does "console emulato" emulate crosstalk?

I have not read anything about it emulating crosstalk.

Interesting question though I don't see how it could as cross talk is a physical phenominom caused by electric circuitry and has always been undesirable. Though I'm speaking out of sheer ignorance of the CE plug I do know engineers have spent decades and mega $$$ trying to get rid of it... and now you want it back?
 
 
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John

soens


Interesting question though I don't see how it could as cross talk is a physical phenominom caused by electric circuitry and has always been undesirable. Though I'm speaking out of sheer ignorance of the CE plug I do know engineers have spent decades and mega $$$ trying to get rid of it... and now you want it back?


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I am happy with digital yet for some unknown reason people want all the distortion and noise of analog. I'm not sure I will ever understand that. 

Now we have people paying big bucks for analog sounding plugins. So your point is very well taken indeed. 

Funny you mentioned this, John. I posted something on another forum that's pretty close to what you're talking about here when someone made a comment about "vintage gear". Here's what I said:
 
I never quite got the whole vintage thing. You set up a sound....you record it....it's either good or it isn't. This whole "vintage" thing is just a darkness of sorts with saturation really. I think a lot of the problem is people give digital a bad name when in reality, analog was assisting them in getting better tones. Digital is unforgiving. If you don't pay attention to what you're recording, you fail. To me, digital is so much easier, I don't have a problem doing a vintage sound if I need to. It starts with the print, ya know?

You want vintage tones, you use vintage gear for your instruments. Gimme a an old Fender amp and a strat or tele and I'll give you vintage without any plugs. You have to know what the sound of "vintage" is before you attempt to replicate it. Want vintage drums in a room, you mic up a set of Gretsch or old Ludwigs using more room, less compression, 0 limiting and no specials on any of the drums. Don't layer instruments...leave things big, open, breathy and with room in between. Don't use the pricey mics that were made for "today's times" that make things so clean and clear.

That's all vintage is to me. Breathing room where the instruments can sing and be themselves without synthetic artifacts or insane triple tracking/hybridding or exciters. Vintage is raw, real instrument recording at its best to where you take the time to get it right or you don't print it. It can't be duplicated with a sim like it can the real thing. I just have never needed outboard gear to get that sound other than the outboard gear musicians use to cop their tones. The key is "copping their tones" if they are indeed "vintage."
 
Compare an old classic rock album to what we have today. Besides loudness in the modern album, what do you hear? More sub lows...more high end sizzle. Take away the subs below 45-50 Hz on a modern recording, take away the excessive tracking, remove 12 k and above just right, increase mids and instant vintage tone. Sure, you may want to use some sort of saturator or tape sim if you need to, but honest, this whole "vintage" thing in my opinion is more hype and a lack of understanding really.
 
I'm like you, John. Happy right where I am. However, if someone goes on an analog crusade and it works for them, it's all good. I'll never go back and don't miss any of it. But when I get a band in here that wants that sound, I've never had a problem giving it to them. It's all in the tracking anyway and the players of course. :)
 
-Danny

This is from the Console Emulation documentation:

The Console Emulator module is based on the following principles:

• Input transformer emulation, which introduces hysteresis and frequency dependent saturation. 
• Frequency response shaping of the channel. 
• Bias drift of the active stages. 
• Component tolerance simulation by slightly changing the filter's values in the different channels. 
• Saturation of the mix bus. 
• Crosstalk on stereo buses. 

I am glad you guys are bringing up the analog vs digital thing. When I used to record in analog, I did whatever I could to get rid of the effects from the above list of "features". I guess digital made it sound too good lol 

soens

• Crosstalk on stereo buses. 

 
As I said. I speak from sheer ignorance... How might one meaasure this?
 
 
Steve

As do I Steve with the sheer ignorance.....why on earth would anyone even want crosstalk in a mix? That to me...is so going backwards. They can call it analog, vintage or whatever else they choose to call it. I've tried my entire life for clean, clear mixes without these artifacts. For some odd reason, people are sold on that stuff sounding better. I have no quams with that if that's a person's opinion. However, I'll surely never buy into it. To me man, every album I've heard that was recorded analog TODAY has sounded absolutely horrible and actually picked up more of those digital artifacts we that are ITB actually hate. Foo Fighters last attempt is a perfect example of horrible in my opinion. If that's analog, keep me away from it. LOL!

You can easily measure the crosstalk. Have a left or right panned channel feed a bus with the emu on it, and pan or measure only the opposite side. If there is activity there, then there is crosstalk. 

Having said that, this is not the end all be all of getting a nice sounding, realistic reacting console emulation. As I said in the other threads, I do not find these to be console emulators but more like digital saturators. What confirmed this for me is not just the sound in a couple of A/B's but also the contradictions in how they are to be used. For me, if they were truly developed to emulate consoles, we wouldn't be using them last in the chain as it has been established. If they are modelling input distortions and frequency responses for example, they should be first! Then they chalked this up to the fact the emu is performing summing. But summing doesn't happen in the channel! That would have been taken care of in the bus. 

Because of the sound, response, and the utter contradiction in use, I do not deem these as console emulations. But, again as I said, they can still be useful as saturators with the right use. 

It's no different in the photography field. Expensive plugins to add "grain" to high resolution digital images. Maybe it's because things are too clear with digital, so it doesn't sound/look the way we imagined it would.

Regards,
Dan

lol... guess I should have read the thread.

So they've flip flopped on the "cumulative" things? 'Cause I'm pretty sure they said in the webinar that to get it to truly create the console effect it should be on all the tracks. Either way... just another goodie to play with and really all that matters to me is it alters the sound in a positive way. 

I really didn't think it would do much for me but I'm not a fan of the sterile, super clear digital sound. I like a bit of hair on my music. The N-Type made my track sound a little more like a really well produced 80's thrash tune which is kind of what I'm going for with this tune. Maybe that makes me a hipster. ;-p

You can easily measure the crosstalk. Have a left or right panned channel feed a bus with the emu on it, and pan or measure only the opposite side. If there is activity there, then there is crosstalk.

 
A couple of weeks ago I did just as Bob(Transcending Music) suggested.  I just piped either white or maybe it was pink noise, can't remember which, through the channel/bus CE's and observed the spectrum via Voxengo's Span.
 
I can verify that there is crosstalk evident when analyzing the CE bus modules.
 
This also allowed me to check out the frequency response of each of the three console modes.
 
The boost/cut is cumulative as I found out by stacking multiple modules on the same track.

pwal


fwiw, is it per-instance crosstalk, or is it doing cross-instance-talk?

I only tested for per-instance crosstalk so don't know about cross-instance...
 
I believe I saved the test setup as a project so when I get a chance I'll fire it up and see what else I discover.