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Thinking Outside the Box, Part 3: Stripping the Channel

Recreating traditional analogue paths is easy in-the-box, you’ll be surprised at what you can do.

By

15 November 2013

Tutorial: Dax Liniere

Let’s take a moment to think outside the box about the big-budget productions we’ve grown up loving. Historically, most have been recorded through an analogue console to multitrack tape, then mixed down through an analogue console to two-track tape. The choices of console and tape type are often different for each role. One of the accepted classic combinations is tracking through an old Neve (for the harmonics generated by their transformer-based designs), recording to two-inch Ampex/Quantegy 456 or 499 tape stock then mixing on an SSL (for midrange focus) to ½-inch tape.

Signals travel from the console input preamps, through EQ, plus any outboard equipment used, to tape. This process is repeated during the analogue mix process — with the addition that it’s summed at the console master bus — for a double dose of analogue saturation. But by comparison, a ‘digital-centric’ production is likely to miss several of these key opportunities to impart saturation and colouration.

These days, you can recreate this path with plug-ins for a fraction of the cost of even a single piece of hardware. Especially when you compare the purchase and maintenance costs of a console, tape machine and tape stock to inserting multiple instances of a plug-in you paid for just once. This affordability means you can own more than one virtual console or virtual tape machine, and it’s a great way to bring variety to your colour palette. 

CONSOLE EMULATION

First, let’s set about recreating the analogue signal path. You have two options: As discussed in the last issue, you can get the majority of your colouration via master bus processing, or you can use saturators on every channel. The second approach is more faithful to mixing Outside-The-Box (which is not to say it is more effective) and there are several plug-ins which will lend colour to your mixes.

Mellowmuse CS1V (US$79) VST/AU/RTAS

www.mellowmuse.com/CS1V

CS1V has two modes: A and B. The former is a vintage mode and the latter is a more open, modern mode. I found that the vintage mode was too closed for my liking, though I could definitely see it working well on more mellow genres like folk or even soul and rock ‘n’ roll. The modern B mode adds quite a bit of top-end sparkle which, if used judiciously, is a lovely touch. I also found CS1V to be one of the more dynamic sounding options.

Slate Digital Virtual Console Collection
(US$199) VST/AU/RTAS

www.slatedigital.com/products/vcc

With their bus and channel plug-in set VCC, Slate Digital ambitiously sets out to capture the essence of five classic consoles. The Trident mode adds a nice widening effect to the low-mids, making it well suited to double-tracked rhythm guitars. The Brit4K mode (SSL) is one of the most open-sounding in the collection, but also imparts the least colour. While VCC’s US A mode (API) is tonally my favourite, its dynamics sound restricted compared to the other modes.

Sonimus Satson (US$39) VST/AU/RTAS

www.sonimus.com/products/satson

Satson is a very subtle creature. It adds a slight thickness and widens the upper-mids. This plug-in also features handy high- and low-pass filters, plus a FAT mode to increase the drive.

Klanghelm SDRR (€22) VST/AU/RTAS

klanghelm.com/SDRR

SDRR was mentioned last issue as an excellent master bus saturator, and while it’s not specifically touted as a console emulator, the four modes (including Desk and Tube) make it equally well suited to channel applications.

Terry West Saturn (Free) VST

www.terrywest.nl

Not to be confused with FabFilter’s flexible saturator of the same name, this plug-in packs a serious punch, adding quite a bit of liveliness and upper-mid character to a mix. The ‘US Pre’ mode adds a bit more ‘oomph’ and some brightness around 6kHz. Remarkably, this plug-in just happens to be free, but don’t let that scare you off, it sounds ‘like a bought one.’

Waves NLS ($249) VST/AU/RTAS/AAX

www.waves.com/plugins/nls-non-linear-summer

Waves’ contribution to the market offers three consoles, each boasting 32 independently modelled channels. The mode modelled on Yoad Nevo’s Neve 5116 adds energy around 800Hz, whereas Mike Hedges’ EMI TG12345 Mk IV adds energy slightly above 1kHz. Both contribute a nice character to the mix that suits electric guitars and drums. They have a lot of similarities, but are different enough that you’d want to choose the flavour that best suits the song. Mike’s console also adds quite a bit of heft below 50Hz as it saturates on low frequency transients, a trait I would have expected more from the Neve. I found the emulation of Spike’s SSL 4000G was too easy to overload and, for me, didn’t suit a lot of sources. All in all, Waves’ NLS seems to be one of the more dynamic emulations in the pack.

VERDICT

My picks are Waves NLS Nevo for its depth, Mellowmuse CS1V for its great dynamics and Terry West Saturn for the price, plus an honourable mention to Klanghelm SDRR for best bang-for-buck.

DEVIL’S ADVOCATE

Part of the trick to a good sounding mix is uniformity. It’s all good and well to be able to choose a different console and tape type for every channel, but will that provide the cohesion  you want? While logic and reason [not Logic and Reason, haha – Ed] can inform which colours you’ll use where, you must listen to how the final result sounds. Do you like it? Does it feel good? Because, in the end, listeners evaluate a song based on their feelings before their logical brain even has time to switch on.

THE SPICE OF LIFE

Console emulation is not the only reason you should consider using saturation on channels. Sometimes our source material is cosmetically lacklustre and needs a dab of makeup, or perhaps we want to go the other direction and ugly it up a little.

For harsh or strident sounds — this could be cymbals, distorted guitars, vocals, brass, strings; almost anything, really — instead of reaching for an EQ to cut top-end, try a ‘warming’ saturator to round out the sound. A source that’s lacking bass or low-mids? Try a ‘fattening’ saturator like u-he Satin or FabFilter Saturn (the Warm Tape mode is a great place to start). Sometimes you’ll get a sound that’s too dull, so give it a bit of excitement with a saturator that generates strong upper harmonics. Maybe you have a loop or sample that’s boring and lifeless, if so, you could give it a bit of crunch. There are lots of saturators that can be used as a special effect. Try them on a small part you would usually tuck away in your mix. Like a sprinkle of chilli, it might just be the spice your mix needs. Plug-ins such as Voxengo’s Tube Amp, Togu Audio Line’s TAL-Tube and Camel Audio’s CamelCrusher are all very effective and also free.

To me, the best thing about ITB mixing is not the cost, but the flexibility. You may have already realised that different console emulation plug-ins could be used in different places in your mix. In the box, you are free from the restrictions that working in the analogue domain imposes. You’re free to use the forward midrange sound of an API for your drums, the fatness of a Neve for your bass and the wide low-mids of a Trident for your guitars. Even the use of different tape types and speeds can be decided on a per-track basis. You cannot practically do this when mixing in the analogue domain.

Better still, you can choose to have no colouration at all on a sensitive source like vocals. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the single best thing about mixing In-The-Box: wherever you don’t want colouration, you don’t need to have it. While we can simulate the non-linearities of the analogue world in digital, analogue cannot pass a signal from one end of the chain to the other without imparting colouration and distortion. In short, In-The-Box can deliver the Outside-The-Box sound, but OTB cannot deliver the ITB sound.

TALKING TAPE

TAPE SPEED

In the studio, common analogue tape speeds are 15 and 30 inches per second (ips). 15ips yields more noise, but also more character due to increased distortion and bottom-end, and subdued top-end. 30ips is generally cleaner and preserves more top end, but has less bass ‘fatness’.

TRACK WIDTH

Common tape width/track counts include 24 tracks on 2-inch, 16 tracks on 1-inch, and two tracks on ½- and ¼-inch. As track width increases, you get increased dynamic range (due to a lower noise floor) and decreased cross-talk.

TAPE FORMULATION

Common tape types are Ampex 456, 499 and GP9. 456 is a low-flux tape which saturates more easily and hence, has more character. GP9, takes quite hot levels and has a ‘modern’ clean tape sound. 499 is approximately half-way between 456 and GP9. Though Ampex has been out of business for a while, and the Quantegy revival is slow, if you’re serious about recording to tape, you’ll need to check out ATR or RMGI for equivalents.

MACHINE SET UP

To get optimal performance from any equipment, it must be set up correctly. Different tape types have different properties and this requires the machine to be calibrated according to the tape manufacturer’s specifications to perform as promised. Bias is a function that offsets the signal fed to the recording head by a certain amount and it’s designed to maximise sensitivity and provide a ‘clean slate’ for magnetisation. However, bias also affects frequency response and distortion. When bias is set as per the tape manufacturer’s specifications, it strikes an even balance between frequency response vs distortion. Under-biasing will result in more top-end, but also more distortion. Over-biasing, while reducing distortion and delivering a cleaner bottom-end, can also subdue the top-end.

MORE WIDTH

In Issue 96, I wrote about width in analogue mixes and how crosstalk affects the stereo image. There are many things at play inside any analogue circuit that may affect the perception of width, making it either wider or narrower. An analogue console contains thousands of electronic components: resistors, capacitors, inductors, transistors and integrated circuits. Although each of these has a specified value within the circuit design, the actual value may vary within a few percent, this is called the component’s tolerance. These minute differences between components accumulate throughout the signal path, resulting in subtle differences in frequency response, noise (amount and spectrum), dynamics and saturation. It’s been suggested that the noise present at a console’s output is perceived by the brain as an increase in reverb and because this noise is left-right uncorrelated (i.e., different on both sides) the ‘additional reverb’ appears wide. All of these left-right differences can contribute to the perception of subtle widening.

The important thing to remember is that this widening is uncontrolled. Your stereo field (including your centre image) will always be slightly spread by an amount that varies with temperature and age. In the box, you can choose to apply plug-ins that simulate this behaviour only on the channels you want to affect.

EQUALISERS

We’ve looked at the console input stage, its output bus and the tape it records to, but sitting in between all that is the humble equaliser, another great source of colouration. Every EQ circuit design has different properties that reflect the philosophies of its designer. Some are clean, some add character, some are surgical, and some ‘musical’. Whether Pultec, Neve, API, Helios or Trident, supplementing console EQs with outboard is a long-standing practice which can avail a broad palette of sound-shaping tools. New toys are fun, but learning the tools you have, especially your ears, is most important. The best advice I could give any engineer about equalisation is to practice ear training. The faster and more easily you can identify frequencies, the more efficient and better your work will become. This is especially true for live sound, where reaction time can be the difference between smiling and frowning musicians. It will also help you to identify how other mixes are constructed and how sounds are placed, which is a great way to learn and improve your own mixing.

There are many ear-training apps available based around one-third-octave bands. Quiztones is one that’s available for iOS and Android and costs less than a beer.

Now what are you going to do with these newly learned skills? Put them to good use with these great EQ plug-ins!

In short, In-The-Box can deliver the Outside-The-Box sound, but OTB cannot deliver the ITB sound

Variety Of Sound BootEQ MkII (Free) Win VST

varietyofsound.wordpress.com

This is a very musical-sounding implementation of a digital EQ with analogue-shaped curves, presented in a Lunchbox-inspired GUI. BootEQ also features a preamp simulator with variable drive and additional tube simulation to introduce pleasant second-order harmonics.

Variety Of Sound Thrillseeker XTC (Free) Win VST

varietyofsound.wordpress.com

Winner of KVR’s 2012 Developer Challenge, this EQ is a bit different from the norm. It features a three-band parallel-topology EQ that can impart quite a lot of character. Saturation is not added pre or post EQ, it’s actually part of it, with each band featuring Bootsy’s Stateful Saturation algorithms.

UAD-2 API Vision Channel Strip (US$299) UAD-2

www.uaudio.com/store/channel-strips/api-vision-channel-strip

Punch and character sum up this plug-in. Going well beyond the recently released bundle, the API Vision plug-in is a full channel strip that models their 2520 op-amp, largely responsible for the signature API sound. For those with an analogue console background, this channel strip might be for you. The 550L module offers four bands of EQ while the 215L takes care of low- and high-pass filtering. It also features the fantastic 225L compressor and 235L gate modules.

UAD-2 Pultec Passive EQ Collection (US$299) UAD-2

www.uaudio.com/store/equalizers/pultec-passive-eq-collection

A revamp of the 11-year old Pultec EQP-1A plug-in, the new collection, also containing the MEQ-5 midrange EQ and HLF-3C filter set, is a vast improvement. Inserting this plug-in brings an instant, pleasant change to the sound as harmonic structures from the original tube hardware are emulated. The new EQP-1A has a very ‘tubey’, warm and gluey sound to it, making it perfectly suited to a variety of sources.

PSP NobleQ (US$69) VST/AU/RTAS

www.pspaudioware.com/plugins/equalizers/psp_nobleq

NobleQ from Polish company PSP Audioware is a great Pultec emulation alternative for non-UAD-2 users. PSP doesn’t claim it’s an exact replica, instead they’ve recreated the Pultec’s essence, while adding features not found on the original including inbetween frequency positions, variable tube warmth and 30/40kHz shelf frequencies for adding ‘air’.

FabFilter Pro-Q (€149) VST/AU/RTAS/AAX

www.fabfilter.com/products/pro-q-equalizer-plug-in

This EQ plug-in is my personal go-to. Pro-Q’s clean and intuitive interface is a perfect reflection of its sound and usability. With 12 filter shapes and up to 24 bands, it covers traditional and linear-phase equalisation in one plug-in, with split-stereo and M/S modes plus a spectrum analyser for hunting down narrow troublesome resonances. If I had to make a record with only one plug-in, it would be Pro-Q.

DEVELOPER INTERVIEW: Klanghelm’s Tony Frenzel

Dax Liniere: When did you start?

Tony Frenzel: In the ’90s, when I built a guitar. I found it was much more fun to work with the electronics than building the guitar with wood. Since I started coding in the ’80s, I never knew what to do with my skills. I was never interested in coding or playing games, I found that boring. I always wanted to do something with music. All my life I’ve only had music in my head. It was very exciting for me when Steinberg released VST. It gave people the ability to build plug-ins, virtual gear, with just a few lines of code.

DL: What is your approach to making an audio processor?

TF: I’ll go back to a time when I called myself a musician. I used to always blame the tools, which is very bad for a musician, but it’s very good when you start coding plug-ins. It made me very sensitive and picky about tools, how they have to work. I have a special sound aesthetic in my head derived from favourite producers, bands and records. I want my plug-ins to become part of a sound, not like a coat you put on. I see the user interface as a very big part of development and I put a lot of thought into them. To me, it’s like music and lyrics; sound and user interface have to work together. After a few weeks of coding a plug-in, once I start to get an idea of how it could sound in the end, I start making a UI that reflects that. Can you work fast, can you see every control you need? The UI has to be slick, fast and enjoyable to look at.

DL: What did you set out to achieve with SDRR?

TF: It actually started as an EQ, but I found working on the input and output saturation more rewarding. I didn’t want to reproduce something that already existed in analogue or other plug-ins. I didn’t care if it sounded ‘analogue’ or not, that wasn’t my goal. There are so many saturation colours that haven’t been done yet, like a digital saturation that sounds pleasing and unobtrusive. As a guitarist and collector, I always found old fuzz pedals very interesting. Electronically they’re very primitive, but the sound is very complex. I wanted to make this warm, complex sound suitable for mixing, create it with a fairly flat frequency response for subtle work.

DL: I heard that you were recently able to quit your day-job to concentrate on Klanghelm. 

TF: It was about time! (laughs) I worked on SDRR for over a year. Having two jobs for the last two years has been quite exhausting. You can’t code plug-ins in your free time because it makes circles around your head; you can’t think about anything else. I just hope I can make a moderate living out of it for my family. I guess nobody in the plug-in business can be rich. But it’s very rewarding, especially when you know some of the bigger names are using your plug-ins on records. You listen to the radio and know that a little part of you is in this record. That’s really a great feeling. I hope it will work with these low prices; I don’t want my plug-ins to be seen as an investment, I want them to be used.

TIP: SECRET TO TIGHT BASS

To tighten the bottom-end of your mix, you need to think beyond the obvious sources of bass (such as kick drum, bass guitar and bass synths), and turn your attention to the rest of your tracks. Unwanted sub-audible energy eats up our dynamic range without any benefit and is a common cause of a muddy mix. Not only affecting headroom, these infrasonics can combine with the useful bottom-end of bassy sources, producing an uneven frequency response due to constructive and destructive interference.

Most hardware consoles have high-pass filter (HPF) buttons on every channel, but most DAWs do not, even though they are most important to an ITB project. Consider which instruments have bottom-end that you want and which are causing clutter in your mix, then put an EQ plug-in in the first insert slot. Don’t forget to set the crossover frequency of the HPF to suit the source. Console HPFs are often fixed at 100Hz and this is a good place to start in-the-box, though don’t hesitate to drop it to as low as 30Hz or as high as is appropriate for the mix. 180Hz is not uncommon for certain instruments within the context of a mix and I have high-passed hi-hats at 400Hz in some cases.

If your DAW allows it, save a default signal path for each channel with a bypassed EQ in the first insert slot. Only enable it when you need it.

Speaking of bass, try the old simultaneous boost-and-cut trick with the LF shelves of any Pultec. This seemingly illogical technique works because the response curve of the two shelving filters is slightly different, producing a bell-shaped dip just above the shelving frequency. Try it for some serious thump and rumble. With PSP NobleQ, you can adjust this frequency difference to tailor the sound.

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