Integrating Analog Tape in Digital Recording

On our latest two singles by State Cows - Hard Goodbye and Center of the Sun - as well as the single by Dynamo Bliss - Circadian Rhythm - I used a tape recorder in the mixing process.

The theory was that by utilizing the characteristics of tape, the digital tracks would "warm up" and become less sterile.

Method

After recording all tracks digitally I sent each one of them to tape and then back into the DAW. What simplified this process was that the tape recorder had three heads and was able to monitor the signal off the playback head while recording. Also, this meant that all tracks would line up with the same time delay back in the DAW. I've tried a similar project with a two-head recorder but it was tedious since the recorder would drift and tracks would line up at the beginning of the song but would deviate towards the end of the song.

Findings

I appreciated being able to drive different tracks at different levels to tape. Some tracks benefited from being run hot while others would require more modest levels. Overall, the tracks came out sounding subjectively quite a bit better. The compression of lightly overdriven tape made most tracks sound more consistent without sounding compressed or congested (as some plugin compressors tend to do). The analog tracks came out sounding more 'energetic' than the original digital tracks. I also felt that the tracks would fall easier into place while mixing.

I noticed a tendency for the analog tracks to sound slightly more 'veiled' than their digital counterparts. I suspect, though, that this may be related more to passing the same signal several times through a prosumer analog-to-digital converter than to the tape medium.