simonsez
Well-known member
Is it normal practices to saturated the mix bus, especially when mixing rock music?
Regards,
Simon
Regards,
Simon
craigmorris74 said:So those great sounding Faces and Rod Stewart records don't have tape saturation?
+1SSLtech said:John, this gets my goat a little...
People don't actually mean 'saturation'... what they mean is 'driving it hard'... -And there are as many different answers as there are engineers.
BS is not a recent development. I escaped from the Hifi business decades ago because it was even worse. The thing I like about live SR is how hard it is to BS thousands of people at the same time... you must satisfy the laws of physics to make good big sound.In the mid-1980s I was making a living mixing rock music on SSL E-series boards (the G-series evolution was still a few years in the future) and nobody felt the need to push the level until the meters were 'reading the maker's name'...
But fast forward to nowadays, and I hear instructors in school telling kids that 'the way to get that 1980's rock sound is to mix on an SSL and push it HARD...
There's an awful lot of bullsh*t being spouted, and many of the people who talk it simply do not have the experience to judge... but of course, "on the internet nobody can hear you mix a band", and it's much harder to judge the actual ABILITY (or knowledge, or wisdom) of someone who tells you how it was.
The dramatic cost reductions in recording gear in the '70s-'80s gave many more individuals access to the basic equipment. Since they didn't magically come with a full instruction set for how to make good recordings, vendors popped up to sell them magic boxes to punch up their sound.Truth be told, until the 1990s, I simply didn't use outboard preamps. -Neither did any of my colleagues. We didn't 'bake' the stereo buss either. Nor did we agonize over what compressor to use. -We either used what was in the rack or we moved the mic, or got the singer to help out with decent technique...
This is especially ironic... the attraction to legacy gear because of some euphonious distortion must have the original design engineers spinning in their graves at 78 rpm... They worked very hard to make their paths as linear as they could.And we didn't go looking for 'that analog sound' either. -Matter of fact, we didn't want the tape machine to give us ANY sound... we wanted it to act like a short piece of straight wire, with 'storage'.
The story on the API as related to me by a guy who claimed to know, was that their use of discrete circuitry and higher voltage rails gave them more bus headroom, so therefore less clipping for a given output level. In practice the extra supply only buys them a few dB. But the lesson I draw from this one old school observer is that they were pursuing a clean unclipped sound, not "saturation". Thats what the tape machines were for.But that's not how the internet wisdom says it was, oh no. -Apparently you can't make a good sounding record without an armory of mic preamps... a panoply of compressors, an arsenal of equalizers, and analog tape -or some manner of simulator- is pretty much essential, because nobody wants it to come out sounding like it went in...
...and apparently, people always used to 'push the bus' until it glowed.
Can't say I've ever mixed on an API, although I've recorded some particularly enjoyable albums by some extremely well known acts on them. -I never felt the need to push anything. Not even the mic pres. -And I always thought that people who 'drove' SSL buses 'hard' were idiots. -I don't hear anything better compared to running them at sensible levels.
Some people will disagree with me. -Possibly quite a few.
Whether they -or I- actually know what we're talking about, I'll leave for the reader to decide.
But from my viewpoint, the idea would be laughable, if it weren't depressing that so many people seem to think it necessary.
To address the original question: "Is it normal practice....?" -For some people yes. -But I think they're mainly idiots.
JohnRoberts said:The story on the API as related to me by a guy who claimed to know, was that their use of discrete circuitry and higher voltage rails gave them more bus headroom, so therefore less clipping for a given output level. In practice the extra supply only buys them a few dB. But the lesson I draw from this one old school observer is that they were pursuing a clean unclipped sound, not "saturation". Thats what the tape machines were for.
API's run on 16V rails. The additional headroom is most likely due to the use of step up output transformers which allow additional voltage swing over what the 16V rails are capable of.
The SSL runs on 18V or 20V rails (Keith would know for sure) with no transformers on the outputs.
Regards,
Mark
Biasrocks said:JohnRoberts said:The story on the API as related to me by a guy who claimed to know, was that their use of discrete circuitry and higher voltage rails gave them more bus headroom, so therefore less clipping for a given output level. In practice the extra supply only buys them a few dB. But the lesson I draw from this one old school observer is that they were pursuing a clean unclipped sound, not "saturation". Thats what the tape machines were for.
API's run on 16V rails. The additional headroom is most likely due to the use of step up output transformers which allow additional voltage swing over what the 16V rails are capable of.
The SSL runs on 18V or 20V rails (Keith would know for sure) with no transformers on the outputs.
Regards,
Mark
JohnRoberts said:Which API console are you talking about..? I recall when the original API console company was being sold, and I was invited down there (somewhere in VA) as a consultant for the group considering buying them. IIRC this was back when Paul Wolff was still a tech there and Sol Walker was the lead engineer (Blackmer had already left years earlier). I vaguely recall something like +/-40V rails, but this was a very long time ago and I did not get to take away actual schematics.
12afael said:I just remember the Metallica´s death magnetic mix...
Perhaps it was 40vp-p the guy who told me was a marketing wonk... and I was not shown schematics when I was there kicking tires back in the early '80s.Biasrocks said:JohnRoberts said:Which API console are you talking about..? I recall when the original API console company was being sold, and I was invited down there (somewhere in VA) as a consultant for the group considering buying them. IIRC this was back when Paul Wolff was still a tech there and Sol Walker was the lead engineer (Blackmer had already left years earlier). I vaguely recall something like +/-40V rails, but this was a very long time ago and I did not get to take away actual schematics.
As far as I know John, all API consoles run on +/-16V's.
The 2520 opamps are speced to +/-20V's, so maybe that's where the 40V spec comes from?
Right, I recall Paul showing me early prototype SMD opamps at an AES show back in late '80s (? maybe early '90s). Well after he acquired the company and was bringing it back from the edge.http://danalexanderaudio.com/ApiInfo/api2520_01.jpg
And yes, the 2520 is mostly SMD parts now, sadly they don't sound anything like their predecessors but that's why we've got a bunch of great alternatives now.
To the original question,
I find when you push a console you can sometimes gain benefits.
It depends on the console, the mix and what you're going for. My Ward Beck console would sound great when pushed, but there was a limit where it started to sound smaller.
Is it responsible for the sound of any decade of music, not likely.
Perhaps this decade, mostly because of the sheep factor.
Regards,
Mark
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