Analogue mixers

[steevio]

heres a brief clip of an old banging minimal warehouse techno track i did in the 1990s,
this was mostly just a 909 overdriven through the pre-VLZ Mackie 16/4/2 desk i mentioned earlier.

quality isnt amazing because its just straight off the old scracthy vinyl,
quite extreme but it shows how much you can change the sound of a kickdrum or any percussion for that matter with a good analogue desk.

eek - everything was 10bpm faster back then


http://www.mindtours.co.uk/backstagewav ... neclip.wav

[Opuswerk]

Here's 2 files of the a 909 kick trhough the ZEDR16.
http://www.opuswerk.ch/Zips/909_Kick_fr ... hannel.wav
http://www.opuswerk.ch/Zips/909_Kick_fr ... master.wav

Seeing as you can't overdrive the channels by sending audio from ableton, i had to load this kick in my MachineDrum and play it from there, so as to drive the input gain of the channel. I recorded 2 different sources, the first one, is the recording of the input of the channel, as expected, the clipping gets pretty bad because the AD is overloading (if i understand the technical aspects correctly, and please correct me if i'm wrong ). The second recording is from the master out, which isn't clipping, as it's outputting the analog signal of the overdriven channel, and left enough headroom to record at a level without digital clipping. I then normalized both files in Audacity with a -1.0db headroom. I hope this gives you an idea of the overdriving.
The sound you get by pushing the EQs is a bit different than this and imo sounds rounder.
All in all, it doesn't sound as round and warm as i was hoping it would, but if you resample the channels, and reEQ them, it got me the results i was aiming for. Again, as this is my first mixer, i can't compare.

@steevio, would you mind doing the same on your mixer?

xx edited the links xx

[steevio]

^^^

the links dont work bro.

can i ask why you cant overdrive the channels from the audio from ableton ?

if thats not possible then it kind of defeats one of the objects of using an analogue desk to fatten up your soft synths.

yep, i'll do a test on my Ghost this afternoon.

[Opuswerk]

updated the links of my previous post.
You actually can overload form ableton, it gives similar sounding results, and does not sound like a channel clipping in ableton. However, i suspect that you're first overloading the DA before it hits the channel strip... But i'm not so sure, that's why i thought you couldn't do it.
The GAIN knob becomes un-effective when using a digital channel (from your DAW), so the online way you get to send a hot signal to the channel, is by pushing your DAW channel in the red. That's why i'm saying you might be overloading the DA first. But i don't really know yet However, just having a digital signal going through the analogue EQ does make it sound different, and you can choose to record the input from that same channel, or record the master out of the mixer. That's why i did 2 files, one where i record the channel in, and supposedly also overload the AD (?), and the other one, where i record the master out, where it's only the channel overloading. I hope all that makes sense
Maybe if you look at the circuit diagram, you'd understand it better?

about your clip, it's indeed fast . After a quick listen, i believe it'd be possible to get such a sound on the Zed, haven't tried it out yet though.

[steevio]

if you can be bothered mate could you do it again with full decay, full attack, full tune on the 909. do say 8 samples and normalise them individually up to 0dB so you can hear a comparison between them clearly. (maybe leave a longer gap between each sample)

i'll do the same, no EQ, no comp,

it will be a good illustration of how different desks sound to each other.

[deccard]

if you can be bothered mate could you do it again with full decay, full attack, full tune on the 909. do say 8 samples and normalise them individually up to 0dB so you can hear a comparison between them clearly. (maybe leave a longer gap between each sample)

i'll do the same, no EQ, no comp,

it will be a good illustration of how different desks sound to each other.

wouldnt it be better everyone uses the same sample to overdrive? maybe the machines sound a bit different or?

[Opuswerk]

I upped the samples as you asked, again recording both the channels input and the master out, at extreme settings, the differences is quite noticeable. I also included the original sample in the zip. As i don't have the chance of having a 909, i had to use a sample, and used the one i had with the longest decay. It comes off the 909 GoldBaby sample pack and i took one sample that wasn't treated.

I did 5 different gain values, again using the MD as a sampler. I hope this gives you a better idea.

I ended up doing 2 packs at two different tempis, one at 126BPM and the other at 80BPM, so as to leave more space between the samples.

link to the packs:
http://www.opuswerk.ch/Zips/ZEDR16_909_ ... 126BPM.zip
http://www.opuswerk.ch/Zips/ZEDR16_909_ ... _80BPM.zip

[gowans]

i dont have a 909 but i have an mbase 11, i'll do a similar test using a Soundcraft Series 200 16ch desk