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Is it possible to transfer analog tone and soundstage of vintage reel to reel to digital.

Sam here again. I have a hi-res digital rip of the rolling stones sticky fingers album from an original commercial reel to reel tape from 1971 and the analog warmth and soundstage is as good as it gets to my  ears. loudness war free sound.   https://postimg.cc/rDmzvR80

I realize there are many digital plugins that emulate the sound of analog tape and vinyl, however when I use them in post processing of digital audio I seem to get further away from the sound I'm trying to achieve? Now I may be naive on the subject, but if I want to digitally replicate the sound of vintage analog tape in the digital domain, why not go directly to the source? Heres what I did I extracted 1 second of analog tape sound between tracks and made an impulse file for the convolver dsp filter for foobar2000. I believe it made the digital download sound better, however, I'm not 100% sure.  Here are my audio samples (1) reel to reel (2) commercial digital download (3) commercial digital download with the impulse filter applied. I used replay gain to normalize the volume to 89db for all three samples.

(1) reel to reel (1971) 24/192 http://u.pc.cd/d2qrtalK

(2) commercial digital download flac16/44 2009 remaster http://u.pc.cd/4oditalK

(3)  commercial digital download flac16/44 2009 remaster.impulse applied http://u.pc.cd/99ActalK
guitarsam
mlsstl
1,436 posts
 
I had a number of direct open reel copies of studio masters as well as some open reels I personally taped of live performances. I transferred all of those to digital some years back and was very pleased with the results -- I couldn't tell the difference.

As I noted on your vinyl threads, there is a difference between preserving on digital the sound quality of existing traditional analog sources versus trying to recreate that sound on digital without the intervening analog process. Frankly, I'm not sure I understand your goals, but it seems to be keeping you busy.
roberttdid
534 posts
 
I think you have your answer already in the last 4 words of your statement. It is all in the mixing, and what you like is the mixing. The format is secondary in this case.

Sam here again. I have a hi-res digital rip of the rolling stones sticky fingers album from an original commercial reel to reel tape from 1971 and the analog warmth and soundstage is as good as it gets to my ears. loudness war free sound.

glupson
7,842 posts
 
mapman,

"I do digital recordings of vinyl all the time and the results sound just like the original."
What do you use? How do you do it?
glupson
7,842 posts
 
In my book, you just made a case against reel-to-reel.

I prefer #3, very closely followed by #2, and would take #1 as acceptable on AM radio or some other nostalgic moment. So, if I were into this, I would do everything as #3 but would not consider it "analog sound" at all.

Do not get me wrong, nothing sounds as good as your favorite song on AM radio in the middle of the night.

(above was listened to on a laptop computer with Sennheiser IE80 earphones, if that matters)
geoffkait's avatar
geoffkait
23,365 posts
 

roberttdid
I think you have your answer already in the last 4 words of your statement. It is all in the mixing, and what you like is the mixing. The format is secondary in this case.

Sam here again. I have a hi-res digital rip of the rolling stones sticky fingers album from an original commercial reel to reel tape from 1971 and the analog warmth and soundstage is as good as it gets to my ears. loudness war free sound.

>>>>>Unfortunately for your “observation” your point is incorrect as the loudness wars has to do with mastering practices, not mixing. It was a war between level and dynamic range and musicality. I just pointed out yesterday the big advantage of cassettes (and obviously RTR tapes) is their inherent high dynamic range (And concomitant musicality) as they were virtually all produced prior to the start of the Loudness Wars.

Except from wiki page on Loudness Wars,

“In late 2008, mastering engineer Bob Ludwig offered three versions of the Guns N’ Roses album Chinese Democracy for approval to co-producers Axl Rose and Caram Costanzo. They selected the one with the least compression. Ludwig wrote, "I was floored when I heard they decided to go with my full dynamics version and the loudness-for-loudness-sake versions be damned." Ludwig said the "fan and press backlash against the recent heavily compressed recordings finally set the context for someone to take a stand and return to putting music and dynamics above sheer level."[18]“
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