just noticed something about analord

so i just went to the rephlex site and was looking at analords. i notice this:

"These are PRE-MASTERED encodings, which are either straight from tape, DAT, drive or Elcassette etc."

everyone already knows that those digital analord releases were pre-mastered, and we've probably all seen that before. BUT the 2nd to last word actually caught my attention this time. Elcassette. I'm thinking it's a misspelling of Elcaset. I did a little bit of diving into cassette tapes and researching other old formats a while back, and was actually thinking about buying one of these once which is why i recognized it.

http://www.preservationsound.com/?p=5399

http://home.iae.nl/users/pb0aia/cm/elcaset/index.html

maybe i'm wrong and 'Elcassette' is something else, but google search doesn't turn anything else that's relevant up. anyway, it's a pretty obscure tape format, and the tapes are going to be rare and limited which means costly, although i think it MAY be possible to use reel tape (but it would be a pain because you'd have to spool it into the shell of an elcaset tape). it also isn't like it's going to sound totally unique from other tape formats. quality-wise it would probably be right between a cassette tape, and a consumer reel to reel. anyway, kind of funny that he'd supposedly be recording mixes to this format...

Yeah, I assumed he meant Elcaset (which is just a contraction of "large cassette", at any rate). And yes, it is an obscure and arbitrary format to use. But then, this is the person who brought us Naks Acid (as in Nakamichi). Personally I think it's a bit silly and just use a pretend tape plug-in as it's much more convenient, but I guess he's having fun.

Ohhhh that's a Nakamichi reference. Fuck.

I've become far more familiar with tape formats since I first listened to Analord, I would of noticed the Elcassette if I came across it today. Elcaset seems insanely rare - I lurk at tapeheads.net and it's barely mentioned. Maybe it was more common in UK/Europe (especially Finland! lol) - after are, 8-track cartridges are pretty much an American format.

I usually don't even notice tape hiss, that kinda stuff's usually completely lost on me. So when trying out that pretend tape plug-in, as reference material I compared my mix to Computer Love and Steppingfilter 101, specifically listening out for the hiss and other imperfections. Wow, Steppingfilter's messy! It sounds so much noisier than Computer Love. It's possible that people making things lo-fi on purpose as an aesthetic are somewhat overdoing it. :) (Incidentally, what's that weird little snare hit twang thing before the handclap in Steppingfilter? Then it sounds like he's slowing the tape down by hand, as it's playing a recording of rain-like crackling... I suspect he's usually just putting random stuff in there just to annoy or intrigue people...)

yah i dont know. i dig it tho.

That twang in Steppingfilter sounds like it's coming from an on-the-fly change in the delay length.

but it affects the rain too

Well, both the rain (more like white noise to me) and the claps could be routed through the delay unit. I'm not saying that is what is going on for sure in the track, though.

The first few seconds sure do sound just like someone applying varying finger pressure on the tape, like Zoe B said, without any delay artifact, so maybe that's the source of the twang effect (the finger pressure being more pronounced at that point) and I'm being thrown off by the long delay on the claps.

i've never heard of elcaset before so that's cool. it's difficult to take an rdj reference to some obscure and costly format with anything but a grain of salt though. he seems like the kinda guy who would just record everything into his macbook daw and then be like, "yeah, i just used an old elcaset i customized for this piece."

these days it would be far more profitable to say you did it on a mac.

yes of course charleswatkins.

  On 2/15/2013 at 5:12 PM, ZoeB said:

I usually don't even notice tape hiss, that kinda stuff's usually completely lost on me. So when trying out that pretend tape plug-in, as reference material I compared my mix to Computer Love and Steppingfilter 101, specifically listening out for the hiss and other imperfections. Wow, Steppingfilter's messy! It sounds so much noisier than Computer Love. It's possible that people making things lo-fi on purpose as an aesthetic are somewhat overdoing it. :) (Incidentally, what's that weird little snare hit twang thing before the handclap in Steppingfilter? Then it sounds like he's slowing the tape down by hand, as it's playing a recording of rain-like crackling... I suspect he's usually just putting random stuff in there just to annoy or intrigue people...)

Most definitely just him messing with the delay time/speed/whatever on a tape delay. Pretty standard dub technique. The old Roland RE tape delay/reverbs are perfect for this, its too bad they fetch insane prices these days, those are awesome units and I think everyone should have one.

  On 2/16/2013 at 6:08 PM, Diao said:

Most definitely just him messing with the delay time/speed/whatever on a tape delay. Pretty standard dub technique. The old Roland RE tape delay/reverbs are perfect for this, its too bad they fetch insane prices these days, those are awesome units and I think everyone should have one.

That would make sense, thanks!

could be a binson echrorec or maybe you can send through an effect without delay and just mess with speed changes on the reproduction surface. delay on the clap then send rain and delay through second box and vary speed.

Holy fuck watching Binson Echorec videos now - amazing piece of gear. Had never heard of it.

Would you consider this Analord release (the late 2009 digital reissue with the extra tracks) as the definitive one quality-wise?

I mean sure, everything should be squeaky clean and vinyl crackle/hiss free (although many people find some certain charm in vinyl artifacts) but doesn't the fact that it is not mastered mean that it would be inferior compared to the original vinyl version?

Regardless of all that I got the digital Analords on shuffle right now and it is the bomb, y'all. I'm jealous of the punks who have this on vinyl It's been a great year for music so far but when I revisit the Anal Lords i think maybe 2005 was the golden era for music. It's lush as a badgers toosh.

  On 8/6/2013 at 10:37 PM, Disappearer said:

Would you consider this Analord release (the late 2009 digital reissue with the extra tracks) as the definitive one quality-wise?

I mean sure, everything should be squeaky clean and vinyl crackle/hiss free (although many people find some certain charm in vinyl artifacts) but doesn't the fact that it is not mastered mean that it would be inferior compared to the original vinyl version?

pretty much whenever you cut vinyl, if i remember correctly, mastering usually consists of making sure there aren't any frequencies that would damage the cutting head assembly or accidentally make a lock groove n stuff.