Danny Danzi

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!

I think there is a lot of myth involved with analog. I recall people extolling the beauty of the sound from vinyl records. What I know about vinyl is that a stereo recording done and placed on vinyl had tons of crosstalk. Not to mention wow and flutter. And lets not forget the wonderful sound of dust. 

I have a good turntable with high end components. Yet the day CDs came out I couldn't be happier. Why, a CD is not going to go bad with playback. A vinyl record will. What some us did was record to tape and play that and keep the record as pristine as possible. Then came along the vinyl eating bacteria. Now you can't be sure that the carefully stored record will not be destroyed bugs.  

No question analog had a sound that digital doesn't and that is what I love about digital.

 

 

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. 

I do not deem these as console emulations. But, again as I said, they can still be useful as saturators with the right use.

 
+1! My thoughts exactly. At least they DO saturate in a good way. When I need saturation, that's what I'll reach for over anything else I have in plugin form.
 
-Danny

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

Not that this has anything to do with crosstalk but last night I decided to try out the console emu on the master bus of my track just to see if it did anything. I wasn't expecting much because from what I understand it's cumulative and should be on all the tracks in the project. However just putting it on the Master did actually have a pretty noticeable effect (might be because it's a lot of distorted guitars). I personally liked the N-Type (Neve emu I'm assuming). It just made everything... IDK... nicer sounding. Hard to describe. I guess smoother and warmer would be the best way to put it. I'm thinking I'm going to toss it on all the tracks before mixdown. Cheers.

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. 

To me console emulation is a much bigger perk than I thought when I first heard about it. It is now the favorite offering I enjoy from X2. 

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

thanks for the info chaps, and the always interesting discussion :)

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.