Eroc's thoughts for Malc S...

Good morning fellows!

Reading this forum for the very first time on a sunday morning at 7 A.M., just
before starting my regular work, I feel like putting some things right. This may
be the first and probably the last time ever, because I really don't have much
time besides my busy schedule to read and discuss on the internet.

What pushed me to write was that statement from Grant:

> Malc, if you only knew what went on in the recording/mastering of most CDs,
> and even many LPs of today, you would withdraw your claim.

First: Thanks to Grant for this statement, I'll focus later on that. Second:
hello Malc, I love you!!! I love the way you are fighting for the analog sound.
I grew up with tubes and wires in the 60's. And I was the first producer in
Germany, probably in the whole world to scratch into a vinyl laquer master
"Digital kills music" (forever to be read on the LP "Aristocracy" by Phillip Boa
& The Voodooclub, 1986). That was when one of my colleagues was about to show
me the "advantages" of that horrible Sony PCM Betacam recording at that time,
and each "modern" musician came around the corner with that AKAI S-900 sampling
machine. I worked my whole life with Studer, Otari, Ampex, Telefunken, Scully or
whatever. And six of them are still standing here, in best condition.

What I love most of you Malc, that you seem to have experienced with your body,
how a natural instrument sounds while playing it (like me), then experienced how
the sound changed by miking it and listening in the control room over a very
good gear (like me), then experienced how the sound changed by recording it on a
multi-track on 15 or 30 i/ps with or without Dolby A or Dolby SR (like me), then
experienced, how the sound changed again when it's played back through a bunch
of long wires to be mixed on the desk with a huge amount of circuits and
EQ's and connections and wires again (like I did for decades), then experienced
how the sound changed when the bus is recorded to a master machine on 1/4" or
1/2" or even 1" stereo, then this master-tape is given to a cutting station to
be played on another master-machine, which probably shows some difficulties on
rep-EQ, Dolby adjustment or even azimuth (not like me!), then this "final
result" of original reproduction is put into a groove via fullspeed or halfspeed
on laquer or DMM, and then finally a vinyl is produced with all it's noise and
rumble and distortion, because nobody seeems to have an interest to change the
pressing tools exactly after more than 250 copies...

No Malc, you don't even listen to that vinyl crap, I know. Nor do I, because we
both know that very many of the vinyls since the early 80's were cut from normal
16/44 DAT's, because very many of the engineers don't like to adjust dinosaur's
gear any more. And we all know, that those 16/44 DAT's have to be processed for
cutting on vinyl over a digital delay, to use the original signal only for the
groove's feed, while the digital delayed copy of the signal is put on the vinyl.

So Malc, whenever you pull the cork out of your bottle of Alamos or Medoc or
whatever, to raise your glass on a very good high-quality "original" sounding
recording, you first switch on your Studer A 80 or A 820 on 30 i/ps and listen
to original master-tapes, your friends at Universal and BMG and Sony supply you
from their archives. And your Studer of course is modified (like mine), maybe
even by Tim de Paraviccini, your cables are (like mine) pure silver with teflon
isolation, normally used for high-temperature-atomic-reactor-wiring (they really
sound marvellous!) and you have treated all (!) connections of your equipment
with RESON LICON before, to avoid even the slightest connection problem in the
plugs, like I do once a month. Your amps are of course made by FM Acoustic in
Switzerland, and of course your living room has "the" acoustic, so that Manuel
Huber found it worth to manufacture his outstanding gear for you, too...

For comparing this great result directly to "digital" your CD-Player is wired
the same way directly to a digital amp, of course by using an anti-jitter-clock
(from www.jitter.de) and golden plugs and short cables, too.

The only thing, Malc, which bothers me a little, is: you are talking of analog
and "digital", while you stomp digital into the ground for general. That's what
I did also for such a long time, that I started out very very late with PC's and
digital mastering. It was in the end of 1998, after 30 years of producing and
mastering srictly analog. But today it seeems not quite fair to me to put
"digital" to the wall in general...

We don't need to get closer into the 16/44 CD, that's for sure. And we shouldn't
talk about kiddie's gear like Pro-Tools or whatever. We also shouldn't mention
Sonic Solutions and other crap, which really ruined some of my very best analog
productions, when one out of the millions of unexperienced engineers was about
to "alter" it digitally.

We should talk about professional digital formats @ 64 Bits / 382 kHz and more,
like I'm using here for really "repairing" technical damages on analog
recordings, never could be done before. There are very good A/D's existing
meanwhile, like Apogee, Daniel Weiss, Pacific Microsonics and more, to put an
analog recording into this high resolution format perfectly. And the digital
domain meanwhile offers great things: We can reduce the tape-hiss to a minimum
without any audible artefacts, we even can remove azimuth-failure from cutted
vinyls (!), so that they sound for the first time ever in mono and even in
stereo like the mix was done in the studio! And you won't believe, how many
vinyls do carry wrong azimuths. Just switch the original LP "Steamhammer
Reflection" into mono and listen. And I can show you hundreds more!

And not to forget the geat digital EQ'ing, which really doesn't add any
distortion and phase-crap to a signal. Yes, Malc, I worked my whole life with
analog gear and EQ's from Focus Rite and Massenburg, and I'm probably the
greatest admirer of George and his fine solutions. But there are some kids today
coming up with fantastic "digital" solutions, too. And they're workimg very
hard, to get the best results out of those little bits and bytes. And they don't
deserve, to be beaten on the back for that.

I'll never sell my good old Studer's and Otari's and Revox's, for sure. And I
also keep my old valve-radios and Dolby's and the first analog Flanger
(equippped with little lamps inside!) for that little remaining rest of my life.
But I'll also be very much up to date each moment on the digital world and what
it really can do for the sound and for the music.

I won't get deeper into those topics here, I really don't have enough time for
long discussions, there's so much work to do and so little time left...

Keep up the music and stay tuned!

Your's sincerely,


- Eroc

 

Thank you Claus for posting this. Very interesting stuff. Eroc seems to put a lot of care into his work. I own some of his work for Repertoire and generally like what he does.

Out of curiousity I compared his remastering of the Everly Brothers (Very Best of the Cadence Era on Repertoire CD) with Steve's (Best on DCC Gold Disc). First of all Eroc's version sounds very good. Anyway, I prefer Steve's version. With Erocs remastering the Everly's vocals very directly "jump" into your face and they are quite bright too. In Steve's version they seem to be much more integrated into the music and smoother, more natural IMHO. In addition Eroc's mastering is much louder. I am not sure if he used more compression, unfortunately I have no tool to analyze this.

Does anybody else have a chance to hear both versions?

Please feel free to disagree.

 

First, I'm surprised I provoked him to respond. It was a well-written post. The man is very articulate and knows his stuff.

He never did get around to what goes on in the recording and mastering of most CDs out there, though.

One thing that struck me cold is him calling Pro Tools "kiddie gear". Interesting! I know that there is an increasing number of engineers, seasoned and semi-pro who are taking this view...

 

Pro Tools can be good or bad... just how you handle this tool.

 

Yep. He did address that issue. Perhaps he is one of the ones who are more careful with the NR than most?

 

Most live recordings or pre-recordings at home will record with Digidesign's hard/softeware today... many artists and bands save $$$.

 

Yeah, I know, and it still all depends on the skill of the user, not the gear.

 

A good example is Joe Satriani's "Strange Beautiful Music"... The most guitarparts were recorded in his home studio... and the CD sounds very good indeed.

 

Isn't it funny how two of the most popular recording devices (Pro Tools and SSL consoles) have such a bad (and well deserved) reputation for sounding bad.

I hate mixing albums recorded on Pro Tools. There's some bad math going on inside that box. The transients are restricted, the sound is 2 dimensional and I can't get as much power out of the mix. If each track sounds like that think about how much that sound will build up over 48 or more tracks.

 

Jamie, what albums that were recorded on ProTools that you have mixed?

 

A lot of stuff remastered with Cool Edit Pro at home sounds a lot better than a lot of ProTools based recordings.

 

Almost every one that I don't record. I record to IZ RADARs which sound wonderful! 24bit/ 96kHz. They'll hold me over until I get a DSD system.

Sometimes I'll record the basic tracking session (drums, bass, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, piano, steel, fiddle) on RADAR and we'll transfer what I recorded to Pro Tools so they can record the vocals at their home studio. When they're done I'll transfer it from Pro Tools back to my RADARs for mixing. Just putting the music into PT and transferring it back without any processing at all will change the sound a lot.

I just mixed four new songs for Carolyn Dawn Johnson that were done this way. I really love my mixes but can hear the Pro Tools sound all over them.

Have you heard 'Beautiful Goodbye' by Jennifer Hanson? That was done the same way although her producer mixed that one (Grrr!)

 

I do not like the ProTools sound. Yes, I have heard Beautiful Goodbye and yes it does have the ProTools sound on it.

 

It didn't when I recorded it.

 

But the mixing on it that her producer did sure sounds like ProTools.

 

It was played from Pro Tools and mixed on an SSL 9000 console, I think... maybe a Neve VR series (which isn't that much better). So yeah, the PT sound is embedded into the tune.

Maybe Eroc will read this thread and discuss his thoughts on some modern gear. I'd actually really love that.

 

So would I

 

I have Ben Fold's "Rockin' The Suburbs" on LP and it's a ProTools production. I think it sounds fine but I'll go listen again with Jamie's post in mind.
I believe most of Peter Gabriel's new albums was one on ProTools as well.

Dan C

BTW, thanks for the excellent post Claus.

 

Well Claus, Bradley and the Yesman have spoken! Get on it.

Heck, why doesn't Eroc just visit us here every once in a while? He'd be a very welcomed guest. I'd think a man as articulate as he is (especially in his second language) would enjoy trading thoughts with some of the bums around here.

 

Most everything is. People are used to the sound by now. I get to hear the before and after so it's VERY apparent to me, especially when I'm the one recording it.

I also hear vocal tuners. Drives me nuts but most people are used to it.

 

Tchad Blake's masterful use of over compression that record kind of erased any sound other than the compression. The mix on the first song is most humbling. Absolute brilliance!!! Must have taken him a week (maybe longer) to do it.

 

Vocal tuners shouldn't even be used. Many people have just too many standards on recordings. BTW Jamie, one digital recording that sounds excellent is Amy Grant's "Lead Me On" album from 1988 on Myrrh/Word (for the Christian bookstore market) and A&M (for the mainstream market) which I had on cassette and does have many of Amy's best recordings overall, I will eventually get it on CD or used LP. An excellent CCM pop album that should be used as a blueprint of how good all digital recordings and mixes can sound like. I highly recommend the album. Jimmy Webb wrote "If These Walls Can Speak," Janis Ian co-wrote What About The Love, and Brown Bannister (her longtime producer) did a great job producing the album as usual with Amy. It has long been acclaimed by CCM fans and critics alike as one of her best albums and I agree, the album is excellent.

 

I LOVE that song. Have the original version on Glen Campbell's Light Years album. Heard Shawn Colvin do it live one time. Love the guitar vocal version on her Cover Girl album.

Have Jimmy Webb's Ten Easy Pieces but don't like what he did to the song.

I even have it on a Tom Wopat album. Hated it though.

 

You'll like how Amy did the song and everything else on the album including the songs she co-wrote on that album.

 

I know Amy's version very well. My girlfriend in High School had that album. Played it all the time.