Total absence of harshness … Enya’s “On Your Shore”

[Sundown]

Hey all,

 

This is one of the reference tracks I use when mixing.

 

 

“Watermark” was a 1988 album so it was certainly done on tape, but I don’t know how they got this track to sound so smooth. On a good set of monitors (with a better source than YouTube) it sounds amazing. 

 

It’s a great reference for a keyboard player when aiming for a smooth sound.

 

Todd

[David Emm]

She was a big D-50 proponent. That has "D-50 Channels an MKS-70" written all over it. The instrument excels at Roland Cream. That's like 4 pads in one place, run through a Lexicon reverb. Just my immediate impression. I think there's a lovely wad of it on David Van Tieghem's "These Things Happen."

[Sundown]

Her voice is remarkably smooth as well. 

 

I think it helps that the track isn’t squashed either. If your typical distributed master is averaging 12-14 LUFS, this is averaging 20 (I measured it). 

 

Todd

[analogika]

On 12/22/2023 at 6:15 PM, Sundown said:

 

“Watermark” was a 1988 album so it was certainly done on tape,

“Clearly” meaning “absolutely done on 32-track digital Mitsubishi tape machines that were the current standard at the time”. 😉 
 

The digital studio age began around 1980. Alan Parsons’ “Eye in the Sky” was a digital production AFAIK and released in 1982. 
 

A good rundown of what made the sound, here: 

 

http://www.muzines.co.uk/articles/enya-watermark/4506

[Anderton]

I found this comment interesting: "He added that his ideal setup would probably be to use an analogue multitrack recorder with Dolby SR noise reduction, to take advantage of the inherent compression and soft distortion characteristics of this medium; then he would combine tracks from the analogue multitrack onto a digital multitrack, then mix to DAT."

 

So, it seems he wanted an "analog" sound, and was capable of achieving it with digital. It sort of goes along with my theory that the vinyl records of yesteryear didn't sound "better" because they were vinyl, but because they were mastered with more care.

[analogika]

There was also a note about the Lexicon reverb being too clean (for the first productions), and a cheap, crappy digital reverb being the warm vibe that she liked better. 

[Sundown]

On 12/24/2023 at 10:54 AM, analogika said:

“Clearly” meaning “absolutely done on 32-track digital Mitsubishi tape machines that were the current standard at the time”. 😉 
 

The digital studio age began around 1980. Alan Parsons’ “Eye in the Sky” was a digital production AFAIK and released in 1982. 
 

A good rundown of what made the sound, here: 

 

http://www.muzines.co.uk/articles/enya-watermark/4506

 

That’s a good article, thank you.

 

I would not have guessed it was done on a digital multi-track, as I don’t agree that digital multi-track was abundant in 1988/1989. Dire Straits “Brothers in Arms” was one of the first digital multitracked albums (Sony 24-track) and that was released in 1985. Alan Parson’s “Eye In The Sky” might have had a digital 2-track master, but it was not multi-tracked digitally to my knowledge (though there is certainly a lot of debate about that album on the internet).

 

Todd

[analogika]

4 hours ago, Sundown said:

 

That’s a good article, thank you.

 

I would not have guessed it was done on a digital multi-track, as I don’t agree that digital multi-track was abundant in 1988/1989. Dire Straits “Brothers in Arms” was one of the first digital multitracked albums (Sony 24-track) and that was released in 1985. Alan Parson’s “Eye In The Sky” might have had a digital 2-track master, but it was not multi-tracked digitally to my knowledge (though there is certainly a lot of debate about that album on the internet).

 

Todd

You’re right! 

"An Analog multitrack recording mixed to Sony 1610 digital format"

from the credits section here:
https://www.the-alan-parsons-project.com/eye-in-the-sky

 

Thanks for prompting me to check. That’s as "horse's mouth" as it gets, methinks. 

[Anderton]

51 minutes ago, analogika said:

"An Analog multitrack recording mixed to Sony 1610 digital format"

 

That makes sense, it was common back in the day. Even after digital had progressed, a lot of engineers recorded on analog but then transferred to digital to prevent degradation. Bruce Swedien was a big fan of that process, and mentioned doing it with Michael Jackson. We got into a friendly discussion about that at a seminar in Mexico when he said he didn't use compression, and I said well, he recorded to analog tape...

 

So now we record on digital, and use plugins to make it sound analog. I guess that means people like that analog is a signal processor, and digital isn't   🤣 

[Sundown]

14 hours ago, Anderton said:

 

Even after digital had progressed, a lot of engineers recorded on analog but then transferred to digital to prevent degradation.

 

I’m not sure how common it is today (given the price and availability of tape and machines), but for a while a lot of professionals were recording to tape and then transferring it to Pro Tools for editing. We can say all we want about tape’s good qualities, but it’s game-over when it comes to editing capability. DAWs win hands-down. I’m not sure how editing was done with digital multi-track (maybe the machines had some RAM to temporarily store data), but I don’t think cutting and splicing zeroes and ones would work.

 

Todd

 

 

 

 

[Anderton]

The only remaining home left for tape is LTO storage devices. I keep thinking they're going to go the way of the dodo, but then the companies figure out how to pack another zillion terabytes in there.

[analogika]

3 hours ago, Anderton said:

The only remaining home left for tape is LTO storage devices. I keep thinking they're going to go the way of the dodo, but then the companies figure out how to pack another zillion terabytes in there.

 

There's a place for recording THROUGH tape: recording to tape, but immediately piping the read head tracks into the DAW. 

You don't get the gelling effect of magnetic crossbleed between the tracks from letting the multitrack tape sit for a day or two, but you do get the dynamic distortion of the actual tape. 

18 hours ago, Anderton said:

So now we record on digital, and use plugins to make it sound analog. I guess that means people like that analog is a signal processor, and digital isn't   🤣 

 

That's not funny. That's literally the use-case description. 

[Anderton]

1 hour ago, analogika said:

There's a place for recording THROUGH tape: recording to tape, but immediately piping the read head tracks into the DAW. 

 

Sure, but finding access to a well-maintained tape recorder in good condition (and tape), and being able to either use it in your studio with a DAW or take your DAW to a studio that has tape, is going to be a non-starter for most people. I used to do that all the time with a two-track for clients who wanted their masters to have a "tape sound." I still have the two-track "just in case." But no one's asked me for that reel-to-reel tape sound in years, probably because they already added whatever tape plugins they wanted in their mix. 

 

1 hour ago, analogika said:

That's not funny. That's literally the use-case description. 

 

Well, of course. I just think it's funny that what was a storage medium is now considered a signal processor.