David MacNeill
Venerated Member
My oldest friend found seven big reels of Maxell tape full of 4-track recordings done on a TEAC A3340 in 1977-78 by his brother, my first songwriting mentor. I digitized the contents into Logic and have separated each song and mixed them using a very mild Distressor compression setting (basically everything set on 5) on each track to smooth things out and get the level up a bit. Then I used Softube Weiss Maximizer on the 2-bus to get overall levels up and glue the tracks together a bit. Final mixed level is around -14 to -12 LUFS.
It sounds quite good for fifty-year-old tapes. I ended up with 58 songs to create a multi-album product with. I plan to bring each stereo song into a Logic project and apply some final mastering. My initial mastering testing used the same Weiss compressor at a mild setting, Transparent mode at around 66% parallel effect.
My question is would a different bus compressor produce a sweeter "glue" effect and a smoother tone overall? Getting att the tracks up to modern level made them somewhat brittle-sounding so I would love to retain the warm "tapeless" of the original if possible — round off the edges a bit. I am using a very minimal master EQ setting on my UAD Massive Passive on the 2-bus already, boost the upper-mid and highs a tad for clarity and reduce the boomy low-mid and lows due to poor mic placement on the original recordings. I have several compressors in my arsenal including the UAD Fairchild 670, UAD Capitol Mastering Compressor, Brainworx Masterdesk True Peak, UAD API 2500, Mastermind, and the UAD Precision Compressor and Precision Limiter.
I ask because after so many hours listening to all this material my ears may be lying to me about the final tone using my beloved Weiss Maximizer. The final masters don't need any more obvious compression, just glue and warmth. Your suggestions and recommended settings, please?
It sounds quite good for fifty-year-old tapes. I ended up with 58 songs to create a multi-album product with. I plan to bring each stereo song into a Logic project and apply some final mastering. My initial mastering testing used the same Weiss compressor at a mild setting, Transparent mode at around 66% parallel effect.
My question is would a different bus compressor produce a sweeter "glue" effect and a smoother tone overall? Getting att the tracks up to modern level made them somewhat brittle-sounding so I would love to retain the warm "tapeless" of the original if possible — round off the edges a bit. I am using a very minimal master EQ setting on my UAD Massive Passive on the 2-bus already, boost the upper-mid and highs a tad for clarity and reduce the boomy low-mid and lows due to poor mic placement on the original recordings. I have several compressors in my arsenal including the UAD Fairchild 670, UAD Capitol Mastering Compressor, Brainworx Masterdesk True Peak, UAD API 2500, Mastermind, and the UAD Precision Compressor and Precision Limiter.
I ask because after so many hours listening to all this material my ears may be lying to me about the final tone using my beloved Weiss Maximizer. The final masters don't need any more obvious compression, just glue and warmth. Your suggestions and recommended settings, please?
