16 track tape sounds better?

Bob-Dubery · 2013-04-17T05:28:11+00:00

I've just read an interview with Joe Boyd in which Boyd climbs onto one of his favourite horses - what sounds best. And the answer, always, is 16 track 2 inch tape. The theory goes that the first retrograde step in studio sound quality was forcing 24 tracks onto the same format tape previously used for 16, and it's been all downhill since then. An example Boyd has offered in the past is the famous Buena Vista Social Club recordings that Ry Cooder produced in Cuba. The sessions took place in an old studio in Havana (at the time there were only old studios there) onto, you've guessed it, 16 track tape. Boyd says he's seen people walk into restaurants or bars where that CD is playing and be surprised at how full and present the music sounds. Much better than modern digital recordings, he says. There's your proof. He's also been gushing about the new Richard Thompson album and how good it sounds. Producer Buddy Miller (a retronaut of note with his weird, old guitars and his preference for tape delay for his live sound) uses 16 track tape in his home studio. But things unravel - for me at any rate. I get why 16 tracks onto 2 inch tape might sound better than 24 tracks onto the same tape. There's a physical constraint there, but we don't have that constraint in the digital world. Also 1) The BVSC album was recorded onto tape but released on CD - so it got digitized at some point. 2) Yes, Miller used 16 track tape for the Thompson sessions, but after the basic tracks were recorded those were digitised and the whole thing was loaded into some DAW (pro tunes?) for further work. So, again it was digitized and in this case before the mastering stage, and effects were added, EQing done and even some overdubs after the conversion. Now, Boyd has been involved in some very good sounding records, so I don't want to just toss everything he says out the window because of this digitizing process that he seems to be overlooking. Is there something going on other than just changes in fashion about how things should sound? Is it possible that the basic tracks on an old technology can have some magic that even subsequent layers of digital processing cannot undo? Is it maybe that the whole process is old-fashioned, which means the actual room in which the recording takes place has a sound? I recall reading that in the 70s and late 60s when the Stones were getting ready to record their main priority was to find a studio with a good sound in the room, where they could play in that studio and it sounded good to them. So, back then, studios did not all sound the same (Boyd was a fan of Sound Techniques in London, saying it was the best sounding studio he ever worked in). Maybe the retro guys embrace that ethos as well and so you get the natural sound of the room colouring the basic recordings. I know that there's a lot of bad sounding recordings these days, but I'm not sure that digital technology is the actual villain of the piece. I qualify that by saying that DACs must have improved since the early days of digital recording and so, for a while, things might have sounded not so good because of distortion introduced as the audio signal was converted into bits. Fire away ?

refuogee

SABC has the exact same Neve console, although falling into a bit of disrepair as can be expected by a state run enterprise...

Psean

Hammeron wrote Have you lads seen Dave Grohls 'Sound City'? Great movie.
They used the Neve consol and tape dont know whether that was 16 track.
Grohl eventually buys the Consol and puts it in his home studio.
Some classic stuff recorded at Sound City, Fleetwood Mac, Tom Petty, Neil Young, Nirvana. Ozzy, Dio to name a few.

Yeah. Cool movie. I enjoyed the whole thing but loved the jam with Pauls McCartney in particular.

« Previous Page