Saw this a while ago. I really like Vox's videos on music and production. There was one on the fade out technique recently:
Why more pop songs should end with a fade out
Why more pop songs should end with a fade out
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Vox: How a recording studio mishap shaped 80s music
- Thread starter lazygecko
- Start date
There really isn't much room in that recording. A lot of resonance though. Listen to the transients on the snare hits and the hihat close, compare to say the kick or the toms. Double overhead cardioid condenser mics don't really pick up any room sound aside from direct reflections off the floor.
I'm being somewhat hyperbolic here, as even a close mic setup picks up some room sound, it's just at such a relatively low db level that it is inaudible even with heavy compression. Double overhead or glyn johns method is basically 95%+ direct sound as well, even with very heavy compression the room reverb is going to be mostly inaudible, especially after mixing. To get heavy room reverb like on Levee or The Ocean, you actually need a room mic(and maybe tape echo too), overheads will never get you that regardless of the size of the room or how reflective it is. The majority of Bonham's drums are not reverb soaked, only a handful of songs use that sound, mainly slower ones. If they had used heavy room reverb on a song like wearing and tearing it would turn to mud.
Well you could use ribbons and you'll get the reverb off the ceiling, but it's really hard to actually capture much reverb with a mic inside of 8 feet of the kit, because the relative loudness difference is so large. Even in a perfectly reflective room, inverse square law can't be beat.
Vox putting in the work - their video production is off the charts; especially presentation.
Been loving their trend of music related videos - Kanye West one is equally as excellent.
Been loving their trend of music related videos - Kanye West one is equally as excellent.
Honestly I think the artificial reverb on vocals far worse than gated reverb. It dates 1980s music terribly, the musical equivalent of massive shoulder pads and teased hair.
I'm glad a lot of the stylistic stuff has come back though, but it's done in a way that's less overdone and IMO much more constrained and subtle.
Insane Metal
Member
I'll see this once I get home. Thanks for posting. Love the 80s!
Saucestin_Roast
Member
It's funny, I used to hate "that sound" that 80s songs had back when I was a kid throughout the 90s. But now that I'm an audio engineer, I love it so much.
Learning how the sausage was made actually made me like it more in this case.
Also, I love me some AMS RMX 16, I have that plugin they show in the video and you'd be surprised. That thing can sound great in contemporary styles. Yes, the nonlinear algorithm has a very specific sound. But the other algos sound fantastic as well and have a nice timbre to them.
Learning how the sausage was made actually made me like it more in this case.
Also, I love me some AMS RMX 16, I have that plugin they show in the video and you'd be surprised. That thing can sound great in contemporary styles. Yes, the nonlinear algorithm has a very specific sound. But the other algos sound fantastic as well and have a nice timbre to them.
Squirrel Killer
Member
Last week Scott's wife and others released the Game Theory album Supercalifragile that he was working on when he died. From a quick listen on the Bandcamp site, it doesn't live up to Lolita Nation, but at least it's not a disaster like Soul Asylum's Delayed Reaction (that shit scarred me so much I can't bring myself to try their latest release.)
Ignatz Mouse
Banned
Lolita Nation is a high bar. I'll give it a try.
My personal favorite of his work is the first Loud Family album, Plants and Birds and Rocks and Things. It's genius.
Guerrillas in the Mist
Member
Peter Gabriel's third solo album has to be somewhere near the top when it comes to influential albums. A lot of "years ahead of it's time" sounding tracks on there.
Ignatz Mouse
Banned
That, Security,and So has to be one of the best runs of albums by anyone ever. But 3 is probably the one that burned into my brain the most, since I had it first.
Preach. As an 80's child I hated that crap. One of the reasons I can not, for the life of me, listen to a great portion of 80's music.
Art Teitlebaum
Member
So true. I still can remember when 11-old me listened to the radio and they played a brand new song called "No Self Control" from a guy I'd never heard of before.
I was so flashed and got goosebumps back then, because that was music from the future for me. Huge impact on my musical taste.
While I can give it a pass to bands formed in the decade, 80's production techniques shittied up way too many good bands to not deserve criticism.
(I didn't expect to read a The The mention on gaf today. nice)
This post is like an oxymoron hypernova holy shit ahah
the 80s sound is basically a lot of tiny, ultra digital, artificial shimmering cold and chirurgical sounds.
(I didn't expect to read a The The mention on gaf today. nice)
This post is like an oxymoron hypernova holy shit ahah
the 80s sound is basically a lot of tiny, ultra digital, artificial shimmering cold and chirurgical sounds.
Insane Metal
Member
Finally watched this.
I looooooooooooooooooove the 80s! Thanks for posting.
I looooooooooooooooooove the 80s! Thanks for posting.
Hahahahahaha. Dude, you really don't know what you're talking about here. For an engineer, that actually knows what to listen for, the room sound in that clip is very clearly audible. No, it's not drenched 80's style, but it's very clearly audible.
What you're describing defies the physics of acoustics unless you're talking about some anechoic chamber or a room with huge absorption coefficients on all surfaces and at all frequencies. Close mic'd drums absolutely are effected by the acoustics of the room. Obviously to a much, much smaller degree than overheads due to the inverse square law, but go close mic a snare in a closet and do the same outside in a field and tell me they sound the same. The reason that you don't hear much if any "reverb" with close mics is because they are almost always gated (manually or with a gate processor). Even so, there is still "room sound" that affects the signal to an audible degree due to phase cancellation, resonant nodes, flutter echo, etc. This close mic thing is a bit of a tangent, but you're statement that there is no room sound with close mics is just factually incorrect.
With overheads though, you get a decent amount of reverb, unless you're recording in a ultra deadened, 70's style studio (and even then, some of those places focused more on deadening mid to high frequencies and left the bass reflections to flop around the room like a dead fish). The difference between recording in a great sounding room and a shit sounding room is night and day, because of the room sound.
I think it was a joke post.
lastplayed
Member
I was nostalgic for 80s music by the mid 90s lol. Love the sound of all of those guys.
Henchmen21
Banned
I was nostalgic for 80s music by the mid 90s lol. Love the sound of all of those guys.
Same. I started getting back into 80s music when I was 16. Couldn't stand the crap that was coming out back then (or now even)
Yeah, I've heard Glyn Johns style micing outdoors(closest I've been to an anechoic chamber) and in a bedroom with 8 ft ceilings. There is very very little difference in reverb. A mic 3-4 feet from the snare can't pick up much room sound, regardless of the room you are in. Granted the degree of the room sound that you capture will change if you are playing softly with a more muted kit.
And the physics agree with that I'm saying. Every doubling of distance is a 6 DB drop, even in a perfectly reflective room(which doesn't exist).
There is not a huge difference in "reverb" (long tail reflection) with close mic'd stuff. There is a gigantic difference in the sound of overheads between a small room and a large room. This is why engineers like to record drums in a good sounding, usually large rooms. I have never, ever heard any engineer that knows what they're doing say it's okay to record in small, shitty sounding rooms because you don't pick up room sound on the overhead mics. That's just not a thing. Literally no one does that unless they have to.
The inverse square law applies to directed sounds, but only works as a sort of loose guideline when talking about reflections. In a perfectly reflective room, how much reflections are picked up would be dependent on room shape, mic position, sound source position, and the polar pickup pattern of the mic. If you had a mic with perfect pickup from all directions in the center of the room, and the sound source emanated from the exact center as well, there would be no dropoff at all. The mic would be picking up all of the sound, unattenuated, bouncing back and forth between opposite walls and the center point of the room infinitely. Obviously this is an impossible situation (as is a perfectly reflective surface), but the math for reflections is very, very complex and non-linear.
I'm not sure why playing softly would negate room sound. Perhaps from less non-linear room resonance, as well as taking into account microphone sensitivity? I honestly can't say it's something I've ever actively paid attention to, mostly because I want signal to be loud to negate equipment noise and any ambient sound.
Synthwave for me does seem to follow on from theme tunes like Airwolf and Knight Rider. It's definitely based on music of the time, but not in terms of what was in the charts.