Thanks Matt ! You should start a series of video call ''What to listen for'' where you tell us like in this video what you are listening for specifically. Most video tell us to listen but if you don`t know what you should pay attention it`s useless . Thanks again another great Video :)
I try to incorporate that into everything I do, because it's fairly easy to figure out what to do if we know what we are actually listening for and want. But maybe I need to examine the concept and start shaping together some listening courses.
Dope video Matt. I love understanding my tools even more to know how to attack mixes. Thank you. You're one of the best on line teachers. Keep up the great work!
@@WeissAdvice You are welcome :) Do you use Slate VTM every time when you need to use a tape emulation or are there any other tape emulations that you use other than the VTM?
Thanks for the explanation of 'bias' I had a vague idea from somewhere that it was to do with magnetising the oxide more or less efficiently which would affect the frequency response. Your explanation and practical demonstration is very helpful. Thank you.
Yea, it's a signal used for stimulating those electrons. The exact physics of it, I'm not really sure - but it's something along those lines. Magnets, how do they work?
VTM is on every mix of mine. It’s cool to hear your understanding on tape saturation. My favorite thing about the VTM is how it’s almost like cheating… it adds a good 3dB to the perceived loudness to a mix.
I don't use VTM much for mixbus these days, but low bias, 30ips, 1/2", FG-9, pushed just to the point before audible transient slurring occurs, has always sounded good to me. Doesn't change much, just a little harmonic juice.
@@WeissAdvice nice! I actually recently replaced VTM on mixbus with UAD ATR. I like some of the tonal options better for heavy rock/metal that I work on \m/
This hi-hat example reminds me of the song 1979, the smashing pumpkins- perhaps they have used this saturation "approach" on it too.... fantastic lesson Matt, thank you a million! Feels amazing to learn detailed about this!
Nice content! i knew how tape works just by tweaking the settings and reading manuals. this "scientific" explanation just made my life easier on the decisions im going to take. thank you, matt
Matthew, thank you very much for the explanation, but could you clarify and tell more about the head bump, which also changes the low frequencies a lot?
I can only say so much about head bump, because I don't know the exact mechanism that causes it. Head bump is an artifact of the repro/playback head and relates to the physical distance between heads relative to the tape speed. But basically just means that depending on your tape machine and playback speed you'll get little boosts and dips in the low frequencies. Some tape machines record nearly perfectly flat, like high end Studers, and have very little freq change on playback. Other tape machines get pretty ripply. When it comes to tape emulation it just comes down to how the manufacturer wants to incorporate the effect.
thank you! question: where do you think tape saturation (plugins) should be generally placed (in terms of order). At the beginning of chain? before or after eq and compression? would be nice if you could do a video on mixing chain order in general :)
Well.. I'm on my laptop camera for this coming week's videos so no distraction.... It's a Blackmagic Pocket 6k, and I've been getting progressively better at the color correction.
So its taming the high end while also giving the low end more high end? I would love to see you explain effects like this for different saturation types !
the high end content is related to the low end in a tonal balance perspective. cutting a little bit of the highs is going to make your bass sound fuller and cutting off some bass will make high mid/high frequency content more evident. that's why a lot of mastering uses tilt shelfs (and tapes)
Zeh Du Bass explained it as well as I could. The tape effect here does boost some lows, but those lows are much deeper than where the "high end" stops. BUT - there are tape emulations that will bump that 1-3k range which we could think of as "the bass of the treble" so to speak LOL. But in this case the perceived body we're getting is from the overall tonal balance shift, not so much a boost to that range.
Another good video. Much broader topic is how funny it is we have come to like so much the flaws and limitations of audio gear of the last 100 years. Flaws and limitations people at the time were trying to get rid of! (Except, I guess, rock music which was perhaps the first genre taking delight in pushing all equipment to its limits… and beyond.)
Music is a human experience - and human means imperfection. It's why I try to explain the context of what makes the sound "feel right" rather than "sound good" on this channel.
@@WeissAdvice Okay so on this topic... I have a more in depth question, but limited time to ask it so... You do a great job of explaining a technique and then What the technique is actually doing. The short version of a long question is: in this Era, why not make/use tools that Specifically process the signal in that manner, and with far greater or more precise Control over that effect. Why emulate the Analog devices, and their limitations in order to achieve those effects, in some digital facsimile of an analog (which ironically is short for being analogous of what it was emulating! Meta!) GUI that then gets described as "magic"? There is no Magic, only Science. That was old science used to do a thing. We now have new science to do that thing. The old way did other things While doing that primary thing. But we mostly understand that now, we'll enough to make the new way Emulate the old way. But why not make/use tools that take those old side-effects, and make them new Effects? To some degree I realize that this is exactly what is happening. And don't get me wrong, I'm writing this while sitting in front of 3 Analog Consoles and Racks of Analog equipment. (No Tape Machines though, those were the first to go!) I consider my studio as my Instrument. It's as much about the performance as the final product. And, last thought, I DON'T want to sound like Mr. Fab Filter over the past couple of years whose essentially become Anti-Analog. But as I was watching (and loving) this video, I couldn't help but thinking of the New kid coming into this and wondering: "If you wanna compress and saturate the highs....why are you flipping those 4 fake switches on a fake tape machine. Just make a plugin that controls the signal like that. Why are you explaining Bias?" How much of what we're doing is Nostalgia?
When I want to roll off the highend of an abrasive hihat or percussion instrument. I use echoboy on 0ms with Master Tape selected in the saturation. It's a quite an aggressive rolloff but still clean. I find for anything not subtle, echoboy works better than all the other tape plugins I own.
Nice video Matt. With all that being said - what's your opinion on hardware tape saturators like the Rupert Neve 542 500 Series Tape Emulator added in a vocal chain?
I use a Handsome Audio Zulu - but I mainly use it on mixbus. That said, the song "Get Out" I used Zulu on Rick Ross's vocal and it worked really well to add a bit of grit to the tone. I've never used the Neve 542 specifically so I can't really speak on it. But I rarely meet a saturation I don't like.
Another great video Matt! I was watching a video about the color of acustica audio plugins. I love the color they add but of course the saturation smears the transients which I did not like. Could following a saturation plug with a transient shaper remedy this or is it more complicated? Add color and keep the punch and definition
Acustica is a very interesting plugin line. I find the saturation of many of the plugins sounds good just going in and out - but the actual "preamps" sometimes sound really bad. But some sound pretty good. Distortion is tricky to model. I usually just leave it off with some exception.
Yes - it's a very similar concept. Except instead of a single transformer, it's more like a series of components acting like transformers giving a more complex saturation curve.
I love these UNDERSTANDING videos!! Can you please make a Playlist for just these, where you walk through a concept or technique?
That's a great idea - I need to reorganize the playlists on this channel. I think that would be good playlist.
Weiss back stronger and better than ever. Just really simplifying things for a lot of folks that are too lazy and in a rush to scroll through presets.
Doin my best!
@@WeissAdvice 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
WE'RE BAAAAACK!!!!
Back for the very first time!
Thanks Matt ! You should start a series of video call ''What to listen for'' where you tell us like in this video what you are listening for specifically. Most video tell us to listen but if you don`t know what you should pay attention it`s useless . Thanks again another great Video :)
I try to incorporate that into everything I do, because it's fairly easy to figure out what to do if we know what we are actually listening for and want. But maybe I need to examine the concept and start shaping together some listening courses.
@@WeissAdvice let me know if I can help
Dope video Matt. I love understanding my tools even more to know how to attack mixes. Thank you. You're one of the best on line teachers. Keep up the great work!
Thank you so much Sonny! I appreciate that.
The beat sounds like Eddie Murphy - Party all the time. “My girl wants to party all the time, party all the time, party all the tiiiiiime”
YES!!!👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
It really does. That fuzzy rounded off quality on the drums in that song, incidentally, comes from over biasing the tape machine. Perfect observation.
I was thinking the same thing! I was humming the baseline while listening to this drums lol
Thanks for a detailed explanation, Matthew :)
Thanks for tuning in Dipshankar!
@@WeissAdvice You are welcome :) Do you use Slate VTM every time when you need to use a tape emulation or are there any other tape emulations that you use other than the VTM?
Thanks for the explanation of 'bias' I had a vague idea from somewhere that it was to do with magnetising the oxide more or less efficiently which would affect the frequency response. Your explanation and practical demonstration is very helpful. Thank you.
Yea, it's a signal used for stimulating those electrons. The exact physics of it, I'm not really sure - but it's something along those lines. Magnets, how do they work?
This was very interresting! Thank you very much! 👌😎
My pleasure, thanks for tuning in!
VTM is on every mix of mine. It’s cool to hear your understanding on tape saturation. My favorite thing about the VTM is how it’s almost like cheating… it adds a good 3dB to the perceived loudness to a mix.
That sweet combination of subtle distortion meeting subtle compression.
Been using VTM for YEARS on my mixbusses, but never considered these details to this depth. Cheers man!
I don't use VTM much for mixbus these days, but low bias, 30ips, 1/2", FG-9, pushed just to the point before audible transient slurring occurs, has always sounded good to me. Doesn't change much, just a little harmonic juice.
@@WeissAdvice nice! I actually recently replaced VTM on mixbus with UAD ATR. I like some of the tonal options better for heavy rock/metal that I work on \m/
@WeissAdvice What u use now then?
This hi-hat example reminds me of the song 1979, the smashing pumpkins- perhaps they have used this saturation "approach" on it too.... fantastic lesson Matt, thank you a million! Feels amazing to learn detailed about this!
Thanks for tuning in Bruno!
Technical but very interesting, thanks!
Thank you!
Nice one Matthew! I also really like tape sims on guitars, the head bump is great for shaping low end.
Absolutely! Especially high gain guitars that can get edgy.
Nice content! i knew how tape works just by tweaking the settings and reading manuals. this "scientific" explanation just made my life easier on the decisions im going to take. thank you, matt
Right on! Thanks ZeH!
Matthew, thank you very much for the explanation, but could you clarify and tell more about the head bump, which also changes the low frequencies a lot?
I can only say so much about head bump, because I don't know the exact mechanism that causes it. Head bump is an artifact of the repro/playback head and relates to the physical distance between heads relative to the tape speed. But basically just means that depending on your tape machine and playback speed you'll get little boosts and dips in the low frequencies. Some tape machines record nearly perfectly flat, like high end Studers, and have very little freq change on playback. Other tape machines get pretty ripply.
When it comes to tape emulation it just comes down to how the manufacturer wants to incorporate the effect.
@@WeissAdvice Matthew, again thank you very much for your explanations, they make me very understand how to work with tape emulation!
Excellent tutorial! exactly what I was looking for. Thank you!
What a great technique to aply on my hi hats bus. I've always wonder how to paint the hats in a way of sounds more "analog". Thanks a lot Matthew !
Tape Saturation is my favorite way to control hi hats and cymbals - I prefer it to EQ most of the time in that context.
Thanks Matt! Voxengo CRTIV Tape Bus is my fav because you can control the knee
That's really cool. I've never tried that one.
thank you! question: where do you think tape saturation (plugins) should be generally placed (in terms of order). At the beginning of chain? before or after eq and compression? would be nice if you could do a video on mixing chain order in general :)
Typical workflow would be the end and then you mix into them. But you can do either or.
wow couldn't pay attention because how good the camera was. what camera?
Well.. I'm on my laptop camera for this coming week's videos so no distraction....
It's a Blackmagic Pocket 6k, and I've been getting progressively better at the color correction.
Wow This is awesome and Perfect Timing For me
WEI$$ DAT MVP 🥶🥶🥶🥶💯💯💯💯💯💯✨
So its taming the high end while also giving the low end more high end? I would love to see you explain effects like this for different saturation types !
the high end content is related to the low end in a tonal balance perspective. cutting a little bit of the highs is going to make your bass sound fuller and cutting off some bass will make high mid/high frequency content more evident. that's why a lot of mastering uses tilt shelfs (and tapes)
Zeh Du Bass explained it as well as I could.
The tape effect here does boost some lows, but those lows are much deeper than where the "high end" stops. BUT - there are tape emulations that will bump that 1-3k range which we could think of as "the bass of the treble" so to speak LOL.
But in this case the perceived body we're getting is from the overall tonal balance shift, not so much a boost to that range.
Another good video. Much broader topic is how funny it is we have come to like so much the flaws and limitations of audio gear of the last 100 years. Flaws and limitations people at the time were trying to get rid of! (Except, I guess, rock music which was perhaps the first genre taking delight in pushing all equipment to its limits… and beyond.)
Music is a human experience - and human means imperfection. It's why I try to explain the context of what makes the sound "feel right" rather than "sound good" on this channel.
@@WeissAdvice Okay so on this topic...
I have a more in depth question, but limited time to ask it so...
You do a great job of explaining a technique and then What the technique is actually doing.
The short version of a long question is: in this Era, why not make/use tools that Specifically process the signal in that manner, and with far greater or more precise Control over that effect.
Why emulate the Analog devices, and their limitations in order to achieve those effects, in some digital facsimile of an analog (which ironically is short for being analogous of what it was emulating! Meta!) GUI that then gets described as "magic"?
There is no Magic, only Science. That was old science used to do a thing. We now have new science to do that thing. The old way did other things While doing that primary thing. But we mostly understand that now, we'll enough to make the new way Emulate the old way.
But why not make/use tools that take those old side-effects, and make them new Effects?
To some degree I realize that this is exactly what is happening.
And don't get me wrong, I'm writing this while sitting in front of 3 Analog Consoles and Racks of Analog equipment. (No Tape Machines though, those were the first to go!)
I consider my studio as my Instrument.
It's as much about the performance as the final product.
And, last thought, I DON'T want to sound like Mr. Fab Filter over the past couple of years whose essentially become Anti-Analog.
But as I was watching (and loving) this video, I couldn't help but thinking of the New kid coming into this and wondering:
"If you wanna compress and saturate the highs....why are you flipping those 4 fake switches on a fake tape machine. Just make a plugin that controls the signal like that. Why are you explaining Bias?"
How much of what we're doing is Nostalgia?
I have two tape plugins, Studer A 800 and Arturia tape mello fi smth…both in a chain sound great!
Nice - one kinda cleaner more "sweet" harmonics, and one a little more "character" oriented. I dig it.
@@WeissAdvice Exactly…like jing jang! 😂
When I want to roll off the highend of an abrasive hihat or percussion instrument. I use echoboy on 0ms with Master Tape selected in the saturation. It's a quite an aggressive rolloff but still clean. I find for anything not subtle, echoboy works better than all the other tape plugins I own.
Nice! Have you seen my "Mixing With Delay" tutorial?
@@WeissAdvice Which one? Fun with delays, D16 repeater, god mode delays, perfect delay throws. Doesn't matter as I've watched them all anyway 😉
Nice video Matt. With all that being said - what's your opinion on hardware tape saturators like the Rupert Neve 542 500 Series Tape Emulator added in a vocal chain?
I use a Handsome Audio Zulu - but I mainly use it on mixbus. That said, the song "Get Out" I used Zulu on Rick Ross's vocal and it worked really well to add a bit of grit to the tone. I've never used the Neve 542 specifically so I can't really speak on it.
But I rarely meet a saturation I don't like.
Great content ❤
Another great video Matt! I was watching a video about the color of acustica audio plugins. I love the color they add but of course the saturation smears the transients which I did not like. Could following a saturation plug with a transient shaper remedy this or is it more complicated? Add color and keep the punch and definition
Acustica is a very interesting plugin line. I find the saturation of many of the plugins sounds good just going in and out - but the actual "preamps" sometimes sound really bad. But some sound pretty good. Distortion is tricky to model. I usually just leave it off with some exception.
Tape Saturation work the same like Transformer Saturation
Yes - it's a very similar concept. Except instead of a single transformer, it's more like a series of components acting like transformers giving a more complex saturation curve.
Somewhat misleading in that that's a digital plugin. I love mix:analog for the ability to use real magnetic tape (on either a Telefunken or Studer).
making a tape saturation content with a reel to reel tape pluggin that is a digital emulation is like preachin in a desert, nonsense and no point ...