SIGNAL CHAIN
DEAN FARLEY
Sounding Analog in a Digital World
How’s everybody doing? For this month’s
topic I want to continue on the subject of
recording. Since there are two distinctly
different media for recording—analog, or
tape-based recorders, and digital recording systems, such as Pro Tools, Samplitude,
Ableton Live—I thought it would be a good
idea to look at what you can do to make
digital media, such as Pro Tools tracks,
sound more like analog tape recordings.
This time we’ll have a peek at a very flexible software package that does a fantastic
job of emulating a large variety of vintage
analog hardware components like compressors, limiters and EQs—not to mention the
various types of vintage analog multi-track
decks like those made by Ampex, Studer,
Otari and MCI (just to name a few). Those
last four names were key to producing
many of the guitar tones you’ve heard on
many of your favorite records and CDs.
The software I’m referring to here is called
Analog Channel, which is part of the Classic
Pack bundle created by McDowell Signal
Processing (McDSP) of Mountain View, CA.
When using Analog Channel, you don’t have
to worry about the inherent problems of
recording to tape-based systems, such as
excess tape hiss, hum or mechanical wow
and flutter. You can align your virtual tape
machine’s frequency response and dynamic
range to your heart’s content, as well as
create all sorts of different and ingenious
sounds. Have you ever listened to any of
those old AC/DC albums and asked yourself how they got those big, fat-sounding
drums? Was this by sheer accident, or was
this the work of a very clever engineer who
knew just how to align the tape machine’s
“head bump” to add a predetermined effect
to the drum’s sound when the recorded
signals hit the tape? Analog Channel has
a separate “head bump” control, too.
Interestingly, this type of control does not
exist on any tape recorder; traditionally, the
tape operator did this manually. The software allows you to perform the same operation by turning a single knob. This particular
plug-in has a ton of clever functions that will
add immensely to your musical creations.
40 PREMIER GUITAR GREATEST HITS VOL. 1 74 PREMIER GUITAR MAY 2009
While we’re at it, it’s worth mentioning that
McDSP also makes entire suites of tools (in
various available bundles) for compression,
limiting, mastering, equalization and sound-processing tasks. For compression, limiting
and EQ, the brand new Retro Pack bundle
is a wonderfully easy way to add some
more analog magic into your Pro Tools sessions. You can make modern sounds with it,
too, since the design is original and not just
modeled after older, vintage gear. For final
mastering needs, you might check into the
Recording music can
be very rewarding,
because it teaches
you at ground level
what makes any
recorded tone sound
bad or good, great or
phenomenal.
ML4000 plug-in. This is the perfect way to
add some polish and shine to your mixes. The
ML4000 has all kinds of useful expanders,
gates and compression algorithms for you to
tweak with and can be very transparent.
For those of you who love the sound of
all things lo-fi, the way-cool FutzBox plug-
in is just the ticket for manipulating your
tones in interesting and twisted ways. The
FutzBox gives you the stuff that might turn
your musical ideas into the next cool trend.
On the flip side, they offer a couple of
other handy plug-ins that do an amazing
job with all the numerous sonic artifacts
that you don’t want to hear. Their NF575
Noise Filter and DE555 De-esser plug-ins
are great at ridding your tracks of vocal sib-
ilants and other noise issues that can create
problems in your recordings.
Recording music can be very rewarding,
because it teaches you at ground level what
makes any recorded tone sound bad or
good, great or phenomenal. You need some
basic ingredients to start you on this journey,
and there are a lot of options out there. The
last time I looked, I had quite a few plug-ins
installed in my computer, but the ones I find
myself using all the time now are those I
mentioned here from McDSP.
Another issue that happens all too often
when using a Pro Tools rig (particularly
the smaller LE versions) is that some software plug-ins tax your computer’s processing ability quite heavily. I have found
the McDSP plug-ins to be much more
CPU-friendly than many other competing
plug-ins. You can always benefit from a
great reverb program, but so many of the
commonly used echo and reverb plug-ins
can eat your computer’s processing power
alive. Finding tools that are less resource-hungry (as well as great sounding) makes
any recording package run cleaner and
more trouble-free.
Well, there you have it: a few good ways to
make your digitally produced music sound
more analog and vintage than ever before.
My money has been well spent in the digital recording realm, and I’m getting really
great results with the sounds I hear coming
from my Mac. If you want to check out what
else McDSP has to offer, visit their website
at: mcdsp.com.
Happy recording, and we’ll see you
next time.
Dean Farley
is the chief designer of "Snake Oil Brand Strings"
( sobstrings.net) and has had a profound influence
on the trends in the strings of today.
