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How Many Are Into "Vintage Digital"?


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You know what I mean...like that digital reverb from the 1980s that technically isn't as good as what's available, but has its own sound. At NAMM, AMS resurrected their 40-year-old Model RMX 16 digital reverb (it's now a 500-series module), and Chase Bliss and Meris collaborated on the CXM 1978, which incorporates three of the Lexicon 224"s most famous algorithms.

 

We're also seeing more plug-ins that emulate digital hardware, whether you're talking Korg M1 or Lexicon reverbs. These are particularly relevant, because the A/D conversion in our audio interfaces is much better than what was in the hardware of the 80s.

 

Got any fave vintage digital? Wish you hadn't sold your PCM-70? Do you want any vintage digital brought back from the 80s? Whaddya think?

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Lexicon M200

Lexicon PCM60

Eventide H969

Korg SDD-3300

 

Bought them ten years ago when everybody was dumping hardware for plugins.

 

I got the Lexicons for dedicated reverbs not multieffects. I wanted all the CPU horsepower dedicated to reverb. Haven't heard a multiFX box or plugin that can come close to legacy Lexicons. Plus those two boxes are simple interfaces, no menu needed.

 

The H969 is a cool harmonizer that is probably easier done with plugins today. Yes the H3000 and later units have greater FX choices, but I like units with controls for immediate tweaking and no menus.

 

The Korg SDD-3300 is my favorite delay unit for synths. Three digital delays each with filters and two LFOs, and a digital audio routing matrix for routing anything to anything. I can also integrate the PCM60 and process the reverb tails in combination with modulated delay effects. This is a tweaker's delight. I get effects from this box that I haven't heard from a multiFX.

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Fortunately, although early plug-ins were usually dumbed down to accommodate multitrack DAWs, some of the newer "vintage digital" plug-ins are direct ports of the original algorithms and code because modern CPUs can handle the complexity. Of course, inserting more than a couple instances might bring your computer to its knees...but at least there's always track freeze.

 

However, I can't help but wonder how much of the "vintage digital" sound depended on the hardware of that time, and whether the better quality of today's converters might be perceived as a drawback instead of an advantage. Waves has an interesting article about their modeling process, and tells the story of how people evaluating their early SSL plug-ins insisted they didn't "sound right." It turns out hum and noise were part of the signature sound...when Waves added the option to include those, then listeners said the plug-ins sounded "right." Maybe "vintage digital" plug-ins will need an option to lower the bit resolution and sampling rate.

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I really liked my Yamaha FS1R synth - FM with some amazing features that left the DX7 in the dust. And just sounded great - better than NI's FM8 (as good as that is.)

 

And yes, those old Lexicon units had a lot of character. Would be fun to play around with new software versions of those - but if it costs very much, I'd probably pass.

 

nat

 

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some of the newer "vintage digital" plug-ins are direct ports of the original algorithms and code because modern CPUs can handle the complexity.

 

The legacy Lexicons implemented lots of TTL ICs to realize their algorithms (the reverb algorithms were NOT in the EPROMs). Back then TTL ICs had way faster propagation speeds than CPUs could dream of. Todays' gigahertz clocked CPUs can approach the speed of TTL ICs but in an laptop/desktop computer OS there's a lot of horsepower divided up between peripherals and DAWs. It's getting there...

 

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However, I can't help but wonder how much of the "vintage digital" sound depended on the hardware of that time, and whether the better quality of today's converters might be perceived as a drawback instead of an advantage.

 

The converters were a big component in the sound quality of signature digital processors, more than most people understood at the time. The designers of high end processors (Lexicon, Eventide, AMS, et al) put a lot of focus on the quality of their converters. There was an AES paper about 1978 that was an excellent study on converters.

 

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some of the newer "vintage digital" plug-ins are direct ports of the original algorithms and code because modern CPUs can handle the complexity.

 

The legacy Lexicons implemented lots of TTL ICs to realize their algorithms (the reverb algorithms were NOT in the EPROMs). Back then TTL ICs had way faster propagation speeds than CPUs could dream of. Todays' gigahertz clocked CPUs can approach the speed of TTL ICs but in an laptop/desktop computer OS there's a lot of horsepower divided up between peripherals and DAWs. It's getting there...

Fascinating stuff!!

 

Wow, that must have taken a ton more design work than just feeding lines of code into a processor. Did this extend into the mid-80s, and the days of the PCM-70? Or was this more of a 224 kind of thing?

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However, I can't help but wonder how much of the "vintage digital" sound depended on the hardware of that time, and whether the better quality of today's converters might be perceived as a drawback instead of an advantage.

 

The converters were a big component in the sound quality of signature digital processors, more than most people understood at the time. The designers of high end processors (Lexicon, Eventide, AMS, et al) put a lot of focus on the quality of their converters. There was an AES paper about 1978 that was an excellent study on converters.

Also fascinating. My dalliance with digital basically started in the days of the Sony PCM-F1, anything prior to that was way too expensive for me to even look at. My memories of early digital gear comes solely from listening to it being used in recording sessions.

 

IIRC back in 1977 you couldn't even get 16-bit converters, so designers paired converters (like 12 and 8 bits) to hit 16 bits. Do you know if maybe those high-end units were using converters made of discrete components?

 

 

 

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Oh, and one more thing @The Real MC...totally with you on the Korg SDD-3000, that was a monster. Maybe they'll reissue it....or maybe Behringer will :)

 

Thanks for contributing your expertise to the forum, it's much appreciated!

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I really liked my Yamaha FS1R synth - FM with some amazing features that left the DX7 in the dust. And just sounded great - better than NI's FM8 (as good as that is.)

 

 

I went from DX-7 to DX7-7II/FD and TX-802 to 2 x Fs1r to FM-7 to FM-8. And along the way there were always people claiming how the earlier or previous version sounded better (warmer :facepalm:) than the current version. Aside from fs1r sequencing stuff that I wasn"t into I never found this to be the case. And I would often challenge someone to create from scratch a new fm patch on the later version and see if that same patch sounded better on the older.

 

Still waiting for a response.

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Ok, that probably sounded snarky, sorry about that. I guess I just don"t care about vintage anything. I love just about everything I currently own because of familiarity and it"s just so much fun to play with. And at least to me it sounds great (the equipment that is :hand:). I never worry about other stuff old or new that may be better or give me something I don"t have. There"s so much cool shit out there to be had be it hardware, software, original, reissues, or new designs. But I don"t have any desire to own most of it. Once in awhile something cool comes along that really grabs me, and then I"ll grab it- maybe. But the older I get the more infrequent this becomes.

 

If I were really into mixing then I suppose I would dig particular effects devices as much as my synths. But I don"t. I have several Moogerfoogers that are fun to play with and explore along with a multi-effects processor, compressor and Eq. But I really couldn"t care less if they"re digital, analog or hamster driven. I think sometimes it"s more about the exclusive ownership title than anything else; something the marketeers are always trying to capitalize on.

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I have a Roland SRV-2000. It was one of the first $1000 digital reverbs on the market. I had a Great British Spring reverb in my remote truck and decided that I needed something that didn't go BOINNGG when someone bumped the outside of the truck. It's still in my rack and when mixing analog (which is most of the time) it's the first reverb I go to. It just works.

 

At the time, there were two others in the same price ballpark, I think one was a Lexicon with about two programs and I can't remember the other one, maybe ART. I took one of each home from my local dealer over a weekend (that's vintage, too) and compared them with the kind of things I work with. I could have been happy with any of them, even though they sounded a little different, but I could make the Roland sound like anything that the other two did, plus what it could do on its own. I don't use reverb for sound design, just to make up for lack of ambience. And when you have tape hiss, who cares about a little extra noise from 1980s digital hardware?

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I went from DX-7 to DX7-7II/FD and TX-802 to 2 x Fs1r to FM-7 to FM-8. And along the way there were always people claiming how the earlier or previous version sounded better (warmer :facepalm:) than the current version. Aside from fs1r sequencing stuff that I wasn"t into I never found this to be the case.

 

Well clearly, you had the versions with the 12AT7 tubes. The ones with a 12AX7 were so much better. Lucky you - I have a 12AT7-to-12AX7 Tube Conversion kit that costs only $499.95! Just go to the online store at www.audiosnakeoil.com.

 

But seriously...as is probably obvious, I'm of the "songwriter and vocals are what matter" school of thought. Yet, if you want the sound of the 80s - and it had its own merits - then the reverbs used in the 80s sound different compared to today's reverbs.

 

I visited a vinyl fan's house, and his listening system was vintage 70-80s consumer gear. He didn't have a fetish about the gear per se, he just said that he figured records were intended to be played back on those systems, so he felt that was optimum. Who was I to argue?

 

 

 

 

 

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However, I can't help but wonder how much of the "vintage digital" sound depended on the hardware of that time, and whether the better quality of today's converters might be perceived as a drawback instead of an advantage.

 

The converters were a big component in the sound quality of signature digital processors, more than most people understood at the time. The designers of high end processors (Lexicon, Eventide, AMS, et al) put a lot of focus on the quality of their converters. There was an AES paper about 1978 that was an excellent study on converters.

Also fascinating. My dalliance with digital basically started in the days of the Sony PCM-F1, anything prior to that was way too expensive for me to even look at. My memories of early digital gear comes solely from listening to it being used in recording sessions.

 

IIRC back in 1977 you couldn't even get 16-bit converters, so designers paired converters (like 12 and 8 bits) to hit 16 bits. Do you know if maybe those high-end units were using converters made of discrete components?

 

The earliest schematic I have is Eventide H910. DAC is a 10-bit 7530, ADC is 10 bit built from TTL logic (!!)

 

Lexicon 224: 12-bit DAC-80-II, and another DAC which is part of the ADC with SAR built from TTL and opamps...! (yes I have schematics) Inputs and outputs were mux'd.

 

PCM60 was 16-bit PCM53 implemented as both ADC & DAC.

 

The EARLIEST digital reverb is EMT 250. No idea what is in there, I don't have schematics, and they sanded off the markings on the ICs.

 

some of the newer "vintage digital" plug-ins are direct ports of the original algorithms and code because modern CPUs can handle the complexity.

 

The legacy Lexicons implemented lots of TTL ICs to realize their algorithms (the reverb algorithms were NOT in the EPROMs). Back then TTL ICs had way faster propagation speeds than CPUs could dream of. Todays' gigahertz clocked CPUs can approach the speed of TTL ICs but in an laptop/desktop computer OS there's a lot of horsepower divided up between peripherals and DAWs. It's getting there...

Fascinating stuff!!

 

Wow, that must have taken a ton more design work than just feeding lines of code into a processor. Did this extend into the mid-80s, and the days of the PCM-70? Or was this more of a 224 kind of thing?

 

The 224 had the ARU (accumulator register unit) and floating point converter processor built from TTL. CPU was an 8080A. The timing & control schematic built from TTL makes my head spin. This is all high speed logic, controlling the propagation timing had to be a b!tch!

 

Discrete ARU was used in 224, 224x, 200, PCM60, PCM70, 480. I have a nice description of the ARU from someone who dissected the circuit, wish I remembered where it came from.

 

Early PCM60s also had discrete ARU, later ones shrank it all in a 40-pin custom IC. '60 also had custom ICs for MMU and CMU. Blow them and you have an instant doorstop. PCM80 and later models used the VLSI custom Lexchips.

 

My study emphasis in college was digital electronics. Lexicon is sick stuff.

 

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But seriously...as is probably obvious, I'm of the "songwriter and vocals are what matter" school of thought. Yet, if you want the sound of the 80s - and it had its own merits - then the reverbs used in the 80s sound different compared to today's reverbs.

 

I visited a vinyl fan's house, and his listening system was vintage 70-80s consumer gear. He didn't have a fetish about the gear per se, he just said that he figured records were intended to be played back on those systems, so he felt that was optimum. Who was I to argue?

 

 

Interesting but...as someone who has zero interest in recreating sounds from the past I recuse myself from further discussion. I"m not exactly sure what recuse means but I heard someone else use it to avoid involvement in further argument and well, I just like it. Fortunately I no longer have my ancient hard copy Webster's dictionary so I guess we"ll never really know.

 

:Python:

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A lot of digital gear from the 80's & 90's can be found dirt cheap, if you look around. In the last couple of years, I've picked up a WaveStation SR for $150, a QS8 for another $150, a Proteus 2000 with the Protozoa card installed for right around $100+/-? Someone gave me a Digitech RDS 1900, another friend gave me a Quadraverb+ that was gathering dust in their Guitar shop. All of them work, and I was able to find Manuals and other support for them online for no additional cost. (Alesis, for some reason, has taken down a LOT of their Legacy Firmware & Manuals in the last couple of years? I was lucky enough to get in before most of it disappeared.)

 

I don't seek this stuff out because it's old, per se; I seek it out because it fits my budget and my needs. When I see the prices of Korg's new WaveState and new FM Synth, I look fondly at my old SR and TX81z.

"Monsters are real, and Ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win." Stephen King

 

http://www.novparolo.com

 

https://thewinstonpsmithproject.bandcamp.com

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But seriously...as is probably obvious, I'm of the "songwriter and vocals are what matter" school of thought. Yet, if you want the sound of the 80s - and it had its own merits - then the reverbs used in the 80s sound different compared to today's reverbs.

 

I visited a vinyl fan's house, and his listening system was vintage 70-80s consumer gear. He didn't have a fetish about the gear per se, he just said that he figured records were intended to be played back on those systems, so he felt that was optimum. Who was I to argue?

 

 

Interesting but...as someone who has zero interest in recreating sounds from the past I recuse myself from further discussion. I"m not exactly sure what recuse means but I heard someone else use it to avoid involvement in further argument and well, I just like it. Fortunately I no longer have my ancient hard copy Webster's dictionary so I guess we"ll never really know.

 

:Python:

 

Well, "recuse" means "to cuse something again." :)

 

Okay, that was a joke. Seriously, you used the word 100% correctly - it's to realize that you shouldn't render a judgement, because you can't be impartial. Then again, no one is really arguing here, we're exploring the topic, which can be fairly nuanced.

 

For example, suppose you were born in 2000. You don't really have an incentive to recreate sounds from the past, because you have no past history with those sounds. Like NBC used to say in the promos for summer reruns, "If you haven't seen it before, it's new to you." Or, you may just happen to like a sound that current devices can't produce.

 

I'm not really into re-creating the sounds of the past either, but I'm not against using them in the present. For example, I don't have any real interest in using a Mellotron in my music; the sound is so stereotyped, and associated with a particular type of music. But, if I ever do something where that sound would fit, I'll use it...although that will probably mean running it through some effects that never existed during the Mellotron's lifetime :)

 

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...as someone who has zero interest in recreating sounds from the past I recuse myself from further discussion.

 

Using vintage gear isn't always about re-creating sounds from the past. Sure, if you want the popular sounds of the day from a DX-7, you can certainly get that from a vintage DX-7, or probably from one of the virtual instrument versions. But I'm sure that not all the sounds the DX-7 is capable of making have been explored yet, or at least not put on a record.

 

Also, sometimes vintage equipment is just easier to use, but this depends on your workflow. If you want an 1176 compressor on a vocal track and you're working entirely in the box, you can get it, and about 1,000 other compressors that will probably do the just just as well, as a plug-in. And it may be awkward to impossible - depending on your interface, your software, and how much you understand about signal flow - to patch in a vintage hardware (or even contemporary revival) box. But when working in the analog world as I do, it's just the natural thing to do.

 

And, frankly, I don't have any right or wrong compressors. I use whatever works out of my choice of about three different ones. The compressor I choose isn't going to sell any more records, at least not at my end of the food chain. I use vintage because it's what I own (from when it wasn't vintage) and it still works.

 

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Interesting but...as someone who has zero interest in recreating sounds from the past I recuse myself from further discussion. I"m not exactly sure what recuse means but I heard someone else use it to avoid involvement in further argument and well, I just like it. Fortunately I no longer have my ancient hard copy Webster's dictionary so I guess we"ll never really know.

 

:Python:

 

Hmmm... are you not also "Music with Marky" that posts in the guitar forum?

 

Electric guitar is far older than early digital music gear. It's pretty hard to play an electric guitar and not recreate sounds from the past, true?

Just sayin' is all. :- D

 

My humble contribution to the is thread is that I own and use a vintage Sharper Image Saxxy, which was a digital kazoo. It is post early digital but so abominable yet versatile (and cheap) that it seems worthy of mention.

It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is.
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Hmmm... are you not also "Music with Marky" that posts in the guitar forum?

 

Electric guitar is far older than early digital music gear. It's pretty hard to play an electric guitar and not recreate sounds from the past, true?

Just sayin' is all. :- D

 

Ummm no, not me, but my nemesis guitar toting daughter will sure get a kick out this thought. Btw it"s not like I avoid classic sounds if that"s where my meanderings, noodlings and programming take me. I just don"t typically set out with any pre-conceived notion of what I want something to sound like. Probably explains my falling just short of mega stardom.

:rocker:

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Oh, and one more thing @The Real MC...totally with you on the Korg SDD-3000, that was a monster. Maybe they'll reissue it....

 

I admit I was tempted by the last reissue, which was in pedal form - still on their site but I doubt it's in production now:

 

https://www.korg.com/us/products/effects/sdd3000_pedal/

 

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Hmmm... are you not also "Music with Marky" that posts in the guitar forum?

 

Electric guitar is far older than early digital music gear. It's pretty hard to play an electric guitar and not recreate sounds from the past, true?

Just sayin' is all. :- D

 

Ummm no, not me, but my nemesis guitar toting daughter will sure get a kick out this thought. Btw it"s not like I avoid classic sounds if that"s where my meanderings, noodlings and programming take me. I just don"t typically set out with any pre-conceived notion of what I want something to sound like. Probably explains my falling just short of mega stardom.

:rocker:

 

Sorry, my bad.

 

I usually try to make stuff sound insane, anything will do that if you find the wrong settings.

Which reminds me, a part of me misses my old Effectron delays, the one where you could turn the time knob and shift the time continously in real time.

I could work wonders with a couple of those, especially on a final mixdown.

That was part of my ish back in the cassette porta studio days.

 

It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is.
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Which reminds me, a part of me misses my old Effectron delays, the one where you could turn the time knob and shift the time continously in real time.

I could work wonders with a couple of those, especially on a final mixdown.

Too bad I didn't PM you when I sold my Effectron Jr. on reverb.com :)

 

However, I do think the elusive "mess with delay and have it sound like the universe is stretching" sound is available in the Helix.

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Oh, and one more thing @The Real MC...totally with you on the Korg SDD-3000, that was a monster. Maybe they'll reissue it....

 

I admit I was tempted by the last reissue, which was in pedal form - still on their site but I doubt it's in production now:

 

https://www.korg.com/us/products/effects/sdd3000_pedal/

 

Craig missed a digit.

 

I was talking about the SDD-3300, not 3000. Very different product.

 

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Old digital reverbs can be had for about a nickel on the dollar. When i was in dire straits about 8 years ago, I got twice what I paid for my old Analog rack gear, and the Alesis and Digtech rack units were worth jack really. So I still have a couple of Alesis reverbs , eq's, and one of their compressors...Which was junk from the start really.

All of it still works, and the Digitech 3.6 delay unit still works really well.

I could not afford any Lexicon stuff back then.

 

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Oh, and one more thing @The Real MC...totally with you on the Korg SDD-3000, that was a monster. Maybe they'll reissue it....

 

I admit I was tempted by the last reissue, which was in pedal form - still on their site but I doubt it's in production now:

 

https://www.korg.com/us/products/effects/sdd3000_pedal/

 

Craig missed a digit.

 

I was talking about the SDD-3300, not 3000. Very different product.

 

Yes, sorry...I knew you meant the 2U piece, not the 1U.

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Which reminds me, a part of me misses my old Effectron delays, the one where you could turn the time knob and shift the time continously in real time.

I could work wonders with a couple of those, especially on a final mixdown.

Too bad I didn't PM you when I sold my Effectron Jr. on reverb.com :)

 

However, I do think the elusive "mess with delay and have it sound like the universe is stretching" sound is available in the Helix.

 

I became curious/nostalgic and surfed ebay to take a look. I remembered that there was a reason why I didn't get an Effectron Jr when I had an opportunity.

Looking at the photos, the reason was that it didn't have an infinite repeat function, this was an important part of my sound for The Posers, a short-lived but fruitful recording project I was involved in.

I had two Effectron II units. I'm not sure now if I owned them both at the same time, the recordings indicate a single delay.

 

I think I had another one when I was in the original Vortexans (a punk band on the east coast took the name years later), in that band I played bass with a nut made from an acoustic guitar saddle transducer so tapping would produce "The Notes That Are Wrong" - a logarithmic inverse of the tempered scale. Run through a crappy Ibanez rackmount pitch shifter, I could capture a short chunk from a fast delay, infinite repeat it and then turn the adjust the delay time in real time. The pitch moved with the delay since it was essentially a sample and was being stretched. Live through a good PA it was an incredible cacophany. The guitarist used a similar nut pickup but had better pitch shifting devices, one for the nut pickup and one for the standard pickup system. So it was impossible for anybody watching to know who was playing what. Far and away one of the best/worst bands I've ever been been in.

 

I still have that nut and the bass it was mounted on. I removed it since I never used it. Not doing anything quite that different these days.

 

I'll have to dig these up and post them online so I can link them!!! Yikes, another project. :-D

 

It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is.
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My humble contribution to the is thread is that I own and use a vintage Sharper Image Saxxy, which was a digital kazoo.

 

I have a vintage Bath House Brass. All analog. I also have a collection of vintage kazoo reeds to go with my vintage tin kazoos.

 

BGMNYv6.jpg

 

That photo is simply obscene.

 

nat

 

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