The certainty of sound re-creation accuracy

[Theo Verelst]

You've set up your studio just right, adjusted the mix, set up and programmed your sounds to become like you intended, fired up your daw or what you use to record and are ok with what you've made. Now you've shut it all down, maybe set up in another place, possibly another PA sys, or you use another instance of your workstation or synyhesizer from a provisioned backline, and go like "How Do I Get The Right Sound"?

 

It's like: what is the achievable accuracy of the repeated sound. Like on a (traditional) organ, you'd have to remember your registration and perhaps guess the expression pedal moves, on a non-programmable synth you'd have to dial in that solo sound and get it right, and if you use digital, you might bring your patches/programs, and remember or intelligently guess your mixer and additional effect settings.

 

Now even when you save your Daw settings, the next time you start, you may have different effective latency, on your digital synthesis workstation, you may forget which "master effects" settings you used while the programmable analog might need time to heat up before it's stable.

 

In short: it's a real challenge to achieve overall repeatable quality sound.

 

TV

[ProfD]

Most digital gear has a very cool feature that allows one to save patches, setups, tweaks,  mixes, etc.

 

I've been told that digital can even make the perfect cup of coffee. I still use any analog coffeemaker.😁😎

[JamPro]

Every room sounds different.  The same set of amps and speakers will sound different in two different rooms.  And two different speakers playing the same material in the same room will yield reproduce the sounds differently.

 

This is a fact of the laws of physics and our human auditory perception capabilities.  It is your job as audio engineer to understand this fact and accommodate yourself to it.  Yes, it is a challenge.  This is why many mix engineers train their ears for years and then only mix in a specialized environment using specialized equipment.

 

 

[scoopicman]

3 hours ago, Theo Verelst said:

you may have different effective latency, on your digital synthesis workstation, you may forget which "master effects" settings you used while the programmable analog might need time to heat up before it's stable.

 

In short: it's a real challenge to achieve overall repeatable quality sound

 

 

I'm dealing with recreating something I did 33 years ago, which is kind of the extreme version of what you are talking about. 🤪😄

 

In 1990, I scored an indie movie.  I used an SY77 workstation (and its sequencer), TX16W samplers, an RX5 drum machine, a DX7, a TX816 (rack of 8 more DX7s), plus an SPX-900 processor.  Fast forward to the present.  Because the movie was re-released on Blu-ray, last December, a music company approached me about providing the score for a vinyl and cassette release.  I still have the working 80's samplers.  I have an SY99, which is fully compatible with SY77 files/sounds.  I don't have the RX5, but I did sample it, as well as recreated a similar kit on an E-MU Pro/cussion.  I have also replicated the giant TX816 FM sound used in the score.

 

I can recreate the songs, very close to the original sounds, but I also see an opportunity for improvements.  I want to put out the best sounding version of the score, so I'm wrestling with being faithful to the source material and making some sonic tweaks.

 

[Jose EB5AGV]

On a sidenote to this... Last week, on last rehearsal before our band gig, sax player told me that on one song, my selected sound (which I had extremely carefully crafted to match the original) collided with him.

 

Then I told him that:

 

First, the sound was exactly as on the original

 

Second, in the original song there is no sax on any part so, if my sound was any problem for him... He could play lower or even don't play at all on that part.

 

Sometimes, all logic is defied 👿

 

Jose

[scoopicman]

On 5/16/2023 at 4:16 AM, ProfD said:

Most digital gear has a very cool feature that allows one to save patches, setups, tweaks,  mixes, etc.

 

Yes, even in the old days.  Here's a video that details my previous post.

 

 

 

[Docbop]

PEBKAC  -  Old term we used in Tech Support and anytime dealing with pointy headed bosses.  Guess it can apply to piano keyboards too. 

 

 

PEBKAC = Problem  Exists Between  Keyboard  And Chair   Goes along with the line all people calling support say...  I swear nothing has changed.    Always followed fifteen minutes later with.....  well I did change this, but that shouldn't matter should it.     

[analogika]

On 5/16/2023 at 3:18 PM, scoopicman said:

 

 

I'm dealing with recreating something I did 33 years ago, which is kind of the extreme version of what you are talking about. 🤪😄

 

In 1990, I scored an indie movie.  I used an SY77 workstation (and its sequencer), TX16W samplers, an RX5 drum machine, a DX7, a TX816 (rack of 8 more DX7s), plus an SPX-900 processor.  Fast forward to the present.  Because the movie was re-released on Blu-ray, last December, a music company approached me about providing the score for a vinyl and cassette release.  I still have the working 80's samplers.  I have an SY99, which is fully compatible with SY77 files/sounds.  I don't have the RX5, but I did sample it, as well as recreated a similar kit on an E-MU Pro/cussion.  I have also replicated the giant TX816 FM sound used in the score.

 

I can recreate the songs, very close to the original sounds, but I also see an opportunity for improvements.  I want to put out the best sounding version of the score, so I'm wrestling with being faithful to the source material and making some sonic tweaks.

 

I hate when artists change stuff to “correct” things or “improve” it. 

I hated it when George Lucas did it, I hated it when Jarre did it for his “best of” compilations. 

 

Remasterings, too, rarely capture the essence of the original. 
 

Give me what people loved back in the day; there was a good reason they loved it. You don’t have to make a 1978 album like “The Wall” sound like it was recorded in 1995 or 2015. 
1995 music is made for 1995 sound. The Wall was not. 

[Tom Williams]

If the new room has a longer natural reverb decay than you used in the recording, you just have to tolerate it.  They're not going to let you hang blankets in the cathedral.

 

Sort of like,  if the diapasons on my PC-4 sound like a bunch of frickin' flutes,  Um, I mean if the principal stop on the organ in church #2 doesn't match the diapasons from church #1, I just have to live with the registration difference.  Fortunately -- and this is probably the real point of this posting -- the listeners almost certainly don't mind a bit.

 

[scoopicman]

6 hours ago, analogika said:

I hate when artists change stuff to “correct” things or “improve” it. 

I hated it when George Lucas did it, I hated it when Jarre did it for his “best of” compilations. 

 

Then you'll be happy to know that I decided to stay as faithful as possible.  For a moment, I thought about using more modern string and brass sounds, then I said "forget that."  I made the above video a few days after the first post.  What you hear in the video are all the authentic sounds I could get my hands on.  Even the one sound that came out of the OASYS, is an imported DX7 .syx file of an 80's program.

 

I think it's a normal thought process, which doesn't always bode well, as your examples prove.  So, I agree. ☺️

[analogika]

I apologise if my testiness came over as personal. I realise it probably sounded overreaching. 
 

It was a weird day yesterday. 
 

Glad to hear you stuck with historical accuracy, though! ✌️

[scoopicman]

25 minutes ago, analogika said:

I apologise if my testiness came over as personal. I realise it probably sounded overreaching. 

 

Not at all.  The Lucas "fixing" STAR WARS example was perfect.  You should see my reactions to Greedo firing first!  😄

[analogika]

5 hours ago, scoopicman said:

 

Not at all.  The Lucas "fixing" STAR WARS example was perfect.  You should see my reactions to Greedo firing first!  😄

 

Greedo never stood a chance in the Despecialised Version — which is all we watch in this household. 

[Theo Verelst]

Playing love you would even have to take air temperature and moist into account.

 

T

[analogika]

42 minutes ago, Theo Verelst said:

Playing love you would even have to take air temperature and moist into account.

 

One of my backliner friends' patients is a guitar player who actually does. 

Standing in the audience on the other end of a line array and a delay line, it ceases to matter, but it's important to him. 

[AROIOS]

1 hour ago, Theo Verelst said:

Playing Making love you would even have to take air temperature and moist into account.

There, fixed it for ya

[marino]

A few random considerations.

 

- A few years ago, I took a very conscious decision to stay away from modular systems. Not because I don't love them, I really do. But having a tendency to build complex patches, the fact of not being able to recreate them exactly the next day (or year) would have driven me crazy!
I have a friend who owns a huge modular system, and when I visit him we have great fun, but it usually takes a long time to perfect a sound, perhaps even doing several - equally good - variations along the way. The fact that all those goodies will be lost forever gives me an uncomfortable sense of wasted time. Today, I can barely stand even synthesizers without patch memory (although I have a couple).

 

However...

 

- I think that having everything too exact and repeatable is equally unhealthy. The little differences in room acoustics, listening  situations etc. are only natural. It's like having two or three oscillators always in perfect tuning and phase relationship: It hurts the humans' nervous system. We need some variety and unpredictability. That's why VCOs sound so pleasing!

 

On 5/28/2023 at 3:14 AM, analogika said:

I hate when artists change stuff to “correct” things or “improve” it. 
I hated it when George Lucas did it, I hated it when Jarre did it for his “best of” compilations. 

Remasterings, too, rarely capture the essence of the original. 

 

I can understand this feeling, but I believe that it has more to do with our expectations than with the actual sound quality... I mean, if we grew up with a particular record and we have loved it all our lives, we tend to hear any change as a betrayal. I actually love some remastering, and hate some other. I have even made experiments, playing old and new versions of, say, "Close to the Edge" in both original and remastered versions for some of my students, and many of them preferred the most recent version... I guess it all depends on who's doing the job.

 

I recently made an electronic music album, where I re-elaborated several pieces from a period of 30 years. I no longer even own some of the instruments that I used, so I decided to redo almost everything. It was an exhausting job, but I am glad that I did it. I think that all the pieces sound better now.
And btw, I love the sound that Jarre achieved on "Live in your Living Room"!

[Theo Verelst]

If all kinds of preparation and studio processing elements were in place in a lot of the very well known music it might be possible to digitally recreate the "right" sound, including the notion that the makers intended the outcome. THen again an intelligent preparer of all that might put in all kinds of options without choosing a particular one.

 

T

[Stokely]

The ability of DAWs to remember every single tweak I made to every instrument and effect--without me having to save a patch, or sysex, or deal with program changes, or put gear into multitimbral mode--is the primary reason I stay in the box.  Dealing with all that stuff in a studio full of keyboards and modules and rackmounted effects (not to mention the console settings, depending on how automated your console was) was a job in itself.  Bringing up a previous session was a lot of work and not guaranteed to be exactly the same.  Granted, we are talking ancient days here    These days I hit File > open project and it's 100% the same as last time, and takes all of 20 seconds.

Sound-wise, as a non-pro with "aging ears" the biggest problem is trust.  I don't necessarily trust what I hear.  I employ referencing a lot, both for the material and to how it interacts with my room/headphones.   A referencing plugin such as Metric A/B makes this much easier (also, don't use mp3s of any quality, get some high-quality files).  Referencing gives me something to shoot for done by a pro (one of my favorites was always Woman in Chains by Tears for Fears, mixed by Bob Clearmountain).  I'd actually like to get any recommendations for modern acoustic/indie productions as that is more my speed these days

[ProfD]

On 5/30/2023 at 10:20 AM, Theo Verelst said:

If all kinds of preparation and studio processing elements were in place in a lot of the very well known music it might be possible to digitally recreate the "right" sound, including the notion that the makers intended the outcome. THen again an intelligent preparer of all that might put in all kinds of options without choosing a particular one.

Not to worry, AI (Artificial Intelligence) will sort it out.  AI will be able to analyze the original recordings and figure out precisely how it was done...instruments, mics, outboard processing, etc.

 

Unfortunately, when AI is perfect, the audience waxing nostalgically for a perfect recreation of music from the 20th century will either be 1) hard of hearing or 2) dead.

 

Future generations may not care enough to accurately recreate an album from the 20th century.  Those recordings will become like Scott Joplin's piano rolls. 😁😎

[Theo Verelst]

It's not at all certain your digital signal path responds "predictable" to the standard I prefer: exact sample for sample delay time, also from midi to audio out, fixed per audio effect overall effective delay, same AD/processing/DA delay every time you start up, and with multiple audio interfaces with no hard sync, the sample for sample delay is going to sound like a phaser effect.

 

I would like "perfect" recordings of existing hits and albums I like. Of course a question is "what's perfect"...

 

T

 

[Theo Verelst]

On 5/30/2023 at 12:33 AM, marino said:

...

 

- I think that having everything too exact and repeatable is equally unhealthy. The little differences in room acoustics, listening  situations etc. are only natural. It's like having two or three oscillators always in perfect tuning and phase relationship: It hurts the humans' nervous system. We need some variety and unpredictability. That's why VCOs sound so pleasing!

....

 

If I'd put a piece and certain saved sounds in a sequencer, I'd expect it to play back sample for sample and bit for bit the same, every time I press "Play". Even when there are effects in the signal path, though then the result can only be the same when the reverbs are silent before pressing play, and the modulation LFO's are in the same state as they were the previous time.

 

T