recording to tape

What's the best way in your opinion to get that analog tape sound?
Any tape recorders you would recommend or maybe it's better to try some of the hardware tape emulators like Anamod ATS-1 or Empirical Labs Fatso?

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/mar10/articles/taperecorderadvice.htm

Might be worth a read for you mate.

scoobylol wrote:http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/mar10/articles/taperecorderadvice.htm

Might be worth a read for you mate.

Great read, thanks.

Just hit the tape hard. Learn to gate and/or accept a bit of noise.

It's easy to lose your bass if you hit too hard, so just be careful or mix bass back in later.

Reel tape might be expensive / hard to find, but is the only thing for professional mastering.

If you are just looking for some grit, then slamming a cassette deck is a great way to go.

The Anamod is SICK!, but you pay big $$$ for it. You can even cop expansion card that sound like specific tape machines (brand/model) loaded with specific tape (brand/part #). It really sounds awesome, and is the only really good tape emulation Ive heard first hand (Havent heard the FATSO, but its made by Empirical Labs.....Nuff Said.)

Might be worth reading my latest book, Creative Effects, as it has a whole chapter dedicated to tape saturation and tubes etc...

nogginj wrote:If you are just looking for some grit, then slamming a cassette deck is a great way to go.

You are talking here about cassette portastudios like Tascam models?
How would the mix benefit from using this?

zork wrote:

nogginj wrote:If you are just looking for some grit, then slamming a cassette deck is a great way to go.

You are talking here about cassette portastudios like Tascam models?
How would the mix benefit from using this?

well, tape is tape... you get "that tape sound" by using tapes... get any tape deck that you can record on. you can get a double deck cassette recorder for like 10 bucks if not free on craigslist...

grab one and try it out. if you like it then maybe invest a bit more on something a bit more expensive. Okay you can get a portastudio or a fostex mult track... they use regular tapes so those are cheap and easy to find. (they take high bias tapes which are thicker however they still can record on regular ones but you might break the tape after a couple of songs) ... or you could maybe grab a reel to reel... which the tapes are getting a bit harder to find now...

I do not necessarily mean the multi-track tape recorders...I mean any tape recorder.

And I suppose the answer to your other question, "how would the mix benefit from using this" is really up to you, you asked about how to get 'that tape sound'. So how would your mix benefit from 'that tape sound'?

From what i heard there is a big difference between slow speed, low fidelity recording tape decks and reel-to-reel recorders like Studer.

That's why i wonder if it's really any benefit to recording by using ordinary portastudios. Did anyone of you actually tried it and compared the results to 2" tapes?

From what i know all the classic hip-hop recordings from the early '90 were done with reel-to-reel professional gear and not consumer cassette decks...

You are right, the difference is huge.
If you want to make a pristine sounding recording using tape, you need a big ass tape machine, brand new tape, running at hi-speed, some denoisers, etc etc etc.

I guess I didn't understand your original question cause you just said 'how do i get that tape sound'. I like abusing tape decks to REALLY get 'that tape sound'...from what I can tell you are maybe talking about something more subtle, which is kind of ironic because all the stuff that goes into an expensive tape machine is to get it clean as possible, and get rid of a lot of 'that tape sound'.

If you want a pristine tape recording, then yea you will likely need a bunch of super high end tape gear or one of those anamod things (never heard one...sounds cool). The most budget effective way would be to use a 1/4" reel to reel 4 track....a really good one, with brand new tape and proper gating and noise reduction.
I have a pretty nice cassette deck that I sometimes bounce to for a subtle effect, but it's not the kind of cleanliness you would get out of a studio like all those classic hip hop recordings were made in.

I think you could make a quality 'tape sound' recording if you bounced a couple key tracks (like drums) to a tape deck, then mixed them back in with the digital tracks. From my experience, just one analog conversion can go a long way to 'warm' up your sounds. Anything really, tape, preamp, nice eq, channel strip, whatever.

My misunderstanding...I thought by 'tape sound' you meant real dirt.

[quote="nogginj"

My misunderstanding...I thought by 'tape sound' you meant real dirt.[/quote]


yeah same here... not the tape machines designed to add no noise at all..


in ten years we will have people asking how to get that CD sound.

mr_debauch wrote:[quote="nogginj"
in ten years we will have people asking how to get that CD sound.

To each his own, but i think there is *great* difference between analog sound from tape and digital "CD sound".
I'm trying to achieve something which can be easily heard on "Incarcerated Scarfaces" by RZA. You can almost feel there that "tape analog" sound even when you listen to it from a CD.

I'm not sure what they were using to achieve that, probably some SSL console, and recorded to reel. I can somewhat duplicate it with ASR-10 mix going through good hardware EQ (bumping up high frequencies), but can't achieve that softness and subtle hiss.

I don't think it can be achieved with ordinary portastudios cassette decks, but maybe I'm wrong.....

Perhaps as a temporary alternative you could get a cheap tape deck, record nothing but the hiss and then layer that internally with a little EQ to soften it inside your DAW or whatever you work with. Or maybe side-chain it to your kicks so it fills those gaps in a more subtle way.

I don't think it can be achieved with ordinary portastudios cassette decks, but maybe I'm wrong.....

Of course it can, it just takes a little work.

Like you said, you can get close by using just a little outboard eq. Well, keep trying, then! Tape itself lends a little natural compression/distortion, probably the 'softness' you talk about. So like I said, maybe try bouncing a few key tracks to tape. If you bounce your drums to tape, then mix them back in, you will get closer to the effect. Any cheap tape recorder will work to try it out.

The *only* way you are going to get it to sound *exactly* like someone else is to completely bite someone else's style and maybe even steal their equipment. So I'd say, instead of saying it can't be done, experiment yourself with what you can get. I really think if you bounce a couple tracks to tape, you will start to get close.

Don't put so much faith in the equipment. Even if you did have all of RZA's old gear, that gear will not make you RZA.