The console and the plugin in the image above each suggest the music of a particular period. A positive view of older gear is common and where this turns into veneration it becomes an interesting subject because it’s so tied up with culture and the history of recorded music. In these days of DAWs and plugins it’s easier than ever to at least get a flavour of gear the majority of us wouldn’t have had access to years ago and for most of us that experience will stay firmly in the software domain. Classic hardware is still exclusive by nature.
It’s tempting to reach the conclusion that this old classic gear is somehow magic, that it’s the missing ingredient which will sprinkle some Grammy dust over a production. We know this to be untrue, but I’ll admit I still get influenced by reproductions of the gear whose sonic fingerprint is on the music I love.
A current example is the reissue of the Fairchild 670. With prices of original units reaching six figures, a reissue under the revived Fairchild name for a third of the cost of vintage units is bound to attract some attention from well heeled customers. And it proves the point that the attraction of classic gear is strong.
We don’t revere all old gear though. And herein lies an interesting point. As I said in my article Let's Stop Kidding Ourselves About Tape Plugins
“Tape wasn’t “supposed” to sound like anything. Everyone who designed, built and maintained the high-end analogue equipment being emulated in plugins intended it to be as transparent as possible”
And it is equipment which, in spite of this, has a definite sonic fingerprint which has been, largely retrospectively, elevated to the top drawer of desirable gear. This status is only loosely related to the value of the gear when new. A Fairchild compressor is a complicated piece of equipment and, as the creators of clones have discovered, there isn’t a cheap way to build one. The equally revered SSL bus compressor is a far simpler device and is eminently clone-able. But also shares classic status. The things both of these devices share is an identifiable character and being all over very successful records. They sound ‘right’.
Successful Gear Isn’t Just About The Sound
By way of comparison, we don’t revere the open reel digital tape machines of the 1980s but we do revere the Lexicon 480L. The digital tape machine, by virtue of its eye-watering price was the more exclusive piece of equipment but it existed to address two principal shortcomings of what preceded it. The 2” 24 track was limited to 24 tracks and suffered from the non-linearities and noise of tape. The Lexicon did cool sounding reverb. When DAWs brought the same benefits as digital tape but exceeded the hardware limitations of tape, and brought all the benefits of a DAW too, those digital tape machines suffered equally eye-watering depreciation! Meanwhile those Lexicon reverbs ring on. While the hardware has become unnecessary, those algorithms persist.
However many records were made on gear which doesn’t share the same status as the bona fide classics like Neve and API. In a recent discussion on the podcast, embedded below, William Wittman, who has been a working engineer through the golden age of recording technology, commented that many of those records were made on gear he and his contemporaries are glad to have left in the past. Amongst others he mentioned MCI. A company whose gear was definitely all over many of my favourite records but he remembers without fondness. MCI were trailblazers in the production of innovative products which engineers actually wanted. The first in line console, 2” 24 track tape machine and their groundbreaking tape autolocator. The gear had a reputation for design and good build quality but the reason it was so successful during the 70s was probably that it was aggressively priced. Being more affordable isn’t a reason to create a plugin version. Neither are workflow friendly features.
Period Pastiche Or Timeless Classic?
The sound of some gear is timeless, while the Pultec EQ dates from the early 50s, there is nothing about that sound which places it in that decade, or as a homage to that period in the same way as for example a tape slap effect would be a cultural nod to the 50s. The tape delay is an interesting example of a sound which was essentially arbitrary. The slapback effect of using the gap between the heads on a tape machine to create a short echo was used because it was available using the gear which was accessible and available to people making those records at a time before the modern professional audio industry existed. You could argue that those records were successful in spite of the gear they were created on rather than because of it. A slap delay on a vocal today might infer a Lennon pastiche instead of 50’s rock and roll, but Lennon was referencing the music which inspired him. And so it goes on.
Technology And Music Move Together
We see this in Antares’ inclusion and marketing of their legacy Autotune Classic mode from Autotune 5. The sound, while inferior to the current algorithm, references a particular period. This retro referencing continues and there must be things in our tools which will become stylistic references to the first quarter of the 21st century. Though from this distance I’m not entirely sure what they are. What genuinely new things are there around today?
In terms of the tools we use we are in a explosive growth in possibilities and potential at the moment. We’re so close to the beginning of the AI revolution that it’s hard to see the shape of it. In the time I’ve been involved in audio I’ve lived through the home recording explosion, the introduction of MIDI and accessible sampling, DAWs, modelling, the list goes on. AI is already extending the limits of what is possible but one of the things which is missing at the moment is a desirable sonic fingerprint. Something which we will want to bring to our production in the future.
Many of the tools which use AI are intended to be invisible in use. The progress in noise reduction with tools like Clarity Vx or in dialogue clean up with Accentize dxRevive shouldn’t leave a sonic fingerprint. An inspiring story currently in the news it that of the release of Now and Then, a ‘last’ Beatles release:
The story being that advances in noise reduction and de-mixing technology made a previously unusable cassette recording made by Lennon viable as the basis for a release. The effect of the technology on the music is clear but not in quite the same way as gear with an overtly identifiable sound.
The absence of something is harder for a contemporary audience to appreciate. For example the shock of hearing no tape noise on digital recordings for the first time or the impact of a strictly quantized piece of music isn’t something which can be revisited in a world where it is no longer new but what, if any, products which are being introduced today are creating a sound which will persist as the sonic fingerprint of the 2020s? It’s hard to know. Our experience of AI is still developing and while widespread production of AI generated vocals and other elements of music are definitely on the way, again at the moment the aim is realism and when that realism is accurate enough it will disappear in the same way as early samplers used to sound like samplers, now digital recordings don’t shout their presence like a Fairlight CMI or an Emulator did.
Perhaps the reason it’s difficult to identify the sonic signature of the 2020 is that products which aren’t overtly retro or model specific analogue hardware aren’t designed to have a sound. In exactly the same way as classic gear was years ago. What sound do you think will identify a 2020s record as being from that period?