Commodore Remix

Here's another question I fancy asking, simply as the thought just fascinates me. The rest of you just grunt if you can hear me.


For me at least, my rig is retro, with old and new gear working in harmony. Say your studio of today is shot back to 2002, losing only the models manufactured in the last ten years. How well could you turn out a mix with the gear you have left?


(This isn't the same question as asking you what you'd do with your actual studio of a decade back, but I'd be interested in that anyway.)



Personally, a truly retro studio of mine would only lose a few bits and bobs, the biggest unit being a PC. I tend to buy old/retro. Recent remasters or remixes of old stuff sounded much clearer and fuller, so at least I was tracking well, though I do wonder how my development could have been handicapped by not technically advancing - especially with software.



But what about those of you who always keep up with the Jonses? Would it be that intolerable to go back in time yourself? Has there really been THAT much of a quantum leap in the last decade?


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I can rebuild my studio from 1990 I have all the hardware + more.

At the moment I just dont have the room for it. Its earmarked as a future project.

That's fantastic. You've got all your old bits, you have confidence in them and they're evidently good enough to still have a place and turn out product at high enough standards. My studio magazines of the period still whet my appetite as gear was certainly impressive even then.

What was best about your 1990 rig?

Since I've always worked with minimalistic equipment, I'd still be able to work with any setup I had in the past 20 years.

I would imagine software would be the real rub.

I think I could go without many of the newer plugins and effects. Perhaps even go back a few versions of Samplitude as it's the skills you use as much as convenient features. Though who knows, improvements in the sound handling may notice too bad if they vanish again.

But I think affordable hardware has definitely 'arrived'. For me anyway, it's been years since a vital piece or software was 'just to be going along with' until something satisfactory came. It's all good now, even a great deal on the second-hand market.

LMan wrote:Since I've always worked with minimalistic equipment, I'd still be able to work with any setup I had in the past 20 years.

Minimalism and Limitations is actually a good thing. There is too much choice these days, and you end up spending time just playing around well at least I end up doing that, and don't get anything done.

Having said that, you still wouldn't want to go back to your old 4-track and keep making bounces just to keep room on the tape for your bigger productions. Myself, I can have backing tracks of drum and bass, then layers of electronic sounds, maybe some violin or harmonium, or whatever. Way beyond arrangements I started with. What about growth?


Myself, I like a lot of choice. Often I've only found the right blend of sounds after a long search in the plugins. You can dabble with all these things and settle on a few red hot choices you fall back on over and over. Software definitely has the edge for me there. This leaves little hardware to actually demand.

Besides the interfaces and compressors and things, I don't use any hardware special effects like reverb. Maybe this is what you mean.

I'm still using the very same machine since 2005. Is it valid to say that 48KHz/24 bits, good AD/DA converters, a working DAW and a couple of outboard gear and a pair of decent monitors should do the job to date?

In 2002 I worked for a broadcast produciton company that was quite well equipped with good outboard gadgets so all I had to do was borrowing the ones I needed for the actual project then setting volume levels (perhaps some EQ) at home on the 400MHz PII machine that I used from 1998 to 2005. I recorded only demos and such, no bigsize projects. With the same gear I would be able to make demos that bite yer headz off, like in the old times.

Anyway, the quality jump that separated demos from albums for me was a mixture of dedicated outboard gear and plug-ins that I need to deliver a level of quality that I like to keep.

If we go back an another decade, into the world of song arrangements banged together on C64 as SIDs, creating drum and click tracks and structures and recording everything to tapes then torturing 4-track Tascam tape machines down to the bones when recording and playing back those demos again and again and again as you miss the synch starting signal until the head ate up all the tape... It had its charm, indeed, but I can live without that quite happily if you ask me

I still compose SIDs.

Since my studio was basically dismantled in 2002, anything I did now would be with the same stuff and sound exactly the same

(well, it would sound like Karma64 anyway)

Ten years isn't that far back so perhaps most of our studios would be almost the same. Though I have to wonder how many new tracks wouldn't sound quite right if we still had only the old limiters, our previous mikes or the predecessor monitors. Not to mention the more sluggish old computers or more rudimentary software.

We upgraded for a reason didn't we.

...torturing 4-track Tascam tape machines down to the bones ...

Perhaps the 34B? I bought an old one and rather liked it. So much so bought another cheap (nearly) pristine one to use as an insert effect for enhancing but I need to change the heads.

Commie_User wrote:Perhaps the 34B? I bought an old one and rather liked it. So much so bought another cheap (nearly) pristine one to use as an insert effect for enhancing but I need to change the heads.

No, it was just a 4-track mini tape recorder, similar to this one but older looking somehow:




It was black, battered to the point that the brand said SCAM and it ate tapes more often than never. It did not sound good but it was okey to record ideas. I gave it away to a younger guitarist fellow some time I don't know. He said he could fix and use it, I said good luck. Also I used an iron-fence era magno called Unitra, that was our rehearsal recorder. Surprisingly it worked pretty fine and was ridiculously reliable. Well, until it fell out of a window around 1995 or so? R.I.P.



That was my... er... "...studio..." back then around 1991 or so, plus one budget Shure mic, a reverse-wired phone speaker (sounded like a blues harmonica mic) some questionable cables, a Marshall Valvestate amp and a BOSS ME5 effect unit that I used for everything as preamp/FX from vocals through drum samples to synths, an ancient pimped Korg digital tuner that worked as a 32KHz - 16bit AD/DA if I can remember correctly (please don't ask how, it was a gift) and a Commodore64 with GMC V1.6 SID editor for drum loops and everything. Also, I can remember of an overdrive box, built into a sewing machine pedal, that had no electronical components, only wires. I also had a Tesla phono player that sounded '60s fuzz with guitar, probably it had some kind of compressor on the mic input because it had a seemingly infinite sustain. At least until the speakers died...

I miss many things from that time. Well... This "studio" is not among them

I bought my first CD recorder in 1998 and I enjoyed recording playmates from work on it. I grabbed a pile of junk to actually get the sounds in but they were happy enough with the digital novelty.

The junk included an Akai hifi cassette deck which I used for the mike preamps, one 5-inch 8 ohm loudspeaker used as a bass pickup, a £5 karaoke mike, an even cheaper 1960s Philips cassette dictation mike and some sellotape to attach it to the wardrobe door (in leiu of a stand). I caught everything as an early stereo-style twin channel pair and everyone was happy enough. And I also used the phono preamp for guitars too. (And thanks for reminding me. I think I'll use that again.)

When I got a rudimentary Fostex mini mixer, marginally nicer mikes and D90 hard disk 8-track a few months later I was truly on the way. Until then I recorded the chaps to a rewritable disc and inserted it into my DVD player. On playback I mixed the sound of the overdubs with it to give me superimposition on a new disc.

It's the early days which often made you think your way around problems the more. Remember the ersatz days with pride!