Okay, I'm Mixed Up in Mixing

[Scorpion8]

Actually, didn't want this forum to be barren, and wanted to make the first post.

But while I'm here, a friend (Emo-Fan) turned me on to a tape recording method for his reel-to-reel that involves a multi-channel mixer, and wanted to see what the collective thought was.

If I recall, it was to insert the mixer between source and deck in 2-channels. Pan the left channel all the way left, and the right channel all the way right. Then he runs the source into the mixer and drops the mixer level (say -2dB) and raises the recording deck level by the same (+2dB). Supposedly it drops the noise floor way down almost like you were using dbx. I may have it backwards, but he swears by it. Of course, he's on vacation right now, so I'll ping him when he gets back.

Hopefully he can chime in.

[Jay Pemberton]

You mean, say, he's dubbing from a CD or something else, to a reel deck, by running the source through a mixer, then just doing this oddball level offset going into the deck? Unless the mixer is needed for EQ or adding reverb or something else there's no point in running the source through the mixer to feed the tape machine.

That level offset won't do any good as noise reduction goes, I'm afraid.

[Scorpion8]

I'll have to let Emo-Fan explain it once he checks back in. I really just didn't like this empty forum and I wanted to have the first post somewhere ....

[Emo-Fan]

Scorpion8 is a hellava guy, but he's been listening to LOVE DRIVE too much--it softened his cerebellum. He needs a little BRAIN SALAD SURGERY. Just kiddin'...The point, though to mixing my music I describe below. It's for
the front-to-back imaging that older recordings like RCA Victor Living Stereo recordings give, rather than the ho-hum left-to-right imaging that CD is limited to.
I record my music through the lines onto DVD (S/N ratio is over 100 dB and it's 24/96, so the rez is higher than what's being recorded). Then I take the DVD recording and run it directly into the TEAC (channels 1 and 3) and simultaneously run two mikes into the mixer and the mixer goes directly into the TEAC (channels 2 and 4). Then I record the whole thing onto the TEAC simultaneously. During the mixdown into stereo, I can boost or attenuate (depending on whatever sound better) any of the four channels. The mikes lend a live feel from the available room acoustics. That's the point--getting rid of that hard, dry digital sound. It can also be accomplished in the digital domain with resonance and cutoff frequency parameter tweaks, but, as we know, analogue is better! I got the idea from those Living Stereo recordings on SACD. The front-to-back imaging of a full symphony orchestra is stunningly there and noticably lacking on ordinary CD. A tape moving at 15 ips
is higher rez than even SACD (so I'm told), so my own music comes to life.

The S/N stuff I was talking about involves calibrating the meters on the mixer and the VU meters on the tape deck to zero, then dropping the mixer down 6 dB. Now the VU meters on the tape deck just dropped 6 dB, so you push them back up to zero. Then you record. (And your meters don't jump all the way to the pegs where you risk damaging them.) That way, you can saturate the tape without overloading it and get the best S/N that the machine has to offer. (6 dB improvement in this case, which is pretty much what dbx does but without the added dynamic range which is already pretty good anyway.) Of course, you can only do this with good tape (such as Quantegy 499). Use crappy tape and it'll over saturate and distort.

These two topics are completely different phenomena.

In short, as ELP say, ("Are you ready, Eddy?") "A bit of vibing is all it lacks." Thanks, Scorpion8 for bring me to this cool web site!

[Scorpion8]

Well, Emo-nerd speaketh in tongues to me. I get the part about meter calibration to push the tape higher, but the miking and mixing part is like a foggy cloud of confurbnefustacles.

Ya wanna put that in plain English please, now that you're back from vacation to the beach and can put your eyeballs back in your head.

[kevinkr]

From an engineering standpoint externally attenuating the signal and then gaining it up to compensate for the loss in level actually results in a raised noise floor. Perhaps the slightly increased noise that results gives an increased sense of spaciousness. Try measuring the noise floor of this setup with an Audio Precision and you will see what I mean.

[Emo-Fan]

You're right, of course, Kevinkr. It did indeed raise the noise floor, but, using the aforementioned technique with the mixer's meters vis-a-vis the VU meters on the r2r lowered anywhere from 6 to 9 dB (depending on the tape quality) it's worth the trade-off. As I just told Scorpion8, I mastered my material down to CD and much of the spaciousness is noticeably missing. But the alternative is straight digital, yielding a hiss-free but hard, dry sound. Yuck.

Entirely in the digital domain, it is possible to tweak the cutoff frequency on my synth parameters (frequency domain) and the resonance (time domain) and get essentially the same results, but again, lacking the jazz nightclub, analogue, you-are-there warmth. Hammond organ samples benefited more than I would have thought (too much vibrato at higher volume levels makes a lot of mud, though); digital pianos, too, don't sound like they're on top of the other instruments. They just hang in the air like they're supposed to.

I hate tape hiss, but I also hate noise reduction and I compared some of my digital imstruments like trumpet solos (where hiss would really be evident) to CD recordings of real trumpets and, without the above mixing arrangement in this discussion, r2r even without noise reduction is as quiet as or quieter than even some exceptional sounding CDs!

You're right about the noise floor, though. Thanks for the reply!

[kevinkr]

It's an interesting subject.. I'm slowly collecting the bits and pieces to set up a home studio, but I am not a musician - plan is to "lure" musician friends to record at my place.. And I will be transferring analog to digital for demo cds - so all of this is of great interest to me.

This is a great place to talk about tape, and I'm glad I joined a few days ago..*reelspin**reelspin*

[Emo-Fan]

On the subject of recording without noise reduction...(tangentially related to this thread)

A friend who used to be in a band said that he'd record using his mixer with the bass part of the equalizer turned down, say 12 dB, allowing him to record at higher volume levels. (It's the bass that moves those meters into the red fairly quickly.) Then, on playback, he'd restore the equalization in the bass by the same amount. I'm thinking that this procedure leads to other EQ problems and I therefore have some reservations about it. Any thoughts?