Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: Mellotronists

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jeff Coulter" <jeffc@...>
To: <Mellotronists@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, March 03, 2004 4:58 PM
Subject: Re: [Mellotronists] 10cc



> > Jon remembers the 48 tracks - I heard 24, or I think I did. Is 1975 a
bit
> > early to be hooking up two 24-track machines? Were there any 48-track
desks?
> > ∗Loads∗ of reverb on it, of course, making it all sound bigger.
>
>
> i used to think it was all done via a fairlight, as it has the
> same sort of odd quality that fairlight "voices" had... but my
> ears were not so sophisticated, and i attributed anything that
> i could not easily explain to one of those $100k+ tools...
> it's really amazing what people can accomplish just with imagination
> and by pushing current technology to the extremes... aaah, innovation!

This was at least five years ∗before∗ the Fairlight, though!

> there were likely a few cutting-edge studios with 2 24-track
> machines locked together via tach-pulses and little black
> boxes - i don't think smpte was even that common back then.
> a 48-channel desk was certainly available some places.
> a couple years later the 3M 32 track digital was born, and
> the digital fomat wars following shortly thereafter.

Again - that sounds like the mid-'80s to me.

> [we have dual studer 24-track machines and a 56 input ssl 9000j
> here at our studio, but protools has been the recording format
> of choice for a couple years now. acts bring a couple firewire
> drives instead of 2-inch tape stock... and the half-inch 2-track
> has been collecting dust for as long as i can remember...]

My brother's studio still use theirs fairly regularly, sometimes to 'warm
up' drums and vocals before putting them into ProTools.

Andy T.