It’s 2024 and the audio world lives primarily in the digital domain, but the lust for the good old days of analog remains.  Analog tape decks are often desired, but rarely used due to cost and complexity.  Audio engineers often turn to tape emulators, either hardware or software, to give them that analog sound.

But what is that good old analog sound?  Analog tape has many foibles, not the least of which is ensuring the deck is running at its peak performance.  A well setup Ampex, Studer, MCI or Otari multi track will each sound very good, but they will each be different; even if optimized for the same tape.  All 4 of these brands have good to great midrange to high frequency response, but the low frequency will be different for each deck and will change between 15IPS and 30IPS.  Each will have some distortion from the vagaries of the magnetic material and its interaction with bias and heads as well as sound differences due to different circuit topologies.  In short, it’s a complex set of compromises which have evolved over the few decades where analog tape was the only medium.

Oh, and each instrument is impacted differently.  A snare drum might sound great if you really push it onto analog tape, but an acoustic guitar might benefit from a lighter touch. 

In contrast, digital recording gives you back pretty much what you sent in.  Sending a snare drum harder onto a digital track gives you back a louder snare drum but no character. 

Emulators to the rescue!

But how well do these emulators emulate the sound of tape?  Matthew & John will play back tracks of a few different instruments which have been recorded onto tape or run through hardware and software emulators for you to hear how well emulators live up to their tape heritage (or not) and we can have a (hopefully) lively discussion about what we hear. 

We Recommend

You download and listen to the files located here before the meeting as Zoom is not kind to audio.  An explainer is included in the download.

To Attend

This is a Zoom only meeting. Sign up for the Zoom at the link above.

Our Presenters:

Matthew Sutton is the owner of Matthew Sutton – Technical Audio Services, LLC in Seattle.  Matthew’s first exposure to analog tape was at age 7, a little deck his dad brought home from work.  The first tape decks he worked on were Ampex 351, Ampex MR70, and a Scully 280.  Matthew provided warranty services on Ampex, MCI, Otari and Tascam decks through the 1980’s and helped implement the first digital recording systems in the Seattle area, both tape and hard disk.  He continues to provide repairs and maintenance on studio equipment in the Seattle area.  While his discography is somewhat limited, Matthew has engineered recordings on analog and digital over the years.

John Metzler is the owner and engineer at Quiet Please Recording in Seattle.  John has owned and operated Quiet Please since 2013.  Prior to Quiet Please, John worked in many phases of audio engineering and production in and around Seattle.  At Quiet Please, John records in analog on his Ampex MM1200 16/24 track and Ampex ATR102 mixdown deck using his Otari/Sound Workshop 54 mixing console with moving fader automation.  In the digital domain, John utilizes Burl converters into Pro Tools Ultimate HDX and can marry analog to digital with his Endless Analog CLASP system.