Hi there,

Probably asked a million times, so apologies in advance. So here goes!

I'm relatively new to Drum and Bass production and hardware in general. To keep a long story short, I'm trying to recreate that '90's dark DnB sound'. Reading interviews with some of the main producers from the genre, they virtually all said they used Emu samplers and Mackie Desks back in the day. They intimated that the Mackie's gave a distorted, but warm overdriven sound which was ideal for that heavy DnB bass.

So I was wondering are all of the newer range of Mackie's still capable of this? Or are there any other desks I could be looking at instead, for that similar warm overdrive/distortion?

And if the newer Mackie's still have it, which one should I go for? I should point out that I probably don't need the biggest one available, as I have a small home set up, and I've only got about three hardware synths and a one MIC.

However, another nice feature to have would be a USB for connectivity, but it's not an essential.

Many thanks for the info',

Rob.

If you have the space, you can pick up a Mackie 8-buss (24.8 or 32.8) very cheaply these days. They did give that ind of sound. The EQ was actually pretty nice, even if they weren't the quietest desks in the world and crosstalk was terrible. But slapping a fat EQ boost on kick and bass sounds to get distortion worked fine. But then you probably need to factor other things in - recording medium (tape? ADAT? DAT? etc) and so on. Be aware that the 8-buss desks are a bugger to service — time consuming and therefore costly. And a lot of them developed problems with the ribbon cables. And lots of the inputs were on the top panel, and so dust and grime found their way inside easily. Etc etc. But, they were good enough for the Prodigy...

That said, there are lots of desks and outboard processors you could do this sort of thing with much better though. And quite a few plug-ins too...

As soon as I saw the title of this thread I started thinking Mackie... In fact a Mackie desk and Emu samplers were what Bukem's studio was based around way back when — those and (I think) an old JV-series synth for electric pianos, strings and such.

Cheers!

Chris

@Kroff, Yeah the old Emu's were the nutz!!

Quote Mixedup:

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That said, there are lots of desks and outboard processors you could do this sort of thing with much better though. And quite a few plug-ins too...

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Thanks for the detailed info Mixedup! Could you please name a few alternatives that I could check out either desks/outboard or plug ins? I've got quite a few plug ins, and some have been pretty cool, but not quite as warm or distorted as I had hoped (but still good none the less). Such as Sound Toys/ Fabfilter, etc.

I'm just really going through a 90 vibe at the mo'.

Thanks again!!

I always recall this particular track..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Z-6e3zIE2k&feature=fvwrel

... fairly minimal this one but a genre I was (still am) quite
fond of.

Tunes like this :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpqAsx2uTH8&feature=related

are difficult to know if the warmth comes from worn white label vinyl release format of a lot of the music or the Youtube encoding. (Highly likely a bit of both)

As already mentioned the Mackie was the desk of the day. (I was always envious of the true parametric mid of the 8 bus, I could not afford the 8 bus and got a Studiomaster P7 instead) I imagine smaller Mackie desks of the day also had similar input stages. Get over to DOA and ask about I am sure there will be a wealth of responses as to which desks might have a similar sound (I think Mackie had a smaller CR-XXXX series back then) As someone mentioned I imagine such crunch could be emulated, it will be fun recreating it

SafeandSound Mastering.

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Mastering online mastering

I doubt anything sounds warmer to my ears than my Sountracs Solo MIDI. Im very very happy with this desk. http://www.studiosystems.co.uk/soundtracs/solo.php

I dont know why anyone buys brand new mixers any more. Sure modern day kit is OK but with 90s mixers costing 8 grand when new to be had for sub 500 quid, I mean, nothing this day competes.

Other goodies are Soundtracs Topaz, Soundcraft Ghost and many more.

If you want a fat 90s sound, buy a fat 90s desk for peanuts.

Thanks guys I'll have gander at those suggestions, and pop over to the DOA forum too.

Cheers,

R.

PS - some cool tunz on youtube there btw.

I would try and track down a Soundtracs Megas.

http://www.studiosystems.co.uk/soundtracs/megas.php

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http://soundcloud.com/richie-royale
http://www.mixcrate.com/richieroyale

Quote Robmobius:

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@Kroff, Yeah the old Emu's were the nutz!!

Quote Mixedup:

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That said, there are lots of desks and outboard processors you could do this sort of thing with much better though. And quite a few plug-ins too...

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Thanks for the detailed info Mixedup! Could you please name a few alternatives that I could check out either desks/outboard or plug ins? I've got quite a few plug ins, and some have been pretty cool, but not quite as warm or distorted as I had hoped (but still good none the less). Such as Sound Toys/ Fabfilter, etc.

I'm just really going through a 90 vibe at the mo'.

Thanks again!!

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Well, any half-decent Soundcraft or Soundtracs (I had a Mackie 32.8 and a Soundtracs Topaz and by far prefered the Topaz... and preferred the sound of the Soundcraft 600 to that) desk from that time should do the job. But there was something about that Mackie EQ for this. Don't get me wrong... it's nothing special, but it does have a distinctive sound when you drive that desk hard.

In terms of outboard gear... well, you're going to have to try it. The point being that whacking up the EQ and overloading analogue circuitry will sound very different from trying to do the same thing in software. But the sound of early converters — Akai, Emu and Yamaha samplers; and the converters on ADAT and DAT and so on will all be part of it. The old Roland and Emu digital synths blah blah blah.

Personally, I'd start with one of the above desks + a multi IO audio interface + a DAW. If you have some outboard synths (a Proteus miught be a good start - going for £cheap right now on eBay). Run all the channels out of your DAW into the desk and EQ to your heart's content. Think about it... the reason they were using this sort of stuff was that they had limited budgets. Get into that mindset of making the most of what you have and that means you probably want to limit yourself in terms of how many effects you're using. Maybe add a cheap reverb (Alesis microverb? Maybe Yamaha Rev7) and delay or two to use as sends on the desk. You can do the compression stuff in the DAW. You can mimic the sampler word-length in the DAW (see Tonebooster plugins for that). And then you just get busy programming the synths and effects and doing some careful sequencing. Try and find out where the records you like were recorded — what they recorded 'for real' with mics, find out what mics and what sort of rooms. When using synths/samples, try to think in terms of the limited memory they had available at the time — which meant creatively designed short sounds that were fed into reverbs/delays and filtered. So avoid posh, long multisamples that you find today. Hope this all helps.

To me the soundtracs range slaughters the old mackies but then there were huge price diffrences.

The Mackies were a superb budget desk and a tone of my fav artists used them to throw out some great tunes back in the 90s. The Mackie is perfectly capable.

The Sountracs Solos and Topaz's etc were very warm sounding the mackie wasn't

Don't forget the Akai S-950, S-1000 and S-3000 series which were also very heavily used as well as that iconic time stretch.

Rob Playford (Goldie, Moving Shadow etc) and Source Direct amongst others were heavy Akai users

Paradox still uses the 3000XL http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2e0wg_618ac

Want my opinion? Get a sampler (EMU or Akai), any ol' crap mixer (Spirit SX), a few FX boxes, one half decent workstation'e synth i.e. Trinity and a big load of old vinyl...then learn your breaks.
Sequencer wise anything will do just as long as you can sequence midi devices with it, Logic 5 on the PC will even do.

Edited by vinyl_junkie (23/03/12 02:45 PM)

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Want my opinion? Get a sampler (EMU or Akai), any ol' crap mixer (Spirit SX), a few FX boxes, one half decent workstation'e synth i.e. Trinity and a big load of old vinyl...then learn your breaks.
Sequencer wise anything will do just as long as you can sequence midi devices with it, Logic 5 on the PC will even do

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Great advice. Check VJs you tube channel too to see it all working :]

Hey VJ, what happened to Ensoniq samplers????? You fell out all ready?

I recall listening to the Topaz and the Soundcraft Spirit 24 desk when I got a P7.
I really liked the smooth Topaz high shelf but the build was a bit plasticcy to me.
The Soundcraft had eq that was dull as dishwater and the P7 just had the best features (MIDI mutes which was great for old analogue synths) and build quality overall. Those were the days ... hanging out in music tech shops on a Saturday. : )

There is definitely something about the EMU samplers of that time as well.. I had the S3000 after taking a loan out, 8MB of ram £550.00 ! which was out earlier than anything decent by EMU and the filters were great on the EMU. The Roland S-760 had the best filters of all though, awesome.

I cannot think that there would be any specific magic to the Mackies tbh, ultimately a box full of JRC2068s probably. (at least on the VLZ series) they might have been 4560's in the Mackie 8 bus. In fact they were a variant SMT4560 as per search, same as the P7. I did used to whack the gain up for some crunch on some sources as I recall.

Here is the S-760 filters in action... I used to know this bloke...he was killer in the studio he put the Amen break to RIP. (was mixed on SSL 4000 though)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obC74KhbQY4&feature=related

Good times.

SafeandSound Mastering
Audio mastering

Cant comment on the topaz but the Solo MIDI is built like a tank.

Yeah hanging out in music tech shope Sat morn and record shops buying up vinyl on a sat afternoon.

Of course things are better nowerdays. You just download a synth and then your music from the same arse groove in the same chair looking at the same screen.......

You could also do worse than getting some of those old "Zero-G Datafile" series sample CD's.
They must be old skool collectables by now, they were properly rinsed in the 90's.

SafeandSound Mastering
online mastering studio

You can still get a lot of the old CDs even direct from AMG mate.

Most of AMGs back catalogue are out as rex file too. Megabass, Lucky Bastard, Global Trance Mission etc etc.

They were gold in there day. Ah happy days long before infanite everything.

Wow! Thanks again so much here guys - There's now loads of stuff for me to start thinking about now.

Cheers,

Rob.

Quote Robmobius:

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Wow! Thanks again so much here guys - There's now loads of stuff for me to start thinking about now.

Cheers,

Rob.

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I love that sound ..

AKAIs are quite crunchy and good for drums and oldschool timestretching, EMUs have great filters and a smoother sound. Mackie 8 Buss mixers were the classic tool, as has been said. Their sound is quite crunchy and not particularly pleasant on acoustic material but actually gives quite a lot of bite and life to electronic sound sources. DBX compressors are pretty good for drums, also check out the Alesis 3630, Ensoniq DP4 and SPL transient designer. If you want to go totally oldschool maybe even pick up an Atari with cubase and a DAT machine.

Also check out the 'Jungle Warfare' sample CDs, they have all the classic breaks on them in a form which you don't seem to find anywhere else.

Some great recomendations by Jonny. Ah thoese were the days when real studios were acctual studios!

BTW Jonny have you seen the prices thoese DP4s now go for? 500 quid plus. No way are they 'that' good. Not when you can get a studio quad for 50 notes.

My 'old skool' production studio was... SH-101, Novation bass station, AKAI S3000, Control Synthesis DB9, EMU Morpheus, Novation Nova, Nord Lead II Rack, JV-1080, Juno-106, Studiomaster P7, Atari/PC, Kenton star midi arrangement, Yamaha SY-35 (still my existing MIDI controller at home studio, they built them well) all around cubase of some variant or other. Did try softsynths but it was never quite the same.

It was fun but I simply ran out of musical ideas after 10 years or so.
I have just recently set a few bits back up again, most of it got sold on.

Oh and still have my TASCAM DA-20 DAT

SafeandSound Mastering
online mastering

Quote SafeandSound Mastering:

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Oh and still have my TASCAM DA-20 DAT

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Same here. I use it as a feed to my artists. Not recorded with it in years and I archived my DATS a while ago.

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http://soundcloud.com/richie-royale
http://www.mixcrate.com/richieroyale

Quote Kolakube:

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The Sountracs Solos were very warm sounding the mackie wasn't

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Someone offered me one of those for peanuts last week so if anyone is serious about tracking one down, hit me up via PM I'll put you in touch... oh and my Emu and Yahama samplers are open to offers.

Soundtracs solo?

Snap it up mate!!

Quote Kolakube:

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Some great recomendations by Jonny. Ah thoese were the days when real studios were acctual studios!

BTW Jonny have you seen the prices thoese DP4s now go for? 500 quid plus. No way are they 'that' good. Not when you can get a studio quad for 50 notes.

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They are pretty good imo .. for huge atmospherics they are great and the chorus and flangers are a big step above any native plugins I've heard. Probably the price has gone up as they have become known (correctly or incorrectly) as the Daft Punk vocoder.

I'm not sure I would pay 500 quid for mine right now .. but I wouldn't sell it either ...

This is just an idea but it seems that a particular mic pre amp circuit was used some years ago that did not have particularly good distortion performance if driven hard (to get a bit tekky, it did not have NFB around the first two input transistors).

That circuit is readily available on the net and has been copied ad.n. by many mixer manufacturers. So, it might be worth trying one of these notorious "copy merchants", the Bs and Phs of the cheapy mixer world!

Also, many mixers now sport a stereo usb mix but these are all just 16bit (and 44.1/48kHz) AFAIK and many seem to give a noisy monitor return signal. Just shunt your mixer with attitude into a decent 24bit AI or a PCI sound card?

Dave.

Rob, do you need the mixer for connectivity, pres, routing etc or only for harmonic distortion?

Because there are a number of ways of achieving HD without going down the mixer route.

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Samplecraze
Stretch That Note

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Because there are a number of ways of achieving HD without going down the mixer route.

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Very true Zukan. It depends on what price you put on hands on cotrol what a real mixer gives you and how much you can live without instant recall.

For me both of thoese rate very highly but for Id imagine im in the minority. I think I just view the entire thing from my own unique angle



e47

I have an A&H Firewire mixer but didnt like it as an interface at all. I did love it as a mixer in itself though. I guess I just prefer seperates. Ive never been into combined devices as much for whatever reason.

Quote Kolakube:

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Soundtracs solo?

Snap it up mate!!

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Yeah a Solo. I've just cleared my studio of 3 mixing desks, don't think it'll go down well at home if I start to re-populate it again quite so soon!

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ScanProAudio & 3XS Audio Systems
ScanProAudio Blog

If you can find one, an old Boss KM-series mixer does a good job with its 2-band EQ and switched gain. Get the KM-60 with the send/return on it, and hook up an old digital delay (Paid about twenty quid for mine, and less than a tenner for my KM-6A). They're small and limited, but might be good for colour and/or a sub-mixer.

There are some very nice sounding old digital delays, I've had great use from a pair of Digitech RDS1900 racks (sixty quid the pair) - not a single CPU in sight, they're all logic and RAM. Try the Boss microrack series too, they're still to be found for about 50 quid a piece.

For lo-fi sampling, I used to totally cane my Mirage, and I still have my old Phonic PMC 12:2, which I replaced all the 4558 op-amps on with TL-072s, and that opened up the top end a bit, as it was tad woolly. I used to have a Casio RZ-1 as well, which had 4 sample pads as well as its regular drum sounds. I used to spend hours trying to pull out individual hits from whatever I was listening to. Good times.

I might get stoned in such a purist thread like this, but kontakt 5 has some very good old sampler emulations which provide some of the crunch of the old akais (but not the classic timestretching).

Don't get me wrong, I would love, LOVE to be able to make a whole album on hardware alone (maybe a yamaha qy700) ... ahh maybe one day ..

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I might get stoned in such a purist thread like this, but kontakt 5 has some very good old sampler emulations which provide some of the crunch of the old akais (but not the classic timestretching).

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Ah, Johnny, I used to like you too, for many years on here years possibly a decade. Oh well, Ok lads you lot grab him and ill get the tourch to burn him at the steak with. Bring Elf too!

Digital VST heathens repent!

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Don't get me wrong, I would love, LOVE to be able to make a whole album on hardware alone (maybe a yamaha qy700) ... ahh maybe one day ..

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Whats stopping you mate? Time or money? (or my other fav, SPACE!! or lack of it)

Did this in the old studio few years ago just on a S-3200XL with the lead from a Bass Station and sequenced by my MPC-2000XL
Every synth sound is sampled from a DX-100 found in a garbage bin

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3EAV9XZjQ8&list=UU0ysg8Om_zET-YzX9lUZhZQ&i ndex=17&feature=plcp

It's a bit like early fsol I guess..

And a housey number on the 3200XL with bass station lead again, this time going into a 32ch Mackie desk wheres before I had the Spirit SX http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGPVNHtGjfw&list=UU0ysg8Om_zET-YzX9lUZhZQ&i ndex=1&feature=plcp

Original samples I sampled on the MPC-60 though on that one

Quote johnny h:

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I might get stoned in such a purist thread like this, but kontakt 5 has some very good old sampler emulations which provide some of the crunch of the old akais (but not the classic timestretching).

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Let me know when you're okay J and we'll carry on m8.

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Samplecraze
Stretch That Note

If were pimping tunes heres a tune that never touched a DAW or has even seen a VST

Atari ST
Akai s1100
Mackie onyx desk
Digitech Studio quad
Kam made 2 fade mixer.
Kaoss pad

Drum and bass Aphex twin remix by moi

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SafUnaLPe4&context=C4ac66b5ADvjVQa1Ppc FNGDIUAeYIGd-09juSrYOgrf40l7asdORU=

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Let me know when you're okay J and we'll carry on m8

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Ha ha - Top Image Zukan - ha ha ha superb!

Quote Kolakube:

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If were pimping tunes heres a tune that never touched a DAW or has even seen a VST

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"Pimp My Tune" That should be a new feature in SOS lol

I'm sorry, I was sponsored by native instruments to say that thing about kontakt. I'm using the money to buy an AKAI S950.

Damage is done now mate. No good, your banished haha

Quote johnny h:

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but kontakt 5 has some very good old sampler emulations which provide some of the crunch of the old akais (but not the classic timestretching).

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And for everything else the's Akaizer

Well to be honest its got one party trick, but its the one Kontakt can't seem to do.

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ScanProAudio & 3XS Audio Systems
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