I Recorded Drums to TAPE... Can You Hear the Difference?

I might have lied to you earlier I have almost no clue what he's talking about man this is crazy this is probably the craziest session I've ever done [Music] I'm at one of the coolest studios in Toronto and I'm about to track drums to tape and I'm pretty nervous because I've never done this before so while Nathan's setting up the kit I'm gonna go and get schooled on how tape machines work [Music] first step is is kind of aligning how hot you want to be recording the tape and that process involves a calibration date and then we record the record portion of the machine to that this is Steven one of the engineers here and before he even started the calibration process I had to make a lot of decisions like how hot I wanted to record which would determine how much tape saturation I would hear and then what tape speed to use 30 IPS would be a flatter frequency response with a touch more top end but I decided to go with 15 to get more of a classic low end bump that tape is known for now he did warn me that the noise floor is increased at 15 IPS but since we weren't recording any quiet instruments here I wasn't too worried about that I had it calibrated to hit a little bit hotter than the reference level on the tape so that I could get a taste of the built-in saturation and limiting but not pushing it to the absolute Max that still wasn't everything the tape path needed to be cleaned since tiny particles of magnetic material rub off over time and He adjusted the Azimuth a term I'd never heard before for it which basically means making sure the record and Playback heads are perfectly straight against the tape and not on an angle and going at a phase he explained a lot more about the alignment process but to be honest I didn't understand much of it and there's no way I could have done this without a tape machine expert like Steven a Weber is a unit of magnetic flux one Weber is a massive amount for a tape machine so we deal in nanowebbers so I always thought the term audio engineer was really Overkill but now I kind of see where it comes from there were a lot of things about tape that I never knew or considered before like how tracks 1 and 24 at the edge of the tape were susceptible to losing certain frequencies or the fact that there's a time delay between the record and Playback heads which means you have to monitor the inputs going into tape and can only hear the sound of the tape on playback after the fact otherwise you have latency and all of this is why in the old days you would have a producer an engineer and a dedicated tape engineer just looking after the machine sometimes in a completely separate room I was already starting to see why digital took over so quickly but I hadn't heard it yet [Music] my goal with miking these drums is to keep everything super simple and super familiar because I know that when we actually start recording my brain's going to be consumed with this whole new tape experience and so I'm using mics that I've used on like hundreds of drum sessions before so no surprises and we're going to keep things super simple all the way through so that I can not screw up something on this end and just focus on the tape I had never engineered anything to tape before but I did record the tape once with the punk band I had in high school it was the first recording experience I ever had and it was an all-nighter because that's the only studio time we could get but I could still remember that tape machine spinning and the Engineer slating song One take two song One take three and we were horrible the recording is horrible but it was at that moment at about 15 years old when I realized I wanted to make records when I grew up are you thinking anything different than you would in other sessions like knowing that you're recording tape no because at the end of the day like the tape is only the the Avenue for the sound to go yeah maybe it sounds warmer it sounds probably better in ways or maybe it's subjective but I'm still trying to put the best performance on tape even if it's in a computer I've randomly had a conversation on the phone with David bendith yesterday oh no way and uh I told him I was gonna do this and he was like don't look at the meters at all he's like don't worry about how hard you're pushing it because you want to get the sound he's like I used to put tape over the meters so that I wouldn't freak out of the meters and he's like just listen to it and just be guided by your ears then he also said well I'm gonna I feel sorry for you because you're gonna be disappointed like what do you mean he's like this is going to be so much better than digital oh you're going to be disappointed ever going back yeah this is kind of the whole experiment today right is I wanna experience what it sounds like and what the process is like but also kind of understand why did everyone move away from it because everyone says it's so good you know all these comments like you're gonna think it's so much better than digital but clearly digital one no one wants to make records to tape anymore I and I mean an hour into calibrating the machine you kind of understand yeah like convenience clearly convenience wins so in order to compare the sound of tape to digital we are recording to tape and Pro Tools simultaneously but I'm going to live totally in analog world here we're going to put all the tracks out on the console I'm gonna mix on the console and try to have a true analog experience so many things going on he's setting up the tape machine we're getting the tracks ready in Pro Tools another engineer was patching everything in because we got two sides of the board plus Road tools man this is crazy this is probably the craziest session I've ever done [Music] sounds like one of them's a hi-hat [Music] that the right side is wrong I think I think the the left is also around you yeah so basically everything from here on will be wrong sorry just got to re repatch some stuff here I decided to make good use of the amazing Neve console there and some of the outboard gear so I committed to EQ on every part of the drums and added some compression as well can we get a pair of uh 1176s on the room [Music] foreign slam some rooms [Music] yeah you really underestimate the impact of the location of the physical Hardware I was essentially never in The Sweet Spot between speakers when I was dialing EQ or compression so it takes a bit longer to judge and settle on those decisions I did just play a little more everything for me thank you I'm committing EQ compression everything on the way in there's no no plugins happening at all [Music] things looking on your end for tape and stuff so we'll want to be on Repro we're armed we're ready where we're safe we won't record okay to put the machine and record you want to hit record and play and then that'll be that'll be it so record play here record here right here [Music] okay one more thing I'm just going to put a compressor on the kick can we get just dressed around that too so if you look at my waveforms here with a fair bit of bleed in the tongues that's probably just because I'm boosting top and stuff after hours of calibration miking and mixing we got a takedown and it was finally time to hear what the tape sounded like [Music] thank you that sounds sick okay let's see if anyone can hear the difference yet sounds a little squishy yeah foreign for sure yeah cool transients I like it it's it's a bit uh crispy or something yeah well I hear I hear like the Shaving off of that like the really high stuff yeah the I mean I don't know if you need that so check this out look at the way this is the snare hit there that's on the tape it's starting to get squared off at the top of it versus the digital snare look at that kind of what I wanted to hear well let's try uh yeah let's do another take I mean I think you're a bit rushed off the top then it settled in fine and then there's something weird at the end but I'm sure it's just keep it on there yeah on time yeah so not used to recording to tape that on the second take I just hit record on Pro Tools and completely forgot about the tape machine I didn't even realize it until the take ended but luckily Steven noticed it as it was happening and jumped in and hit record just in time and I didn't even record the tape I literally just went hit record and just hit record on Pro Tools and he didn't even mention it until I said something what's that you got it there's a good engineer right there why don't we just get one more for good measure and then I think you'll be good to go [Music] thank you cool man I think we're good to take this experiment even further I wanted to see what a mix would come out like so I brought the tracks home and spent some time mixing both the digital and the tape versions trying my best to get them to sound as good as possible using the same settings [Music] thank you [Music] foreign the difference is subtle but I gotta admit I would choose the tape tracks here there's a little bit more energy and Edge a slightly warmer and Fuller sounding mid-range and the transients are squashed just a bit in a way that imparts more glue and control to the overall sound so what do I think at the end of all this well it's a pain I liked what tape did to the sound but that extra bit of vibe is not worth the cost in time and money I didn't even mention that a reel of tape will run you up to 500 bucks but I gained a lot of appreciation for the expertise and the skill set that tape required back in the day and that much more appreciation for how much easier faster and more convenient digital recording is the most fun part was probably dialing in all the EQ and compression on the way in and committing to those sounds without having to look at a screen but that's an attitude you can take into digital sessions too with the added bonus of not having to bend down halfway to the floor to adjust the compressor all in all I'm glad I was finally able to experience this and hear it for myself and even though the tape added a unique flavor that I liked the extra hassle made it very obvious why digital one and I'm certainly not going to be jumping to record my hex project to tape I hope you enjoyed following along with this experiment I'm curious to know whether you guys heard a big difference in the sound of the tape so let let me know in the comments below and if you want some help on how to mic up and track drums check out this video here and make sure you're subscribed to the channel to see more videos like this

Channel: Hardcore Music Studio

Views: 132,338

Keywords: jordan valeriote, hardcore music studio, drum recording, drum recording setup, drum recording techniques, recording drums, recording to tape, recording to tape vs digital, recording to tape machine, recording to tape process, recording drums to tape, tape machine, tape saturation, tape saturation drums, recording studio, tracking drums, tracking drums in the studio, tracking drums in pro tools

Id: OjMIdmwwXK0

Length: 14min 8sec (848 seconds)

Published: Mon May 08 2023