Beepster
I would definitely prefer hardware solutions to get my "lo-fi" stain on things but I don't have the money, room or patience for much of that. I could probably get better results recording everything through my old Mackie console but I don't think it would have the same effect as the pres and consoles being discussed here. Next big round of actual tracking I do I will likely be doing just that but then what of my soft synths and stuff? I'm certainly not going to route out and back in again (I tried this on my old set up and... well that did not work very well, lol).
I guess it depends on the type of music I'm doing too. Like if I'm doing some kind of dance groove or industrial synthy stuff I'd go for the ultra clarity and leave the CEs out of it. If I'm mixing my old punk/metal bands... well then that's where the "haze" starts becoming appealing to me (and likely the other band members and/or listeners). One of my favorite old bands was the Dead Kennedies. Their earlier work was recorded HORRENDOUSLY but there is just something about the feel of those albums that's just awesome to me. Once they started dumping more money into production I lost interest. Too cold sounding. Or look at Iggy Pop's Raw Power... Raw indeed. Old rock/blues recordings from the sixties. Love that sound.
I totally get what you guys are saying that after chasing the clarity dragon for so many years that after you finally get him by the tail you don't understand wanting to let go. I don't have that because I've mainly been a listener and a live player so the grit on the recordings and the overloud and distorted sound coming out of subpar club boards is what I'm used to and like. Add to that I just really don't listen to or like much modern music. I mean there are some great metal bands that I dig but the kick being reduced to a little "click", the solos sounding like they came out of a some kind of tone generator, everything completely isolated, EQd and squashed so there's no interaction of the instruments and don't even get me started on the vocals (those are vocals... lol). Now not every band is doing this. The stuff I've heard from Nile seems to avoid all that crap while still sounding ultra clear. Not sure who produced that stuff but he earned his money. Another band that has taken advantage of the newer clarity available without losing the warmth is Slayer (RIP Jeff).
It's that raw edge/warmth I'm after. The saturation plug option that was mentioned is something I've been using even back on Nuendo but those plugs only seem to go so far without crapping out like the signal is being ripped apart. On one of the Groove3 vids about production the guy is running things through the fancy big studio pre amps and he did an example of "smashing" the pre on some signals and it was the same kind of effect and totally undesirable (which he pointed out). So once that limit is hit on the saturation there isn't really anywhere else to go. The CA2A was a great purchase for me because it gets some more of that warmth/edge. Don't ask me how but it does but again it starts being undesirable after a certain level.
So in comes the CE. If I'm having a hard time getting where I want with those other options I try the CE on the track and start again. It seems that the CE will respond to those sat knobs and compressors and give me more of what I want from them. I rarely even tough the drive knob on the CEs. I just let them sit or I'll even turn the drive knob down more often than not. Sometimes I'll mix and match the different CE types on different channels so it's like using a different board for different instruments. That's pretty cool. Then I'll try it out on some of the busses where I think it's sounding a little too sterile. Less often I'll put it on the master because there are some things that I just don't think benefit from the CE like my BFD drum samples.
As always definitely not arguing and I totally get what you guys mean by reintroducing something that you spent ages trying to get rid of but I think it's a neat tool if you don't have any hardware or want an older kind of sound. I've had complaints from band members and fans about some of my earlier works (before Sonar) that it was just too clean and polished sounding. Gutter punks and pit monsters, as with many other things in their lives, seem to prefer a thin layer of grime and grit on their music. When I'm in that headspace I tend to agree.
Just some morning blathering to start the day but that's why I like having them around over not having them at all. I doubt I'll use them on the jazz stuff I intend to put together soon but they do serve me well in certain situations. Cheers.
Who do you think you are with that post, me?! LOL!! Good stuff beeps as usual. There's no arguing about any of it really. If something works for a person, they use it. The next plugin that comes out should be called the "you can hear what I hear" plug. This way, I can hear all the stuff people hear that I can't, and then they can use the DD preset that allows them to hear what I hear...as well as what I do NOT hear. :)
See now, the way you are using the CE's...to me, it's just another slug in the signal path. I personally cannot hear one bit of difference unless I turn up a gain knob on those. Don't get me wrong, in times when I need a little of that sizzle they add, I go for them. A band needed a bass with a bit of drive on it...we used the Sonar CE for it and it was awesome. Just a bit of grit. For the modern type stuff, yeah it's good to have.
But to me, it's not a CE...it should be called "The Sizzler" because that's all I hear. If I recorded your guitar tone through your amp with a mic and ran it to tape, you'd hear a different compression/saturation thing going on. If we ran your sound through a tube pre or a pre that was made for smashing a bit, you'd hear that the drive you get from that is a completely different animal.
The good drive you get from tape and pre-amps does not sound like digital clipping. It softens the highs and gives you meat in all the right areas. It's not even sizzle...I like to call it "goirth" as I say here in NJ (real word is girth of course lol) as it rounds things out and doesn't even give you a hint of what I would call sizzle or even distortion. Tube pre's and tape saturate and compress a bit. CE's do not which is why this is not something I'd want to use on every track and bus. I actually like the Sonar versions better than Waves because the Sonar versions don't give you too much drive. But Waves wins on the other side for the channels they give you per instance. Neither are really of any use to me other than specialty situations.
If warmth is what you're after, you have two choices. You invest in tube pre's or you start compressing a bit more and low passing further. That's all warmth is....a lack of piercing high end. Can we not achieve this with any good eq? I think we can...and we have. Start low passing all the way down to 5k and see how things warm up. then increase to 7 k and listen to the difference...than 9k. It's amazing how we can warm things up just by low passing the right freqs. You don't need a tube pre unless you are after the saturated, slightly compressed sound that it gives you. Example....Angus Young's guitar sound....that's not distortion, that's saturation and output tubes glowing due to volume. That is the sort of sound you get from smashing a pre. You'll get pregnant and make millions of dollars as the first man to poo out a kid before a CE will do that. LOL!
At the end of the day brother, I sometimes sound like I have all the answers when in reality, I really do not. I'm not the be all end all of engineers....but I'll tell you something, I hear quite a lot of crap being produced today and many of our Sonar users are blowing top notch engineers and producers into the dust. Yeah, some of the pro guys have more consistency on some of their instruments, but if we had million dollar facilities instead of bed room studios, (or at least properly set up bedrooms) we'd obliterate those guys. Their new techniques haven't shown me anything other than we are going backwards production wise by at least 75% and just about everything is overkill.
It doesn't even pay to have a nice REAL stereo system anymore because people gear everything towards ear buds. The loudness wars suck....trying to resurrect old analog gear in the digital age sucks...trying to sell saturation when tube modeling is still pretty far off sucks, hype that these pieces of software make things easier sucks because engineers are not learning, are not bettering themselves and are relying on presets.....everything is a no no today when you show forth a little true talent. You just have to sound like everyone else to be accepted it seems.
Artistic creativity has to sound weird and well, pretty terrible for people to like it where talented people that actually play will have a hard time even being accepted as art. If that's how the industry wishes to be, so be it. I sure will not join the ranks and am perfectly happy just the way I am. Change for the better is acceptable. Change for the sake of hype or for our new word "unique" (which seems to have replaced "great" in the 2000's) is BS to me. Record good sounds, mix them, compress and pan them, use a few special effects, move on. Keep it simple unless you are going for something extreme where it's needed. Haven't you heard enough music that sounds like it was created by robots? Thank the evolution of software for that and how it's been marketed. However, and this is the purpose of the thread....the PC has indeed made a difference for the better and is easier to use in a good way. It's old school but new. Back in the day, you twisted a few knobs on your console and you moved on. I think just about everyone likes that type of work ethic unless you need a super tight eq for special things or something like a Sonitus or a Roger Nichols custom eq. Whatever works. :)
-Danny