THE ANALOGUE
DIFFERENCE
London's analogue tape recording studio. Five machines, one room — the same signal chain that made some of the greatest records ever made.
THE MACHINE BEHIND
THE RECORDS
123 has five tape machines, each with its own character. Two run 24 tracks — the 3M 79, with that deep, warm 70s weight, and the Otari MX80, cleaner and more precise. Alongside them sit the Ampex 440 (the same machine used by the Daptones), a ¼" mono Studer B62, and a Revox A77 with a looseness and charm all of its own.
Brett was researching what made the sound of some of his favourite albums and kept finding one thing in common — the 3M tape machine.
From Fleetwood Mac to Isaac Hayes, Bill Withers to the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin to Michael Jackson, Chic to the Beatles — the 3M 79 runs through the history of recorded music like a golden thread.
This particular machine was Pete Townshend's — used at his Eel Pie Studio. Now it lives at 123, and it still sounds exactly like it should.
ON TAPE
"I have always loved the sound of tape. The first things I ever recorded were demos for my band South to a four-track tape recorder. These were picked up by a label called Mo'Wax and released as the Four Track Sessions. Even then I realised you could do many things with tape — overdrive the inputs to crunch the sound, flip the tape backwards to record reverse parts. How I like to record to tape now is to sound vintage."
— Brett ShawAnother side to analogue is to transfer digital recordings and use the benefits of tape. It's possible to use the tape machines as analogue inserts — and while correcting the machine head delay in Pro Tools, to use them just like you would a plugin. The results are anything but.
It's also possible to mix to tape — running audio stems through the machine during the mix rather than staying entirely in the box. Each stem picks up the natural compression, saturation and harmonic character of the tape, and when it all comes back together the mix has a cohesion and weight that's very hard to replicate with plugins.
FULLY ANALOGUE RECORDINGS
Recorded at 123 Studios to tape.
Examples of putting digital recordings through the tape machines as analogue inserts — correcting the machine head delay in Pro Tools to use them like you would a plugin.
SOUNDS FROM THE STUDIO
Recorded and produced at 123 — to tape.
