Interesting Articles

RIP Malcolm.

So cool. Love the Music of My Mind story in the middle of that video in the article. A huge shift not only in technology, but how music could be produced and created. Still 100% Analog at that point of course - and now the functionality of that room full of gear is on a chip or in software.

This is not to say that most of the chips or software SOUND like that. Many digital synths were and are awful sounding. Love that people like Nils Frahm and Olafur Arnalds are bringing back the use and sound of analog synths. And that’s a labor of love, because the things are not reliable. And digital emulations of analog synths have gained in popularity.

But man - listen to the warmth of the sounds Stevie made on the albums in his heyday!

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Agreed, very cool. I’d first learned of the Stevie story from the PBS Soundbreaking doc, episode 4. Not nearly as in depth as the video in the article. Also concur about synth sounds. Now I gotta drop everything and go play some 70’s Stevie!

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Ignore the clickbait headline - techniques for creating virtual acoustic spaces have existed for a long time, although of course the quality, detail, and parameters available improve constantly, but it’s interesting, and the result is available to download/purchase at high resolution too :slight_smile:

…and from one extreme to the other, anyone remember these?

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I had a 12v version in my car back in the day. . . :+1:

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Anyone on here “wise enough” to have owned a Yamaha DSP-1. I had a lot of fun with that magic box, back in the day. (Same thing/principle, no?)

I think it’s still on the premises somewhere, rotting away in a box.

Here is a picture of one:

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A related and interesting read for those interested:

image

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Lexicon PCM70 was my reverberant “weapon of choice” - designing early reflection profiles etc. - wish i had one now :slight_smile:

my father’s Radiogram had a spring reverb built in too, it seems to become fashionable to add reverb to hifi every few years…

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Another one from The Graunion:

I first came across him playing bass for Paul Young - a live BBC recording, hugely energetic from the whole band (especially their “backing singers” (The Fabulous Wealthy Tarts) who were front line lead as much as Mr. Young was) - and a lot better than the wimpy singles he released :slight_smile:

Edit - I just googled “The Fabulous Wealthy Tarts” - one of them married Pino Paladino, the other one is a Reverand in New York.

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Great article. Thanks for sharing. Love Pino! Here’s a full concert from his tour with NIN. Great tour, one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. Quite the lighting/video production.

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Still have an 80 - what’s it worth to ya?:cowboy_hat_face:

What’s boggling my mind at the moment is the TC Electronic stuff ported to plugs. Try out the VSS4HD Native verb plugin.

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ha wouldn’t that be nice, does it have the daft tuned resonant things patch?

i haven’t been involved in sound recording for over 20 years, so not up to date on plugins. i can see the computer workflow recording thing would be great, but i was a sucker for actual hardware, and tape machines, lovely big tape machines :slight_smile:

Hardware is great, but tends to be a single stereo instance. When it comes to software, it is nice to be able to put as many instances as you want of a given thing on as many channels as you like without having to own multiple pieces of hardware.

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Absolutely I know it makes sense and if I was in the lucky position to be music furtling again I’d be down with it (networked audio looks like a fascinating subject too), as it is I can relax and be a hardware dinosaur :wink:

One fun bit is that there are entire console emulations of all the famous makers, and some have noticed that each channel in a mixing desk they’re modeling is slightly different from the next, so they capture that as well. In other words, they’re including the range of tolerances in the boards’ specs. That way you’re not simply putting the exact same emulation on every channel, which can sound unnaturally uniform.

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I’ve been waiting for someone to create a plug-in or some such that emulates different HiFi preamps…
It could run in one of the streaming platforms and save buying a bhk preamp for example :smiley:

I’d think it’ll happen eventually, if the licensing can be worked out and there is enough money to be made.

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…and here’s the live recording I first saw PP on - it wasn’t the BBC, it was Channel 4’s “The Tube” - an “anarchic” music show featuring a young Jools Holland and others presenting.

Paul Young’s band made a huge impression on this show, and were asked back the next week (it says online, I don’t recall, it was a long time ago).

We had a Phillips Video2000 machine, and watched the full set this came from a lot :slight_smile:

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