We have a lot of very wonderful questions this week beginning with, “When would you go for an analog delay vs a digital delay?”
Basically, a digital delay is an incredibly, if not a completely accurate facsimile of the sound you would traditionally think of. A modern digital delay is pretty much repeating the exact sound- analog delays were sort of mock-ups, a way of reproducing the same sound fairly closely.
I think of being a kid and buying the boss DM, DM 1, DM 2, DM 3, analog delays, and then the DD delays. The difference was massive! Those analog delays seemed to sound a little bit dull and then suddenly digital delays came in came in and they felt like incredible facsimiles.
However, that isn’t entirely true, you can buy old digital delays which have 4 and 8-bit resolutions, and as those repeats go on they tend to decay and deteriorate. That’s pretty musical- they’ll just decay into a weird kind of digitally distorted deterioration, I love that.
There isn’t really a one-size-fits-all answer.
For me analog delays, and low bitrate digital delays, will probably be in the same world.
Tape delays would do the same thing as well. However, the modern digital delay is a completely accurate facsimile, which is great, but if you can try using analog delays or analog modeling delays, try using old digital modeling for an 8-bit technology because it adds something a little bit more special than the accurate facsimile.
I honestly believe wrongness is what makes things great, that’s why I like the old analog delay. As we’re filming this I’m thinking about going on eBay and buying one of those original boss DM series delays because they were fantastic! They were what The Edge was using back in the day and they will work! A lot of the guitar players that we grew up listening to were using these!
I answer the following questions during this week’s FAQ Friday:
• If a singer sings in a Bb Major in the verses but the choruses are song in A minor would I have to tune all the sounds according to each section to match the vocals?
• When would you go for an analog delay vs a digital delay?
• When you place the instruments in the “room” do you mix differently depending on the number of instruments you’re recording? Do for instance you enhance the stereo width of the drums when recording a trio, while choosing mono drums if there are a lot of instruments? Any thumb rules?
• I was wondering about the reasoning behind the two different slopes when you were high and low passing on the reverb?
• If I could get one plugin suite or one plugin to help me the most with enhancing a mix what would you recommend? What’s the best deal in your opinion?
• A friend’s dad and I were thinking about trying to do a protools project (where more than one user on Pro Tools, on separate computers, can work on a session together). I was wondering if you’ve ever done one of these before and, if so, when it come time to mix, how does the mixing process work? What happens if I use plugins that he doesn’t own, or vice versa?
• What controller do you use to switch between your Genelec’s/iLoud’s/Kali’s?
• How would you go about mixing drums recorded with only one mic, especially when you can barely hear anything but the cymbals in the mix?
• I was wondering if there’s anything that tells you the tempo of a song in pro tools besides tap tempo? Or is tap tempo good enough?
