Warm sounds like Dial Records

[khuko]

Hi there!

i'm wondering how these producers from the Dial label makes their sound so warm and analog.

I know that Efdemin is using max/Msp with selfmade patches for some productions, but what is it with the oter producers from Dial like panta du prince, ...

Cheers

[re.vise]

Must be a final-mastering thing. Some sort of compression and equalizing.. Also the Mindshake records sound alike because of the great mastering from Xavier... Also the Minus records sound so clear... Guess why.. Great mastering.

[Tekcap]

Hi there!

i'm wondering how these producers from the Dial label makes their sound so warm and analog.

I know that Efdemin is using max/Msp with selfmade patches for some productions, but what is it with the oter producers from Dial like panta du prince, ...

Cheers

wat plugins are this? max/msp

[Jack Rock]

It's not the mastering. It's primarily a production thing. Mastering can add some warmth to the surface of a mix, but not a thoroughly round and soft production quality like the Dial stuff.

I think they sound the same because that's the style of Dial. No particular magic. Except it's a freakin' cool label!

[victorgonzales]

It's not the mastering. It's primarily a production thing. Mastering can add some warmth to the surface of a mix, but not a thoroughly round and soft production quality like the Dial stuff.

I think they sound the same because that's the style of Dial. No particular magic. Except it's a freakin' cool label!

I think this is the most likelly answer.

Adding that much warmth to the sounds is very unlikelly in the mastering process unless the engineer is doing a full mixdown with stems from the track. It is possible but Id say it's more likelly they just like to sign tracks that sound that way.


There are alot of ways to make warmth from distortion to filtering/equing techniques.

[MINIMALTECHNOHOUSE]

What is 'warmth'.... does anybody know?

I find subtle modulations give more 'warmth' than distortion etc.... but thats just me...

[victorgonzales]

What is 'warmth'.... does anybody know?

I find subtle modulations give more 'warmth' than distortion etc.... but thats just me...

Thats another topic in itself. To me most of the things people call warmth is simple the use of chords instead of notes and some proper equing in the lower mid range.

Some people think it's magic of some kind when youplay a chord.

[async]

I am intrigued by this (as a dsp nerd). Most of the references I can find to "warmth" refer to Tube distortion. It sounds like "warmth" as an attribute of timbre is usually contrasted with "crisp" ness and/or "cold" ness. Crisp seems to be definable (to me) as sound having broad-band noise frequencies in the 3-20khz range a nice, and a sharp attack and fairly quick decay envelope. I've heard elements of basslines that sound "crisp" when harmonics are present in that range. The noise sort of buzzes. My best guess as to warmth would go along with victor's idea that "warmth" is really just a good harmonic to noise ratio in the low-mid to mid-range frequency range.

I generally found myself wanting warmness out of a low-pass or band-pass filter, so I eventually just went and wrote myself an audio unit that emulates a Moog 4-stage filter (lo / band and hi pass) with a non-linear saturation point at every stage of the filter. I find that hyperbolic-tangent transforms of the signal "warm" the sound up by smoothly squishing noise near the top and bottom of the signal range.

I'm almost done with the filter unit, please mail me at pauley(at)unsaturated(dot)net if you'd like to try the audio unit out when it's ready.