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Comment by dcwca | Hacker News Reader

One thing people fail to understand about consoles like this, or the Neve, is that they do produce a unique sound, but not for any technical reason. Yes, everything this machine can do can be done in a laptop. Sure there are small differences related to audio signal paths and headroom and distortion, but for the most part those can be simulated or ignored.

The big reason working with hardware like this produces unique results is more about the layout and workflow than the tech inside the machine. The workflow makes the sound. The lack of automation forces you to make choices. Forces your hand, literally. The sound is in the physical design.

Another example is the MPC sampler, which has a workflow that can be heard in hip hop music. Of course software samplers can do everything the MPC can do, and more, but you can hear the signature sound of someone working on an MPC.

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> The workflow makes the sound. The lack of automation forces you to make choices. Forces your hand, literally.

You raise an excellent point here. A full-blown DAW is practically without limits: hundreds of tracks, unlimited effects on every track, any signal chain is possible.

But making art is about working within constraints. Most of the best art derives from the constraints as much - or more - as the capabilities of the devices or instruments used.

However there is a technical reason why these devices do sound different, and that is that they all impart euphonic distortion. Bass sounds "bigger." Treble sounds "clearer." Mixed tracks "glue together." Vocals "pop out." A sense of "depth of field" may be imparted. Technically speaking this is all "distortion" of the original signal.

> However there is a technical reason why these devices do sound different, and that is that they all impart euphonic distortion. Bass sounds "bigger." Treble sounds "clearer." Mixed tracks "glue together." Vocals "pop out." A sense of "depth of field" may be imparted.

Digital advocates are quick to point out that all of those phenomena can be perfectly modelled in the box. We have convolution reverbs and tube amp models and emulation that can be scientifically proven to match the analog gear.

By point is, you _can_ do all that, but will you? You have a world of possibilities, and so the likelihood when working with a digital / software workflow is that you'll stick to the relative strengths of that setup.

Another thing to note about the hardware console interface is the nature of a classic design. Consoles like the Neve or SSL are familiar to engineers, they are instruments with a hand feel. A recording or mixing engineer can go into a studio and get similar results from similar gear. The listeners ear can pick up a je ne cest pas familiarity from it, what you call "good sound" in another comment, without quote knowing what they're hearing. The same way the Telecaster just "sounds good". It's not better, it's just familiar. Digital workstations are all different and don't achieve the same familiar sound.

> all of those phenomena can be perfectly modelled in the box

Nope.

How you gonna model the interaction between a microphone and the preamp load it's driving, and the compressor that's driving, and the EQ it's driving, and the nonlinear summing bus that's feeding, when all of these are interacting in a live signal chain, and all entering various forms of nonlinear behavior based on the age of components, their tolerances which vary from box to box, heat, etc? It might be theoretically possible, but past a certain point, to model these devices requires modeling physics at the materials level. In point of fact most digital "simulations" of these sorts of devices are not simulations at all, but approximations that impart similar EQ, dynamics, and harmonic distortion.

I'm a dev by trade, been doing audio for decades too. I used to believe this was all modellable too. I think there's a tendency for people who are strong in digital signal processing but naive to what these devices are really doing to the signal to be overconfident in our ability to simulate them in realtime.

You can definitely achieve a reasonable facsimile! But if you want the sound of this console then you're going to have to make one or buy one.

This is all true, but there's a point beyond which it stops being musically/artistically relevant.

I've probably been doing this stuff as long as you have, and I'm not actually sure where that point is any more.

I actually hate the sound of most of the Beatles albums. I think they sound crap by modern standards - tinny, rattly, clogged-up, mid-heavy mixes with no deep bass.

Put them up against a modern trance single mixed ITB and the latter sounds huge, dynamic, cinematic, and infinitely more polished.

Which is better? It depends...

The Pink Floyd albums hit a sweet spot by being musically ground breaking while also being the first examples of hifi multitrack recording in its modern form.

Now I tend to think ITB is fine for electronica and dance, because sometimes you want polish and a slightly unreal shine. But for rock, country and maybe even hiphop the older hardware is going to give you more character, bite, and depth.

Ultimately they're just colours you can use. If you have talent, it doesn't matter if you mix ITB or not.

If you don't, it doesn't matter either.

> I actually hate the sound of most of the Beatles albums. I think they sound crap by modern standards - tinny, rattly, clogged-up, mid-heavy mixes with no deep bass.

Of course the whole point of bands like the Beatles was that they stood "engineering" on its head, as it was understood at the time (actual scientists wearing actual lab coats attempting to capture sound as accurately as possible).

EMI engineers making classical records were trying to create photographic style recordings. The early Beatles records sound, mostly, like you're standing at the Cavern club in front of a late-1950s sound reinforcement system. Photographic.

The Beatles helped to change the idea of making "photographic" records into making records like painting on canvas. Together with the other influential artists of the time (Beach Boys, Pink Floyd, Mike Oldfield, etc) they transformed modern music.

When yo

>Put them up against a modern trance single mixed ITB and the latter sounds huge, dynamic, cinematic, and infinitely more polished.

>Which is better? It depends...

I think you make my point here.

If I were making a Crystal Method record, of course I would use a different signal chain that if I were making a Dawes record.

That's the whole point.

> I actually hate the sound of most of the Beatles albums.

I agree, and I found the 2009 re-releases to be incredibly disappointing given that they didn't even do the most basic repair work on the most obvious glitches and errors. They were marketed as some major improvement, but in reality were a new remastering only. Removing half of a dog turd from my cup of coffee doesn't improve the coffee.

What did you think of the 2015 stereo mixes? (Only on the 2015 re-re-release of "1", unfortunately. If they released a complete box set of new mixes redone in the same fashion, I'd be first in line. And I'm not even a big Beatles fan.)

    Technically speaking this is all "distortion" of the original signal.

Not really - if it was "distortion" you could MEASURE it with an oscilloscope. There's another, less polite, word for most of those comparisons.

If you want to measure it, an oscilloscope is the wrong tool.

You can see it - very clearly - using a lab-quality audio signal analyser from a company like Audio Precision.

https://www.ap.com/

And a popular way to model it is with a DSP technique called a Volterra series.

You may want to consider that impolite words are also used about people who consider themselves very knowledgeable about domains where they show no evidence of understanding the fundamentals.

I don't believe it's any of those things. Though, certainly the ergonomics of a traditional studio, and the equipment therein, works best for engineers who learned in those environments and using those tools. Those engineers happen to be the most experienced engineers working, so they are probably, on average, better than most younger engineers with much less experience.

However, the reason some of the classic records sound amazing today is because they cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to make, in a time when hundreds of thousands of dollars was a lot of money. This is reflected in the rooms where they recorded. The quality of the studio itself is every bit as important, maybe even more important, than the equipment within it.

When recording live musicians, a bad room literally cannot be overcome with good equipment. And, thus, simulating a great room with equipment is harder than simulating a great console, or a great EQ, or a great compressor. Digitally removing the room "badness" and putting in "goodness" isn't something that people have even really tried.

Records made at Abbey Road studios sounded great because the room sounded great, the microphones sounded great, the board sounded great, the EQs and compressors sounded great, and, the musicians sounded great playing through their great sounding instruments. They had everything working in their favor, and that moment of everything coming together nicely was captured by excellent engineers.

So...the reason most records don't sound as good as Dark Side of the Moon is not merely that there aren't a lot of consoles comparable to this one. You could probably find something that would be a sufficient substitute (and maybe even a laptop with a very good AD/DA could substitute for much of the equipment in a studio). But, any mediocre piece in the chain, starting with the musicians and the room they're playing in, will make a mediocre recording.

Pink Floyd, a very talented bunch of musicians and songwriters, had a massive budget, a truly inspired bunch of songs, and a lucky bunch of connections in the industry to get them the best people and the best gear all in the best studio in the world, and the result is a classic that sounds better (by some definition of "better") than 95+% of big budget records even made today. There have been similarly high quality recordings made, but it's rare...and I don't think a specific set of equipment can do it (after all, lots of other records were recorded in the very same studio and didn't sound that amazing). A lot of stuff has to come together for it to work out that way.

A great studio or alternatively a great bathroom :)

Jim Morrison’s Bathroom Vocals On “LA Woman” At The Doors Workshop

http://www.feelnumb.com/2009/07/03/jim-morrisons-bathroom-vo...

While I like DIY stories a lot, I will mention that LA Woman has never once been mentioned as a recording of comparable quality to Dark Side of the Moon.

There have been some great records made in weird places, including some of my favorites. The Band recorded Songs From Big Pink in a big old pink house in Woodstock, NY. Springsteen's Nebraska was a super cheap home recording; effectively a demo. The Rolling Stones Exile on Main Street was recorded in a mansion in France. Radiohead recorded OK Computer in an old house (and that's a great sounding record, though not as good as The Bends that preceded it).

Many of my very favorite records are 80s punk rock records, and nearly all were recorded in extremely suboptimal conditions (nearly all engineered by a guy named "Spot").

All that said, it's clear when a recording is of the caliber of Dark Side of the Moon and it's extremely rare. It doesn't mean we can't love less amazing recordings. Just that there is an artistry and science to audio recording, on top of the artistry of the music being recorded. And, it's usually a major undertaking to achieve something like DSOTM. The pantheon of god tier records, where literally everything came together in a near-perfect work, is pretty small. I'd probably include some of the following (for reference): Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, The Beatles' Abbey Road, Peter Gabriel's So, Bjork Post, Michael Jackson's Thriller, The Flaming Lips' The Soft Bulletin, Marvin Gaye's What's Going On, Steely Dan's Aja, Outkast's Speakerboxxx/The Love Below. There's more, of course, and it's debatable what qualifies...the more live instruments and musicians on the record, the harder it is to make it perfect, but all of those are worth a listen for their production qualities alone, IMHO.

Most impressive may be artists that make amazing sounding records with very limited resources. Bon Iver's For Emma, Forever Ago is perhaps the archetypal example of this. Recorded in a cabin by one dude with very limited equipment, but it sounds incredible and holds up very well to repeated listens.

I could ramble for days about production quality and my favorite records...

Not to be glib, but why not both? Are you a recording engineer and capable of speaking to the points he makes, or is your entire counter-argument "I don't believe that"?

"Are you a recording engineer and capable of speaking to the points he makes"

Well, yeah. I went to college for audio recording, and worked professionally in the field, in television and in recording studios, for several years. It's been a hobby of mine for most of my life, and I've always had a pretty competent home studio and I pay attention to the industry even today.

>"One thing people fail to understand about consoles like this, or the Neve, is that they do produce a unique sound, but not for any technical reason."

Isn't the EQ, preamps and compression I get a product of the design of that unit? How is that not a technical reason?

Why are there Neve plugins based on the classic 1073 EQs and Preamps if there is nothing technical about why a Neve sounds like a Neve?

If this was the case I could I just artificially constrain my workflow and get the same recording as I would from a Neve.

How are you going to artificially constrain your workflow in a way that resembles a massive mixing desk in the room?

I made concessions about the technical details you're asking about in my post, you chose not to quote that part.

I actually don't see any technical concession you made, in fact after the above quote you went on to say:

>"The big reason working with hardware like this produces unique results is more about the layout and workflow than the tech inside the machine."

That seems like a clear statement that you believe the technical details have very little to do with the sound.

Hmm, that "forcing your hand" to do something is a point i maybe have underestimated. I'll adjust my judgement, thank you for your answer!

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