Dolby 360 NR

Hi,

I bought an old Dolby 360 Noise Reduction system with a CAT 22 card.
It seems to be good to use for compression on vocals.
Can someone pse point me to some manuals or specs ?

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Many thanks

> It seems to be good to use for compression on vocals.

I doubt it. Dolby A is a brutal multi-band compression/expansion system. While the milder Dolby B is sometimes useful for bumping-up treble in tapes to be played in the car, or emergency use for killing hiss on crummy sources, I doubt a single-ended Dolby A processing is good for anything.

In the intended use "that you've heard on about a million rock and roll records", you encode going to tape and decode coming off tape. The result is "nearly nothing", except tape hiss is greatly reduced. So it would be better to say you DIDN'T hear it on a million recordings.

But hey. I never had a Dolby A and never listened to un-decoded Dolby A signal. Maybe it will help tame a wild singer.

I found this on the first page of Google Dolby 360 Noise Reduction CAT 22:

http://www.audionet.cc/Simulating_Dolby_A_with_EQexpander-7174433-1307-a.html

The referenced 363 manual has moved to:
http://dolby.com/assets/pdf/tech_library/151_363_8.Manual.pdf

it compresses just the high end...all of Bono's vocal tracks on every U2 album from the very first were recorded in encode and no decode..Lots of people have been doing this for many years..Mutt Lange's back-up vocals on all the Def Leppard stuff...the units were modified though...I have two of these units

Yes,

And a lot of those mid-eighties smooth-sounding female backing vocals were put through an encode-only Dolby (Dobly! :wink: ) A

I'm sure I had a link to the 360 or 363 manual...let me root...

Mark

Hi,

Thanks guys for the positive feedback.Let it come.

Much appreciated :grin:

Greets

The 360 is a 361 without the machine-triggered switching capability. Last year I installed about 100 361's -They are all transformer coupled and discrete. They take a lot of calibration for seamless encode/decode and you need the Dolby jig. They distort more acceptably than ALL of the later variants, which got Dolby a bad rap for clipping before the tape would give out.

The Bono thing is actually not entirely true I suspect, having listened to the early U2 stuff and haveing done the "encode-only" trick myself a few times. I think that some of the stuff has it, but it's inaccurate to say that all of the stuff did.

For some less-cool comparison, I think that most of the David Coverdale vocals in the 1980's had a similar effect. I also used it on some of Ian Gillan's vocals on his first solo album.

You'll still need a copmpressor, and the compressor will have to be before the dolby in the chain, otherwise the wandering vocal level will cause the dolby to brighten some syllables more than others. -Basically a strong compression will even things out a it, then the Dolby brightens up the tails. -Look out for clothing noise though... the Dolby will go hunting for smal noises to brighten in between lines!!!

Keith

Dolbys huh? I never got on with brightening vocals this way. However you may not know the old Lawrence Horn/Motown trick to brighten a vocal. Feed the vocal channel to a gentle compressor via an insert, brighten a little as per usual, and use this channel's auxes to feed any fx you require. meentime, take a seperate feed from the tape machine(or Protools), and feed to another channel. Comprees the FeJeseus out of this channel with a really "sucky" compressor with a very fast attack/release. I like my Pye's or BBC/Neves for this. Brighten the hell out of this channel, and gently increase the level of this channel til the vocal shines. hey presto! really bright clear diction without horrible sibillence artifacts! And you don't need to over-compress the vocal or ride it to hell to make it sit in the track. This also works brilliently with bass or gtr, only you boost much lower frequenciesw on the "dirty" channel. Be sure to check the phase between the two tracks. This DOESN't work in the digital domaign. too much phasing going on! You will need an analog console

Enjoy!

Andy P

[quote author="strangeandbouncy"]without horrible sibillence artifacts[/quote]
...which is the beauty of the Dolby method... since the HF is upwardly compressed (i.e. the quiet bits are turned up -to a defined limit, 10dB in this case- but the loud parts are not, as opposed to downwardly compressed, where things can be turned down a lot) then there is brightening, but only the quiet bits.

Anyhow, can the 360/361 replace a compressor or be used in place of a compressor? -No, you'll be very disappointed if you want compression and use this! -It's an occasionally useful tool in conjunction with a good compressor though.

Keith

Is most of this aimed at those that still use tape decks ?

If so there are a couple of plugs that may let you do a HF expansion on soft signals through to comp on the loud stuff.

This might help those of DAW to get a similar effect.

Can't help but think this will only complicate and confuse people with simple set-ups.
Great for those that do have the works.

Hi Kev,

As far as I know,this has nothing to do with tape stuff,because the box is only used in encode mode.
I don't understand why you're saying this would "confuse"people with simple set-ups .
Anyway,if that should be the problem,they could also use soft plugs like channel strips,eq's or reverbs.

Greets