^ maybe he just remembers things wrong, i dunno. the way the article is worded, it makes it sound like he only started using PT recently.

i totally believed that to be the case because it wouldnt surprise me if he had steered clear of it til now.

there is an audible difference on his last two records, compared to the previous releases. almost a metalic kind of sound. a thinness.

in editing, sometimes the natural breathing of the vocalists gets sliced away in the cuts. like all the air gets sucked out of it. ends up sounding robotic. like steel instead of a breezy liquid gold.

imo, reason is better than pro tools. just an over-all better vibe about the whole thing. those who use it will know what i mean.

but like i said, if you lose the natural breathing of the track in the cuts and the mix, no good.

tape is such a beautiful thing, for the reason you mention, all that natural compression, even cassette tape is tres fonky for that,

but digitally you have to eff about with it to get almost the same effect, which is ok, but its not the same.

unless ur running some luscious old analog compressor when ur recording. you know how it goes.

anyway, maybe terry talked him into it all those years ago, and he was just recalling it during the interview and it ended up sounding like a recent conversation.

robinhood said:

^ maybe he just remembers things wrong, i dunno. the way the article is worded, it makes it sound like he only started using PT recently.

i totally believed that to be the case because it wouldnt surprise me if he had steered clear of it til now.

there is an audible difference on his last two records, compared to the previous releases. almost a metalic kind of sound. a thinness.

in editing, sometimes the natural breathing of the vocalists gets sliced away in the cuts. like all the air gets sucked out of it. ends up sounding robotic. like steel instead of a breezy liquid gold.

imo, reason is better than pro tools. just an over-all better vibe about the whole thing. those who use it will know what i mean.

but like i said, if you lose the natural breathing of the track in the cuts and the mix, no good.

tape is such a beautiful thing, for the reason you mention, all that natural compression, even cassette tape is tres fonky for that,

but digitally you have to eff about with it to get almost the same effect, which is ok, but its not the same.

unless ur running some luscious old analog compressor when ur recording. you know how it goes.

anyway, maybe terry talked him into it all those years ago, and he was just recalling it during the interview and it ended up sounding like a recent conversation.

Pro Tools and any recording have the same format of digital files wav or aif (or the like), so the sound quality is the same and better than CD (at 24 bit 96hz or upwards). Pro Tools does not in any way make sound brittle or robotic. Those qualities would be a creative choice of the producer and done with mixing, EQ, and compression.

And physically cutting the tape and cutting in a digital program are just the same, except that digital is better since you can go back.

You can choose to leave in the breaths of a vocalist in both! It's the choices of the producer/editor.

Prince has gone for a demo like brittle sound before. Like on "Dirty Mind". I think Party Up and Head sound thin and stark on purpose. And that's on tape!

ufoclub said:

Pro Tools and any recording have the same format of digital files wav or aif (or the like), so the sound quality is the same and better than CD (at 24 bit 96hz or upwards). Pro Tools does not in any way make sound brittle or robotic. Those qualities would be a creative choice of the producer and done with mixing, EQ, and compression.

And physically cutting the tape and cutting in a digital program are just the same, except that digital is better since you can go back.

You can choose to leave in the breaths of a vocalist in both! It's the choices of the producer/editor.

Prince has gone for a demo like brittle sound before. Like on "Dirty Mind". I think Party Up and Head sound thin and stark on purpose. And that's on tape!

the main differences in the use of programs like pro tools and the old-school tape method are, for me, about what this new technology has enabled producers to do.

taking this up a level: how we use the technology seems to be key in whether the work will sound natural.

since pro tools came out, producers have taken dire shortcuts in the recording process.

backing vocals, for example, are recorded once, then copied through the song, like samples. this even occurs in lead vocal chorus sections. horrifying concept when you really think about it.

suddenly, there's no natural movement through a song, we're hearing exact repeats of vibe from one section to the next. the natural flow and life of the track is murdered using this process.

even in verses, a singer will do umpteen takes, then the producer or whoever slices together the best cuts from each line? we're not even getting a verse sung from start to finish anymore.

let alone a whole song performed from start to finish, backing vocals included. and the same happens with instrumentation. copy paste. absurd.

i realise this is something different than what we were previously talking about, but i think it matters when using this digital tek, not to abuse the art, by over-use of the teks capabilities.

pro tools and the like, have directly contributed to the laziness, and ineptness, of singers and musicians alike, because they go:

"oh we dont have to nail it anymore. we can just get it right once and copy and paste, we can just edit and use effects and stuff to POLISH THIS TURD."

as a result, the airwaves are full of sugary junk, breathless and lifeless robotic sounding music.

i agree the marriage of tape and digital is not a bad thing, and recording solely on digital is not necessarily a bad thing either, but look what people have done with this technology.

thanks to the misuse of modern tek, we've destroyed music, via our own stupidity, and lack of knowledge on what makes music so great in the first place.

ultimately, recording straight onto digital is like recording into a vaccum. on tape, there's presence. cuz when the tape keeps rolling, even when there's nothing on that track, presence bleeds through in the silence.

you dont get that with digital. in all the sections where there's nothing on that track, its a dull dead vacuum silence. nothing. there's no life in that silence, and in my opinion it effects the whole song.

i think the digital sequencer/editing/mixing/mastering system is great in a lot of ways, but is better left for sequencing, editing (sparsely), mixing and mastering.

if ur gonna record onto digital you have to be real sure to capture the full life of each performance without too much editing and use of thin digital effects.

no copying and pasting live performances through the song. thats just lame and an insult to music itself, imo.

us humans tend to take modern tek and use it wrong until we learn how to use it right i guess.

or maybe we just need to learn what music really is and study nature before we attempt to destroy it lol

robinhood said:

ufoclub said:

Pro Tools and any recording have the same format of digital files wav or aif (or the like), so the sound quality is the same and better than CD (at 24 bit 96hz or upwards). Pro Tools does not in any way make sound brittle or robotic. Those qualities would be a creative choice of the producer and done with mixing, EQ, and compression.

And physically cutting the tape and cutting in a digital program are just the same, except that digital is better since you can go back.

You can choose to leave in the breaths of a vocalist in both! It's the choices of the producer/editor.

Prince has gone for a demo like brittle sound before. Like on "Dirty Mind". I think Party Up and Head sound thin and stark on purpose. And that's on tape!

the main differences in the use of programs like pro tools and the old-school tape method are, for me, about what this new technology has enabled producers to do.

taking this up a level: how we use the technology seems to be key in whether the work will sound natural.

since pro tools came out, producers have taken dire shortcuts in the recording process.

backing vocals, for example, are recorded once, then copied through the song, like samples. this even occurs in lead vocal chorus sections. horrifying concept when you really think about it.

This has been done even with analogue tape it's called ATD, Automatic (or Artificial) Double Tracking. It was first used in 1966 by the beatles in Abbey Road studios in London. Beach boys use to do this alot too

suddenly, there's no natural movement through a song, we're hearing exact repeats of vibe from one section to the next. the natural flow and life of the track is murdered using this process.

even in verses, a singer will do umpteen takes, then the producer or whoever slices together the best cuts from each line? we're not even getting a verse sung from start to finish anymore.

What you're talking about here is called Composite Recording and editing, and has also been majorly done in tape. They use to ride the rills and cut tape, to fix pitches and and get the most perfect vocal edit.

let alone a whole song performed from start to finish, backing vocals included. and the same happens with instrumentation. copy paste. absurd.

Doing this is genre specific and has nothing to the sequencer.

i realise this is something different than what we were previously talking about, but i think it matters when using this digital tek, not to abuse the art, by over-use of the teks capabilities.

pro tools and the like, have directly contributed to the laziness, and ineptness, of singers and musicians alike, because they go:

"oh we dont have to nail it anymore. we can just get it right once and copy and paste, we can just edit and use effects and stuff to POLISH THIS TURD."

The copy and pasting your talking about is Looping, and has been heralded under Analogue Tape machines of the 70's and 80's. Before Digital sampling there was Tape Looping, which is pretty much the same cut and paste idea.

as a result, the airwaves are full of sugary junk, breathless and lifeless robotic sounding music.

i agree the marriage of tape and digital is not a bad thing, and recording solely on digital is not necessarily a bad thing either, but look what people have done with this technology.

thanks to the misuse of modern tek, we've destroyed music, via our own stupidity, and lack of knowledge on what makes music so great in the first place.

ultimately, recording straight onto digital is like recording into a vaccum. on tape, there's presence. cuz when the tape keeps rolling, even when there's nothing on that track, presence bleeds through in the silence.

you dont get that with digital. in all the sections where there's nothing on that track, its a dull dead vacuum silence. nothing. there's no life in that silence, and in my opinion it effects the whole song.

i think the digital sequencer/editing/mixing/mastering system is great in a lot of ways, but is better left for sequencing, editing (sparsely), mixing and mastering.

if ur gonna record onto digital you have to be real sure to capture the full life of each performance without too much editing and use of thin digital effects.

no copying and pasting live performances through the song. thats just lame and an insult to music itself, imo.

us humans tend to take modern tek and use it wrong until we learn how to use it right i guess.

or maybe we just need to learn what music really is and study nature before we attempt to destroy it lol

Honestly man I'm a producer and engineer and have work in both tape and digital.

I've worked in Pro tools, Logic Pro, Reason, Ableton Live and have had the pleasure on working on an SSL analogue tape machine. And I can honestly say, you don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about.

All the complaints you've given have nothing to do with the digital sequencer, but rather the production techniques which has been in effect for decades.

The only thing DAW's did was make these techniques easier on the engineer.

The only thing that made tape "better" than digital was because it analogue and therefore attained a smooth algorithm, whereas a machine must always adhere to a combination of zero's and ones.

This is called "Digititis, and usually was due to unsophisticated Analogue to Digital converters.

This was a problem 10 years ago.

A/D converters have become extremely sophisticated

and with tape emulating plugins such as CraneSongs Pheonix, which smoothens out the digital algorithm, and a wide variety of outboard gear like Alan Smart's C1 and C2 which emulate old school "warm" tape compression. Or just the ability to record and extremely high sample rates.

Digital recording is pretty much on par with tape recording and in many ways better.

Whatever qualms you have about digital recording, I'd suggest you read a book on recording techniques of the last 50 years, and you'll realize that nothing basically has changed since the 60's. Except that its easier to do now.

EmbattledWarrior said:

And I can honestly say, you don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about.

thanks so much. i'm aleady aware of everything you just wasted your time telling me.

you've totally missed the point of my post and apparently havent read most of it.

surely if you had, you'd be addressing the point i made, instead of whatever tec details you wanna run a tangent on, which have nothing to do with my point.

musicians cutting corners with their music because of the features that digital recording has given them.

so what if it was being done on tape whenever. pro tools and the like opened the door wide for even more bastardization of music to occur.

just because they did it in the 60's doesnt mean it was a good idea does it? of course not.

i also said quite clearly i didnt think digital recording was bad, or that the marriage of analog and digital was bad, my focus was on the over-use of editing, copying and pasting, and peurile digital effects.

if you'd like to continue this discussion, please go back and actually read what i wrote, before spinning up to me with insults.

earlier you mentioned people who talk shit. i'm not one of them. and the interview i showed you did in fact confirm that prince and talking about pro tools, contrary to your grand opinion.

look at the state of music today, how it sounds, the lameness of most artists, the laziness of their capabilities and tell me it has nothing to do with technology making it so easy for them to cut a record and make it sound half decent.

i dont really care what you've been doing and for how long. try reading comprehension first then i'll be happy to talk to you further.

Forget about Pheonix... here comes "Heat"!

EmbattledWarrior said:

Honestly man I'm a producer and engineer and have work in both tape and digital.

I've worked in Pro tools, Logic Pro, Reason, Ableton Live and have had the pleasure on working on an SSL analogue tape machine. And I can honestly say, you don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about.

All the complaints you've given have nothing to do with the digital sequencer, but rather the production techniques which has been in effect for decades.

The only thing DAW's did was make these techniques easier on the engineer.

The only thing that made tape "better" than digital was because it analogue and therefore attained a smooth algorithm, whereas a machine must always adhere to a combination of zero's and ones.

This is called "Digititis, and usually was due to unsophisticated Analogue to Digital converters.

This was a problem 10 years ago.

A/D converters have become extremely sophisticated

and with tape emulating plugins such as CraneSongs Pheonix, which smoothens out the digital algorithm, and a wide variety of outboard gear like Alan Smart's C1 and C2 which emulate old school "warm" tape compression. Or just the ability to record and extremely high sample rates.

Digital recording is pretty much on par with tape recording and in many ways better.

ufoclub said:

Forget about Pheonix... here comes "Heat"!

EmbattledWarrior said:

The Avid Plug-in,

i've heard about it.

do you have it? How does it work?

EmbattledWarrior said:

ufoclub said:

Forget about Pheonix... here comes "Heat"!

The Avid Plug-in,

i've heard about it.

do you have it? How does it work?

From what I know, it's built into Pro Tools HD ( I only use LE). And it's being pushed as a the best thing to individually introduce (potentially warm) analog emulating defects into each track of your mix.

ufoclub said:

EmbattledWarrior said:

The Avid Plug-in,

i've heard about it.

do you have it? How does it work?

From what I know, it's built into Pro Tools HD ( I only use LE). And it's being pushed as a the best thing to individually introduce (potentially warm) analog emulating defects into each track of your mix.

Damn it, its only on HD!

Im looking for an alternative to HD,

I primarily use logic, for composition purposes, but once I'm done midi tracking, I usually just dump everything into pro tools, and finish tracking there,mostly to manipulate the Phoenix plugins, which are pretty damn good, a bit complicated to use.

You literally have to put it on every track in your mix,

Im looking for something that can be controlled via busses.

Also Pro tools 8 is sincerely pissing me off, more and more each day (loved pro tools 7)

And im finding myself gravitating more to logic, however none of the good plugins support Logics AU engine. Luckily for all my RTAS plugins I can use a wrapper to convert them, however Im shit out of luck when it comes to the HD plugins.

How do you like LE?

I use it every now and then, but I feel it just freezes up way too much on me, if I use more than 10 tracks, Don't get me started on the midi.

EmbattledWarrior said:

ufoclub said:

From what I know, it's built into Pro Tools HD ( I only use LE). And it's being pushed as a the best thing to individually introduce (potentially warm) analog emulating defects into each track of your mix.

Damn it, its only on HD!

Im looking for an alternative to HD,

I primarily use logic, for composition purposes, but once I'm done midi tracking, I usually just dump everything into pro tools, and finish tracking there,mostly to manipulate the Phoenix plugins, which are pretty damn good, a bit complicated to use.

You literally have to put it on every track in your mix,

Im looking for something that can be controlled via busses.

Also Pro tools 8 is sincerely pissing me off, more and more each day (loved pro tools 7)

And im finding myself gravitating more to logic, however none of the good plugins support Logics AU engine. Luckily for all my RTAS plugins I can use a wrapper to convert them, however Im shit out of luck when it comes to the HD plugins.

How do you like LE?

I use it every now and then, but I feel it just freezes up way too much on me, if I use more than 10 tracks, Don't get me started on the midi.

I've never had a problem with LE freezing up, even with 20+ tracks in best format, stereo, with live processing on every track. But I thought the functionality of the software was the same between LE and HD outside of plug-ins and limitless tracks on HD. I'm just not familiar with the differences.

What changed for the worse on Pro Tools 8?

For what it's worth, I've been wasting my time with digital recording devices and programs (Logic and Pro Tools) for the last 11 years. I recently converted to tape. It has made a huge difference in how I record music. I actually care about and enjoy what I'm doing! It's not as easy as digital, but the limitations of tape necessitate creativity! All the records I enjoy listening to were done on tape. All the best Prince stuff was done on tape, and tape apparently records thought forms because of the electro magnet on the record heads interacting with the ferrous oxide, which subtly records the electromagnetic activity of your very thoughts! (just something I read in a Preston Nichols book, and it resonated with me, you don't have to beleive it).

Computers are for checking my email, downloading the Larry Sanders show, and uploading stuff, but tape records SOUND, NOT DATA (as in 1s and 0s...)

Just my opinion, based on my experience of working with both. I maintain that Prince's work has suffered in the digital age, even the cd remasters of his pre 1991 albums don't sound very good.

robinhood said:

on tape, there's presence. cuz when the tape keeps rolling, even when there's nothing on that track, presence bleeds through in the silence.

you dont get that with digital. in all the sections where there's nothing on that track, its a dull dead vacuum silence. nothing. there's no life in that silence, and in my opinion it effects the whole song.

i think the digital sequencer/editing/mixing/mastering system is great in a lot of ways, but is better left for sequencing, editing (sparsely), mixing and mastering.

[]

maybe we just need to learn what music really is and study nature before we attempt to destroy it lol

Antoun said:

tape apparently records thought forms because of the electro magnet on the record heads interacting with the ferrous oxide, which subtly records the electromagnetic activity of your very thoughts!

[]

tape records SOUND, NOT DATA

this is why i said earlier that terry lewis (or whoever it was that suggested prince use pro tools) should do jail time.

but this goes even deeper, in my understanding, so bare with me on this explanation, which may contradict my previous comments, in terms of tape being better than digital for recording. you'll see...

as carbon-based life-forms, tape will capture our essence more effectively than digital, because our energy is over-all more compatible with analog.

but once we purify ourselves of the carbon in our bodies (not possible? think again) to become silicone-light based life-forms - our energy becomes more compatible with digital.

as silicone-light based life-forms, we are more compatible with digital than analog, because the analog will only capture carbon-based thought-forms.

a carbon-based life-form is more compatible with analog, because digital is asking for more resonant input. its asking for the silicone-light thoughtforms. not the carbon-based thought-forms.

silicone-light based thoughtforms are pure data. there's no emotional residue left. the vibration is higher than what analog can capture.

prince is a carbon-based life-form (despite popular belief to the contrary lol) which is why his energy isnt translating well into digital tek, if or when he records directly into his little digital set-up.

on another note: music is something we create with our ears, mostly, meaning we base our musical decisions on how things 'sound'.

what the digital tek has done, is take the sound and make it visual, although not in all instances if ur using a digital hardrive but no screen.

we sit there actually looking at how things sound. makes no sense to me, to look at a waveform, created by data, and expect that is somehow more advanced than closing my eyes and listening.

there's an old quote, forget who said it, but it goes : "i close my eyes in order to see". i'd like to add "i close my eyes in order to hear"

whilst some might argue that looking at waveforms doesnt effect the quality of your work, i'd argue that it does, on very subtle levels, to do with visual distraction, the brain itself actually hears the music differently once your eyes are looking at it.

but thats another can of worms for another time i guess.

anyway thanks for your post on this.

ProTools

So overrated, don't care if it is or was the industry standard...

Technology has moved on now..

'dre

robinhood said:

as silicone-light based life-forms, we are more compatible with digital than analog, because the analog will only capture carbon-based thought-forms.

does this mmean broads with fake tits are more compatible with digital media maybe on to something... shame about Brooke Hogan and Jordan tho'... didn't work for them musically in the digital OR Analogue domain, lol!

'dre

DreZone said:

robinhood said:

as silicone-light based life-forms, we are more compatible with digital than analog, because the analog will only capture carbon-based thought-forms.

does this mean broads with fake tits are more compatible with digital media maybe on to something... shame about Brooke Hogan and Jordan tho'... didn't work for them musically in the digital OR Analogue domain, lol!

'dre

lol no it doesnt mean the fake-tit brigade are more compatible with digital lol

their simply stuffed with silicone, not silicone-light.

massive difference, which cannot ever be faked.

but thanks for the laugh yo lol

DreZone said:

ProTools

So overrated, don't care if it is or was the industry standard...

Technology has moved on now..

'dre

To what?

It's amazing how a thread like this just brings the amateur "experts" out of the woodworks. If you are not a PROFESSIONAL (like, that's how you make your living day-to-day) musician who records or a professional studio-tech, you probably have no idea what you are talking about an should probably just shut up while you're ahead, cause the rest of us are just shaking our heads and laughing at how ridiculously stupid you all sound.

ufoclub said:

DreZone said:

ProTools

So overrated, don't care if it is or was the industry standard...

Technology has moved on now..

'dre

To what?

Well I should rather say 'caught up.. Logic and CuBase can now do what ProTools did JUST as well...

'dre

gamera said:

It's amazing how a thread like this just brings the amateur "experts" out of the woodworks. If you are not a PROFESSIONAL (like, that's how you make your living day-to-day) musician who records or a professional studio-tech, you probably have no idea what you are talking about an should probably just shut up while you're ahead, cause the rest of us are just shaking our heads and laughing at how ridiculously stupid you all sound.

...