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VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!
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Dayo
Cinquecento
Joined: 10 Jan 2008
Posts: 544
Location: UK
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 Posted: Mon Apr 12, 2010 3:04 am Post subject: |
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Thanks for the full reply Mike. Plenty of head nods of agreement here. I remember my first trip to voice in a London v/o studio in 1984. They still had U47 (FETS), the mic amps were original Rupert Neve designed Focusrite reds and a Compex 2 limiter took care of compression. Memory plays tricks, but I still crave that sound!
Back in th day I used to have a Neve 1073 pre/eq module in a single rack which I traded for an Akai DR4D hard disk recorder. Massive 1 gb storage. Not my best decision ever!
Colin
| Mike Sommer wrote: | | Dayo wrote: |
Mike
I like a bit of Neve iron myself. Wondered what your thoughts were regarding the more colourful pres and female voices? We favour tubes here but I'm thiking that another colour might be handy sometimes. |
I love it.
One must remember that it wasn't all that long ago when that's all there were but "colorful preamps". Here in the States most of the broadcasting facilities used RCA, Altec/ Western Electric preamps and equipment or built their own. In the UK and Europe it was the same equipment or the wonderful Telefunken preamps and gear. --Remember you could not just rundown to the local electronic house and pick up a mixer, or a preamp, like you can these days.
With the likes of Bill Putnam (US) and Rupert Neve (Briton), things changed but were much the same, in that, it was still expensive, though at least you had an option, other than the big boys.
The flavor of these old pres can not be denied, especially of the tube and germanium transistor preamps. Around 1960 RCA replaced it Tube pres with the BA 31 all germanium preamp, and with later refinements with the BA71 and BA72, these preamps pretty much stayed in place well into the 1970's. The colors, or "imperfections" of these preamps sound nothing more than yummy to my ears. These imperfections gives music and the voice depth and interest. [The Neve 33115 sounds similar to the BA72, but sounds like, or sounds similar to, is a very subjective path to walk on. But paths worth taking.]
I fell in love with the "Disney Sound" in my youth, which of course used RCA equipment. Most of it was all tube equipment, up until the 1984, when Studio's A and B went through a complete audio overhaul.
This morning while flipping around the dial, CBS was showing the 1977 Masters Tournament. Now I could care less about golf, but the sound of it caught my attention. It was deep, wet and rich yet clean, full and dynamic. Occasionally there would be some recent VO narrative to advance the story and give oversight. The sound of this narration was dry, thin, brittle and uninteresting. It paled in comparison to the old broadcast audio. Which has been my complaint about modern broadcast audio for years: The picture gets better and the sound gets worse.
So, of course, colorful preamps sound wonderful on female voice, as does a good ribbon microphone. The problem is, most engineers don't know what to do with, or make of, such full, wonderful dynamic audio. When in fact there is very little needed to be done with it-- it's ready to go. |
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