I ended up figuring this problem out on my own.  (Although it’s one of those “workaround” fixes) But in my journeys on the Avid DUC, I hit the Pro Tools 8.0.3 release notes which includes bug fixes.  Now, being that we’re on Pro Tools 10 I’m a little late in figuring this out and quite frankly a bit upset that I didn’t know this 2 years ago.

In 8.0.3 there is a little feature at the bottom of the Options menu called “Edit/Tool Mode Keyboard Lock”.  I have been screaming for YEARS that you can’t lock the trim tool in place causing me to inadvertently time compress regions rather than trim them.  I’ve been on the verge of punching my LCD monitor many times on those LONG editing sessions.  I could never understand why Avid never added this feature.  I even went so far as to post it on Ideascale.  Well, they DID fix and…and a while ago too!

This is a happy day indeed!  No more wasted editing time!  HOORAY!!!!

While tearing down a session today I was listening to Throwing Copper by Live.  I got to thinking, “they don’t really write songs like this anymore”.  Which then lead to, “NO ONE writes songs like this anymore.” Live came up in the era of “alternative”.  Alternative USED to mean exactly what its name implies.  It was a break from the usual rock formula.  You had countless bands that were doing things no one had heard before.  The Pixies, Mudhoney, The Flaming Lips, The Melvins, and even groups like Soul Coughing, The Beastie Boys, and Cake were all breaking new musical ground.  It was ground that retained some of the standard rock ethos, but was utilizing totally new sounds, structures, dynamics, and textures.  A lot of those bands stayed true to their roots over time.  But some bands, like Live went from this…

http://www.last.fm/music/Live/_/The+Dam+at+Otter+Creek

To this….

http://www.last.fm/music/Live/Birds+Of+Pray/Heaven

It’s not necessarily their fault.  Music changes, times change, fans change, and tastes change.  In order for an artist to stay current they must adapt to the current climate, which alienates the old die hard fans.  But if they stick to their old base, sometimes they run out of songs too soon, don’t gain any new fans, and some fans say they’re tired washed up musicians doing the same old tunes.  It’s a lose, lose situation.

I would say that MOST artists that want to keep making money will change their style over time to keep up. And obviously, there will be a new crop of bands with a new style just waiting to be the next “thing”. Unfortunately, as time has progress, that “thing” keeps getting more and more pop, and consequently, more and more formulaic.

Am I just like every other person who thinks that THEIR generation’s music was the “good stuff”?

I don’t think so.
My favorite eras of music are from the 80′s,  90′s and some 70′s thrown in there.  Granted, there are bad types of music from all of those eras…disco, 80′s ballads, boy bands.  But that’s pretty much ANY era of music.

So, while listening to that Live song and winding up mic cable, I had this thought: “Pop Music has evolved so much in such a short span of time for the human race.”

So for me to say that those generations are “golden eras” isn’t too much of a stretch.  In the 80′s and 90′s  we had evolved past the point of technological brick walls and music that was too bubblegum to accurately express people’s troubles and emotions.  But we hadn’t yet gotten to the point of pitch corrected, timing manipulated, manufactured monstrosities.

It was a good time.

Granted you are free to disagree and I respect that!  But, one thing is for sure; we haven’t even scratched the surface of what music will be and what it will evolve into.  I only wish I could be alive to experience it, and I can only hope that the current trend of “melding” pop genres doesn’t make music implode on itself.  Well, scratch that.  I DO hope that happens!  We’re about due for a new music revolution.  The stagnant murky pool known as pop music has really only gone through two REALLY big explosions caused by, in my opinion, the Beatles in the 60s and Nirvana in the 90s.  Damn…I guess that means we’re still a decade away.

I’ll be waiting.

Yes, ANOTHER Neve 1073 clone shootout.  Just what you always wanted….

I FINALLY got my hands on a Golden Age Projects PRE-73 to compare with my Vintech 473!  Obviously it would be nice to have an actual 1073 to compare to, but hey…..I’m not made out of money here!   (but that may be coming later on down the road.  Stay tuned)

Now, just like with all of my shootouts, I’m not going to go into great detail about what I thought for two reasons.

#1 My opinion is really irrelevant.  The audio speaks for itself.  Download and listen.  I could go on for 3 pages about what I think, but that’s completely pointless.  A [clip of audio] is worth 1,000 words.

#2 I loath reviews and shootouts where the reviewer goes on about how “transparent, warm, airy, 3D, up front, smooth, detailed, etc” a piece of gear is.  That’s just a bunch of crap that most reviewers put on the page to make minute differences seem big; or a $10,000 piece of gear SEEM like it’s worth every penny compared to a $500 piece of gear.  Audio is a game of inches.  Don’t let anyone fool you or tell you otherwise.

What I WILL say is that I liked the 473 better.  But it’s BARELY different.  The two preamps are VERY close to each other.  I wouldn’t be completely disappointed if I had a rack of 4 Pre-73s rather than my Vintech.  Well, I take that back.  Yes I would, because my Vintech has an AWESOME EQ on it.  The point is, if someone swapped out my Vintechs with GAPs, didn’t tell me, and put a sheet over my rack, I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

THE TEST

Keeping phantom power out of the mix I used a Shure SM7 mult’d (split) at the patchbay going directly in each preamp at the same time and then going directly to Pro Tools.

SM7 -> patchbay split -> Vintech & GAP -> Digidesign 192

The interface was a Digidesign 192.  Both the GAP and the 473 are stock from the factory (no mods or special transformers)

I recorded snare and voice.  The voice was mine and a snare was a vintage Ludwig Black Beauty.  I recorded myself speaking a few sentences and then recorded 3 hits on a snare drum.  These are all separate files available to download below.  You will also find a phase inverted file that shows the difference between the two preamps.  I took one of the three snare hits (level matched) and inverted the phase between the two preamps.  The last file is the phase inverted difference between the two preamps.  They do a pretty decent job of canceling out all things considered!

Gain on both preamps was set at 50db for voice and 30db for snare with the output all the way up on each. The GAP was 3.5db hotter on its output.

I set up a Pro Tools HD 9 session at 24bit 96kHz.  There was no processing anywhere from mic to final file output.  I set the level to be equal between both pre’s  in Pro Tools and normalized the files to -3db.  (with an SM7, the output on speech can be quite low.)

Files were exported to 24bit 48kHz WAV files for download.

THE FILES

Below you will find a download link with 5 files.

1. GAP Pre-73 – Voice
2. Vintech 473 – Voice
3. GAP Pre-73 – Snare
4. Vintech 473 – Snare
5. Phase inverted snare

Get the files here ->  DOWNLOAD!

ENJOY! Don’t forget to leave feedback and let me know what you think!

Vintech 473 – http://www.vintech-audio.com/473_info.html

Golden Age Project PRE-73 – http://www.goldenagemusic.se/goldenageproject/uk/index.htm

I can’t make a mix sound good (in my opinion) without excessive use of tape saturation plugins, console emulation plugins, analog gear emulating plugins, using outboard compressors and EQ, and finally dumping the final stereo mix to tape when it’s all done.

If I don’t do these things, the mix sounds too “real”, too “sparse/open”, and definitely NOT like a record.

I’ve been mixing with saturation plugins for years, but up until the last couple years I hadn’t been adding outboard and tape into the mix.  And lately I’ve been having some eye opening experiences in getting mixes to really sing.
So the “saturation” and analog processing thing isn’t NEW to me by any stretch of the imagination.  I’ve know that digital doesn’t really work for making  great sounding mixes for a LONG time.  But what I DID start thinking about this week is how much TIME I spend getting to that point where I can actually start mixing, rather than being in “analog recovery” mode.

I would read articles and attend seminars by some of my favorite engineers/mixers and be amazed when they would say that they could get a few mixes completed in a day.   I remember thinking to myself, “that can’t be JUST skill by itself…there has to be something more to it”.  Well there is something more to it.  I had been trying to get those great mixes together with a COMPLETELY digital signal path, while they were using a completely analog signal path.  So I had spent the majority of my time getting it to sound “analog” before the mix even began.

Well, unfortunately I don’t see that wasted time coming back to me any time soon.  Unless I work on an analog console, I’ll always be spending that extra time getting there.

The sad part is……..I’ve kind of grown to enjoy the challenge.

I will however have an ACTUAL entry very soon.

This will be my LAST show with Murder Happens….so PLEASE attend! (especially if you haven’t come to see me before) I will be taking an indefinite hiatus from “live” music after this. PLUS, We will be playing with En Esch from my favorite band KMFDM! If I don’t see you at this show….you are, in fact….a doo doo head.

http://www.firebirdstl.com/event/69667/

I’m sure many of you will be surprised to learn that I listened to Metallica’s “Death Magnetic” for this first time yesterday. Honestly I never really WANTED to listen to it for two reasons.  First, Metallica hasn’t really written good songs in a while, and second, if FANS (not engineers) are complaining about the quality of the record….that’s proof enough for me.  I don’t need to listen to it.

But yesterday I thought I’d give it a try….

Ho….

Ly…..

S**t……

It was worse that I ever could have imagined.  Worse as in, “who in their right mind would EVER put out a record that sounds this bad”.  It’s compounded by the fact that they have the money to make a great sounding record AND they should know what a good sounding record sounds like after all this time!

Well, maybe not necessarily the last comment.  I mean Metallica records  have never really sounded GOOD per se. (St. Anger anyone?)

So, what’s so bad about it you might ask?  The real question should be, “what ISN’T bad about it?”

Basically take every word you can think of that describes a bad audio recording and Death Magnetic fits that description.
It is all of the below and probably a bunch more words that I can’t think of right now….

Unlistenable
Nasty
Distorted
Brittle
Harsh
Crunchy
Painful
Unappealing
Clipped
Destroyed
Ruined
Compressed
OVER-Compressed
Flat
Lifeless

It’s just plain hard to listen to. I honestly didn’t pay any attention to the quality of the songs themselves because I was so distracted by the crappy sound.  I can describe the quality of the record to you all day, but you really have to experience how bad it is and make “that face” while you are listening before you can fully comprehend its horrendousness.  WHY WOULD YOU PUT OUT A RECORD THAT SOUNDS LIKE THIS?!??!?!?!

The best part about the whole situation is Lars Ulrich going on record saying that they LIKE the sound of it, it was meant to be that way and fans are wining to much!  I think someone is in denial.  He even dismissed a petition with 13,000 signatures (that has now reached 22,000) asking to remix/remaster the record!

The ONE saving grace of this record is that it really opened a lot of fans’ eyes to the loudness war. MP3 compression is one thing.  I can understand people not being able to tell the difference.  But you can’t dismiss flat out distortion.  People hear that and realize it’s NOT pleasant and they don’t want to listen to it because it’s fatiguing.  Fans heard the UNmastered version in the game Guitar Hero and realized how much BETTER it sounded!

This whole thing made me think. Remember that feeling you get when you first put in a cd and you start to crank that volume knob way up so that you can rock out? Or when you’re watching a movie and the character reaches over with a swift and determined motion to crank it up?

That simply doesn’t happen anymore.  In fact, most of the time I end up turning my stereo DOWN to listen to music because it’s already loud!!!  That’s psychologically bass ackwards!

Well, I for one still like to crank up the volume knob.  Who’s with me?

For further reading, please visit:

http://www.justiceforaudio.org/
http://turnmeup.org/
http://www.dynamicrange.de/
http://www.aes.org/
http://mastering-media.blogspot.com/

Throw ALL the faders down, start over and do the opposite of what you did the first time, and do it QUICKLY acting on instinct only. I guarantee THIS 10 minute mix will be better than the one you agonized over for 5 hours.

That is all.

Today I was listening to a few modern rock recordings on the internet and it reminded me that sometimes I beat myself up when I can’t get a record sounding how I would like it to sound (slick, perfect modern records).  But then I thought to myself…WHY do I want my records to sound like that?  I really don’t like the sound/style of most modern rock records!  They’re full of pitch/time perfect/sample replaced artificial production.  At first I thought it was amazing.  But as time passes every modern rock record starts sounding the same!  Foo Fighter’s last record “Wasting Light”  was a much needed departure from the usual.  THAT record sounds phenomenal in my opinion.

I’ve heard a few engineers equate it to eating McDonalds day in and day out.  At first it’s really good, but after a little while you would start getting sick.  REAL food begins to taste amazing again.  I think that’s the perfect analogy.

Obviously there is nothing we can do about it.  But I’m curious (now that we’re officially in the next decade of the 2000′s) what this decade has in store for the state of music and production.  I think we’re all pretty much tired of the past “lost decade”.

It’s time to move on!