Mixing Tips the "John Lennon" Dolby A Trick Effect.

In this video I analyze a Dolby A unit to show why it sounds so good as an effect processor. I then do the "John Lennon " mod on the Dolby cards and try to match the sound using a modern multi-band compressor plugin.
/ biasedaudio
The Music Is the fabulous Luca Chesney, one of my favorite records from last year.
(and mixed by me) open.spotify.com/album/2UO6j1...
My Udemy Analog Tape Course.
www.udemy.com/course/analog-a...
Opening Graphic music
Ze Luis www.zeluis.com/
Arta Software
www.artalabs.hr/

[@grahamcristie1291]

When I was an engineer I was lucky enough to record my band's demos at the studio I worked at(Maison Rouge in London). We had 48 track Dolby SR recordings. One weekend we came in to mix a track to find our studio has rented out all the Dolby racks to another studio! Rather than waste the weekend, we mixed the un -decoded tape, using some heavy gating on the SSL to tame some of the 'tails' of the un-decoded signal. It sounded amazing and gave an excitement to the track we were never able to reproduce when mixing with the NR on . A happy accident!

[@patrickkoenigsfeld1253]

Wow that really smoothes those vocals out!! Fantastic!

[@ibrahim47x]

I’m amazed and ecstatic to find out that audio engineering content like this exists, thank you 🙏

[@tronic307]

u-He Satin tape plugin has a Dolby A-mod setting, plus you can control the compander mix level and mix-match encoders and decoders in the compander section. For example, you can have a modded Dolby A encoder with no active decoder.

[@nichttuntun3364]

Oh yes. It's an amazing plugin with incredible amounts of different tones and options of shaping audio.

[@Tazmanian_Ninja]

Thanks for the tip, Brad! You just made me appreciate my F6 (and Ozone 9 Dynamic EQ) much more. Thanks 🙏

[@pamboscharalambous3770]

i have a focusrite voicemaster pro and it has an effect thats based on this teknique 😮.. very cool indeed...

[@delphinbringsby6768]

I believe that effect is all over Led Zeppelin III. Drums, acoustic, vocals, everything.

[@am74343]

It's almost acting as a de-esser in reverse. Great stuff!

[@tommysdmf2737]

Genious!!! My jaw is dropped far to the floor. Thank you!!!

[@davidevans1420]

Very creative. Brilliant work!

[@ibrahim47x]

By the way, the company AudioThing released a plugin emulation of this unit a while back, it would be interesting to see a comparison with the real thing

[@jacobbuxton932]

Excellent video!!

[@patrickkoenigsfeld1253]

Why did i just find this channel!?

[@stevekirby7333]

I used to work for Dolby in the '90s. Ray was the most brilliant (and unassuming) man I've ever met. And an absolute literal genius. I'd bet his IQ was over 200. 700 component schematics were like children's books to him. He also didn't allow trim pots on any of the products to try and prevent people from messing with them. Every thing was "calibrated" with selected components. I think I'd heard about this "mod" and how it offended people in the company. I also agree with the comments below that the molested Dolby unit sounds smoother and silkier than the plug in. Ray, Ken Gundry, David Robinson and others at the company completely understood marginal non-linearities of certain devices that weren't on the data sheets, and how to use them to get the best sound. I don't know if the world will ever see a concentration of brilliance like that place again. Ray kept things lean compared to the tech giant I work for now. People really worked together and ran as hard as they could out of respect for Ray's leadership.

[@biasedaudio]

I find it interesting that people at Dolby would be offended by this method, at the same time Dolby produced the CAT 43a nd B which enabled the manipulation of the different bands of a Cat-22. You are right though Ray Dolby was quite a genius.

[@MrConorLumsden]

Respect is due for the Lords of 52nd Street T shirt!

[@66fitton]

Very cool! Didn't know that's how Dolby did it's thing. Very ahead of it's time indeed! I had already frozen the screen and taken pics before you put the settings up at the end lol. Very glad I clicked on this. Now let's see how the stock plugin from Cubase 11 pro does at this... Love the "air" that it gave the track! Very clean! Subbed, liked. I'll be back! lol Cheers!

[@biasedaudio]

Thanks, been busy I hope to have more videos soon.

[@mileschannel6661]

Wow Very interesting Trick Effect So Genious Wow Amazing Sir Shoutout Watching from Bahrain

[@ciuffo100]

Very interesting, Brad. I seem to hear the compression on the multiband effected track, or else the level is just higher. But, either way, it's a great tool! Also because no one will be A/B-ing the final track like you're doing here! MJ

[@MadScientist267]

All salt to taste at that point 😉

[@Giller9]

Idk if it’s just me but the plug-in sounded harsher and less inviting, than the Dolby sounded. It’s hard to explain but it’s just got that digital eq boost sound

[@cylonvoiceguy]

I agree. It's good that it exists but there's just more "life" in the hardware

[@MikeDawson1]

weird, I found the opposite

[@jackmason2722]

awesome! thanks, Brad!

[@JuanMotta]

Thanks very sound very good, i have never heard about this, thanks,

[@leoelias77]

very excellent. Thank you

[@kinghandlee]

Great method!

[@hyperactivists9390]

good comparison thanks

[@biasedaudio]

Glad you liked it

[@sb848]

First heard about this from Fabian Marasciullo during his Pensados Place ep.

[@lancerockwell4178]

Awesome video, breaking down the effect helped me understand how to better apply it my mixes. Granted I'm using it as more of a creative effect in the production stage to help spruce up samples I've cut. Do you think the various software emulations are faithful to the original unit?

[@biasedaudio]

Having the real thing I have not yet tested the plugins. I was hoping others would post comments. On my FB page many have said they have gotten good results with the Dolby emulator plug ins.

[@MegaJacob04]

thank you!!

[@Art_Of_Sound]

Absolutely brilliant stuff, thank you so much for digging in and providing this information. interesting thing happened a little while back where I had some old 2 track cassette‘s that were on a tascam 103 and I remember I used to play them back with the Dolby c turned off and it really did add a dimension to it; I didn’t care about the noise it would be interesting to see how this would apply using the ‘Dolby c’ trick...hehe...even domestic sounded good...just so full and rich...except the bottom end sucks. Be great to have both ;)

[@biasedaudio]

I used to leave my Dolby off on cassettes as well, I think Dolby B even sounded better than C

[@Art_Of_Sound]

@@biasedaudio be nice to be able to morph/interpolate between the 2 :-) i think the tops were better on B but low mids had more shadow detail on C

[@martinovergnano6274]

Very good, thanks for this video! Can anyone help me to understand what kind of effect(s) Mark Linkous /sparklehorse used on his vocal in his cover of "wish you were here" ? Thanks if somebody will be able to help me, ciao

[@MadScientist267]

That's pretty tight

[@gregpreuss8425]

I have a complete TTM Frame with 24 channels of Telefunken and Dolby cards. It would be interesting to run a full 24 tracks through it.

[@princetonaudio]

-thank you so much!

[@biasedaudio]

You're welcome!

[@OlimShirinov]

Thank you

[@alfredocuello2795]

Wow!

[@jamesdoctor8079]

Could you do the same thing with a normal compressor if you have a mixer? Wouldn’t it be very similar to send your vocal through an AUX or the effects loop output into a compressor then bring that back into a separate channel and cut out all of the lows and low mids to blend in with the unaffected vocal? I record to tape before dumping into the computer, and I don’t have Dolby A but would like to kind of do this trick before hitting the tape (atleast ballpark) because I’ve found that boosting any of the hi’s digitally from a tape source after-the-fact just essentially creates tape hiss. Also, incredible video! Nice to see some actual audio engineering going on

[@biasedaudio]

If you had a hardware multiband compressor it would work, but hardware multiband compressors are rare and expensive. A standard compressor would not have the same effect.

[@nichttuntun3364]

Very interesting. Thanks. Cheers

[@aviatedviewssound4798]

if it isn't my bro over at gearslutz you're everywhere mate

[@nichttuntun3364]

@@aviatedviewssound4798 music was my first love and it'll be my last. Whenever I try out things or reach boundaries orI want to expand my knowledge during a practical process, I search the net for it. Hi bro btw :)

[@aviatedviewssound4798]

@@nichttuntun3364 good to see you man it's jams3223 at gearslutz we talk about a lot of stuffs specially plugin alliace stuff so when do you use the dolby technique ?

[@nichttuntun3364]

@@aviatedviewssound4798hey, nice to meet you. I-net is small. I just experimented with it and tried to make things more cut through our change the sound. I use Satin a lot and I just wanted to understand the technology behind it better. There also are great plugins from AudioThing which emulate that technology. It's great for vocals but technically you can use it on every source. Cheers

[@aviatedviewssound4798]

@@nichttuntun3364 i know about audiothing but other than on vocals what do you use it for ? or does it get used less by you (just wanna get some feedback from peoples about it).

[@liminal12]

Not sure I fully understand it, from the sounds of the explanation the Dolby turns up the higher frequencies of a signal when it decreases in volume, which is upward compression, yet the technique on the plugin seems to turn down these frequencies as downward compression, unless I'm getting something wrong here? Wouldn't it make more sense to change the Range control from minus to plus in the plugin and not boost the EQ?

[@biasedaudio]

The actual Dolby unit uses compression in the Recording (encode) process. So I tried to copy the process as close as possible.

[@GabrielPerboni]

Very interesting! Do you think is it still possible to find a unit like this on the market?

[@biasedaudio]

Lots on eBay, look for Dolby 361 with Dolby A cat 22. I might sell this one as well.

[@GabrielPerboni]

​@@biasedaudio Thanks! But you're loosing a chance for an awesome giveaway... you can GIVE it AWAY to me, in case you are out of ideas (; But seriously, I'm loving your content so far, specially stuff about tape. Keep it going!

[@jmalmsten]

If the decoder is usually on the playback device. Wouldn't it be very hard to disable it during mixing? Or am I missing a step here?

[@biasedaudio]

Well if you are disabling from multitrack you would by pass those channels which is a option on pro noise reduction units. If you were using a stand alone unit during mixing you would connect through the encode connectors.

[@pablopereyra.musica]

for moments multiband and dolby sounds really close to each other, but sometimes the dolby has more character (I like that) and the multiband sounds more clear.. the singer it's great btw

[@biasedaudio]

Agreed

[@jamesdoogan5528]

I didnt understand any of this but the results sound great! My head hurts tho so Im going for a lie down..............

[@JuanMotta]

What was the settings of 4 band?

[@andrewmuelleranantababaji8073]

Do you know what effect Sean Lennon uses on his singing voice live

[@biasedaudio]

I don't but if I ever get the opportunity I will ask.

[@KyronVance]

Can i use your video clips for my video? It is a great reference. I'm just going to edit some of it.

[@biasedaudio]

Thank you for asking. I put a lot of hard work into creating these and would prefer to not have others use this work. Good luck with your project.

[@drumandbes]

Can Waves Abbey Road Saturator do this trick?

[@biasedaudio]

I don't have the plugin, but reading the description it appears it does or something similar.

Thanks for the demonstration of the unit. Your EQ settings were close for sure. A little 'edgier' than the Dolby Unit. I assumed they were using a DBX unit not Dolby :)

[@biasedaudio]

Agreed, I would say this requires adjustment to taste. I overdid it a tad. I also think I would back off the Q on the 3k eq I cranked to match the curve.

[@dc37wwe2kmods]

What is the name of that plugin?

[@biasedaudio]

The plugin I used in the video is Waves f6

[@dc37wwe2kmods]

@@biasedaudio Thank you sir!

[@m.o.n.d.e.g.r.e.e.n]

this should have come free with my coles hehe

[@MerlinMerlinL]

Wow. What is the cat number of Dolby unit? 22?

[@biasedaudio]

Yes CAT 22

[@MerlinMerlinL]

@@biasedaudio Thanks. the hardware is matchless

[@schipbreukeling3]

@@MerlinMerlinL Are you gonna change your name in MJE analog studio recording now?lol

[@phi6337]

Wasn’t the 1176 on the market since around 1968?...

[@biasedaudio]

The Dolby 301 predates the UREI 1176 by two years. 1965 for Dolby 1967 for the 1176

[@phi6337]

@@biasedaudio Ah, I didn’t know that! Thank you.

[@sejrec56]

Isn’t that what DBX NOISE REDUCTION DID for tape recordings

[@magoostus]

but what about a 32-band compressor like Voxengo Soniformer :P

[@biasedaudio]

I'm a big fan of Voxengo plugins. I use their Span plugin often. I expect you could create something similar but I would expect the way the bands are split would make it difficult to match closely. Other plugins can do the same setup as the F6. I just liked the F6 because I could set two shelf overlapping shelf bands in the high freq that was similar to the Dolby.

[@rocktonmusikschule]

I always thought its the Queen BGV technique.😂

[@biasedaudio]

Seems right, not sure who originally attributed to Lennon.

[@92trdman]

Sounds compress but the vocal stand out

[@abdulaiabdurahmani2913]

try recording vocal with Telefunken U47 microphone. And see the difference

[@biasedaudio]

__

[@ingoodmusic]

priceless

[@horowizard]

The Plug-in sounds edgier and not as silky smooth as the actual Dolby A.

[@villasandvistas]

Agreed, the real unit is almost like a slap delayed frequency of warmth following the vocal

[@horowizard]

@@villasandvistasWell no, that's slap delay.

[@devilio]

You know all that is good what we are seeing, but priceless would be if you put one sample in DFF file somewhere in description for those who have for example Astell&Kern SP1000 with some good quality headphones like Final Audio D8000 to compare to themselves. KZbin is not good neither for video or sound comparison, there is big difference between unprocessed vocal and processed one, but very light difference between those you try to make and with JL mode. Great video by the way ;)

[@biasedaudio]

Good idea. I will see if I can set this up.

[@llamafrhd]

I think you might need to add some noise reduction on your mic

[@biasedaudio]

and then again I might not i

[@rays7805]

The decoder? Hey, isn't that where John Lennon lived during the last years of his life?

[@biasedaudio]

Rim shot!

[@redscunthorpe5501]

All these geniuses.........never a record.....

[@KlayAnderson]

Your segment audio levels are all over the place.

[@jamesdoogan5528]

John Lennon didnt understand the tape echo/ADT process let alone Dolby!

[@redscunthorpe5501]

Yeah, but you do huh....DF......

[@kingatheist7231]

I genuinely don't really hear a difference. It didn't sound to me like it was switching on and off.

[@sejrec56]

How is that a John Lennon effect? I don’t hear any similarities !