I am going through the details of some of the Abbey Road drums and I see they used tape saturation during the creation/recording process.

70s drums
60s drums
80s
and so on...

so my question is, what happens to the audio when you start applying something like IKM tapes to the drum bus in a DAW? If the Abbey Road engineers went out of their way to re-create the sound of the decade during creation, you adding another layer of a 24 track studer to the drum bus only messes it up or enhances it?

Hello nitrateaudio, I’m not an engineer from that era but I know a lot about recording in different era’s.
Just think back in the 50’s and 60’s they only had 4 tracks. A lot of saturation/color was from the consoles and going back and forth from recording the drums and bass, then bouncing them both back down to 1 track. Now they 3 tracks left. Music like gtr’s and horns, etc on another track bounced down on one track. Now they have 2 tracks. Now the vocals, bgv’s, claps, etc, bgv’s on one track and vocals on the other. Stereo was barely a thing then.
Anyway, a lot of tape saturation though they were not trying to get that. Back then engineers were very particular and did everything by the book most times. Meaning, hitting tape around 0 VU, getting the cleanest sound they could for back then. They just couldn’t get away from console noise, color and tape saturation.
Now, would they do it differently now, hell yeah!!!!
They would use the highest fidelity they could and use outboard etc. I’m from the 80’s/90’s era and in talking to older engineers and/or mixers, they wish they had the gear we have now then.

I hope this helps. I did a video on this on my YouTube page.
Check it out.

Marc

The sky is the limit, you can do whatever you want. I've used a few tape saturations going into each other on some mixes. If it sounds good, then it it is good.

Yeah. I agree and I get that. But I am trying to get an idea of what does it do to audio. If we use the analogy of smearing colors. if you smear colors. then you do it again, sooner or later it starts to lose its dimension.

True! I kind of like the analogy of that it's like as a kid, when you mix a whole bunch of paints together, thinking that it will be the most vibrant color ever. And then it is disappointing that it is only a dull brown color or gray.

Another way to look at using multiple tape saturations is that they can be more of a filter, just for frequency information, and not necessarily saturation.

Another way to look at the recording chain that the Abbey Road drums were recorded, is that they are going for straight up re-creations of the recording chain back then. But maybe you want a more overdriven, retro-modern sound or something with more grit. I tend to like to mess up some sounds in a way that I find interesting, sonically, rather than what is going by the rules.

For example, bear in mind that tape hiss was an unavoidable consequence of recording back then, and they wished to have more fidelity. One could come from the mindset that they want the sonic characteristics of drums recorded back then, but with minimal hiss. Or you could add more, your own. When adding saturation, I tend to like it more hissy sounding.

True. We are well-reminded that the "colored" gear of yesteryear was not trying to be colored. It was mostly trying to be accurate and when not abused, was to a great extent. The classic albums were recorded with the finest equipment available at the time. The 'smearing' was mostly a byproduct of what they had to do to get their track counts up there, not a sonic "goal" in and of itself.

Starting your modern recording with cheap mics and interface preamps will probably not be able to withstand as many layers of tape plugins or whatever, even if you stipulate that the plugins are truly equivalent to the tape decks.

there are some artists who paint very detailed lines with a fine brush and oils or acrylics; and others who slash a line with some chalk or charcoal and immediately smudge it with their finger. Still others dump buckets of paint directly onto the canvas. It's all "art", I guess. Just depends on what you are going for.

IMO, thinking of this as "enhancement" is a very 21st Century thing to do.

If your goal is to nail the sound of certain albums, keep in mind that they usually strategized how many layers there would be. and which things could 'withstand' multiple layers (record those first) and which things really demanded the fewest generations (record those last) .