I spent the late evening tonight recording my MPC onto a half track Revox B77. I made a seperate digital version at 24bit 88.2khz. Then A/B’d them back to back. After careful volume adjustment to reduce any biased outcomes, the results were so close, I was really astounded. The VU meters were peaking at +3db, run through the FMR Really Nice Compressor using Super Nice (setting for mix compression)
Digital was very slightly deeper low end (50hz) , which is not surprising seeing as the B77 is about 40 years old and EDM wasn’t exactly a thing back then (!)
B77 had smoother top end. Not as sharp and sits ever so slightly better in the mix, but it’s only very slight.
Other than that, I would say they sound sounded almost the same and I had a hard time knowing which was which when switching…
I then made another second B77 master with higher input levels, looking for more tape saturation, but it just seemed to start clipping and squash it too much IMO. It felt less dynamic in the second the A/B test and I preferred the more conservative first recording.
Overall a quality result for the Revox considering the age of it. The B77 half track is a mint condition well serviced machine (I was so lucky I drove 200 miles to get it).
So my conclusion and this may not be yours, is that I believe a well serviced machine, biased correctly with quality tape (SME900) will almost sounds invisible. The digital and analogue had just very slight differences.
Would I reach for tape everytime I mastered? I’m not sure I would now. Forty years ago this would have been incredible, let’s face it, but modern digital is so good too.
Finally, I’m going to digitise the tape at 24/88 and then put them both through Ozone or something, but I bet the tape magic gets lost quickly.
I was told that a serviced tape machine, with good heads and quality tape should be almost invisible when mastering to it. Now I understand.
Back when these were made they were trying to have the cleanest recording possible. If the goal is lots of color, it almost seems like a crappy tape machine would be better.
great find, i have the same machine but needs a servicing.
these machines are really clean, if you want more character an A77 is probably a better bet. the amps have more of a sound/character to them, especially when driven. i used to have both and always used the A77 for vibing up things.
Interesting to know. I nearly got an A77, but it was far from economical to repair it. A friend sold me an excellent condition Akai 4000DS mk2 for £100 and I think that sounds superb at 7fps. I’m going to give that a go next.
I’m not knowledgeable enough, but if I had to take a guess I’d say that tape or digital doesn’t matter much and a lot of the mojo that some attributed to tape does in fact come from somewhere else.
yeah i had a bunch that were borderline irrepairable too. motors dried out, amp cards broken etc. i bought most of them from house clearances cheaply. sold most of them because nowadays you can get so close ITB with much more flexibility
I did both, one mix with VU meter at +3, a second mix with about 6-8db increase. Raising the gain did little to reveal more character IMO and just made it slightly worse.
It’s an interesting litmus test. I wonder if you would find more of an audible (even if not measurable) sonic impact if you only mix the drums to tape and A/B that with digital.
If you’re aiming for a good overall mix, you might be listening with different ears than if you were processing the drums exclusively (which is how some people use tape in relation to electronic music).
I remember a Lisa Belladonna video where she’s talking about printing her mixes to 8-track tape, and that it has different qualities than other formats. She also mentioned VHS as an option.
I do think a lot of the “tape warmth” is actually the awesome preamps found on certain 4-track tape recorders. I had a Yamaha MT400 that sounded amazing when used as a mixer
tasty Revox and Space Echo!
and also enjoy taping live jams directly from a stereo output:vulcan_salute: