I've just read another article about producers making records sound warm by recording to tape. I think this is largely untrue. The same goes for general trends in searching out wobbly old valve gear to get closer to the warmth and spirit of old records.
If classic old records have a warmth about them it is because of arrangement, spirit and playing techniques not what they were miked up with or recorded on. Taking the tape point, I more than understand the technical argument - tapes overload and saturate when you record so that you basically get more sound for your money etc. - but that's just limiting and frequencies - and I don't think that's what the argument's about.
I was reading in sound on sound (I would link to the article but it's subscription only) that the Keane album was made by recording the drums to tape for this reason. Yet on that album, the drums sound very tidy, lifeless and dull - and really just like a decentish drum machine. The piano sounds on the other hand are far more interesting - they're subtly spacious and make a huge dynamic contribution to the sound of the record. They were recorded using a hotch-potch of techniques and millions of layers, on pro tools yet they actually sound "warm".
Of course they do - that was a proccess of trying to make a new sound and trying to do something original (mainly fill in the space other bands might have filled with guitars). It's nothing to do with rack fulls of old gear or mixing desks that Pink Floyd nearly recorded on, warm records in that sense have to do with sounds and ideas that were put together for a specific purpose to make that individual record sound good - in other words (and other words might be useful) the warmth one hears is more to do with the sound of people trying to do something new and beautiful or exciting than it is to do with the frequency spectrum. Usually in fact, those records were made with the newest technologies available - indeed frequently these were only developed for that purpose (like Abbey Road engineers apparently inventing Automatic Double Tracking (chorus basically) , amongst other things, to save the busy Beatles from having to double track their vocals).
Pop music is not objective - it's about connecting with people subjectively and more often than not, letting the listener read what they like into the music - it's a chunk of emotion that you react positively to if it calls up a related feeling in your mind/body. An honest attempt at novelty or just a desire to make a record more exciting and more engaging, or even just louder and brasher than any others before is much more likely to achieve that response than a polite attempt to make a record that sounds neat and tidy like a minimalist loft conversion and is determined to fit into strictly pre-determined radio station genres.
I know this latter point is not entirely the fault of sound engineers, but it is an example of how false consensus ends up robbing contemporary artists of an ability to make music that sounds as good as their predecessors. In music of late, the trend has been that an idea is tried, becomes a success, becomes a fashion and then a lazy rule. If this habit ends up dominating in the studio completely, it will be impossible for those arists who don't produce their own albums to make ones of any lasting quality without wading through hours of twaddle about valves and engineers running about rewinding huge spools of tape.
That said, I would love a big humming heap of old compressors or a massive echo chamber in the roof - but that's just twisted lust.
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