Re: Source tapes for upcoming remasters

LookingGlass <goldencockerel@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jul 3, 4:58 pm, steve@[127.0.0.1] (Stephen X. Carter) wrote:

On Fri, 3 Jul 2009 13:12:59 -0700 (PDT), LookingGlass
<goldencocke...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

But it has been stated that they used some "vintage" equipment.

There was a documentary about the making of "Love" in which Giles
Martin explained that in order to start the process that he did,
they had to play the original master tapes on the original mixing
desks at Abbey Road. And that was because they (both the tape and
the desks) were so old that there was no modern equipment that would
enable/allow the data transfer with any form of fidelity.

The they went on do todo the various "new" processes.

steve.hat.stephencarter.not.com.but.net
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I have an appropriate analogy...

Friends have often burned both audio and data CDs for me...sometimes
they play on my audio system/computer and sometimes they don't. But
those same CDs ALWAYS play in the burner that made them, While all the
burners and players are mass produced, there are *differences* enough
to cause this to happen. I'm sure we have all experienced this.

The *vintage* machines that were used to record the original tapes
have their own particular *peculiarities*. The record/playback heads
need to be adjusted and re-aligned periodically. If you take an old
tape and play it on a new machine...while the standards may be
similar...the alignments might not be quite the same. So to use the
same *vintage* machines on which the tapes were originally
recorded...carefully *tuned*...will reproduce the best fidelity.

That's a good analogy!
To those of us who concentrate on digital recording, sometimes it's hard
to appreciate how each one of those old pieces of equipment had its own
character. Not just the tape machines but also the EQ units, reverbs,
compressors, etc.

I've got three books by this guy:
http://bobbyowsinski.com/Bobbys_Owsinskis_Books.html
A lot of the books I have are devoted to interviews with recording,
mixing, and mastering engineers -- the old timers who are the pioneers
in the field -- and some of the stuff is mind-boggling. Just the
discussions about analog compressors, which are used extensively in both
mixing and mastering, are real eye-openers.

Think about the guitar solo in Nowhere Man. It's highly EQ'd and
compressed. I wonder what it would sound like if a different analog
compressor had been used, for example, or if it was processed digitally.


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