HOW TO GET THAT ’70s CLASSIC ROCK SOUND

• The deader you can tune and mute your drums, the better. Use much smaller cymbals for punctuation rather than explosive accents. Even put some light tape on the ride cymbal to make it a nice dry percussive hit without much wash. Don’t be scared to extend the hi-hat stand to its maximum height and drop the height of the snare to get as much separation as possible — or even move the hi-hat a bit further away from the snare. It may be less comfortable for the drummer, but will make the snare sound purer, and make it easier to work with.
• Think massive drum kits — four or more toms were the rule rather than the exception. It wasn’t unusual to see four mics close to the cymbals, submixed to a stereo pair; a mic on each tom, submixed to a stereo pair; plus a kick and snare track, sometimes with two mics on each submixed.
• It’s all about the close mics.
• Once again, tell your drummer to play to the mics, which often means playing a bit quieter than normal. There are stories of legendary studio drummers who rarely played loudly, instead focusing on consistency of drum hits. Any sort of rimshots on the snare should be avoided — it’s all about consistent hits in the centre of the head. The whole effect is a drier, completely focused and controllable tone at all times.

When mixing the sounds, it’s all about clarity. Gate the snare and mute the silences on the toms. Sculpt the sounds of the kick and snare. Add high mids to the toms for extra definition. High-pass filter the cymbals and hi-hats aggressively, and keep them reasonably low in the mix. Insert a compressor on the kick and snare, and place one on a drum submix too, but with a low ratio and moderate attack/release. You’re just using it to tighten up things rather than change the tone.

The post How to: Bang-on Retro Drums Part 4 appeared first on AudioTechnology.

Tutorial: Michael Carpenter

As pop music was taking over the world in the mid ’60s, there were also massive changes in recording technology. For one, by the end of the decade, stereo pipped mono for pop’s preferred format. As pop records and productions grew in creativity, so did the compulsion to innovate. 

Producers started to use the extra room on four-track machines for more content. As they discovered reduction mixes (bouncing down a mix of four tracks to another four-track machine to free up more tracks for overdubbing) there became more demand for a clearer focus on the drums. Also, vocalists didn’t necessarily track live with the ensemble anymore, which reduced or almost completely eradicated the ambience and spill which had been such a big part of a record’s sound up to that point. 

Combined with slightly more detailed EQ on consoles, more input channels and routing options, different compressor choices (the earliest 1176 incarnations arrived around this point, as well as The Beatles’ heavy use of Fairchild compression), and advances in tape formulations and machines, records just started to sound better. They became much more tonally focused, with a greater sense of the close mics rather than the ambience of single-track ensemble recording. Later, eight-track recording unshackled the engineers, often resulting in a whole tape track set aside for drums!

Engineers still shied away from moving the mics as close as we do today — there were all sorts of concerns about overloading mics and consoles by getting too close to the drums. But they did start adding additional mics. Initially it was to represent the kit more faithfully, but became more creative as the decade rolled on. For example, engineers started to put mics somewhere in the vicinity of the toms. Often underneath the rack tom, and another somewhere vaguely over the floor tom. If they felt they weren’t getting the presence of the snare, they’d put a mic underneath the snare and add treble to increase the snap of the drum as it headed into its submix, before compression and prior to hitting tape.

HOW TO GET THAT MID TO LATE ’60s DRUM SOUND:

Start using more mics closer to the kit, but not as close as you would for a contemporary kit. Think more about ‘coverage’ of the drum sounds. Possibly start with a kick mic (dynamic, right in the drum) a snare bottom mic quite close to the bottom snares (a dynamic or pencil condenser) and a condenser as an overhead. Place dynamic mics underneath the rack tom by about 30cm, and above the floor tom by about the same distance and pointed more towards the snare.

Take off the front head of the bass drum and deaden the sound. Drop the tuning of the snare a little more, but deaden the snare with a wallet or a folded up cloth. Tighten up the snares underneath, and possibly use masking tape (don’t use gaffer tape, it’ll tear the bottom head) on them to make the sound of the drum resonance free, with a short sharp snap to it. Tune the toms a little deeper, with maximum resonance. Use smaller, more ‘standard’ cymbal sizes.

Get your drummer to play at a moderate to quiet volume, laying off on the cymbals. For that Motown/Stax sound, don’t be scared to remove all toms and crash/ride cymbals, and just focus on the groove, using only one or two mics in unusual places to capture the whole kit.

Avoid ambience mics completely, and focus more on the closer mics, even keeping the overhead mic moderately low in the overall mix.

Submix all tracks to a mono auxiliary. Insert a compressor plug-in with a faster attack and release, and higher ratio. Adjust the release so the kick drum is pumping against the cymbals. Rebalance the close mics so the kick and snare are upfront and clear and a little crunchy. Add an EQ after the compressor to accentuate the low bottom end, and possibly highlight the high mids (around 4-6kHz) while low pass filtering around 10kHz. Don’t be scared to experiment with saturation/distortion plug-ins. Distortion and overdriving equipment was par for the course at this point, and is a key part of the sound of this era.

The post How to: Bang-on Retro Drums Part 3 appeared first on AudioTechnology.

Tutorial: Michael Carpenter

The ’60s ushered in some pretty significant changes. Though Les Paul and others experimented with sound-on-sound recording in the early ’50s (essentially, playing one mono tape into a mixer, and recording another part at the same time to another mono machine), true overdubbing facilities only started to appear on three-track machines in the very late ’50s. The initial benefit was that orchestras could be overdubbed. Tracking sessions soon involved having the ensemble balanced onto one track while the singer, also performing live, was recorded to a second track. The orchestra would then be overdubbed onto the third track — a massive change at the time. As the first four-track machines started to hit in the early ’60s, this practice remained intact. Ensembles, including singers, still performed live in one space, and occasionally the additional tracks were used for ‘sweetening’ — adding horns, strings or backing vocals. The pre-’60s practice of self-balancing remained.

The first major change ushered in by the rock ’n’ roll era was that singers could monitor themselves through ‘monitor speakers’ to compete with the louder guitar amps that had also popped up. Drummers started to play harder and used more cymbals to mirror the live experience, prompting engineers to begin looking at new ways to convey this live experience to tape. Basically, everyone got louder.

This manifested in some small but important changes. Large diaphragm condenser mics were replaced as the main ‘drum kit’ mic with either a ribbon mic to tame the cymbals, or a dynamic mic to protect the more fragile/expensive mics from flailing drum sticks. A kick drum mic became compulsory too. Though in this early stage the front head was still on the drum, and engineers, concerned with the amount of air pumped out of this bigger drum, placed the mic no closer than a metre from the head. 

In the control room, things changed as well. The valve consoles had to be upgraded to handle the four-track recorder functionality. In many situations, a compressor was placed between the bussed output of the console and the tape machine, to protect the tape from overloading. It meant the live tracks were submixed down to one channel, sent through a compressor and then to one track of the tape, embedding those sounds and balance into the mix forever. So a lot of time was taken to get the balances and interaction between the elements and the compressor right before they hit tape.

HOW TO GET THAT EARLY ’60s SOUND

Let the drums ring; take out or reduce the dampening in the kick drum, and use a full head on the front of the drum. Tune the drums up a bit higher than you’d expect, particularly the toms. Open up the hi-hats a bit more.

Play a bit harder.

Use two dynamic mics for the kit — one out the front of the kick and one at cymbal height pointing towards the centre of the kit, so that the cymbals are pointing at the side of the mic. Move your cymbal setup around so you only have a crash and a ride.

With this setup, you are again listening for drum kit coverage. By this point, engineers were looking for a little more ‘focus’ out of the mics, hence the addition of a dedicated kick mic. With these two mics, you’re getting a better representation of the close quality of the drums.

Place another mic or two — condensers or ribbons — a few metres back from the kit, and point them in the opposite direction.

With these mics, you’re strictly imitating the sound of open vocal mics. Pointed away from the drum kit, they’ll pick up drum spill and ambience. By themselves they should sound unfocused and ambient. Mixed in with the above close mics, you get that authentic crunch.

Do the high/low-pass trick mentioned above. Submix all the channels into a single auxiliary through a compressor with a moderate attack, release and threshold so the kit glues together rather than pumps. Readjust the balance once you hear the effects of the compressor, as this process will (and should) change your balance.

The post How to: Bang-on Retro Drums Part 2 appeared first on AudioTechnology.

STEP 1: THE RIGHT KIT

The most important parts of achieving any of these drum sounds are right at the source. The drum kit needs to be setup and tuned for the style, and the player needs to understand the concept of playing to the mics. For anyone trying to get in the ballpark for the first time, it’s worth spending time looking at images on the web of drummers (and their kits) of the era you’re interested in.

For sounds up to the late ’60s, it was at most a simple four-piece kit, usually with two full heads on the bass drum and almost no dampening, except some felt strips. The snares were almost always five-inches deep, and there were usually only two large crash/ride cymbals that weren’t hit very hard. If you’re using a kit with a big fat deep snare, a bass drum with a big pillow on it, five toms and six cymbals, you’re making your job a lot more difficult. And if your drummer is a basher, smashing out quarter notes on the hi-hats, with a weak snare backbeat and a zillion drum fills, you’re going to struggle to get an authentic Motown sound.

The point is that appropriateness will yield plenty of sonic options from any mic combination you use. And don’t be scared of how odd your drums might sound in the room. We have a bunch of drums that we keep tuned a particular way (including a kid’s toy kit) because we know under a certain combination of mics, they’ll sound a particular shade of incredible.

Throughout this article, there are some specific modifications to both the kit and to the drummer’s approach that will guide you towards the right combinations of approaches. Still, your best asset will always be your ears. Learn to listen through those old records for your best chance of figuring out why they’ve become so iconic.

HOW TO GET THAT LATE ’50s SOUND

 Apart from making sure we use the absolute right kit, see sidebar Step 1: The Right Kit, some techniques to get close to this sound would include:

Don’t use many mics on the drums themselves, perhaps only one over the whole kit. 

Remember, at this early stage of drum recording, no one considered the drums as individual elements — kick, snare, toms, etc. One mic was placed in a central position to pick up the sound of the whole kit. Ribbon mics were great for this, as the weight from the bottom end of the kit was emphasised, and the duller top end helped tame the cymbals. Listen for a mic position that gives you a balance of the whole kit.

Then scatter a number of mics of different varieties around the room, pointed in different directions; away from the kit at a distance, into a corner, aimed at the glass on your window, or pointing down at the floor. Imagine there’s an ensemble coming into your room, and you’re putting one mic up for each instrument. You may use a ribbon mic for where the horns would be. A condenser for the rear of the upright piano. Maybe a dynamic where the singer would be. 

The idea here is to simulate spill — open mics around the room picking up the sound of the room, but not in a ‘drum-conscious’ way. So experiment with these and see which ones give you the greatest sense of ‘drums in a room’.

Get the drummer to play at the volume he’d need to play if he had a live singer in the room with no foldback. Tell him to back off on the fills and the cymbals, and make it all about the groove. 

When listening back to the various mics, only listen in mono, perhaps putting a high-pass filter at 100Hz and a low pass at 8-10kHz on every mic. Don’t be scared to submix all the tracks to a mono auxiliary and treat the sound with light compression or even a saturation/distortion type plug in. Balance all the mics up until you get a sound that can be described as ‘character-filled’. 

The post How to: Bang-on Retro Drums Part 1 appeared first on AudioTechnology.

With so much of the world running headlong into a landscape dominated by digital manipulation and mass production, it’s nice to occasionally run in the opposite direction…

Text: Andy Stewart

“Oh s**t, not again!” was the first thought that crossed my mind when I finally clapped eyes on the Retro 176. What was I thinking, asking to review equipment like this yet again? I’d seen the pictures and I’d heard the rants from other engineers who’d used it… I should have steered well clear after reviewing Retro’s versions of the stereo Pultec and Gates STA Level and simply gotten on with living in the real world. You know the real world? That tedious place where you haggle to get 20 bucks off the price of that already discounted dishwasher, or resist the temptation to buy that $29 Aldi DVD player because the one you already own works fine. Sure it whirs a bit, and the sound drives you crazy sometimes, but it seems wasteful and rash to just throw it out!
The world of the Retro 176 is not that world. This is a world where reason and convention are tossed out the window faster than a cheeseburger wrapper from a P-plater’s car. It’s a world of audio compression par excellence, where a vocal chain glows luminous (like the compressor’s enormous VU meter) and
every moment of the performance rivets you to the spot like a stun gun from Star Trek. It’s a world where the weak notes inherent in a bass guitar are ironed out with little fuss: a turn
of the input gain here, a fiddle with the release there; and where thin sounding, amateurishly recorded electric guitars suddenly get their comeuppance, lose their clattering top-end and grow some midrange.
Very few compressors on earth can place such comprehensive control over an audio signal without causing its sound to lose vitality or tone, but you can certainly add the 176 to this very short list.

A ‘REISSUED’ CLASSIC

Like all Retro gear, the 176 takes its cue from a vintage classic; in this case the much loved (though rarely sighted) UA 176, which first appeared out of Bill Putnam’s laboratory in around 1966. This ’60s single channel vari-mu valve compressor – which itself was the younger sibling of the fixed ratio (12:1) UA 175 limiting amplifier, released in 1961 – is still regarded by many who use it as the ultimate valve limiter. From the success of these units eventually came the cheaper (and valve-less) 1176LN ‘black-faced’ compressor; a more ‘modern’ take on the 176 design, this time designed using solid-state circuitry and a FET – rather than vari-mu – gain reduction circuit. The 1176, although similar in terms of its control set, was quite different under the bonnet, possessed a significantly faster attack control and was more aggressive overall. These days the 1176 is by far the most famous member of the original UA family.
Like the much loved and oft emulated 1176LN, the Retro 176 (like the UA 176) has very familiar controls, albeit with a few curve balls thrown in for good measure. As with all the models in Bill Putnam’s original range, setting the gain reduction on the Retro 176 is a two-handed process whereby the input control manipulates the threshold – more input generates more compression – and the silky smooth output knob compensates accordingly. Ratios of 2:1, 4:1, 8:1 and 12:1 are selectable via a rotary switch while attack and release setting are independently manipulated in the typical fashion via standard rotary pots.
Actually, there’s more to the attack control than first meets the eye. Pulling this knob clicks it into an alternative mode of operation that’s slightly more bombastic and distorted sounding – and more in keeping with the original circuitry of the UA 176. I’ve not actually used a UA model for years so I can’t confidently compare the two in my mind, but suffice it to say one setting is more elastic than the other. The ‘in’ setting seems more relaxed and invisible while still retaining the ability to push back powerfully against a strong incoming signal. And the stronger the gain reduction, the thicker, more harmonically rich and vivid things become, just like you want your audio to sound… but more on that in a moment. The backlit VU meter, which casts a magnificent glow over its immediate surroundings is switchable to Input, Output, or Gain Reduction, and like almost no other compressor I know, its swing and trajectory seem perfectly in tune with the performance of the compressor itself – as the gain reduction circuit puts the squeeze on, so the needle seems to press with conviction to the left and release only after the signal has submitted to its will.
Also, like the original, the build quality of the Retro 176 is remarkable. The construction is that of heavy-grade steel, although most of the unit’s considerable weight seems to be in the input and output transformers, which are hefty indeed. Ironically, the nature of this classic ’50s/’60s design makes for an extremely fragile unit overall. With all the valves and transformers (bar one) being rear-mounted and very exposed on the back panel, the Retro 176 must always be treated with great care when it’s out of the rack or when you’re connecting XLR cables. This design type hails from an era when packing up your studio and heading over to a mate’s place for some overdubbing was all but inconceivable. The 176 is not designed to travel without a proper protective roadcase, and you’d never dream of throwing it in the back seat of the car with your mic stands and guitar cases, that’s for sure. In the rack is where it belongs.

TACTILE-ICIOUS

The main input and output controls of the 176 feel magnificent to the touch, and provide super accurate tweaking of their respective values – I only wish the smaller knobs were as convincing. The front panel is hinged at the bottom and tilts forward as per the original, and opening up the unit reveals hand-wired point-to-point wiring and very little else. All the circuitry is mounted either on the front or rear panels; there’s nothing placed horizontally on the tray itself, apart from wiring.

WHERE IT’S DIFFERENT

There are three other major controls on the Retro 176 that you won’t find on the original. Two of these can be found on the left side of the unit above the chunky bypass toggle switch, and these are manipulated via more of the same. The uppermost control is an ‘Interstage’ switch that affects the tone of the compressor by inserting an additional transformer into the circuit between the input and output stages. Depending on the program you’re feeding it, this can add anything from an almost imperceptibly subtle tonal shift to extra amounts of distortion and punch. I’m yet to fully appreciate the benefits of this control, to be honest, and suspect it will only be after spending more time with it that I’ll have a better sense of when to switch it in (or not). At this stage my perception is that it seems to invigorate slightly dull and mellow sounds by raising the percentage of distortion in the signal, making them more obvious in a mix.
The second unusual feature is what’s called an ‘Asymmetry’ switch, which betrays Phil Moore’s background in broadcasting (Phil being Retro’s President and designer). This is an unusual control that feeds only the positive or negative sides of a waveform to the compression circuit; a concept that was apparently originally designed into broadcast limiting amplifiers to protect AM radio transmitters from overload. Essentially what this control does is reduce the amount of information funnelling into the detector, and in cases where a waveform is decidedly asymmetrical – like voices and percussion, for example – it allows you to choose (using your ears) which side of the waveform best suits your needs. In cases where a signal still sounds too harsh or spiky, switching the Asymmetry switch from positive to negative offers you the opportunity to find the harder edged side of the waveform (if one exists) and feed only that side to the compressor, thus making the tone at the output smoother overall. Conversely, a sound that feels a little too mellow can have its softer side fed to the detector, leaving the harder side to pass through to the output unscathed, thus compressing and simultaneously clarifying the sound somewhat. It’s an esoteric concept but a logical one nonetheless, and for certain voices it works well. Again, this is something you’d only develop an instinct for over time but there’s no question it does make a difference.
The final feature on the Retro that doesn’t exist on the original 176 is a sidechain high-pass filter, a control that’s becoming more and more commonplace on newly released compressors. The concept is simple enough: the sidechain HPF is inaudible to all but the compressor’s detector circuit, allowing whatever low frequencies are filtered from the detector’s path to pass through the compressor without incident, reducing pumping and a general over-sensitivity to bottom-end. This is a great feature to have in a compressor. It allows the control circuit to react to something other than the kick drum in a stereo mix bus situation; it allows more of the midrange component of a signal to be controlled without the bottom-end being annihilated in the process, creating a fuller rounder tone; and it gives you the ability to preserve and maintain some dynamic in the signal below the HPF’s crossover point where other compressors might otherwise force you to simply back the gain reduction off.

IN RETRO-SPECT

Sonically the Retro 176 really is a classic piece of esoteric outboard. It brings dynamic vocals into line with so much richness and delicacy it’s just plain unfair. On bass it provides fullness and depth without pumping or overreacting, and electric guitars just sit in the mix and glow. It’s one of those devices where the more I’ve played with it, the more indispensable it has become.
I’m sure I’ll find countless other roles for the 176 over time, but I must admit, every time I’ve been in the studio with it lately, it has almost always found its way onto centre stage as a lead vocal compressor. No doubt this will be the role it performs in the vast majority of cases in studios around the world, and in this situation it is simply sublime. Vocals are often wildly dynamic and hard to control without generating unwanted side-effects, particularly distortion, but with the 176, 10dB of gain reduction is perfectly manageable and 15dB still holds together nicely.

THREE STRIKES

This is the third time I’ve looked at a piece of Retro gear and mercifully – for the time being at least – the last. As a writer and engineer, it seems there are only two possible outcomes of a Retro review: going nuts or going broke! In the six weeks I’ve had the 176 I’ve grown more accustomed to its sonic qualities than I would have liked, so once again the struggle to return it will be immense. Like no other compressor in my outboard rack, the Retro 176 seems to sound better the more it compresses, and in the window between two and 12dB of gain reduction it’s unmatched by any compressor in the rack.
I’m sure ‘the haves’ – those lucky enough to buy a 176 at some point in the future – will snigger when they screw this unit into their racks for the first time. Meanwhile the ‘have-nots’ – the vast majority of us – will have to be content for now to pray for a miracle: that one day 176s will simply rain from the sky! I, for one, will be firing arrows from my crossbow at the tyres of the courier van (à la Wez from Mad Max II) as it drives away next week. When I win Tattslotto I’m going to buy all the Australian stock of 176s in one second flat, no questions asked. Until then, I guess I’m hangin’ with the have-nots.

The post RETRO 176 appeared first on AudioTechnology.