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All the console does can be done with a laptop nowadays, the nostalgic value is of course a big point in purchasing it. Still, who would aquire this monster, if

All the console does can be done with a laptop nowadays, the nostalgic value is of course a big point in purchasing it. Still, who would aquire this monster, if not a museum? I can't see any modern recordings done with it, but solely for the goal of achieving said nostalgia. "It belongs in a museum".

butterfi 10y ago
My understanding is that consoles like this are really unique animals, each one having its own sound. Dave Grohl did a documentary called "Sound City" about his efforts to maintain a legendary console from another studio: https://www.fastcocreate.com/1682339/dave-grohl-explains-how-a-70s-era-recording-console-rocks-his-world-in-sound-city https://www.fastcocreate.com/1682339/dave-grohl-explains-how...
- MrJagil 10y ago
  That documentary is hogwash, a marketing stunt, feeding off nostalgia and romanticism. There's a reason they never use actual data and measurements to prove their points. If you really want to try those famous consoles, i'd recommend Sound Toys' "decapitator" plugin.
  - efnx 10y ago
    It is true though, recording an album on tape is nothing like using a laptop and it shows in the final product. Not only is the path the sound takes different, but the recording, editing, mixing and mastering techniques required are different. You can do all the production on your laptop and then attempt to recreate an analog sound with effects but your end result is still very different.
  - riprowan 10y ago
    > There's a reason they never use actual data and measurements to prove their points Artists use the most advanced measurement devices in the world: a binaural listening device connected to the world's most advanced neural net. The neural net is the best part. Sorry. There is much more to sound than frequency response, dynamic range, phase shift, and total harmonic distortion -- and moreover, the "optimum" amount of each of these is not fixed, but depends entirely on the material and the taste of the engineer & producer. You can get great sound "in the box," don't get me wrong, but ultimately there is, as yet, no substitute for the real thing. A saturation plugin is nowhere close. To accurately simulate this device, you would have to practically simulate at the molecular level.
analog31 10y ago
Also for nostalgic value, I'd love to see the schematics.
riprowan 10y ago
This is a profound misunderstanding. Euphony and accuracy are quite different. Euphony derives from nonlinearity. These are not cherished for their accuracy. They're built to sound good, For this reason most of the best sounding records still make very heavy use of analog signal path. I've been recording since the earliest days of DAWs. Yes you can do amazingly good things with a computer, but it is still not possible to build digital devices that "sound as good" IMO. After 15 years of living "in the box" as a mix engineer, waiting for modeling to catch up to hardware, I finally broke down when I realized that the best mix engines still don't compete with the best analog devices. Since that time I've become a convert. For editing, accuracy, durability, price/performance, and maximum dynamic range through the mix bus, digital is king. If I were recording a symphonic orchestra I would absolutely use an all-digital signal path. But if I want to make an expressive album like Dark Side of the Moon, I want to stick as much analog in the path as I can fit. Why try to model chaos, when there's an old box stuffed with tubes and a zillion other nonlinear components? Nobody - almost - builds devices like these anymore. It comes from the Golden Age, when engineers had different priorities, and the difference is palpable.
- elmar 10y ago
  can I ask what is your view on the no-mixing philosophy? http://www.waterlilyacoustics.com/techspecs.htm http://www.waterlilyacoustics.com/techspecs.htm
  - bvm 10y ago
    That's a pretty extreme approach! It reminds me a little of my all time favourite musicians, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings - who detail their process here: http://tapeop.com/interviews/85/gillian-welch-and-dave-rawlings/ http://tapeop.com/interviews/85/gillian-welch-and-dave-rawli... One of the relevant quotes: Q: Is everything recorded live? G: Totally. D: Yeah, everything is live. It is pretty much all from takes one, two or three. Very few mixes. This is the first record we've done that Stephen Marcussen [our mastering engineer] listened to and said, "Okay, Let's transfer it." We didn't compress or EQ anything. Just transferred it from a machine of his that we really like, through the nice converters and a clean signal chain. In my more limited experience having a minimalist workflow can have benefits that stray way beyond sonic purity: it encourages discipline and allows you to concentrate on the task at hand . The minutiae of your workflow are less important than simply having one.
dcwca 10y ago
One thing people fail to understand about consoles like this, or the Neve, is that they do produce a unique sound, but not for any technical reason. Yes, everything this machine can do can be done in a laptop. Sure there are small differences related to audio signal paths and headroom and distortion, but for the most part those can be simulated or ignored. The big reason working with hardware like this produces unique results is more about the layout and workflow than the tech inside the machine. The workflow makes the sound. The lack of automation forces you to make choices. Forces your hand, literally. The sound is in the physical design. Another example is the MPC sampler, which has a workflow that can be heard in hip hop music. Of course software samplers can do everything the MPC can do, and more, but you can hear the signature sound of someone working on an MPC.
- riprowan 10y ago
  > The workflow makes the sound. The lack of automation forces you to make choices. Forces your hand, literally. You raise an excellent point here. A full-blown DAW is practically without limits: hundreds of tracks, unlimited effects on every track, any signal chain is possible. But making art is about working within constraints. Most of the best art derives from the constraints as much - or more - as the capabilities of the devices or instruments used. However there is a technical reason why these devices do sound different, and that is that they all impart euphonic distortion. Bass sounds "bigger." Treble sounds "clearer." Mixed tracks "glue together." Vocals "pop out." A sense of "depth of field" may be imparted. Technically speaking this is all "distortion" of the original signal.
  - dcwca 10y ago
    > However there is a technical reason why these devices do sound different, and that is that they all impart euphonic distortion. Bass sounds "bigger." Treble sounds "clearer." Mixed tracks "glue together." Vocals "pop out." A sense of "depth of field" may be imparted. Digital advocates are quick to point out that all of those phenomena can be perfectly modelled in the box. We have convolution reverbs and tube amp models and emulation that can be scientifically proven to match the analog gear. By point is, you _can_ do all that, but will you? You have a world of possibilities, and so the likelihood when working with a digital / software workflow is that you'll stick to the relative strengths of that setup. Another thing to note about the hardware console interface is the nature of a classic design. Consoles like the Neve or SSL are familiar to engineers, they are instruments with a hand feel. A recording or mixing engineer can go into a studio and get similar results from similar gear. The listeners ear can pick up a je ne cest pas familiarity from it, what you call "good sound" in another comment, without quote knowing what they're hearing. The same way the Telecaster just "sounds good". It's not better, it's just familiar. Digital workstations are all different and don't achieve the same familiar sound.
veli_joza 10y ago
Can be done with a laptop, but this huge console features fast user interface with great feature discoverability and is arguably much better tool for creating music. If you connected some MIDI controllers to your laptop and spent few days mapping controls to knobs, you'd get a technically better system. Still, if some musicians prefer analog/vintage technology, why is it so important to prove them wrong?
- riprowan 10y ago
  > technically better system Define "better". "If it sounds good, it is good." - Joe Meek
  - veli_joza 10y ago
    Better in technical terms; better SNR, non-destructive editing, enables remote collaboration, more versatile and flexible.
    - riprowan 10y ago
      These are all amazing benefits, but when you're making art, you'll throw all of those out the window if doing so get you the sound you need. The problem is thinking that this is either/or. I use a 48 channel ProTools HD system married to gear that's largely 40-70 years old. Best of both worlds.
bogomipz 10y ago
>"All the console does can be done with a laptop nowadays" No, you are wrong on all accounts. A laptop can not produce a pure analog recording, an AAA LP[1]. Also vintage analog consoles are actually quite coveted by recording engineers either for use as whole desks or for parts like the pots, EQs, side cars, etc. The people that designed this gear were highly skilled craftsmen. Here's a guide to some of the more coveted and collectible analog desks: http://www.proaudioeurope.com/info/funky-junk-guides/guide-analogue-mixing-consoles http://www.proaudioeurope.com/info/funky-junk-guides/guide-a... Additionally there has been a resurgence in analog recording and studios for some time now: https://ask.audio/articles/the-return-of-the-analog-recording-studio https://ask.audio/articles/the-return-of-the-analog-recordin... http://www.thebunkerstudio.com/ http://www.thebunkerstudio.com/ [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARS_code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARS_code
JohnBooty 10y ago
There's no doubt that the data and measurements would tell us that this analog gear is objectively less accurate than a laptop's worth of high-quality digital gear. What gets overlooked, though, is that analog gear often sounds more pleasing because some kinds of distortion sound subjectively "good" to our ears. The easiest example is electric guitars. They are full of (intentionally introduced) distortion and (when everything is set up and played well) they sound freaking awesome. We all know this, right? We also know that most distortion sounds bad -- when your mp3 is corrupted, or when you're using the headphone output of a crappy laptop with a bunch of random noise. So that tells us what? Some distortion sounds good, some sounds bad. Clipping and random noise are forms of distortion that sound bad, generally, unless you're intentionally going for some kind of glitches-out sound like some artists do. Some distortion sounds pleasing through, just like our electric guitar example. Second-order harmonic distortion (and other even-order distortion) often sounds good to us. Second order distortion introduces distortion that is exactly one octave higher and one octave lower than the fundamental frequency of the note being played. It's basically a "chorus" effect and it can be very pleasing and musical. This is why tube amplification can be very enjoyable. Objectively, it's shit. Subjectively, it can sound nice, because most of the distortion is second-order harmonic distortion. I don't know what kind of technology exists inside this console, but just know that accuracy is not always the highest goal of art. It's why we have paintings instead of photographs, and why movies have dramatic lighting inside of just clinically lighting everything like it was the inside of an operating room. Or, just use your ears. Because Dark Side of the Moon sounds as good as any album you've heard in your life, and significantly better than most.
- xxdarrenxx 10y ago
  I agree. Even top producers plug their ableton track into a nice console after it's done, and directly feed it back again in the laptop, purely for the on-board eq/compression or subjective type off distortion that gets added. One can argue offcourse if it's over the top, but let's be honest, most producers only use 5% off any vst in their lifetime and some don't even venture away from stock presets. For most producers that one sound out off thousand redundant ones is enough.
  - 10y ago
cannam 10y ago
I wonder how many individuals there are in the world who have sufficient space for this, something to use it for, and the ability to maintain it? A bit like musing about the potential global demand for high-end yachts. It's not on anything like this scale, but I recently acquired (sort of by accident) a Revox A700 reel-to-reel tape deck from the mid-1970s. Even though it works, it could be the most useless object I've ever possessed. It only does one thing (I guess two if you count recording and playback separately) and that thing can be done with higher fidelity by a free smartphone app. It weighs 25kg, draws a lot of power, is fiddly to use, and is probably one of the most complex pieces of consumer electronics ever made in terms of the number of distinct components it contains that can fail. What is the purpose of it, today?
- soylentcola 10y ago
  > I wonder how many individuals there are in the world who have sufficient space for this, something to use it for, and the ability to maintain it? A bit like musing about the potential global demand for high-end yachts. I can see someone like Wayne Coyne buying it and getting plenty of use out of it, but I'm not sure if he's got quite "fuck you money" enough to pay the inevitable selling price.
- Sanddancer 10y ago
  If you're looking to creates something that sounds like it came from the mid-70s, you can either try to fiddle with a bunch of different settings in your DAW of choice to simulate the distortion that a reel to reel provides, or you get a reel to reel from the 70s and not have to worry about if it sounds right for the era/emotions you're trying to catch. A console like this? It's probably going to end up as the centerpiece of someone's collection, much like Nathan Myhrvold's Difference Engine. It'll be well loved, admired, but rarely if ever actually used. I'd love to be proven wrong though, and have it end up being used as a console for a boutique studio for its unique sound. There's a ton of studio equipment that's kept around "just in case" because sometimes what you're working on calls for something out of the ordinary.
bborud 10y ago
While a DAW can do everything this console does (and a lot more) and you could model the signal distortion / treatment characteristics accurately so as to recreate the sound, the way you interact with it would be completely different. Which affects almost every aspect in how you use it. Besides, this thing was used with tapes. Editing when you use tape is an entirely different thing than doing it digitally. It involves cutting, taping, scraping and edits are destructive. Not to mention that you didn't have unlimited tracks on a tape.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
kevincennis 10y ago
This is sort of true for mixing, but definitely not for recording. At the end of the day, you always need a mic pre. And they're often a big part of what people love about these old consoles. On the recording side, I'd argue that a DAW is more akin to the tape machine than the console. Preamps are important, and computers don't have 'em.

butterfi 10y ago

My understanding is that consoles like this are really unique animals, each one having its own sound. Dave Grohl did a documentary called "Sound City" about his efforts to maintain a legendary console from another studio: https://www.fastcocreate.com/1682339/dave-grohl-explains-how-a-70s-era-recording-console-rocks-his-world-in-sound-city https://www.fastcocreate.com/1682339/dave-grohl-explains-how...

MrJagil 10y ago
That documentary is hogwash, a marketing stunt, feeding off nostalgia and romanticism. There's a reason they never use actual data and measurements to prove their points. If you really want to try those famous consoles, i'd recommend Sound Toys' "decapitator" plugin.
- efnx 10y ago
  It is true though, recording an album on tape is nothing like using a laptop and it shows in the final product. Not only is the path the sound takes different, but the recording, editing, mixing and mastering techniques required are different. You can do all the production on your laptop and then attempt to recreate an analog sound with effects but your end result is still very different.
- riprowan 10y ago
  > There's a reason they never use actual data and measurements to prove their points Artists use the most advanced measurement devices in the world: a binaural listening device connected to the world's most advanced neural net. The neural net is the best part. Sorry. There is much more to sound than frequency response, dynamic range, phase shift, and total harmonic distortion -- and moreover, the "optimum" amount of each of these is not fixed, but depends entirely on the material and the taste of the engineer & producer. You can get great sound "in the box," don't get me wrong, but ultimately there is, as yet, no substitute for the real thing. A saturation plugin is nowhere close. To accurately simulate this device, you would have to practically simulate at the molecular level.

analog31 10y ago

Also for nostalgic value, I'd love to see the schematics.

riprowan 10y ago

This is a profound misunderstanding. Euphony and accuracy are quite different. Euphony derives from nonlinearity. These are not cherished for their accuracy. They're built to sound good, For this reason most of the best sounding records still make very heavy use of analog signal path. I've been recording since the earliest days of DAWs. Yes you can do amazingly good things with a computer, but it is still not possible to build digital devices that "sound as good" IMO. After 15 years of living "in the box" as a mix engineer, waiting for modeling to catch up to hardware, I finally broke down when I realized that the best mix engines still don't compete with the best analog devices. Since that time I've become a convert. For editing, accuracy, durability, price/performance, and maximum dynamic range through the mix bus, digital is king. If I were recording a symphonic orchestra I would absolutely use an all-digital signal path. But if I want to make an expressive album like Dark Side of the Moon, I want to stick as much analog in the path as I can fit. Why try to model chaos, when there's an old box stuffed with tubes and a zillion other nonlinear components? Nobody - almost - builds devices like these anymore. It comes from the Golden Age, when engineers had different priorities, and the difference is palpable.

elmar 10y ago
can I ask what is your view on the no-mixing philosophy? http://www.waterlilyacoustics.com/techspecs.htm http://www.waterlilyacoustics.com/techspecs.htm
- bvm 10y ago
  That's a pretty extreme approach! It reminds me a little of my all time favourite musicians, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings - who detail their process here: http://tapeop.com/interviews/85/gillian-welch-and-dave-rawlings/ http://tapeop.com/interviews/85/gillian-welch-and-dave-rawli... One of the relevant quotes: Q: Is everything recorded live? G: Totally. D: Yeah, everything is live. It is pretty much all from takes one, two or three. Very few mixes. This is the first record we've done that Stephen Marcussen [our mastering engineer] listened to and said, "Okay, Let's transfer it." We didn't compress or EQ anything. Just transferred it from a machine of his that we really like, through the nice converters and a clean signal chain. In my more limited experience having a minimalist workflow can have benefits that stray way beyond sonic purity: it encourages discipline and allows you to concentrate on the task at hand . The minutiae of your workflow are less important than simply having one.

dcwca 10y ago

One thing people fail to understand about consoles like this, or the Neve, is that they do produce a unique sound, but not for any technical reason. Yes, everything this machine can do can be done in a laptop. Sure there are small differences related to audio signal paths and headroom and distortion, but for the most part those can be simulated or ignored. The big reason working with hardware like this produces unique results is more about the layout and workflow than the tech inside the machine. The workflow makes the sound. The lack of automation forces you to make choices. Forces your hand, literally. The sound is in the physical design. Another example is the MPC sampler, which has a workflow that can be heard in hip hop music. Of course software samplers can do everything the MPC can do, and more, but you can hear the signature sound of someone working on an MPC.

riprowan 10y ago
> The workflow makes the sound. The lack of automation forces you to make choices. Forces your hand, literally. You raise an excellent point here. A full-blown DAW is practically without limits: hundreds of tracks, unlimited effects on every track, any signal chain is possible. But making art is about working within constraints. Most of the best art derives from the constraints as much - or more - as the capabilities of the devices or instruments used. However there is a technical reason why these devices do sound different, and that is that they all impart euphonic distortion. Bass sounds "bigger." Treble sounds "clearer." Mixed tracks "glue together." Vocals "pop out." A sense of "depth of field" may be imparted. Technically speaking this is all "distortion" of the original signal.
- dcwca 10y ago
  > However there is a technical reason why these devices do sound different, and that is that they all impart euphonic distortion. Bass sounds "bigger." Treble sounds "clearer." Mixed tracks "glue together." Vocals "pop out." A sense of "depth of field" may be imparted. Digital advocates are quick to point out that all of those phenomena can be perfectly modelled in the box. We have convolution reverbs and tube amp models and emulation that can be scientifically proven to match the analog gear. By point is, you _can_ do all that, but will you? You have a world of possibilities, and so the likelihood when working with a digital / software workflow is that you'll stick to the relative strengths of that setup. Another thing to note about the hardware console interface is the nature of a classic design. Consoles like the Neve or SSL are familiar to engineers, they are instruments with a hand feel. A recording or mixing engineer can go into a studio and get similar results from similar gear. The listeners ear can pick up a je ne cest pas familiarity from it, what you call "good sound" in another comment, without quote knowing what they're hearing. The same way the Telecaster just "sounds good". It's not better, it's just familiar. Digital workstations are all different and don't achieve the same familiar sound.

veli_joza 10y ago

Can be done with a laptop, but this huge console features fast user interface with great feature discoverability and is arguably much better tool for creating music. If you connected some MIDI controllers to your laptop and spent few days mapping controls to knobs, you'd get a technically better system. Still, if some musicians prefer analog/vintage technology, why is it so important to prove them wrong?

riprowan 10y ago
> technically better system Define "better". "If it sounds good, it is good." - Joe Meek
- veli_joza 10y ago
  Better in technical terms; better SNR, non-destructive editing, enables remote collaboration, more versatile and flexible.
  - riprowan 10y ago
    These are all amazing benefits, but when you're making art, you'll throw all of those out the window if doing so get you the sound you need. The problem is thinking that this is either/or. I use a 48 channel ProTools HD system married to gear that's largely 40-70 years old. Best of both worlds.

bogomipz 10y ago

>"All the console does can be done with a laptop nowadays" No, you are wrong on all accounts. A laptop can not produce a pure analog recording, an AAA LP[1]. Also vintage analog consoles are actually quite coveted by recording engineers either for use as whole desks or for parts like the pots, EQs, side cars, etc. The people that designed this gear were highly skilled craftsmen. Here's a guide to some of the more coveted and collectible analog desks: http://www.proaudioeurope.com/info/funky-junk-guides/guide-analogue-mixing-consoles http://www.proaudioeurope.com/info/funky-junk-guides/guide-a... Additionally there has been a resurgence in analog recording and studios for some time now: https://ask.audio/articles/the-return-of-the-analog-recording-studio https://ask.audio/articles/the-return-of-the-analog-recordin... http://www.thebunkerstudio.com/ http://www.thebunkerstudio.com/ [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARS_code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARS_code

JohnBooty 10y ago

There's no doubt that the data and measurements would tell us that this analog gear is objectively less accurate than a laptop's worth of high-quality digital gear. What gets overlooked, though, is that analog gear often sounds more pleasing because some kinds of distortion sound subjectively "good" to our ears. The easiest example is electric guitars. They are full of (intentionally introduced) distortion and (when everything is set up and played well) they sound freaking awesome. We all know this, right? We also know that most distortion sounds bad -- when your mp3 is corrupted, or when you're using the headphone output of a crappy laptop with a bunch of random noise. So that tells us what? Some distortion sounds good, some sounds bad. Clipping and random noise are forms of distortion that sound bad, generally, unless you're intentionally going for some kind of glitches-out sound like some artists do. Some distortion sounds pleasing through, just like our electric guitar example. Second-order harmonic distortion (and other even-order distortion) often sounds good to us. Second order distortion introduces distortion that is exactly one octave higher and one octave lower than the fundamental frequency of the note being played. It's basically a "chorus" effect and it can be very pleasing and musical. This is why tube amplification can be very enjoyable. Objectively, it's shit. Subjectively, it can sound nice, because most of the distortion is second-order harmonic distortion. I don't know what kind of technology exists inside this console, but just know that accuracy is not always the highest goal of art. It's why we have paintings instead of photographs, and why movies have dramatic lighting inside of just clinically lighting everything like it was the inside of an operating room. Or, just use your ears. Because Dark Side of the Moon sounds as good as any album you've heard in your life, and significantly better than most.

xxdarrenxx 10y ago
I agree. Even top producers plug their ableton track into a nice console after it's done, and directly feed it back again in the laptop, purely for the on-board eq/compression or subjective type off distortion that gets added. One can argue offcourse if it's over the top, but let's be honest, most producers only use 5% off any vst in their lifetime and some don't even venture away from stock presets. For most producers that one sound out off thousand redundant ones is enough.
- 10y ago

cannam 10y ago

I wonder how many individuals there are in the world who have sufficient space for this, something to use it for, and the ability to maintain it? A bit like musing about the potential global demand for high-end yachts. It's not on anything like this scale, but I recently acquired (sort of by accident) a Revox A700 reel-to-reel tape deck from the mid-1970s. Even though it works, it could be the most useless object I've ever possessed. It only does one thing (I guess two if you count recording and playback separately) and that thing can be done with higher fidelity by a free smartphone app. It weighs 25kg, draws a lot of power, is fiddly to use, and is probably one of the most complex pieces of consumer electronics ever made in terms of the number of distinct components it contains that can fail. What is the purpose of it, today?

soylentcola 10y ago
> I wonder how many individuals there are in the world who have sufficient space for this, something to use it for, and the ability to maintain it? A bit like musing about the potential global demand for high-end yachts. I can see someone like Wayne Coyne buying it and getting plenty of use out of it, but I'm not sure if he's got quite "fuck you money" enough to pay the inevitable selling price.
Sanddancer 10y ago
If you're looking to creates something that sounds like it came from the mid-70s, you can either try to fiddle with a bunch of different settings in your DAW of choice to simulate the distortion that a reel to reel provides, or you get a reel to reel from the 70s and not have to worry about if it sounds right for the era/emotions you're trying to catch. A console like this? It's probably going to end up as the centerpiece of someone's collection, much like Nathan Myhrvold's Difference Engine. It'll be well loved, admired, but rarely if ever actually used. I'd love to be proven wrong though, and have it end up being used as a console for a boutique studio for its unique sound. There's a ton of studio equipment that's kept around "just in case" because sometimes what you're working on calls for something out of the ordinary.

bborud 10y ago

While a DAW can do everything this console does (and a lot more) and you could model the signal distortion / treatment characteristics accurately so as to recreate the sound, the way you interact with it would be completely different. Which affects almost every aspect in how you use it. Besides, this thing was used with tapes. Editing when you use tape is an entirely different thing than doing it digitally. It involves cutting, taping, scraping and edits are destructive. Not to mention that you didn't have unlimited tracks on a tape.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

kevincennis 10y ago

This is sort of true for mixing, but definitely not for recording. At the end of the day, you always need a mic pre. And they're often a big part of what people love about these old consoles. On the recording side, I'd argue that a DAW is more akin to the tape machine than the console. Preamps are important, and computers don't have 'em.