Handbook for Sound Engineers

Consoles 831

Stereo recording using two-track tape technology
seemed to many to be the zenith of professional audio.
Many will argue the point even today. There is inescap-
able evidence of the validity of that opinion in that some
of the finest stereo recordings, especially of classical
and jazz works, were done using fundamental micro-
phone techniques straight onto two track. Even in the
field of pop records where things were bounced merci-
lessly the final master still represents the first generation
of the last overdub. (In retrospect that is an advantage

over contemporary multitracking where the master is at

best the second generation of everything.)

Multitrack soon reared its head(s?) in the early

1960s—initially as three track and four track across 1

inch tape; there are those who regard that as the zenith.

More tracks reduced the number of intermachine

bounces, but they still added up! Sergeant Pepper is of

the bounced four-track genre (although many parts were

done on a pair of loosely synced machines for pseudo

eight-track) and stands up rather well even today. It

does put things in perspective. How much more tech-

nology is needed for what?

Three tracks afforded a great advantage over two

tracks for modern music producers at the time.

Two-track recordings were always hampered by the

need to make sure that all the earlier things done in a

bouncing sequence were right to begin with; there was

no chance of subsequently altering them. Three-track

recordings, typically in a Track/Vocals/The Rest format,

took a little of that pressure away. Already producers

and performers were taking advantage of the multilay-

ered production approach to take the heat out of

recording; it was no longer necessary for everyone from

lead vocalist to third trianglist to be present all at once

for a momentous occasion. Bits could be done one at a

time. The extension to this given by multitrack is simple

to see: the more tracks, the smaller those bits need be

and the fewer things needed to be incontrovertibly

mixed. Putting off the day of reckoning—the final

mixdown—is one of the strongest appeals of multitrack.

This, indeed, has led to a curious polarization in the

business; tracking, the laying down of individual tracks,

is typically done in entirely different studios or environ-

ments to mixing. And remixing, the construction of yet

different mixes from the same basic tracks for specific

genres such as dance mixes, has spun off into yet

another subindustry. So much for making spontaneous

music.

25.5 Grouping and the Monitoring Section

Each signal source in the console needs some routing to

determine the machine track on which it is going to end

up. It’s a situation that hardly existed previously, since it

was pretty sure that the mono or stereo output of the

console was going to go straight to the respective

mono/stereo inputs on the tape machine(s). There were

on a stereo console just two groups where all the

sources were summed together; for multitrack as many

groups as there are tape tracks are switch selectable

from the sources—any source to any machine track.

The alternative hard way, patching everything across on

Figure 25-13. Panpots.

Figure 25-14. Channel feeds showing foldback and stereo
echo-send feeds.

Fader

Panpot

Mix bus

L R

Ganged complementary

pots: One turns down as

the other turns up vice versa

A. Postfade.

Mix bus

L R

Panpot

Ganged

stereo

fader

Stereo PFL pickoff

B. Prefade.

Buses

FB 1

FB 2

PFL

Main

fader Main

pan

E/S

pan

E/S

Main LMain R

PFLE/S LE/S R

Foldback

1

Foldback

2