EQ Magazine - May 2008 - (Page 42)

MIX BUS “ANALOG” TAPE FLANGING FOR DAWS by Rocco Fortunato I’m intrigued by anything that combines my analog background with the digital playground. I suppose high-res digital recording formats are blurring any arguments over whether CDs sound better than tape or vinyl, but my ears still tell me there’s something different about iron oxide. Call it crunch. Call it saturation. Call it sweet! At the very least, it’s a sonic tool that has prompted many attempts to recreate it’s magic inside the digital box. Take flanging. DAWs provide oodles of flange-like plugins, and we all know the trick of doubling a track and offsetting it to bend our ears a little. But only those who have heard true tape-based flanging know how sterile digital flanging is by comparison. Along with the distinctive sound of tape, the original methods for flanging depended on imperfection. Even when techniques evolved from dragging a finger on a tape reel to modulating the tape-transport speed, the key was still subtle speed variations that made the sound more organic. So how can we achieve a flange effect that more faithfully reproduces the original analog sound with a DAW? The old method was to mix the output of two tape players playing the same sound while manually varying the speed of one. Try that in a DAW! However, if you happen to have a three-head tape recorder with vari-speed, why not emulate the original method? LET’S FLANGE We’re going to route two dubs of a track we’d like to flange through the tape recorder. The results can be output to mains, as long as you mute all other tracks, and listen only to the flange effect. (To hear the effect properly as you flange in real time, you must avoid monitoring the original track.) • Record a dub of the stereo track (the original track) you wish to flange through the tape recorder to a new DAW track (label it “FLANGEDUB.”) • Record a second pass of the original track through the tape recorder to another new DAW track (label it “FLANGEMOD”) while manually adjusting the tape recorder’s speed knob. Twist to taste. The true cool of the old analog method was hands on, expressive control. Maximum effect modulation will occur fairly close to the zero delay point as you turn the knob toward and away from it. You’ll hear the zero point when you pass through it. What does it sound like? Just listen. • When you are jazzed with the result, slip-align the flange tracks back in time with your original track. A cool aspect of this whole flanging thing is how open it is to experimentation. Consider placing the FLANGEDUB track 180 degrees out-of-phase during the FLANGEMOD pass to discover its effect. Listen especially for the magic zero point where there is no delay, and cancellation occurs. Passing through this point so smoothly is not possible in DAW flange emulations. Try different signal routings. Add a third original track The source material on track 1 is output to a three-head tape recorder. The tape playback head output returns to the DAW, recording on track 2. Label the new DAW track “FLANGEDUB.” Because the dub will be out of sync with other project tracks, we can only listen to the track we are flanging. Others tracks (except for the flange source track) should be muted. The source is recorded again through the tape machine to track 3 ("FLANGEMOD"). This time, the tape transport speed is varied to taste. If you are listening to track 2 and 3 through a zero-latency monitor scheme, you can hear the flange effect in real time, which offers hands-on creative control over the effect. 42 EQ MAY 2008 www.eqmag.com http://www.eqmag.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of EQ Magazine - May 2008

EQ Magazine - May 2008 Contents Talk Box Sounding Board Jamie Lidell, What the New Model of Record Deal Means to You, Part II, Andrew W.K. Tool Box Aerosmith Fast Tracks Guitar Trax Bass Management Key Issues Drum Heads Vocal Cords Mix Bus Cheat Sheet DigiDesign Pro Tools LE 7.4 Cakewalk Sonar 7 Line 6 UX8 Studio Projects CS5 Art Tubefire 8 Jazzmutant Dexter MCDSP Emerald Pack Overloud Breverb KRK Exposé E8B Mackie MR5 Blue Sky Exo Monitor System Big Fish Audio Around the World in 80 Raves East West Fab Four Virtual Instrument Sony Matt Fink- Starvu Session Keys Room With A VU

EQ Magazine - May 2008

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