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Classic Neve 8068 For Power Station New England

Vintage King Revives Classic Neve 8068 For Power Station New England

posted on July 16, 2017 by Eric Allen

PowerStationNeve.jpg

Power Station New England, founded in 1995 and located in picturesque Waterford, Connecticut, has taken delivery of a historic Neve 8068 MkII recording console as part of an extensive studio expansion. At the center of the 2017 upgrade is the legendary main recording space with signature 35-foot dome, plus four isolation spaces and the historic control room, which now features the vintage Neve 8068.

"We put Vintage King through the ringer during its restoration and at the end of the day they knocked it out of the park," explained Power Station NE manager Mike DiBiase. "There is something about this console that's just magic."

The Vintage King Tech Shop and console legend Ed Evans restored the Neve 8068 console to its original 1978 glory. The console was originally installed at Electric Lady Studio in NYC in 1979, and was later located at Record Plant in NYC and most recently at Pachyderm Studios in Minnesota. The console played a role in historic recordings by such artists as John Lennon, AC/DC, Van Halen, and Nirvana.

"Mike has been a long time client of Vintage King. He came here to work at Power Station, I want to say two or three years ago. We started talking about his vision for the company and what they wanted to do with this room," says Vintage King Audio Consultant Jeff Leibovich, who worked with DiBiase on the studio expansion. “It's been over a two-year process. It wasn't just 'Here's my gear list, I need the best prices.' It was a partnership. We worked together to get this room to where it's at.”

Power Station NE recreates the exact design and acoustics of the original Power Station in New York City, which was designed and built in 1976. Power Station was one of the most awarded recording studios in history, thanks to an acoustical design that contributed to hundreds of Gold and Platinum records. 

 
 
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A week ago, Lady Gaga released her fifth album, "Joanne," which has a stripped-down sound that is quite different from her previous efforts. She has promoted the album with performances at small night clubs and dive bars, a coming home of sorts to the days when a young Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta would tear up a West Village bar with nothing but her voice and a piano. Beyond Gaga's performances, what’s unique about "Joanne" is how some of the songs were made. When she announced earlier this year that she was recording an album with the producer Mark Ronson, the press began calling it her analog album.

What’s an analog album? Since the late nineteen-nineties, when Pro Tools recording software became widely accepted, the vast majority of music has been recorded digitally onto computer hard drives. The advantages of digital recording are obvious: Pro Tools allows for endless editing and manipulation of sound, from pitch-correcting vocals to splicing up ten takes of a song into one seamless track. Cheaper versions of the software let amateurs record in their homes, which makes music accessible to many more people. Pro Tools also helped create new genres, like modern electronic dance music, mashups, or the stripped backbeat that powers much of today’s hip-hop, by artists like Drake.

Analog preceded this. It is music recorded on reel-to-reel tape machines. The only way to edit tape is by slicing it with a razor and attaching it to another piece of the tape, an irreversible process that restricts after-the-fact manipulation. Despite these limitations, over the past several years, a number of musicians, from well-known pop stars to young independents, have begun seeking out studios, producers, and engineers who have the skills to record albums with the tools of the pre-digital era. Early advocates included Gillian Welch and the Foo Fighters (whose 2012 Grammy-winning album, "Wasting Light," was recorded on vintage equipment in the lead singer Dave Grohl’s garage), as well as analog’s high priest, Jack White, whose Third Man Records not only produces albums in White’s analog studio but regularly records concerts live to vinyl masters, which they press and distribute. This return to analog (which mirrors the revival of vinyl records) may have begun with rock and indie albums, but it is increasingly found across genres. Recent analog albums include work by the neo-soul star D’Angelo, the Wu-Tang veteran Ghostface Killah, Ryan Adams, the Black Keys, and Arcade Fire. "Joanne" is not completely analog, but “at least three songs were recorded to tape,” according to Mark Ronson’s manager.

The reasons that musicians record on outdated, archaic, and less flexible equipment are, in some sense, surprising. The assumption is that they want to capture a certain audible sound quality—the oft-mentioned warmth of a tape recording. This is a factor, but is not as significant as people tend to assume. Today’s professional digital recordings offer a sonic quality that only the most discerning audiophiles can distinguish from its analog equivalent, and today most people consume music through tiny headphones, regardless of how the album was originally recorded.

“I think the sound quality is one of the smaller reasons why people chose analog,” Chris Mara, who owns a Nashville analog recording studio called Welcome to 1979, said. Mara, an experienced recording engineer, opened the studio eight years ago in a former record-pressing plant, and his business had doubled pretty much every year since.

The bands and musicians who seek him out—as well as a growing cluster of other producers who have sprung up around Nashville—tend to be younger and are looking back in time to get away from the heavily manipulated, overly polished sonic atmosphere of modern pop. These musicians want their albums to sound like those made by Led Zeppelin, Sam Cooke, and Bruce Springsteen—not Justin Bieber. By recording like the legends of the twentieth century, they hope to create something new. Another analog studio engineer in Nashville summed it up in simpler terms: “The old shit’s the best shit.”

For Mara, the power and flexibility of Pro Tools—with its limitless edits, corrections, and effects—has drawbacks, particularly because it brings with it the endless potential for distraction. “When I’m recording in digital, I’m constantly futzing with reverb and other variables on the computer,” he told me when I visited his wood-panelled studio two years ago to speak with him for my book "The Revenge of Analog." “Where with analog, I turn the vocals up and it’s there," he said. "The music just reacts to the tape.”

Recording in an analog studio demands more from musicians. After each take, the band, engineers, and producer decide whether what they just recorded was the best version, or whether they should record the whole thing over again. Because of the time and cost involved, Mara said that analog recording sessions tend to be more tightly controlled. Decisions have to be made as the session moves along because mistakes cannot simply be fixed in post-production. “People think limitations are a bad thing,” he said, “but it moves the process forward in a good way. You can easily get lost in the process. It’s easier to stick to the plan when you have limitations.”

Sound effects and editing are possible, but they require significant effort, and are used sparingly. Welcome to 1979 has an echo chamber, which is a long concrete hallway with a microphone at one end. Reverb is achieved by playing the music back through a door-size vibrating metal plate that weighs hundreds of pounds. On Pro Tools, both of these effects can be achieved with a few clicks of the mouse, which means they’re deployed all too frequently, along with other plugins, like Auto-Tune and beat correction.

Scott McEwen, another analog recording engineer in Nashville, who owns the studio Fry’s Pharmacy, suggested that Pro Tools makes musicians lazy. They settle for a decent take, he said, safe in the knowledge that it can be fixed later. “With tape you just have to man up and do it. It instantly makes you play better. It makes your blood boil in a good way. It makes you nervous.”

Just as the choice of technology ultimately influences the way a record sounds, it also shapes any kind of work. By making certain things easier, and offering limitless options, software can be simultaneously liberating and paralyzing. Sometimes the least efficient option, such as paper and pen, leads to better results, or at least uniquely imperfect ones.

Ken Scott, a legendary recording engineer who crafted the sound of the Beatles, as well as David Bowie and Pink Floyd, told me that the iconic albums he worked on were all the products of the happy accidents that the analog process imposed—mistakes, screwups, and forced improvisations of the type that can be instantly corrected today in the studio. “We humans cannot achieve perfection,” Scott said. All we can do is embrace our best, imperfect efforts, and move on.
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Although I agree with much of what this article says, there is something that I think it misleads somewhat about.

 

Although Les Paul is well known for his name on a Gibson guitar, he should be more widely celebrated for another technology that he brought to the music industry: multi track recording. Even though it was all analog, he realized that you could lay down a track, then play it back while laying down a different track. Then do that again, for as many tracks as you had available (initially 4, but very quickly 16 or more). So if there was a mistake at one part, just play it again on another track. This all was then downmixed to mono or stereo.

 

Obviously not the ease and flexibility of modern digital, but certainly not do it all right the first time or do it all over.

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The Return of the Analog Recording Studio

G.W. Childs IV on Oct 05, 2013 in Recording & Production

 Software plug-ins & DAWs have taken over most music studios. However, analog is making a comeback. Now more than ever, musicians & producers are turning to hardware. But why? GW Childs investigates.  
 
"...  it’s absolutely important to understand that analog recording works very different from digital. There is no cutting and pasting anything in. With this in mind, it is encouraged that you practice, practice, practice before you go into record. Many people think that the studio is where you piece the song together. Actually, this is a practice that began to take place in the 80s when signed bands had something known as a ‘budget’. But, in the days of the Elvis, and the Beatles, you wanted the song to be finished, and tight before you even stepped in the studio. This is because the recording tended to take place in one take. Granted, with 24 tracks to work with, it’s common to record a few members with a click track and then add in fills, licks and more later. Nevertheless, the tighter you are, the less you spend. And, the better the recorded performance." 
 
 
 
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 Sax-Gaga-Tape.jpg
 "... What’s an analog album? 
 
...It is music recorded on reel-to-reel tape machines... 
 
... musicians want their albums to sound like those made by Led Zeppelin, Sam Cooke, and Bruce Springsteen—not Justin Bieber..." 
 
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History of multitrack recording

 Multitrack recording of sound is the process in which sound and other electro-acoustic signals are captured on a recording medium such as magnetic tape, which is divided into two or more audio tracks that run parallel with each other...
 
The first system for creating stereophonic sound (using telephone technology) was demonstrated by Clément Ader in Paris in 1881..
 
The next major development in multitrack recording came in 1953, when musician Les Paul devised the concept of 8-track recording; this was commercially developed by the Ampex corporation, which launched its first "Sel-Sync" (Selective Synchronous) recording system in 1955,..
 
510ampexles.jpg 
 
 Large format analog multitrack machines can have up to 24 tracks on a tape two inches wide which is the widest analog tape that is generally available. Prototype machines, by MCI in 1978, using 3" tape for 32 tracks never went into production, though Otari made a 32 track 2" MX-80. A few studios still operate large format analog recorders..."
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Back in the early 90's we used to record music on an old Teac 8 channel analog machine. We used to have to do submixes on to DAT then re-record them back onto the analog tape in order to free up more tracks for overdubs of guitars and vocals.  It was a time consuming process and you had to make sure your submix was perfect because there was no going back since with a limited budget we would end up recording over the original recordings once we mixed it down.  I think both analog and digital have their pros and cons.

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I almost exclusive buy their high end pressings
 
 Quality Record Pressings
 
Audiophiles remember and still covet the UHQR pressings from JVC Japan from some 30 years ago. They were the pinnacle of high-quality vinyl, and UHQRs remain among the very most collectible and valuable LPs ever pressed. Now, Quality Record Pressings is reviving that long-gone name of excellence and adding to it an even higher standard of perfection. With the UHQR from QRP, we've applied all of the most innovative and ear-approved ideas ever introduced to vinyl LP manufacturing to create an ultimate LP. Never before has one record represented such singular superiority.

Each UHQR is pressed, using hand-selected vinyl, on a manual Finebilt press with attention paid to every single detail of every single record. All of the innovations introduced by QRP that have been generating such incredible critical acclaim are applied to each UHQR. The 200-gram records feature the same flat profile that helped to make the original UHQR so desirable. From the lead-in groove to the run-out groove, there is no pitch to the profile, allowing your stylus to play truly perpendicular to the grooves from edge to center. Every UHQR is hand-inspected upon pressing completion, and only the truly flawless are allowed to go to market. Your UHQR will be packaged in a deluxe box and will include a booklet detailing the entire process of making a UHQR along with a hand-signed certificate of inspection. This will be a truly deluxe product.

UHQR: Hand selected and hand inspected. Handmade and worth every dollar paid.
 
 Clarity Vinyl is the ultimate vinyl formulation because it contains no carbon black additive, common in vinyl formulas for LPs. Carbon black contains trace metals that become magnetized and cause electrical distortions in cartridges during playback. The result is a smearing of the sound. It's the same reason that cartridge demagnetizers are effective. By taking the carbon black out of the vinyl, we are able to dramatically reduce the distortion and thus bring more clarity to the playback process, providing a more realistic musical experience for the listener. Our Clarity Vinyl is also made using the highest quality co-polymer available - a key component in the vinyl pellets used for manufacturing LPs.
 
 
 
 
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Oldtexasdog, how much do these high end pressings run? I wanted to buy the self titled Rage Against the Machine remaster from Audio Fidelity. I had the original CD, but I believed the hype and decided that I'd pony up $30 for the remaster. When I went to check out on the site they wanted another $10 for shipping and I said forget it. $40 was too much to pay for something I already had a version of.

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