DIY analog tape recording effects...

yo-ho

so myself and friend are at the stage of our music making that we're trying to finalise recording the stems of some of our songs, and after recently going to a studio to record and mix a couple tracks we came to the conclusion that we want to enhance (or de-hance((?)) the sound of each instrument track a little more before mixing - frankly the demos we came out with felt a little too 'dry' and lacked character

SO! just wondering if anyone has any cool DIY cheap-skate ideas as to adding character to sounds

for example, recently stumbled upon the article below, and am already in the process of sequring a tape deck to try it out:

http://blog.dubspot.com/analog-distortion-on-a-budget-cassette-overdrive-technique/

We have an almost entirely analog gear set-up, so we'd like to take that ethos through to the recording of the tracks and steer-clear of VSTs etc. - so if anyone has any suggestions or ideas, would love to hear them

My guess is that the stems are too bright and sterile...? That's usually the problem with electronic music spit straight out of a DAw.

I think you could probably get the results you want using compression and EQ (and maybe some saturation).

But I like lo-fi stuff so that colors my advice.

It's funny this loop that i made sound great on some not so expensive old and thrashed head phones, bit more mushy and rich. On the fancy headphones though it lacks punch crunch and character, which means i'm going to have to re-eQ everything. So i'd like to know not about tape effects but how to get crappy headphone effects.

hah. sorry, it's a true story though, i was thinking about it yesterday and now this thread.

  On 12/1/2013 at 12:45 AM, delet... said:

It's funny this loop that i made sound great on some not so expensive old and thrashed head phones, bit more mushy and rich. On the fancy headphones though it lacks punch crunch and character, which means i'm going to have to re-eQ everything. So i'd like to know not about tape effects but how to get crappy headphone effects.

 

hah. sorry, it's a true story though, i was thinking about it yesterday and now this thread.

Crappy headphones (like crappy speakers) usually have a weird EQ profile that includes very little lo-end, hyped midrange (2khz-5khz) and brittle hi-end (which is only really brittle because of the lack of low-mids e.g. 250hz). There might be a way to actually find the EQ profile of the headphones in a manual or on the internet. But generally there's a a steep lo-shelf at 100hz(-ish) and then midrange hype and then probably a steep hi-shelf past 10khz(-ish).

  On 12/1/2013 at 12:51 AM, LimpyLoo said:

 

  On 12/1/2013 at 12:45 AM, delet... said:

It's funny this loop that i made sound great on some not so expensive old and thrashed head phones, bit more mushy and rich. On the fancy headphones though it lacks punch crunch and character, which means i'm going to have to re-eQ everything. So i'd like to know not about tape effects but how to get crappy headphone effects.

 

hah. sorry, it's a true story though, i was thinking about it yesterday and now this thread.

 

Crappy headphones (like crappy speakers) usually have a weird EQ profile that includes very little lo-end, hyped midrange (2khz-5khz) and brittle hi-end (which is only really brittle because of the lack of low-mids e.g. 250hz). There might be a way to actually find the EQ profile of the headphones in a manual or on the internet. But generally there's a a steep lo-shelf at 100hz(-ish) and then midrange hype and then probably a steep hi-shelf past 10khz(-ish).

 

get a really flat microphone then record white noise through the headphones with the mic next to the earphones then capture the eq profile with an of those smart EQ matching plugins or whatever

kind of like what Dave Rat does http://forum.watmm.com/topic/70200-dave-rats-headphone-adventure/

  On 12/1/2013 at 12:51 AM, LimpyLoo said:

 

  On 12/1/2013 at 12:45 AM, delet... said:

It's funny this loop that i made sound great on some not so expensive old and thrashed head phones, bit more mushy and rich. On the fancy headphones though it lacks punch crunch and character, which means i'm going to have to re-eQ everything. So i'd like to know not about tape effects but how to get crappy headphone effects.

 

hah. sorry, it's a true story though, i was thinking about it yesterday and now this thread.

 

Crappy headphones (like crappy speakers) usually have a weird EQ profile that includes very little lo-end, hyped midrange (2khz-5khz) and brittle hi-end (which is only really brittle because of the lack of low-mids e.g. 250hz). There might be a way to actually find the EQ profile of the headphones in a manual or on the internet. But generally there's a a steep lo-shelf at 100hz(-ish) and then midrange hype and then probably a steep hi-shelf past 10khz(-ish).

 

hah, thanks for the advice. Don't know if i'll get the crunch, but i'll definitely play around to see what i get. don't know if i can try that mic thing, might be fun to muck around with to see what i get though.

  On 12/1/2013 at 1:08 AM, RadarJammer said:

kind of like what Dave Rat does http://forum.watmm.com/topic/70200-dave-rats-headphone-adventure/

Cool link, tah [-;

  On 12/1/2013 at 1:11 AM, delet... said:

 

  On 12/1/2013 at 12:51 AM, LimpyLoo said:

 

  On 12/1/2013 at 12:45 AM, delet... said:

It's funny this loop that i made sound great on some not so expensive old and thrashed head phones, bit more mushy and rich. On the fancy headphones though it lacks punch crunch and character, which means i'm going to have to re-eQ everything. So i'd like to know not about tape effects but how to get crappy headphone effects.

 

hah. sorry, it's a true story though, i was thinking about it yesterday and now this thread.

 

Crappy headphones (like crappy speakers) usually have a weird EQ profile that includes very little lo-end, hyped midrange (2khz-5khz) and brittle hi-end (which is only really brittle because of the lack of low-mids e.g. 250hz). There might be a way to actually find the EQ profile of the headphones in a manual or on the internet. But generally there's a a steep lo-shelf at 100hz(-ish) and then midrange hype and then probably a steep hi-shelf past 10khz(-ish).

 

 

hah, thanks for the advice. Don't know if i'll get the crunch, but i'll definitely play around to see what i get. don't know if i can try that mic thing, might be fun to muck around with to see what i get though.

Yeah since it's more than EQ you might try capturing it. I'd like to hear it.

Or...there are plugins (either IR or just static EQ cloners) that can capture the EQ profile of the headphones and will allow you to apply that EQ profile to anything you want. Waves Q-clone is the only one I can think of but I bet you could find a bunch.

  On 12/1/2013 at 1:03 AM, RadarJammer said:

 

  On 12/1/2013 at 12:51 AM, LimpyLoo said:

 

 

  On 12/1/2013 at 12:45 AM, delet... said:

 

It's funny this loop that i made sound great on some not so expensive old and thrashed head phones, bit more mushy and rich. On the fancy headphones though it lacks punch crunch and character, which means i'm going to have to re-eQ everything. So i'd like to know not about tape effects but how to get crappy headphone effects.

 

hah. sorry, it's a true story though, i was thinking about it yesterday and now this thread.

Crappy headphones (like crappy speakers) usually have a weird EQ profile that includes very little lo-end, hyped midrange (2khz-5khz) and brittle hi-end (which is only really brittle because of the lack of low-mids e.g. 250hz). There might be a way to actually find the EQ profile of the headphones in a manual or on the internet. But generally there's a a steep lo-shelf at 100hz(-ish) and then midrange hype and then probably a steep hi-shelf past 10khz(-ish).

get a really flat microphone then record white noise through the headphones with the mic next to the earphones then capture the eq profile with an of those smart EQ matching plugins or whatever

Yeah, I was about to recommend the same thing. Or record each track with the mic through the speakers and add those recordings to the tune and add some subtle reverb.

  On 12/1/2013 at 9:59 AM, Squee said:

Yeah, I was about to recommend the same thing. Or record each track with the mic through the speakers and add those recordings to the tune and add some subtle reverb.

I've done this before (minus the additional reverb). Results are pretty good!