaginary listening environment (other than the speakers) that way.  Not a big, new idea but I don't really hear people framing it that way much, usually it's more jsut "copy it to a tape to warm it up" or something, even if what they're really doing is exactly what I'm doing - making a digital file probably streamed over the Internet sound kind of like it's coming out of a cheap cassette boombox in 1990, for example.

 

There are a lot of really interesting consumer and semi-pro "enhancers" and "spacializers" and things that were sold for home stereos and especially home theater systems in the 80s that are dirt cheap today and a lot of fun for this stuff.  My current favorite is the Vidicraft Stereo Synthesizer:

 

 

I think they're fairly rare (they seem to have been aimed more at the semi-pro market too, mine's really overbuilt) but when they do show up nobody wants them. I paid I think $22 on eBay and I'm sure it would be half that if you could find one locally.  4 inputs, 6(!) outputs (different combinations of outputs all seem to sound different, too - L1 and L2 sound completely different a a stereo pair than L1 and R1 for example), wet/dry mix, odd sounding band-limited panning that's sweepable separately in the lows and highs, a surpriingly nice sounding nonresonant lowpass filter and a pleasantly shitty sounding one knob compressor ("dynamic noise reduction"); the spacialization, filter and compressor can be switched in and out independently.  I haven't even gotten in to using it in a feedback loop or anything like that yet, but it's great for making pads sound thick and blurry, and the compressor seems like it'll be good for drum machines although I haven't messed with that much yet.

 

Omnisonix 801 Omnisonic Imager is another good one, had that for years.  Just a simple Carver "sonic holography" knockoff (I forget what they do exactly but it's some kind of basic "crossfeed delayed/phase inverted versions of the stereo channels" idea that's been around since the late 60s), all BBD stuff so it's not very accurate but it really does make stuff sound wider and is great on pads, especially if you mess with M/S processing upstream in the signal path and kind of confuse it so it makes the "widening" get unstable and swirly around.  Paid around $15 for that one.

 

There are a few early THX surround preamps from the late 80s that show up really cheap now that had some digital spacialization stuff for faking surround from mono or stereo inputs, and usually had some digital reverbs built in too, and I've been thinking about grabbing one of those for a couple years now but the one time I found one at a good enough price the seller refused to ship it because it only went for $16 with free international shipping from Greece (can't say I blame him although if you aren't willing to sell something for $10 with free international shipping don't start your auction at $10 with free international shipping).

That box sounds pretty interesting.

Even though I have plenty of gear that I use for colouring and whatnot, my stuff always turns out still too hifi I feel, I think it's just the way my music comes out naturally, I can't help it.

I have just been given a 4 track though which I want to start pitching drums and whatnot with. really liking the awful sound coming from it.

Another fun but more subtle thing is to ind 600ohm - 600ohm audio isolation transformers and wire them straight to 1/4" jacks.  Studio types do this with high end transformers to get a bit of classy summing buss type coloration but you can do it just as easily (and a lot cheaper) with shitty transformers to get shitty summing buss type coloration, which is a lot more fun.  If you want a really ugly sound, pick up one of those cheap isolation transformers they sell on Amazon for getting rid of ground loops in car stereos.  I got one years ago to protect the SID in my c64 from voltage spikes and it sounded way too bad to use for that but it's definitely useful for dirtying things up and taking out a lot of high end.

 

This isn't the exact one I have but it's the same thing.  The single one star review says it all.

 

 

And just in general, impedence mismatches aren't always a bad thing.

Edited September 25, 2016 by RSP

I've spent hours cleaning and rearranging my studio today, mostly for naught. I added in a desk, so now there's much more tabletop versus what it was...but I don't like the setup now, and it feels like I have almost less room somehow. Very weird, going to step away from it for now because I'm pretty frustrated 

  On 9/25/2016 at 6:52 PM, Chesney said:

That box sounds pretty interesting.

Even though I have plenty of gear that I use for colouring and whatnot, my stuff always turns out still too hifi I feel, I think it's just the way my music comes out naturally, I can't help it.

I have just been given a 4 track though which I want to start pitching drums and whatnot with. really liking the awful sound coming from it.

 

I struggle with that, too.  An old VCR might be worth picking up, too.  Go for stereo but don't bother looking for a hi-fi S-VHS machine if you want dirt - they kind of sound too good (although they do compress really nicely and don't cost much at all these days, I have one because I was transferring the surviving remains of my old VHS collection a couple years ago but for dirtying stuff up it's better in standard mode with a standard VHS tape).  youcan also play around with recording with noise reduction off and playing back with noise reduction on, and using type I tapes in your 4 track (they're almost all designed for Type II only so type 1 sounds not so good).  In general, type I tapes tend to have more low end at the expense of more distortion and less high end and more noise, so they're a good bet for the purposes we're talking about.

 

Just read up on how to get the best performance out of cassettes and then do the opposite.

 

I've got a bunch of blanks I scored years ago from a defunct DIY punk label and I've been thinking about starting to experiment with recording on them, heating them up in the toaster oven until the case just starts to look a bit melted, and then moving the tape into a non-melted case if necessary and playing it back into the computer for that "left on the dashboard all summer" sound.

 

The down side of cassette is that despite what people think, it can actually sound really good.

Edited September 25, 2016 by RSP

Oh, one more tip - if you're gong to be recording to the tape really hot to make it saturate, turn off the noise reduction!  Noise reduction, especially DBX, compresses the incoming audio and more or less limits the strength of the signal that can actually reach the tape, so if you record loud it makes the noise reduction sound worse but it doesn't actually give you that tape saturation sound you're probably after.  I didn't know that for a long time, and all of my old 4 track recordings would have probably been a lot better if I'd known that the hot input signal and the DBX were actually working against each other so neither one was really doing what it was supposed to do.

  On 9/24/2016 at 3:04 PM, sweepstakes said:

I'm no expert on tape but I think a good analogy might be printed letters. As the letters get smaller, the ink starts to blot and the words get harder to read. Similarly, moving the capstan slower is records more changes in amplitude on the same section of tape, so the magnetic charge weakens and the sound reproduced by the tape head is degraded.

 

 

I'm not sure of the exact science of it but speed fluctuations at lower tape speeds cause way more noticeable pitch changes, too.  I assume it has something to do with pitch being logarithmic.

 

You should keep your eye out for microcassette recorders and answering machines if you want to go really lo fi, too.

Yeah, the dbx on this thing does not do much for me at all, cuts away far too much goodness but yeah, needs experimentation.

Main thing is, I feel i'm gonna get some real fun out of this regardless of it being useful or not. Plus I can remaster my dads old 4 track tapes now.

  On 9/25/2016 at 7:16 PM, RSP said:

You should keep your eye out for microcassette recorders and answering machines if you want to go really lo fi, too.

That's a good idea.

Little jam desk, sequencing the blofeld with sq-1 is limited but still pretty fun.

Edited September 25, 2016 by th555

DBX is great if you're trying to get a clean sound on a cassette, it really does get rid of most of the hiss without affecting the highs too much, so you can run everything a little quieter, which means you won't get as much distortion i the mixer.  Pretty much the opposite of hat you'd want out of cassettes today.  You might try turning it on for playback only, though, just to see what it sounds like.

 

Another thing I've been meaning to do but neer got around to is recording on a tape and then rewinding and recording on the same track again but with a piece of paper or masking tape or something covering the erase head so it doesn't completely erase what was already on there.  Either recording since the second time to partially erase the first take or recording something else over the first take so they get blended together. 

 

When I was working at a record store a while back we had a long time regular who was developmentally disabled and one time he made us a mix tape, but he had changed his mind a lot and rerecorded different songs on it.  Thing is, his cassette player wasn't working right so it wasn't actually fully erasing what was on the tape already when he recorded over it, and what we got was three our four different mixes of 60s soul playing at the same time, but the way they all kind of smeared together because of his erase head not working right sounded amazing.  Got a lot of in-store play for a while and I'd love to try to recreate that sound some time.  Cutting the hot lead to the erase head and wiring in a pot to control the level would probably work really well (I've seen people ad switches for bypassing the erase head completely before but never seen a variable erase level setup) but I like my portastudio too much to mess with it like that and whenever I find cassette decks that are unremarkable enough to be sacrificed but still work well I end up giving them to friends instead.

My deck (see pic) has a switch between normal, metal and CrO2, do you know what happens when you use one of the other ones with a normal cassette?

  On 9/25/2016 at 7:58 PM, th555 said:

 

  On 9/25/2016 at 7:16 PM, RSP said:

You should keep your eye out for microcassette recorders and answering machines if you want to go really lo fi, too.

That's a good idea.

Little jam desk, sequencing the blofeld with sq-1 is limited but still pretty fun.

 

 

How's the Behringer Multieffects pedal?  Ever since I picked up that Space-C pedal last month I've been a lot more interested in their stuff, that think is REALLY nice sounding even though it does tend to distort easily with signals that have a lot of high end.  I have to make an effort to not record everything through it sometimes.  I can only imagine how great it would be to have an actual Dimension D!

 

I saw a show a few months ago and one of the people who played did everything in the box on his laptop except for one Behringer octave pedal that he was using as a send effect in Ableton.

rad ideas RSP

I like the pedal, the chorus is really nice for analog bass, pitch shifter is cool, and some of the effects get real whacky and melodic when you put them in a feedback loop (e.g. this track uses a chorus/filter loop without any delay).

Oh I forgot, the delay is nice too, a tad short but you can do looping with it, and when the delay line clips it gets real gritty.

Edited September 25, 2016 by th555

Does WATMM have any recs for cheapish reverb and delay pedals? I'm currently looking at the TC HOF and Flashback, and the digitech polara and obscura. Ps. Needs to be stereo.

Pedals not so much, but my favorite cheap reverb thus far is the old Alesis The Wedge, the Midiverb/Quadraverb's unpopular, inbred cousin.  I've also got a completely indefensible love for the original old Digitech RP-1 multieffects pedalboard thing and those used to be practically free (or literally free in my case) but they seem to have crept up a bit.  I'd be careful buying them because the power supply runs really hot and causes all kinds of problems.  Mine works sometimes. Only mono input, but stereo out.

 

For really lo fi analog delay (Radio Shack Electronic Reverb caliber here, but different), I picked up one of those $35 Donner delay pedals last summer.  It's definitely not a good pedal (I know some of these cheap Chinese clones are actually good for the money but this isn't one of them) but there are some things about it I actually really like.  The main thing is that because there's so little headroom, it has a really squashed, gritty sound when you turn the feedback up into self oscillation.  Most BBD delays I've used get really loud when they self oscillate, like a Moog filter, and it can make them hard to manage but this one doesn't, it just gets ompletely saturated but not much louder at all and sometimes that's a really nice quality in a delay.  The down side is that it's pretty mid-heavy and the dry signal sounds really bad when it's turned on, so it's not like you can switch it on and it jsut adds a  cheap sounding delay to your input signal, it makes the whole thing sound cheap.  Also nice sometimes.  I haven't messed around with moddin it at all since it's mostly surface mount but it would be nice to put a dry signal defeat switch in it so you could use it in an aux send (I did that with my BYOC reverb pedal and it's great, does a convincing enough spring reverb sound to fill that role in place of a proper spring reverb 9 times out of 10.

 

EDIT: I have a feeling you probably meant cheap in price, not in sound.  Oh well.

 

  On 9/25/2016 at 8:12 PM, Chesney said:

rad ideas RSP

 

Thanks, chesney!  Honestly part of the reason I don't post much music here is that it's not really IDM (or at least let's just say it's closer to The Manor Boys than to Selected Ambient Works) but a big part of it is that a lot of the time I'll just get sidetracked in the sound design/making it sound weird side of things and end up with tracks that sound weird but don't necessarily go anywhere.  I've been working on a sort of an album for a couple months though, and when I've got enough material together and have things far enough along I'll probably share some stuff to get advice.

 

 

  On 9/25/2016 at 8:04 PM, th555 said:

My deck (see pic) has a switch between normal, metal and CrO2, do you know what happens when you use one of the other ones with a normal cassette?

 

This video from a few months ago does a great job of explaining what the different bias and formulation and noise reduction settings are for and how to get cassettes sounding their best.  Once you've got a handle on how you're supposed to use them itt's pretty easy to extrapolate how to make them sound "bad."

 

 

If your machine has a setting for metal tapes it's probably pretty nice, so you might want to look for a shittier one to go with it, maybe a walkman or something.

Edited September 26, 2016 by RSP

Yeah, I have an old tsr-12 rack module, but I want something with knobs I can fondle while making lush endlessly looping/feedbacking ambient drones. I meant cheapish as in not eventide/strymon. Thanks though!

Edited September 26, 2016 by Gocab

  On 9/25/2016 at 10:20 PM, Gocab said:

Yeah, I have an old tsr-12 rack module, but I want something with knobs I can fondle while making lush endlessly looping/feedbacking ambient drones. I meant cheapish as in not eventide/strymon. Thanks though!

 

If you don't need stereo and want analog, I've had an Ibanez AD20 delay for about 4 years and I love it.  I checked eBay recently just to see if they were going up in price (I paid I think $225 locally for a recently serviced one) and they aren't, if anything you can often find them for less than that.  Probably not really what you're after but it's a really nice sounding BBD delay with the old 15v Panasonic chips (two of them working at about half their capacity for even more headroom, too!), a tone control, modulation, separate wet and dry outputs and some solid chorus and flange modes too.

 

I'm not really a good person to ask about stuff that's actually good though, not my area of expertise!

Edited September 26, 2016 by RSP

  On 9/25/2016 at 9:30 PM, Gocab said:

Does WATMM have any recs for cheapish reverb and delay pedals? I'm currently looking at the TC HOF and Flashback, and the digitech polara and obscura. Ps. Needs to be stereo.

I've got a Boss DD-6 that's always been solid for delays, is stereo, but does have some quirks that some don't like. Probably used around 50-75, but I'm just guessing.

 

If you really wanna go cheap, you could always hunt through multi-effects pedals from 10-15 years ago, they often plummet in the used market. There weren't usually too many stereo though.

As much as it's an old, unloved piece fkit the Alesis The Wedge I mentioned before actually is pretty great for the money (they're really cheap) and is quite knobby, four long faders for real tie tweaking, stereo ins and outs, reverb time up some something like 80 seconds. Not modern sounding but useful.  It was either dual Quadraverb engines with a modified MIDIverb OS or vice versa, I forget which. If you can solder you can get them really cheap sometimes, because the power supply jack apparently tends to get loose.  Mine was around $35 on eBay untested, and worked perfectly but even tested they should be around $80 more or less.  Dated sounding but not in a bad way in my book, and mine has always sat well in a mix.  Pretty good MIDI implementation too, although no sync for the delays, but you get tap tempo so that mostly makes up for it.  Don't buy one without the power supply though, because it's proprietary.

When I was a kid I found the sweet spot on the record button of my cassette boombox which would record without activating the erase head. Took a bit of experimentation and it was very sensitive, but there was a certain point where he record button was around half pressed in which would work. Made some interesting tapes then. Shame I don't still have them all.

  On 9/25/2016 at 9:30 PM, Gocab said:

Does WATMM have any recs for cheapish reverb and delay pedals? I'm currently looking at the TC HOF and Flashback, and the digitech polara and obscura. Ps. Needs to be stereo.

i have both the polara and obscura and they are amazing. the polara is super lush and the obscura can do some interesting things (i got it because i was interested in the degrade options, but it does clean stuff really well too obviously).

I bowt dem tings ^

  On 9/25/2016 at 9:30 PM, Gocab said:

delay pedals?

 

SAD-1