— Yellow DOG studios standardizes its control rooms with Endless Analog’s CLASP® —

David Percefull, chief engineer at Yellow Dog Studios

AUSTIN, TX, November 5, 2010 — Endless Analog’s CLASP® (Closed Loop Analog Signal Processor) system (booth 617), which uniquely integrates analog tape machines into the digital audio production workflow, has been so successful at yellow DOG studios in Austin, Texas, that producer and engineer David Percefull has installed a second unit. According to Percefull, the first CLASP unit has been in constant use since it was installed in Studio One earlier this year, ensuring that it would also take pride in placing a unit in the newly constructed Studio Three.

Percefull, who moved into the facility, formerly known as 5AM, with partners producer-musician Ed Robinson and singer-songwriter Steven Todd Hudson near the end of 2009, reports, “Everything that I record hits tape through CLASP and goes to Pro Tools. I thought initially I would use it on occasion, if the client wanted tape.” But as he quickly discovered while using CLASP at every available opportunity, “It’s a game-changer. I won’t do anything that doesn’t hit tape at this point.”

Soon after opening in spring 2010, the partners set about promoting the studio at South by Southwest, recording 23 artists over three days. “We laid it to tape, thinking that people would hear the difference and want to come here and record. It was wildly popular; everybody really loved our gear and the tone we were getting. A huge part of that is going to tape, but even more importantly the speed at which we were going to tape, and the availability to overdub and use different tape speeds within the same session – that was a huge deal.” CLASP’s proprietary SST® sample synchronization technology allows groups of tracks within a project to be recorded at tape speeds appropriate to their frequency content and transients.

Bookings started to come in and Studio One, the facility’s main tracking room, was soon also attracting mix projects. In planning Studio Three, the partners chose not to take the more traditional route of equipping a new mix room with a vintage console, different monitors, and so on. “We did things a little bit out of the box, so instead of doing that, we thought, why don’t we just mirror this control room? So we bought the exact same API 1608 console and set up a very similar monitoring scheme.”

With yellow DOG’s equipment complement now including both 16-track and 24-track MCI tape machines in addition to Pro Tools|HD2 with Apogee converters, a second CLASP unit was also a given. That makes a lot of financial sense, as Percefull explains: “The biggest impact has been in efficiency – I can get tones quicker. I go to mix and if stuff is recorded to tape it’s just very forgiving and everything sounds good, whereas in the digital world you suddenly have five EQs ganged up and you’re notching this out and doing that to try to achieve a sound that is immediate with analog tape.”

He continues, “Processing audio to tape inspired me to spend more time creating and shaping tone at the beginning of the recording process instead of keeping it safe and clean and dealing with at the end of the process, the way that I did when I was a kid cutting to analog tape. The sound of tape is much, much more musical and it’s inspiring to me.

Current projects at yellow DOG, all involving CLASP, include a new album by 97-year-old Pinetop Perkins, the last of the living Delta Bluesmen and one-time house pianist at Chess Records; iconic Texas singer/songwriter Brandon Jenkins, with whom Percefull has worked on seven previous albums; and Cody Canada’s first solo album with producer/engineer Adam Odor. “I’ve been recording with Brandon since ’96,” shares Percefull. “He got in here and started tracking some new stuff and was just blown away with the difference. That’s held true for many clients.”

CLASP fits perfectly into Percefull’s workflow, allowing him to spend more time on the creative process rather than fixing the audio: “I came up in the industry recording to tape; it was my only option. So it’s been great, because in my way of thinking it gets me to the end game much quicker — with much better results.”

CRAS Administrator Kirt Hamm with CLASP

Endless Analog in Nashville reports that the Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences (CRAS) in Arizona has taken delivery of two Endless Analog CLASP (Closed Loop Analog Signal Processor) systems for its campus facilities in Tempe and Gilbert, Ariz. The CLASP units will be used in conjunction with CRAS’s SSL 4000 Series consoles, Studer A-820 2-inch 24-track analog tape machines and Avid Pro Tools HD systems. Beginning in 2011, CRAS will teach and certify its students on the operation of CLASP.

"We had CLASP here for a two-day demo, and it was immediately obvious that this is the next step in hybrid audio production,” says Conservatory Administrator Kirt Hamm. “The cost and time issues that put analog tape on the back burner are nullified by CLASP. It allows us to expose our students to the sonic palette that only tape can offer while still maintaining the speed and capabilities of digital audio workflow. We are proud to be the first audio recording school in the world to certify students in the operation of CLASP.”

Read Mix magazine’s Endless Analog CLASP Signal Processor review by technical editor Kevin Becka.

For more information, visit www.endlessanalog.com and www.audiorecordingschool.com.

I spent two days this week with CLASP cutting tracks with live musicians in the SSL room at the Conservatory of Recording Arts. The system allows you to record through analog tape, coming off the repro head and immediately into your DAW. It was a mind-blower and more fun I’ve had in the studio in a long time. It made me realize how one-dimensional digital recording has become and how I’ve gotten into the habit of settling for poor results.

In my career, I’ve seen the pendulum of our business swing from analog to digital, and now back to an analog/digital hybrid that marries the best of both worlds. I record on a regular basis using a lot of great mics, preamps, plug-ins and monitors. And while excellent audio gear can shape a track in many positive ways, the weakest link is digital conversion and what the digital mix engine does inside the box. Using tape again brought that ear-friendly component back, even after conversion, making the tracks mix easier and offering a palette of sonic color that is lost in conversion straight from the mic.

CLASP turns your conception of analog workflow upside down. There’s no rewind time and tape cost is cut dramatically because you’re not using it as a format but instead, as a medium. You can monitor off the repro head at different tape speeds on the same take so you can make judgements on how hard to hit the tape, what speed is best and then mix and match speeds and saturation over a series of overdubs, on the same song. The end result is dramatic and discernible, even to the untrained ear.

During two days of sessions, I invited enginers whose ears I respect, students, even non-audio folks and to the last person, they “got it”. They could hear the difference in the bottom end, the musicality of tape and how it effected their perception of the music. The musicians also loved it, urging on the experimentation. It became a shared peak musical experience: the best part of music production.

To read more about how CLASP can be integrated into a studio’s workflow, check out my interview with Lenny Kravitz and his audio team. He owns two systems and uses it across a range of tape machines. Since October, inventor Chris Estes has sold 21 systems, about one a week, and sales are strong. With all the bad news in our industry including studio closings, plunging budgets not to mention crappy music, CLASP is a bit of good news for audio pros who got into this business because of the sound of music.

By Kyle Swenson

Found in Translation

A new technology tries to recapture the warmth of analog in digital recording

It’s one of the music industry’s fiercest debates: digital or analog?

In the face of the recording world’s ever-growing need for speed, most artists and engineers have abandoned traditional tape machines for the easy production of digital recording, exchanging the classic warm analog sound for the flat feel of computer-based production.

But if one Nashville producer has his way, all that will change.

This summer, area musician and producer Chris Estes and his company Endless Analog unveiled the Closed Loop Analog Signal Processor (CLASP) system, a combination of hardware and software that allows users to digitally record with analog tape machines, bridging the gap between the much-loved sound of the classic technology and the convenience of 21st-century production.

“It’s going to become the new standard,” Estes says. “Some people are still having a hard time wrapping their heads around it because it’s the opposite of what everyone knows and is taught.”

A former musician and current producer, Estes first began to toy with the idea of wedding advanced technology to analog when he became fed up with the poor quality of digital sound. Knowing that many audiotape companies were nervous about the decline in analog recording, Estes shopped his ideas around to major manufacturers, hoping one would team with him and cover research and development costs. Although the companies were enthusiastic, they chose not to commit funds to spend on Estes’ idea.

Instead, Estes and his wife Amy decided to pursue the idea on their own. “We’ve spent the past several years in the music industry, and we’ve been investing our time and our money and our talents in other people,” Estes says. “We said we were going to invest in ourselves for once.”

Financing the research himself, Estes spent more than two years developing the CLASP system. The technology records using analog, but simultaneously transfers the recording in real time into a digital machine, where the track can be quickly altered or tweaked.

When Estes debuted his technology this summer at a local meeting of the Audio Engineering Society (AES) at Ocean Way Studios, it was immediately apparent CLASP could create a sizeable buzz. “Here in Nashville, it was standing room only,” Estes says. “We had to break it into two different demonstrations just to fit people in, and we received standing ovations.”

The industry excitement over CLASP is only growing. At an appearance at this year’s AES Convention in San Francisco, Estes came face to face with recording industry legends such as Chuck Ainlay and Alan Parsons, both of whom were interested in purchasing a system.

“It’s really the best of both worlds,” says Mike Poston, a Nashville sound engineer who has worked with producers and artists such as Ainlay and Mark Knopfler. “Digital can’t really duplicate the sound of analog tape, and CLASP gets rid of the negatives that we had with analog. It won’t be for everyone, but I think it will extend the life of analog.”

The retail price for the system is around $9,000 and can be built to each client’s specifications. Currently, the company sells the products themselves, but Estes is working to partner with various audio companies that will offer the system as well.

“This isn’t really something you sell at the local music store. It’s one of those things where a customer has specific needs, and they call me up and say, ‘Hey, I’ve got this type of tape machine,’” Estes says. “So we build a unit specifically for that client.”

Currently working with only his wife and one other employee, Estes says he plans to grow the business as much as is called for by incoming orders. And if the industry’s initial reaction is any indication, the CLASP system may revolutionize how music sounds.

“We project that we will be selling a lot of these things,” Estes says. “There’s a lot of movement right now to change the standard, and this will do that.”

Link to the Business TN Website

by Frank Wells

While plug-ins modeling analog processing elements have replaced many legacy products, complete digital emulation of the complex sonic character of analog tape recording has remained ellusive and the interface of analog tape recording within a DAW centric recording project can be cumbersome and expensive. So, what if recording a true analog record path were as simple as using a plug-in?

“Being able to work the normal workflow that you’re used to with your digital audio work station, but getting the true sonic benefits of real tape, of a real tape machine, of the analog circuitry in the tape machine,” are the stated goals of Endless Analog founder Chris Estes. As a producer, Estes preferred the sound of analog tape, but worked in a DAW-dominated world. Some five years ago, he had what he calls his “eureka” moment, and began the quest to realize his vision of seamlessly marrying analog and DAW recording. “This has never been done before,” says Estes, citing the adage that necessity is the mother of invention. “I wanted to be able to use tape, ’cause that’s what I started out on–I think we all started there, and I wanted to get back to the sound of real analog.”

In mid-August, at a meeting of the AES Nashville Section, Estes unveiled the physical manifestation of his quest: CLASP, for Closed Loop Analog Signal Processor. The two basic components of the CLASP system are a hardware interface and control unit, and a companion VST plug-in. Rather than making analog connections directly to the A/D converters feeding the DAW, the signals are first connected to CLASP, which is interfaced with an analog tape machine. When a track is armed inside the DAW, the VST plug-in automatically sends track-arming and transport control information via MIDI Machine Control (MMC) to the tape machine through the CLASP interface. The engineer works inside the DAW as normal, operationally ignoring the tape machine. When any DAW track is armed, pressing Play on the DAW rolls the tape machine, and when Record is punched in, corresponding tracks on the tape machine enter record. Armed tracks are recorded on tape and the playback head signal is then immediately fed to and recorded by the DAW. “The plug-in–,” says Estes, “the only thing that it’s doing, is communicating what the mix engine needs to do to sync things up,” such as automatically adjusting for analog record path latency. A direct path through CLASP allows zero-latency monitoring. “If you’re using a digital console,” Estes says, “or even a digital headphone distribution system, those devices always have some sort of inherent latency that they introduce to [the signal path] and everybody just kind of deals with it. With CLASP, you can enter that information, and it’ll compensate for that as well.”

Estes undertook the R&D challenge himself, learning programming and circuit design, and forming Endless Analog, along the way. Before CLASP, says Estes, DAW users were turning to various emulation plug-ins to try and attain the sound of analog recording. “I figured you’ve got all these great tape machines that cost tens-of-thousands-of-dollars that are just collecting dust, and nothing beats the real thing. People would love to use tape, but the traditional method of using tape is such a headache. CLASP solves all those problems; there’s no headaches anymore.”

Estes cites a number of the problems associated with that “traditional method.” On his list: “having to use SMPTE time code; working with synchronizers; having to have your digital audio work station chase your analog recorder as opposed to the other way around; the cost of tape–having to buy multiple reels of tape to do an album project; the sound of tape, after it sits around for a while, it looses its energy and it doesn’t sound the same as when it’s first recorded; not being able to hit Undo–that’s a big one–everybody has gotten used to being able to hit undo, to work really fast.

“I’ve used it on numerous sessions,” says Estes, who’s worked with a prototype for over a year. Rather than accumulating a stack of analog tapes during the course of a session, he says, “with CLASP, you can do your entire album with just one reel of tape”-tracks are recorded off of analog immediately, with no need for later synchronized dumps to DAW. In this mode of working, the only operational differences CLASP adds to the DAW methodology are short reel time remaining warnings and (automatic) rewind time “In fact,” Estes adds, “sometimes during sessions, we’ve forgotten that the tape machine was even there–you’re not paying attention, and all of the sudden it’s rewinding.” An additional feature is the ability to change tape speed at any time with a push of a control panel button. Estes also says it is simple to do hybrid sessions–bypassing the CLASP path on select tracks.

Thus far, CLASP has reportedly been used with a Studer A827 and A800, an Otari MTR-90, and even with an Otari MX5050 two-track. Estes says as long as a tape machine has a rear panel control port, all Endless Analog needs to know is the machine type and they can ship CLASP with the appropriate cable. The complete CLASP system–the control chassis, interface cable and plug-in software–are expected to run around $8000.00. CLASP is DAW system agnostic, as long as the DAW supports VST (either directly or via a wrapper) and the system has a MIDI port available for MMC. Rear panel audio interface employs 25-pin D-sub connectors using the widely adopted eight channel pin-out per connector. Endless Analog will begin taking orders mid-September from its new headquarter space in the Emerald Sound Studios building on Nashville’s Music Row.

Estes says the goal for CLASP is “to bring analog tape back into the music production world to improve the sound of recordings. The main thing that people have to understand is that it’s not a plug-in that simulates tape–this is really using tape. It’s going to, hopefully, start an analog revolution. I’d love to get people excited about using tape again.”