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Posts Tagged ‘Chris Estes’

MIX MAGAZINE – Aerosmith records “New Dimension” with CLASP

Wednesday, August 1st, 2012

Steven Tyler singing.
Steven Tyler recording vocals.

Warren Huart on Steven’s vocals: Most of Steven Tyler’s keeper vocals were cut at Swing House with a Neumann U 48 that Huart had used previously on The Fray, James Blunt, Adele and others. Other pieces of the chain included a Brent Averill Enterprises 1073, “and then I mult to two sets of compression and I parallel compress. I have two [dbx] 160 VU’s, which I set pretty lightly, like 2-to-1 or 3-to-1. I split those out of a mult and then each of those goes to an 1176 set to limit on 20:1 and they just catch the peaks. I’ve got one for verses and softer vocals, attacking it lightly, and then when he goes into that louder, crazier Steven thing I have another set of compression set at half that. They’re multed back together and that’s the vocal sound. What it does is give you huge, fat vocals all the time. I ride the 1073—I’ll click the gain settings up and down depending on where he is on the vocal. It’s pretty old school. As an engineer, you’re blessed to work with a singer of that quality, because he makes your life very easy.”

Tape machine.

On Tape and CLASP: Douglas and Huart joined the growing ranks of producers and engineers to embrace the Endless Analog CLASP system, which Huart says “gives you a sound only tape can give you. You can’t fault it on drums—it gives you a nice little low that’s never going to be the same if you just EQ. You can also boost the top end on your overhead in the mix without it sounding brittle.” For this project, the recording team used CLASP in conjunction with three Studer A800 two-inch analog recorders—a 16-track (for drums) and a 24-track at Pandora’s Box, and another A800 24-track at Joe Perry’s Boneyard.

Swing House studio.

Douglas on Swing House: “The vibe [at Swing House] was totally relaxed. It’s like a clubhouse. Crystal Method was in there awhile, Marilyn Manson. And we had visitors, too—Richard Lewis, Rick Nielson, Jack Black, Johnny Depp, so it was a lot of fun.” Depp and Julian Lennon are among those who helped on backing vocals.

Douglas has done so much work at Swing House over the past five years that he has merged much of his personal equipment with the studio’s, including his (now-rare) SPL Charisma dual-channel processors and some Retro gear, such as the 176 (the modern version of the 1176), which he lauds for its highpass filter. “Also, their version of a [1950s-era] Gates Sta-level [compressor] and passive EQ are very good.”

Swing House studio compressor.

Other favored pieces of gear included Pulse-Tec’s modern versions of the classic Pultec PQ-1 and PQ-2; and the Vertigo Sound Quad Discrete VCA Compressor, which Huart likens to the “the classic dbx 202 VCAs that are in the original [SSL] 4000 bus compressor, though the control over it is much better. What I like about it is the highpass filter, which is very modern. It’s set at 60 and 90 and it really allows the bottom end to breathe.”

Both of Swing House’s two main rooms were used for the Aerosmith project. The control room of Studio A includes a vintage 20-channel API console, a Cadac sidecar and an assortment of Calrec and Neve mic pre’s. Studio B features a gorgeous vintage 24-channel, 8-bus Neve 8058.



SONIC SCOOP – Research & Development: Inside the Making of Machine Matrix from Endless Analog

Thursday, July 26th, 2012

How does an audio offering come to life? Welcome to the new SonicScoop series “Research & Development” where we’ll be exploring the genesis of hardware, software and services that catch our eye.

What's the story behind Endless Analog's new Machine Matrix? (Photo Credit: Jake Harsh)

First up: When Endless Analog first launched the CLASP (Closed Loop Analog Signal Processor) in 2010, there was no guarantee that the world would warm up to their system.

Patented by Chris Estes, the CLASP design bridged analog and digital recording techniques by seamlessly integrating tape machines into Pro Tools. The result was the ability to record to tape while maintaining the speed and flexibility of a DAW, delivering real-time analog monitoring with zero-latency through a mastering grade audio signal path.

In 2012, there are no doubts: CLASP is here to stay, with deployments for Lenny Kravitz, Aerosmith, Abbey Road Studios, John Shanks, Nathan Chapman (Taylor Swift), Beck, Michael W. Smith, Denis Savage (Celine Dion), Butch Walker (Panic at the Disco, Pink, Avril Lavigne), Dave Cobb (Shooter Jennings, Jamey Johnson), Chuck Ainlay and John Fields (Jonas Brothers, Miley Cyrus, Switchfoot), and more.

As Estes spent time in the field with CLASP, however, he discovered that something more was needed for the line — CLASP users with multiple tape machines needed an additional level of control. For that, Endless Analog has just introduced a powerful complement to the CLASP line: the Machine Matrix ($3,750). Here, Estes explains how and why his new made-to-order system came into being.

(l-r) Chris Estes and Lenny Kravitz. (photo credit: Mathieu Bitton)

What’s the principle behind the Machine Matrix?

With the Machine Matrix and a CLASP system you can switch back and forth between tape machines in the middle of the song without any patching or re-syncing all with a single mouse click. Machine Matrix is software/hardware controlled analog tape with mastering grade auto signal routing.

What sparked the original idea for this addition to the Endless Analog line?

The original idea for the Machine Matrix came from Lenny Kravitz’ studio. I spent a good amount of time with Lenny at his studio in the Bahamas and he was one of first customers to utilize CLASP with the Studer J37 one inch four track. His J37 was actually used by The Beatles to record Sgt. Pepper.

He has several different tape machines, and and he wants to use them all. So that was the inspiration for creating the Matrix — a seamless way to switch between tape decks during a session that doesn’t disrupt the creative flow. With our old CLASP software you needed a separate template for each machine, but with the Machine Matrix and our version 3.5 software and hardware there is only one master template for all your tape machines, so you never have to stop the creative flow of the session, break down, and connect your Pro Tools and patchbay to the new machine.

With the Machine Matrix it’s just literally as easy as one mouse click, and within the time it takes to click the mouse your CLASP is switched over to a new tape machine, and everything is patched and synchronized instantly.

For example, let’s say your studio has an Ampex ATR ½-inch machine at 30 ips, but you also have a Studer A80 1-inch that’s running at 15 IPS. You could have 20:32 of tape left on the Studer machine, while the Ampex ATR is running at 30 IPS with 07:31 minutes left — it doesn’t matter. The Machine Matrix keeps track of it all. When you switch to the new machine, the CLASP hardware is automatically updated to the newly selected tape deck.

What did you learn from the rollout of the original CLASP – what was surprising/unexpected for you in terms of how studios were integrating them into their workflow, and using some of the features of the system?

(click to enlarge) This diagram depicts a CLASP system installation using pre existing D-Sub patch bays and pre existing wiring. There are 3 patch modes; (1) CLASP mode which requires no patching. (2) Pro Tools Only mode which requires only one patch from the mic pre outputs to the Pro Tools inputs. (3) Analog Tape Only mode which requires one patch from the analog tape deck outputs to the console line inputs. All of the patchbays are half normaled except for bays 1 & 2 (microphone lines to mic pre amps).

One of the things we learned was how to efficiently and economically integrate CLASP into a studio with minimal wiring. We now have a patchbay configuration diagram that uses mostly your pre-existing wiring. And if you already have a DSUB patchbay then it’s even easier. (see diagram) CLASP is designed to be plug-and-play, you take it out of the box, plug it in and go. It only takes literally one minute to install the software in your Pro Tools.

Another thing we learned was how to improve the software interface and its functionality. We had great suggestions from a few engineers at Abbey Road.

So with those in mind I reworked the interface, and in this new version 3.5 you see the culmination of suggestions from our users — a much better GUI where you can see the track arming status of all 24 tracks of the CLASP hardware simultaneously, better functionality such as Input Monitor and Repro monitor controls on the plugin. An auto update feature that scans for track arming eliminating the need to bank through channels manually with HUI. And we’ve put more controls on the plugin to control the hardware, because that’s mostly what the software is doing — controlling our hardware.

In addition to Lenny Kravitz’ studio, can you give us another example of how the Machine Matrix can optimize the CLASP workflow?

The Machine Matrix makes it extremely convenient to work with all of the machines in your arsenal for overdubbing, mix down — you name it. For example; you might decide to track with your 2-inch machine, but then overdub with your half-inch 2-track and then mix. Or you might be in a tracking session and you have two totally different 2 inch machines you want to A/B for a song. Well, now you can A/B without stopping the session.

You’re one mouse click away from any machine you have in your room. It’s possible to have three completely different 2-inch machines, 1-inch machines, half-inch, quarter-inch or any combination all connected to the Matrix at the same time. It takes as long to switch between decks as it does for you to click the mouse.

One of the best examples I have seen is a CLASP studio with two different 24-track machines (Studer A80, MCI JH24) and an ATR 102 that used a different 2-inch for each song at different tape speeds that best suited the vibe of each song while tracking, then switched into the ATR for vocal overdubbing and the final mix processing.

It’s really exciting to see how people use CLASP. A lot of guys are using it in the mix stage now. They insert the half-inch two-track into the mix chain after their bus compressor and set it on “input” using the VU meters on the two-track to keep an eye on the mix buss gain structure. After the mix is about 80% dialed in, they set the two-track into “repro” and take its transport online with the CLASP.

So now Pro Tools is driving the tape transport (automatic) and they are listening “through the tape” and making final mix and buss compression tweaks, letting the tape react to the fast transients instead of their buss compressor. They fold the output of the two track back into Pro Tools on a fresh channel and use a make up gain plugin like the Slate Mastering Plugin to offset the gain difference going from 0db @ -18VU. The results from this are amazing.

Back view of the Machine Matrix. (Photo credit: Jake Harsh)

What’s the most challenging aspect of designing an entirely new product, as you’ve done with the Machine Matrix?

I think the most challenging thing is to do it so it integrates with our pre-existing lines — that’s what I set out to do. Seamless integration was the goal: When you have a Machine Matrix and want to plug into a CLASP 8, 16, or 24, you’re there. It just plugs in and sees it.

The form factor also takes a lot of careful consideration. Originally we were going to make the audio routing and machine control routing of the Matrix as a separate pieces of gear, but in the end we decided it made more sense to put everything together — that this would give the customer more value. Fortunately it wasn’t difficult to integrate! I just had to re-work the circuit board designs.

Lastly, why is product evolution an essential part of what you do – what are the market forces that make new product features and models a necessity for manufacturers like Endless Analog?

As a music artist it is necessary to keep writing, performing and inventing. I used to write songs and make records — that’s what I did for a living, and then I had the idea for CLASP because I was feeling frustrated about how my digital recordings were sounding. So this is just me being an artist, just like when an artist writes a new song: You have the song in you, you want to get it out and make it happen you want to see it materialize. These are my songs in the form of gear.

Eventually CLASP will be a lot more than what you see right now. It took about five years for us to get the first patent issued for CLASP, which is kind of like getting your songs copy-written. So these first pieces of Endless Analog CLASP gear are like the first few tracks on an album that has been written. Now we’re recording the rest of the album for release a few tracks at a time and hopefully people will continue to like our music.

Just like we each like different genres of music, some engineers like plugins, and that’s fine. But when it comes down to it, we like the sound of using the real thing any day over a simulation. And why not use the real thing if you can? A real tape machine running in the studio is always way more inspiring than a plugin any day.

– David Weiss

 



USA TODAY – Music lovers pursue technologies to return to high fidelity

Friday, January 27th, 2012

    SONY / ARISTA Records Country Music Artist Jarrod Neimann with Engineer Brian Kolb and Producer Dave Brainard

    SONY / ARISTA Records Country Music Artist Jarrod Niemann with Engineer Brian Kolb and Producer Dave Brainard use the new CLASP technology to record Neimann’s new album release.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Recording engineer Pat McMakin approaches his work with an almost obsessive pursuit of the perfect sound.

The difference between CD, MP3 via The Tennessean

By the time a recording makes its way to fans via iTunes or over Internet radio, it possesses a fraction of the total sound information captured in the studio — as little as 3% of the original, live sound waves. Even CD formats are stripped of up to 90% of the live recording to fit onto a 4 3/4-inch disc.

Often gone are the last lingering notes of a bass guitar, the echo of a drumbeat, the very high and very low notes.

But now, in Nashville, a handful of Music Row businesses are beginning to invest in new products and technologies to increase the fidelity of music at every stage of the recording and listening process, from new in-studio recording technologies to new music formats to home stereo equipment.

Whether consumers who have grown accustomed to listening to tunes over $10 ear buds will be willing to pay for better sounds, however, remains a big question mark.

“I already invest a lot in my music, in my laptop and my iPhone and my Wi-Fi at home,” said Corey First, 28, a marketing assistant from Franklin, Tenn. “I don’t have the bucks to spend more. I have no complaints about my music.

Still, the steep drop in sound quality as digital music has taken hold remains a source of aggravation for artists and music professionals — and audiophiles among consumers — who argue that music is losing many of the subtle qualities that gave it emotion, spaciousness and depth in order to make songs Internet ready.

“The irony is that we’ve been making better- and better-sounding records in the studio, but the technology has been dumbing them down for years,” said McMakin, director of operations at Ocean Way Studios on Music Row.

“All of us —the engineers, the artists, the musicians — put a lot of heart, a lot of time, a lot of care into making music. For us to hear the same piece of music on an MP3 or radio sounds disheartening,” said McMakin, who has engineered audio for Many in the music industry are now beginning to advocate for sound quality solutions.

Last week, singer Neil Young took his campaign for higher-fidelity digital music to a technology conference, revealing that Apple’s Steve Jobs, before his death, had been working on creating bigger digital files to capture a wider range of sound. (Jobs, Young noted, preferred listening to his music on vinyl records.)

Hybrid approach

Last month, at the former historic RCA Studio A on Music Row — now known as Ben’s Studio — country artist Jerrod Niemann recorded tracks for his latest album with a new invention he hopes will increase the audio quality of even the digital versions of his album.

The recording studio is the same Music Row space where stars such as Elvis Presley, Chet Atkins and Joe Cocker made albums during an era in which bulky analog tape decks faithfully captured the sound in a studio and music was sold on vinyl records. Analog captures the entire spectrum of sound, as does vinyl, because the music isn’t compressed or squeezed to fit.

Digital recordings, on the other hand, are captured by computers, which record only certain slices of sound at split-second intervals that are then encoded into computer language. All those 1′s and 0′s end up representing a numeric interpretation of sound.

But Niemann’s recording session relied on a new piece of recording machinery known as CLASP, which takes a hybrid approach.

It records on analog tape and feeds it into a digital machine, giving producers the ease of editing digital with a better-recorded sound, said CLASP’s inventor, local music business entrepreneur Chris Estes.

Estes is marketing the equipment to artists, producers, studios and record companies after spending six years tinkering with the invention in his Bellevue home.

Thus far, its $3,000 to $7,000 price tag has attracted established record labels rather than new independent artists.

Taylor Swift, Adele and the rock band KISS are among the artists who have hired Estes to record with CLASP to capture what Estes calls that “warm, detailed, musical sound.”

“It’s way clearer to listen to,” said Niemann, 32, who is signed with the Sony-owned label Arista Nashville. “I want the fans to hear the music the way it’s supposed to be, the way that I hear it. It’s way better than digital.”

Vinyl is most faithful medium

Although no medium is capable of duplicating exactly the quality of a live performance, the best audio recordings and playback equipment capture the entire range of sound in the studio.

Vinyl is the most faithful medium, with no compression or translation of music.

Among digital recordings, Blu-ray offers one of the highest resolutions possible — the biggest digital space to capture and then rebroadcast a much higher portion of the recorded sound.

But CDs subtract portions of the sound to fit on discs. And MP3s subtract even more.

In mathematical terms, a typical Blu-ray song contains 2,304,000 bits of information. A CD contains a third of that — about 705,600 bits.

But a digital version — an MP3 downloaded from iTunes or the Internet — captures just 70,000 bits.

For all of the hundreds or thousands of minute human-driven adjustments of microphones, sound boards, mixing and mastering that go into constructing a professional album, it’s a computer software program that uses a standard algorithm that decides which of the millions of bits of information aren’t necessary for the human ear — in effect, which parts of a song a listener can do without.

Dynamic ranges (louds and softs) and frequency responses (high and low notes) are often casualties of the compression process.

“The computer program has to take all this information and make it so it can cram down a little pipe and then make it sound good on the other end,” McMakin said. “But it’s like a computer program you put a short story into and it decides all the letter v’s are unnecessary.”

Sound quality then further depends on the consumer’s playback equipment — ear buds and laptop speakers, for example, versus higher-quality stereo systems.

“It’s very frustrating, but when the computer came in people plugged in those little speakers and they seem satisfied with that,” said John Corigliano, 73, a New York composer in contemporary classical American music circles who records with the Franklin-based Naxos label, the biggest classical music label in the world.

“I work long hours getting the sound quality just right,” he said.

To increase the quality available to fans, Corigliano is working with Naxos to produce audio Blu-ray versions of his orchestral compositions. But higher-quality sound isn’t cheap.

At about $19, Corigliano’s Blu-ray Circus Maximus is twice the price of the CD version of his work. No other major label is issuing sound-only Blu-rays, although the format has been used for concert films.

Klaus Heymann, Naxos president and founder, said the company has had to roll back its original plans to issue all new recordings on Blu-ray because it hasn’t yet caught on among consumers.

“We are trying very hard to get other labels on board,” Heymann said. “Some who are not as financially strong as us don’t want to spend money on something that’s not yet a sure thing. But we think it will be because we’re seeing more people buy surround-sound TV systems, and we think consumers are going to understand that equipment is not only good for their video, it’s good for audio.

“The Hong Kong-based Heymann predicts that a proliferation of Internet-ready televisions in the near future probably will make listening to music on computers a short-lived phenomenon. Increasing Internet bandwidth to allow for bigger files that capture more sound information to stream or download also is critical, he said. That would allow for bigger digital files — a step that a handful of recording label executives also want to see.

Gibson jumps in

Nashville’s Gibson Guitar is counting on a resurgence of consumer interest in listening to music at home.

Recently, the longtime guitar maker announced it had created the Gibson Pro Audio division, which includes a partnership with Japanese consumer electronics manufacturer Onkyo to make and market stereo systems, speakers and home theater systems to consumers who, Gibson CEO Henry Juszkiewicz believes, want better-sounding music.

“With Onkyo, our goal is to bring the same exceptional experience artists demand in the studio to a larger consumer base,” the Gibson boss said.

Gibson’s Onkyo partnership includes high-end home system equipment that runs to the thousands of dollars, as well as receivers that run only a few hundred dollars.

That may be a big leap for many consumers, but others seem to be inching in that direction after years of eschewing bulky home systems.

In 2011, sales of such audio systems reached $4.4 billion, according to the Consumer Electronics Association. This year they’re projected to reach $4.53 billion. That’s still down from the $5 billion in sales in 2007.

“I don’t think we’ll ever go back to full-content audio and CD players in the home,” said Sean Murphy, senior analyst with the Consumer Electronics Association.

“But we’re seeing home receivers equipped with digital playing abilities running through a receiver that are 100 times better in terms of sound quality than listening to an iPod on a speaker dock.”

There are a few other factors giving some Nashville music makers optimism that consumers are ready to return to better-quality sound products. Gamers are demanding better audio to go along with increasingly sophisticated video systems, said McMakin, who last week recorded a full score by an orchestra for an upcoming Sony PlayStation game.

Bandwidth probably will expand, allowing for bigger digital music files that store more sound frequency.” My instinct is there’s going to be an ‘aha moment,’” McMakin said. “There’s going to be a generational shift where there will be more reasonable access to alternative formats than we have now, and people will hear the difference.”



JOHN HIATT Records New Album With CLASP

Monday, April 4th, 2011

2011-4-5-claspNashville, TN (April 5, 2011)–John Hiatt is tracking his next album in Nashville with producer Kevin Shirley and an Endless Analog CLASP system.

A multiple Grammy nominee, Hiatt’s career spans several decades, with songs such as “Thing Called Love,” “Riding with the King,” “Have a Little Faith in Me” and “Angel Eyes” to his credit. He is working with Shirley–Hiatt’s last few LPs have been completed without the help of a separate producer–at the studio space now owned by Ben Folds, previously known as RCA Studio A/Javelina Studios.

Endless Analog’s CLASP (Closed Loop Analog Signal Processor) system integrates analog tape machines into the digital audio production workflow. “Working with tape again just sounds so much better to me; it’s such an improvement over straight digital,” noted Hiatt. “When we started tracking these songs, we were all blown away just hearing it again, because I haven’t cut to tape in several years. And we’re back using different kinds of tape and experimenting with different tape speeds to the MCI JH-24, just like the old days. It’s really thrilling. The tracks sound alive, and because we don’t have to change reels or rewind, the creative process is uninterrupted.”

Hiatt appreciates the ways that CLASP improves upon the analog recording process. “The fact that you can run the 24-track and work in real time and do everything–punch-ins and all that stuff–is fantastic. We get warm, classic analog sound with all the editing and recording capabilities of the digital age. And we do not have to worry about changing tapes, because CLASP lets us use the same reel almost indefinitely. We’ve only used one reel so far, and we’ve cut 15 songs.”

Endless Analog
www.endlessanalog.com


VARIETY MAGAZINE – Analog recording makes a comeback

Tuesday, January 4th, 2011

Variety.com Analog recording makes a comeback – Entertainment News, Weekly, Media – Variety

Musical artists turn to old tech for vintage sound

John Mellencamp’s recent album “No Better Than This” was recorded by the singer and “O Brother, Where Art Thou” music producer T-Bone Burnett using a single vintage RCA 77DX microphone and a 50-year-old refurbished mono Ampex 601 portable tape deck.

It’s easy to dismiss the record as simply an artful manifesto on Mellencamp’s part — he along with fellow music artists Prince and Stevie Nicks have all railed publicly that digital technology in general and the Internet in particular have destroyed both music and the music business. Except that Mellencamp also took what has become a recent trend to its extreme: as CD sales continue to plummet and digital downloads barely dent that fiscal void, new recordings using hoary analog technology and released on vinyl making a surprising comeback.

Vinyl’s resurgence has been well documented. In 2009, 2.5 million vinyl albums were purchased, up 33% from the previous year and showing a sustainable rise from sales of 858,000 in 2006, according to Nielsen SoundScan. And new LP prices can range as high as $30, twice what the typical new CD fetches.

But as vinyl records grow in popularity, the back-to-analog effect has been heading upstream — more artists now choosing to record their LPs from the very first note using ancient tape machines revived by artisans with soldering irons. Taylor Swift, Jack White, the Secret Sisters, Lenny Kravitz, and Elton John and Leon Russell on their recent “Reunion” LP are among analog’s fanatics; Kravitz owns one of the four-track tape decks used to record the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s” album at Abbey Road Studios.

Mike Spitz, owner of both ATR Services, which is refurbishing vintage analog decks, and ATR Magnetics, which is manufacturing tape for them, says business has boomed in recent months.

“Tape is now the holy grail for musicians,” he says, welcomed by both industry veterans who miss the format’s sine-wave warmth and by indie twentysomethings who are experiencing full bandwidth after a lifetime of listening to highly compressed MP3s.

Nathan Chapman, Swift’s record producer, says the 21-year-old loves the sound of analog tape as well as the way it changes the recording process.

“Taylor’s young and she has the energy to go the extra mile it takes to record in analog’s more limited number of tracks,” Chapman says. “A lot of older recording artists have gotten used to the convenience of digital.

“It also affects her vocals, in a good way. When recording vocals to Pro Tools there’s always a tiny bit of latency, for the analog-to-digital conversion process. Recording directly to tape, there’s an immediacy Taylor hears and reacts to.”

A vintage multitrack deck like a Studer A827 costs $7,000 or more, and and additional $10,000 to refurbish, but Spitz says demand continues to increase. The cost of the media is also rising — a reel of 2-inch tape today costs $250 to $300, more than double the cost a decade ago. That reflects the scarcity of the necessary raw materials like base film and oxide, says Don Morris, director of sales for RMG Intl., the Dutch company that took over the assets of BASF’s liquidated EMTEC tape manufacturing business. “But musicians are willing to pay that now, because they know how much better it sounds,” he says.

A recent innovation that addresses tape cost is Clasp — the Closed Loop Analog Signal Processor developed by Nashville-based Endless Analog. The $10,000 unit is essentially an analog front end to a digital audio workstation like Pro Tools, imparting analog’s warmth and the tonality associated with running the tape at various speeds — slower speeds like 7.5 inches per second are used to capture the low frequencies of drums and bass while vocals and guitars sparkle at 15 and 30 ips.

Clasp’s inventor, Chris Estes, says since the tape is used for processing the sound but not to store it, one reel of 2-inch tape can theoretically be used as many as 10,000 times, mitigating the high cost of the media. “The tape is constantly running, not being constantly stopped and restarted, which stresses and stretches the tape,” he says.

Perry Margouleff, who owns the vintage-equipment fantasy land Pie Studios in Glen Cove, N.Y., which attracts artists like the Rolling Stones and Jimmy Page, says working in analog restores some of the talent filtering lost to the DIY ease of digital recording. “When you record in analog, the drummer has to play in time, the singer has to sing in tune, the guitar player has to nail the part, because you can’t go back later and fix it with a black box,” he says.

Analog-recorded music is finding its way into films. Soul singer Sharon Jones’ rendition of 2009′s “Up in the Air” theme track “This Land Is Your Land” was recorded in the funky and analog Daptones Records studio in Brooklyn’s Bushwick section, where the basic tracks for Amy Winehouse’s Grammy-winning “Rehab” were also recorded.

“The sound of the tape is a big part of the sound of the record,” says Gabriel Roth, Jones’ record producer and Daptone partner.

Analog’s attraction lies in its ultra-high resolution capability, Spitz explains. Direct Stream Digital (DSD), the high-resolution digital disc format Sony used for its audiophile SACD format, is capable of 2.884,000 transitions per track per second, but a high-quality mastering tape contains approximately 80 million transitions per track second. “And that’s just for 1/4-inch two-track tape running at 15 IPS,” says Spitz. “The resolution goes up substantially with wider tracks and higher (tape) speeds.”

However, don’t pull your tie-dyed jeans out the closet just yet, say musicians, producers and music execs. The entire infrastructure of professional music recording has been firmly entrenched in the nonlinear digital domain for more than a decade, and even basic tape deck maintenance such as headstack alignment is no longer part of the core curricula for aspiring engineers at media academies such as Full Sail U., SAE and Berklee College of Music.

“Analog is great, but it’s just economically unrealistic to think you can use it all the time or even very often,” says David Frangioni, who has cut tracks for Aerosmith, Bryan Adams, Ricky Martin and Ozzy Osbourne. Aside from the cost of media and hardware, Frangioni says contemporary records need to have access to more tracks and nonlinear editing capabilities to be competitive on radio and at retail.

“These days especially, you have to balance time and budget against the cost of analog.”

Michael Lloyd, a record producer and exec at Curb Records in L.A., says while the cost of tape media may not be a budget-breaker for major labels, he wonders, at a time when music sales continue to decline, if recording technology even matters to consumers. “At the end of the day, it all goes out (on CD) or MP3. I’d rather see the concentration on good songs than on the technology. We have a good digital workflow in place.”

Analog recording is expensive and exotic compared to digital systems and it will remain a niche. But its renewed popularity suggests some listeners may be tired of MP3′s squeezed sonics.



Endless Analog CLASP at the Motor Museum – exclusive review by Mike Crossey…

Monday, December 13th, 2010

endless analog clasp at Miloco The Motor Museum, LiverpoolIt’s a pleasure to welcome guest blogger Mike Crossey, our partner at the Motor Museum Studio in Liverpool, to share his thoughts on the latest piece of gear at the studio, the Endless Analog CLASP – Tape to DAW synchronization hardware…

I have always been a big fan of recording to analogue tape, for me it adds another dimension to the recording that is impossible to get with digital. It emotionally has more impact on me. All of the records I have worked on that have stood the test of time with me personally have all had tape in the chain at the recording process.

As a huge fan of this way of recording I can list many advantages to recording this way!

Tape gives those slight differences in tone that provide cinematic width to your stereo sounds.
Tape thickens your transients providing a more meaty punch to your drums and percussion.
Tape smooths your dynamics in a much more musical way than any compressor can, leaving you with more power in your raw tracking.
Tape provides a sonic thumbprint to all your individual tracks that allows them to marry together perfectly in the mix.
Tape forces you to use good engineering practice with your gain structure and levels.
Tape laces your sounds with harmonic richness that makes your EQ feel more powerful in the mix.
Tape running at 15 ips gives a huge tight low end that has to be heard to be believed.
All that vintage gear everyone loves, U47s, Vintage Neve mic pre-amps etc, were all designed to hit tape and sonics of that process were allowed for in the design. Check it out!

In my view, the reasons that tape has been left behind to the pro tools generation have never been sonic reasons but financial reasons and convenience. Much of modern culture makes this sacrifice, quality for convenience/cost.
Imagine being able to work with the speed and editing possibilities of pro tools but still have all of the benefits of tape! I never thought this would be possible until now!

When I first heard about the Endless Analog CLASP system on youtube I was literally straight on the phone to the designer Chris Estes In Nashville to have him explain it to me more. The main challenge for Chris is to actually get across how seamlessly CLASP works and how this is achieved. I’ll have a go…

CLASP allows Pro Tools to take complete control of your tape machine. Once the tape is loaded on the machine, you never need to touch the tape machine again for the whole session. You can work in Pro Tools as you would normally! How amazing is that!
CLASP has a built in switching system that automatically controls how your performers can monitor what they are playing (with zero latency!) and what is routed to tape.
CLASP learns your tape machine and can take control of the pro tools delay compensation engine to automatically compensate for the delays between the record head and the repro head in real time.
CLASP is constantly sending information about the status of your tape machine to pro tools via MIDI and in vice versa, can control your tape machine through the cable that would normally run to your remote transport.
CLASP allows you to change tape speeds on the fly mid session. Would you like to record your bass and drums at 15ips and your vocals at 30ips? No problem. This was never possible before when working just with tape.

Lets say for example you have a singer with the vocal chain patched into multitrack input 3, you then arm track 3 in pro tools ready to record…

1. CLASP routes the live mic directly to channel 3 on the console from here the vocal can be sent to foldback, this allows the performer to monitor themselves with ZERO LATENCY.
True zero latency monitoring is not possible when monitoring post converter in pro tools. I have noticed a marked increase in the comfort and performance of a musician performing to a true analogue signal of themselves.

2. CLASP then also simultaneously routes this signal directly to the 3rd input of the tape machine, when you put Pro Tools into record, your tape machine automatically jumps into record also.

3. Whilst in record during the take, CLASP automatically transfers the take straight from the repro head into input 3 of Pro Tools.
All delays involved in this process are corrected in real time!

3. Once your take is finished and you press stop, as soon as you disarm track 3 in pro tools and CLASP automatically then routes Pro Tools output 3 to track 3 on your console in place of the original live mic ready for playback.

4. In summary, the recorded region in pro tools has hit tape, been played out off the repro head, transferred to pro tools and been placed in sample accurate time with your existing tracks. Seamlessly and instantly!

This process allows you to work with playlists, comp between takes, edit arrangements and everything else you would normally in a pro tools session but with every track recorded to tape with that sound :)
As you are working with the tape machine in a non linear way, there is no need to rewind the tape between takes. My preference is to work at 15ips on our studer A80, this allows for 30 minutes solid record time before a 45 second break is needed to let the tape rewind again, CLASP warns you when you are about to run out of tape and you can of course rewind the machine directly from pro tools without having to leave your workflow.
Because of the way CLASP integrates Tape with Pro Tools, you also see less tape wear and wear on the machine itself. This allows reels of precious tape to go a lot further and minimum maintenance required!

Anyway as I’m sure you can tell from this blog, I am blown away by this system and it has allowed recent sessions to run smoothly and quickly without any compromise to the sound quality, suddenly I am able to use tape on the single sessions where only a few days are booked for tracking!
Here at the motor museum, we have also been having fun experimenting with different lineups on the Studer. Adding a slight high lift at 10Khz on the record lineup at 15ips and setting the bias by ear on a 40Hz sub tone Steve Albini style being my favourites!
Producers and Engineers, Come and check it out!

www.miloco.co.uk/motormuseum

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MIX MAGAZINE – The Secret Sisters Record Debut Album using CLASP with producer Dave Cobb and executive producer T Bone Burnett

Saturday, November 20th, 2010

The Secret Sisters are real-life sisters 
Laura (left) and Lydia Rogers.

The Secret Sisters are real-life sisters Laura (left) and Lydia Rogers.

Considering the music industry buzz surrounding the impressive debut album by the neo-traditional country duo the Secret Sisters, it’s remarkable to think that a year ago the act didn’t exist and that real-life sisters Laura and Lydia Rogers hadn’t been knockin’ ’em dead at talent shows or coffee houses in their hometown of Muscle Shoals, Ala., the past several years. They’re that polished, that charismatic.



About the only concession that was made to modern technology was using Pro Tools as a storage medium, but even that had an old slant: Cobb and Bolas used Endless Analog’s CLASP system in which the recording signal bounces off the repro head of an analog tape recorder (in this case, a Studer A27 2-inch 16-track machine) directly to a DAW so that the recording retains the favored characteristics of analog tape without requiring thousands of dollars of the medium. (For more on CLASP, see the Mix June 2010 review.) “We also had real slap going the entire time off a Studer B-67 and we printed slap live. We were printing effects as we were going,” Cobb says. The producer lauds Blackbird’s “incredible chamber, which is like a two-story-high entryway, but the ceiling goes up and goes down so you can change the size of it. It’s pretty magical.”

Indeed, as their producer Dave Cobb recalls of their origins, “We discovered them at an open-call audition in Nashville in October [2009]. One sister—Laura—got up and sang, and it was just the most magical thing: She sounded like Snow White or something; I’d never heard anything like it. It seemed very different but also sort of timeless. And she said, ‘My sister is coming in a couple of hours and you should check her out, too.’ So we paid attention to her, and she was great, too, and then they sang together and they were so good. But they’d never officially been a band or a group or anything and had never performed live. They didn’t consider themselves professional singers.”

Laura and Lydia Rogers, both in their early 20s, are from a musical family and had been singing for years informally in church and around the house, but as Laura Rogers says by phone from San Francisco where she was about to perform with her sister and T Bone Burnett’s band at the famed Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, “Up until the point we were ‘discovered,’ nobody had a clue that we were singers. I have friends from high school who message me on the Internet, and say, ‘I didn’t even know you could sing! You just played the Ryman, you recorded with Jack White, you made a record.’” She laughs at the seeming absurdity of the Secret Sisters’ truly meteoric rise.

“It’s been a crazy year,” she continues. “Obviously, we never expected this. It’s almost like we get these Christmas presents every few months: ‘Oh, guess what, you’re going to be doing a taping [for an upcoming TV special] with Jakob Dylan and Elvis Costello and T Bone Burnett’s going to be there. And then you get to play in San Francisco for the bluegrass festival.’ It’s pretty humbling and very moving for us emotionally to know that these big names are inspired enough by two little girls from Alabama who nobody has ever heard of before, to want to be part of what we’re doing.”

DUO UPDATES CLASSIC COUNTRY AND POP SOUNDS

For Cobb, after the Nashville audition had knocked him out, “We had to figure out what to do with them because it was so out of left field—it’s certainly not your Lady Gaga or Katy Perry. What do you do with this? So my manager—Andrew Brightman—and I flew them out to L.A. and cut a couple of songs with them at my studio [known as 1974, after the year Cobb was born] and they were signed within a week. They had a couple of songs that they knew and we did an experiment with the recording and really had a good time trying to do something different. I love old records—I’m a huge fan of RCA Studio B [Nashville] recordings of the ’50s and ’60s, and also the whole Wrecking Crew era in L.A., and that’s what we tried to do with it [sonically]. I thought it would be cool to bring back a little bit of Skeeter Davis and a little bit of Patsy Cline, a little bit of George Jones and kind of blend it all together. Country, but also pop. So we had some A-list guys here in L.A. come down—some friends of mine—and we did it really quick. We did the demos with this engineer named Greg Koller, and he had access to all sorts of original Universal Audio 610s and Fairchilds and [RCA] BA6A compressors, and we really tried to pick period-appropriate gear.” Though none of those tracks made the eventual album, it set the tone for the duo’s aesthetic—retro but with a modern twist.

“Then we went to Nashville,” Cobb continues, “and did the record at Blackbird, mostly in Studio A, with the help of this pedal steel player named Robby Turner who used to play with Waylon Jennings, and he suggested Pig Hargus as the piano player. Pig was part of the whole RCA Studio B scene, and he actually helped invent that style of piano along with Floyd Cramer. It was funny, when we were going through and picking songs for the record, he’d say, ‘Oh, I played on that one.’ ‘Yep, I played on that one, too.’” [Laughs.] Rounding out the house band were guitarist Jason Cope, bassist Brian Allen and drummer Chris Powell. The songs are a blend of old country nuggets by the likes of George Jones, Buck Owens and Hank Williams; a couple of traditional pieces; and two originals written by the Rogers sisters. As Laura Rogers notes, “It was pretty cool to know that songs we had written in the 2000s were compatible with songs from the 1950s.” Their sound at times resembles a female Everly Brothers (and Louvin Brothers)—“It’s that thing where two voices sort of sound like one when they’re together,” Laura Rogers says. “Being sisters helps.”

Cobb notes that at Blackbird, “We did it all live in one room together, though the girls were in a booth separately but looking at the band the whole time. There was a lot of bleed. The first round of songs we did were with [engineer] Niko Bolas, and he did a great job capturing everything. Once again, we stuck with the old equipment. Blackbird really has anything you could want; it’s unbelievable. I stayed up at night dreaming about the gear in the place! So we really took advantage of what they had there, plus Niko had some original tube mic pre’s from a DeMedeo desk here in L.A. But the studio had some [Telefunken] V76s for the vocals and [Blackbird owner/engineer] John McBride had these old RCA OP6 [pre’s] that he recommended and sounded incredible. Then we used all period microphones: Greg Koller, who did the demo, had an original RCA KU3A ribbon, which is a mic they used to use for film in L.A., and it’s a great-sounding mic with a crispy top end, as well as the low end of a [RCA] 44; so we used that [as an overhead] on drums, a [AKG] D-30 on kick and then Niko also put up a couple of side mics—[RCA] 77s—to fill it in between the rack tom and snare, and one in between the floor tom and the kick. But in the final mix, it ended up being mostly the overhead and the kick. Nearly everything else was miked with 77s, except the guitar, which was an RCA BK-5—a really cool mic John McBride turned me onto. The girls were singing on a Neumann U48—just one mic in cardioid—and then on one particular song, ‘House of Gold,’ they were facing each other and we did that one in figure-8.

“We did the bulk of the tracks in about three days together—three or four songs a day—and they were just nailing the lead vocals on the scratches. We set ’em up so they could maybe punch in or come back to something, but we didn’t really need to. We did several passes on most of the songs and every pass was good. It was just really, really easy for them. They actually told us after a couple of days, ‘This whole recording thing is really easy,’ and we were thinking, ‘Girls, you have no idea how laborious this usually is!’ I’m not kidding—it was like hearing a finished record by pulling the faders up. We actually had a few more days booked for [Blackbird] Studio B for overdubs and fixes, but we mostly just ordered food,” he chuckles.

Though Laura Rogers says she and her sister had some typical first-time nerves in the studio, “Luckily, we really connected with all the session players who were there and Dave [Cobb] was such a huge source of comfort for us. It felt like there was no pressure. All we had to do was walk into a room and sing, which wasn’t hard for us.”

In truth, the whole Secret Sisters “package,” if you will—the name, the look—came after the sessions for the most part. Laura Rogers comments, “Dave was especially instrumental in helping us hone what we wanted to do. We knew that we loved that old kind of music and we knew there wasn’t a huge amount of it out there for the general public to hear, so we really kind of blossomed in the studio sessions at Blackbird. That’s when we became the Secret Sisters. We really became ourselves in that moment. And then, once the music was there, that’s when the label stepped in and they wanted us to have a unique look, so we decided the best way to go was let the style of what you see when we come out onstage match the music that you hear. So far it’s working pretty well because people are starting to recognize that aesthetic of the Secret Sisters. When we walk out onstage, you’re going to see us looking like we just walked out of 1957. At the same time, in our regular everyday life, we don’t dress that way and we prefer it that way because nobody knows who we are whenever we’re dressed like regular people and we like that anonymity. It’s kind of like the only time you get to see the Secret Sisters is when they come out onstage and perform. We like that mystery.” The name was suggested by manager Andrew Brightman.

After the Blackbird sessions and some subsequent mixing work by Darrell Thorp, Burnett heard the Secret Sisters and was so floored that he wanted to get involved, too, and signed on as executive producer of the fledgling act’s first disc. As Cobb says, “T Bone really opened up a lot of doors for people to pay attention to the record.” Burnett suggested cutting one last song for the album—the haunting Bill Monroe ballad “The One I Love Is Gone” (which the Rogers sisters sing similarly to duo versions by Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard)—and also a couple of B-sides recorded at Blackbird with Cobb producing and McBride engineering. Burnett’s engineering team, including Jason Wormer and Mike Piersante, also supervised the recording of a few guitar and steel overdubs (by Russ Pahl) and re-mixed the album at Burnett’s Electro Magnetic Studios in L.A. on an API console, with Piersante and Burnett tackling four songs, Wormer the rest. Wormer says, “T Bone wanted to change the aesthetic a little bit and kind of bring it closer to what we do, which is a very traditional sound, but a very modern traditional sound. It sounds old-timey, but it’s also full-fidelity big. I think Dave [Cobb] and those guys were going for more of a pure ’50s sound, but when you hear the girls sing, they immediately take you to that era anyway, so T Bone wanted to hear something a little different.”

Separate from all of these sessions was a day the Rogers sisters spent cutting a one-off single with Jack White, who had also become enamored with the Secret Sisters’ sound. The feeling was mutual: “We’re huge fans of his and had to pinch ourselves and try not to seem like girlie fans,” Laura Rogers says. White and the ladies recorded the traditional “Wabash Cannonball” in a fairly straight style, but transformed the Johnny Cash nugget “Big River” into a full-blown, White Stripes/Raconteurs thrash number. “We were thinking it was going to be the same tempo as the Johnny Cash version, maybe have Jack play some bluesy bottleneck guitar on it, but before we know it, he’s got that guitar and he’s shredding!”

Not bad for a couple of unknown country girls—and that was all before their first album even came out. Their performing career is actually just beginning now. They’re off to a good start.



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