There are many amazingly talented people in this world but there are those rare few that are truly innovators and geniuses. George Massenburg is one of these people.... Thank you Andrew
Dear Andrew, that truly was four hours of joy. I had always hoped that someone would do an in-depth retrospective with George. Watching you ask the questions made it even more special. You have given the audio and music world a great gift. Thanks also for the kind mention, I was floored.
That was one of the most riveting, nutrient-rich audio interviews I have ever watched. Mr. Massenburg is an absolute don. Thank you sir for sharing your stories and your insights. Much thanks to Andy, Mark, and the whole Pure Mix team.
This gives me the chills. He's a monument in audio. Still grounded, a good storyteller and I can just imagine how nice it has to be to have a chat with him, godforbid even working with him.
Andrew's series has been incredible, and George was an excellent and highly enjoyable interview. Thanks for continuing to provide us such content! "Four f'n hours of joy." Loved it!
Ha! I'm still here... at the halfway point! This is the best re-telling of Hollywood history evah! :) Bless you, Fab. Thank you, Andrew! GORGEOUS GEORGE!!!
Thank you for posting this and thank you George for being such an inspiration to me back in those Hollywood Sound Recorder days. I loved going upstairs and helping you with the live chambers and changing mic placements, etc. And then the pinball machines. But most importantly it was magic watching you and that old Bushnell console and always being blown away when you noticed when I messed up a 1/8 dB on the biasing of that M79 24 Track!! . Yes, those days with you and Jesse, Tom Perry, John Guess, Rik, Jamima and David Harrelson, were days I will never forget. And yes, Hustons BBQ!! And the making of that Valerie Carter album!!! I can go on but Thanks so much for these memories.
You already had me at _George Massenbug,_ hook line and sinker. But then George said "Curtis Marshall". I swear I've never jumped to turn up the volume so quickly. I thought there's no way he could mean _Stephen_ Curtis Marshall, because the timing wasn't right, but then he went on to mention that Stephen was Curtis's *son* and it all made sense. Stephen Curtis Marshal, aka _Stephen St. Croix_ was a polymath genius whom I discovered through his column, 'The Fast Lane', in Mix Magazine in the early 90's. It's the reason I subscribed (and the reason I hunted down old copies of RE/P, which was his previous writing gig). One of my heroes from afar, and by all accounts the kind you should meet. He shed his mortal coil in 2006. I regret to this day that my 19-to-30-year-old selves didn't make an effort to get in front of him and tell him how much his writing had impacted me. I suppose I'll have to wait a few decades and tell him in the afterlife, if there is one, although I'll settle for resurrection. It was great hearing George share tidbits about his life, if only briefly.
Thank you so much for this ITW... and for all this série of interviews. I made in 2000 a technical report for my audio school final test (BTS audiovisuel in france), and it was on the GML8900. I was 20, had never been in studios and I wrote an email to George who answered me. He was so kind and put me in touch with his engineer Jeffrey Warren at GML who answered all my questions... hope I’ll meet someday George to tell him all that and give to him my school report ! Thanks again !
What a joy to hear the stories. I’m a fan of George’s honesty and approach to producing, recording and mixing and have followed bits and pieces of his stories over time, but great to hear the evolution and how many things he did.
The whole "This is Mixing, this is bullshit.... stop shopping for sounds on plugins, bullshit, shop for sound sounds in your brain" ........ Brilliant :-)
Great stuff, Andrew is a natural host and George puts everyone to shame. Thankfully, I always knew I was not really anything approximating a proper audio engineer, which makes listening and learning from pureMix Yotube videos these past few weeks an utter joy, instead of an ego shattering experience. (Though these videos never held up that mirror nearly as cruelly as Steve Albini's article, where he describes what an engineer should know.) Thanks for making these videos available to us, they are invaluable. This is why: Sitting in my half-assed DIY treated room with my attainable gear, I try to make music sound like music, and it sometimes feels like I'm feeling my way blind. With no real oportunty to gain experience through watching good engineers work around here, the practical experiences of those that walked the path so majestically offer glimpses into the vast plethora of various skills, knowledge, experience, like little peaks above the canopy, so we can at least know where to look to next.
AES paper in 1972, geeking with 3D diffusors calculatior AND touring with rock stars at the same time ? this man had and is having 100 awesome life! well deserve, great great man.
First 5 Minutes I always think "oh, I don't like that guy/girl" but after half an hour I'm just loughing my ar** of and having fun listening to all the stuff they have to say. Andrew is such a good interviewer.
Hi. I just wanted to listen 30 minutes and the rest when I got more time. Now I'm into this wonderful interesting interview for 2 hours in one piece. I simply hanging on your lips and enjoying those stories a lot. Thank you very much for this. Highly appreciate that detail and richness. Could go on for hours. But I must set a break here now as I really got things to do now. Coming back out course. Please don't forget your word :) All the best for you two guys.
The Reverb question can be traced back to our ancestors. Don't forget that we used to live in caves and some caves with particular reverbs were considered places of gods. There is one of this caves in Italy called Grotta Cavallo (you can find it on wiki) that means Cave of the Horse because the reverberation inside and the delays(or echoes if you like) could resemble the sound of horses running. This was considered a sacred place from our ancestors. Reverbs has always been connected with spirituality and mistery
Almost but not quite, "Lets groove tonight" has the most killer bottom end of any mix ever, maybe 2nd to "serpentine fire", that is thee question to ask George
George is my all time fav engineer bar none, that said... th-cam.com/video/V0QgYgWnDfI/w-d-xo.html WTF? first George contradicted himself on his GML plug sounding "identical to the hardware", second and most importantly "every hardware 1176 sounds different from the one next to it", YES! and that is why OTB mixing will always ALWAYS be superior to ITB mixing, the 20% variances of every electronic component in a piece of hardware or channel strip is unique unto itself, there is a CHARACTER AND UNIQUE SONIC QUALITY TO EVERY INDIVIDUAL PIECE OF HARDWARE BECOMES THE SONIC SUM OF ITS PARTS, the channel strips and every single instance of the same plugin sounds EXACTLY like the one next to it, and still worse is all the other millions of users channel strips and plugins sound exactly like the ones you own... EXACTLY! This is the reason why a stale homogenized sound has spread like a virus on every single piece of music you hear these days! Be original, be artistic, achieve unique character, create and record music analog OUT the F-ing Box!!!!!!!!
"Later on, we can talk about the nostalgia for tape.: "Or not." It's always funny to me how most the guys who grew up with tape absolutely hate it, and those who didn't lionize it as some magic potion.
My apologies, my family invented mp3 at the Fraunhofer institute as a side project to light prism and light optic work. I hate mp3 and more so shuffle on the iPod, it stops us from properly listening to a concept album from start to finish.
This also ads up on why i always kinda had patience for listening to a cassette mix vi@ Walkman while doing math in school period, it made me more at peace with music and i could listen a track even if i did not liked it that much, but i had mixed stuff on it so i could not be bored. Now it is kinda hard to focus with music all around and i am in process of going back to cassette again, simplifying my life again to that point to raise appreciation for the music again.
At around, 38 minutes in. They are talking about Biasing, Analog Recorders. And nobody knows how to Bias an,, Analog Recorder. Better than Me. There are different ways to do it. And each way features a different clarity of sound. And so neither, of them. Worked. For one of the most Legendary, American Manufacturers. Like I did. Where I was In Charge. Of the entire Production Floor. And worked. To improve the quality of the machines. Which I did. And in so doing. I checked out all the ways. To bias up a recorder. Along with my test bench. Filled with the best, test equipment and distortion analyzers. We still had to order our Test Tapes from MRL and STL, both. Which we regularly replaced. Every 3 months. And one day. We got a new set of tapes from MRL. When, suddenly. None. Of our machines. Would pass spec. What the hell? What changed? Nothing changed! Except the test tapes. Hmmm? So I pull an old tape out of the trash. I put it on the machine. The machine tests out, beautifully! I put the new tape on. The machine will not meet spec. What the hell? Our test calibration tapes. Were a special type. They were a Fast Sweep Tape. From 500 Hz through 20,000 Hz. Pulsed very quickly. That would display on an oscilloscope. With a Spectrum Analysis. Between 500 Hz and 20,000 Hz. At the scope had to be triggered. By a start pulse. At the beginning of the frequency sweep. And so I zoom in on my oscilloscope. And I look at that start pulse. It's going positive. On the old test tape. It's going negative. On the new testate. Hmmm? So I call up, Jay McKnight over at MRL Labs. And I tell Jay. You made your test tape wrong. He didn't like that. He got all upset. He called me every nasty name in the book. Told me I was an idiot! And hung up on me. Oh poo. This ain't, going to work. So I had to tell the owner of, Scully. We can, no longer use those specialized MRL test tapes. We will have to use different ones. They will slow us down. He was not happy. The following day. An announcement comes over the factory floor speakers. I have a phone call in the front office. This is not good. The only people that know I am working for Scully is my younger brother and mom. And so I know what this means. Grandma, has passed on and died. So I pick up the phone. Spec to hear a sobbing mother. And it's Jay McKnight! He's apologizing to me. Telling me I made him really angry. But then he went into check. Undiscovered. I was absolutely right. And he had already shipped out. New test tapes. With a positive going start pulse. Because I told him. It was charging up the input, electrolytic capacitor, Backwards. At he didn't believe me originally. I thought it was very funny. I one upped. The World Authority. On Reference Calibration Alignment Tapes. And how many others did he send out like that? I could only laugh. Of course. It will not have this adverse effect. On other brands of machines. Because other brands are designed, considerably different from, Scully's. As we had no, playback head, input transformer. Like all other manufacturers, had. And our machines, sounded better and different. Then the other American, manufacturers. Such as Ampex, 3M and MCI. Whom, I had also been trained by at the factory. On their machines also. And I knew them inside and out. Just like, Scully's. And there was another manufacturer that was little-known, Stephens by John Stephens. And he had a unique way of, Adjusting Bias. It was done by ear. Not by voltmeter. Not by VU meter. You did it by listening and tweaking. For Lowest Modulation Noise. It was his method. That was best for Bass Guitar. And other extremely low frequencies sources. Such as Synthesizers. And it provided for a much cleaner sounding signal recorded upon magnetic tape. The unique thing about his method. You need a Function Oscillator. That can deliver a low distortion, 10 Hz, sine wave signal. Yes that's right. 10 Hz, 10 cps. Now, No Recorder can record, 10 Hz. It won't do it. But what it will let you do. Is, to hear that modulation noise and the gravel. It sounds like gravel. Like you are walking upon, gravel and broken glass. And you don't want to hear that. That's Modulation Noise. Most of which can be eliminated. By using John Stephens, bias adjustment method. Its unique. And it can only be done through Headphones. DO NOT ATTEMPT THROUGH YOUR SPEAKERS! YOU CAN VERY EASILY DAMAGE YOUR SPEAKERS. And that's why you must do this with headphones and headphones, only. Your speakers must be Muted. And so few people have used, this method for themselves. For, Analog Tape Bias Calibration. The most popular method is Over Biasing at 10 kHz. Or Peak Biasing at 1 kHz. Or, 1/2 dB over at 1 kHz. The least accurate of the 3. And an older, earlier, method. That fell out of favor to the 10 kHz method. Of over biasing, 2 or 3 or more, dB's. What most folks, use. Because they don't know how to do the, 10 Hz, method. For Lowest Modulation Noise. Of low frequency source material. Such as Bass guitar and Synthesizers. Where you can hear somebody walking on gravel and broken glass in the background. Ugh! I don't like that modulation noise any. Neither should you. Digital doesn't do that. That's why so many of us love, Digital Recording. I've been Digitally Recording since, 1983. 41 years ago. As it's not new. And it is not the most Recent, Digital Format. There is a far better one. That everybody has chosen to ignore. So they don't really want better sound after all? And because they cannot write the software for real-time effects. And it disappeared. So most Audio Engineers are nothing but a bunch of, Hypocrites! Ugh! RemyRAD
Find George Massenburg's Inspiration open.spotify.com/playlist/4yDOwJto0y0FLdY9eQlNGc?si=fh_lcN86TjuTxEu3xsTYyQ
& Perspiration Playlists: open.spotify.com/playlist/1N9BeooBffIecLduhc9sfW?si=sUbHyxorQ4mvZsKCUK-RTQ
There are many amazingly talented people in this world but there are those rare few that are truly innovators and geniuses. George Massenburg is one of these people.... Thank you Andrew
Dear Andrew, that truly was four hours of joy. I had always hoped that someone would do an in-depth retrospective with George. Watching you ask the questions made it even more special. You have given the audio and music world a great gift. Thanks also for the kind mention, I was floored.
That was one of the most riveting, nutrient-rich audio interviews I have ever watched. Mr. Massenburg is an absolute don. Thank you sir for sharing your stories and your insights. Much thanks to Andy, Mark, and the whole Pure Mix team.
This gives me the chills. He's a monument in audio. Still grounded, a good storyteller and I can just imagine how nice it has to be to have a chat with him, godforbid even working with him.
Thank you for your feedback !!
@@PuremixAudioTutorials Thank you! I would love see an episode with Alan Wilder.
Andrew's series has been incredible, and George was an excellent and highly enjoyable interview. Thanks for continuing to provide us such content! "Four f'n hours of joy." Loved it!
What a great interview! Love this series with Andrew. I hope someone will also interview Andrew with this format.
Ha! I'm still here... at the halfway point!
This is the best re-telling of Hollywood history evah! :)
Bless you, Fab. Thank you, Andrew! GORGEOUS GEORGE!!!
Glad you enjoyed it!
Thank you for posting this and thank you George for being such an inspiration to me back in those Hollywood Sound Recorder days. I loved going upstairs and helping you with the live chambers and changing mic placements, etc. And then the pinball machines. But most importantly it was magic watching you and that old Bushnell console and always being blown away when you noticed when I messed up a 1/8 dB on the biasing of that M79 24 Track!! . Yes, those days with you and Jesse, Tom Perry, John Guess, Rik, Jamima and David Harrelson, were days I will never forget. And yes, Hustons BBQ!! And the making of that Valerie Carter album!!! I can go on but Thanks so much for these memories.
You already had me at _George Massenbug,_ hook line and sinker. But then George said "Curtis Marshall". I swear I've never jumped to turn up the volume so quickly. I thought there's no way he could mean _Stephen_ Curtis Marshall, because the timing wasn't right, but then he went on to mention that Stephen was Curtis's *son* and it all made sense.
Stephen Curtis Marshal, aka _Stephen St. Croix_ was a polymath genius whom I discovered through his column, 'The Fast Lane', in Mix Magazine in the early 90's. It's the reason I subscribed (and the reason I hunted down old copies of RE/P, which was his previous writing gig). One of my heroes from afar, and by all accounts the kind you should meet. He shed his mortal coil in 2006. I regret to this day that my 19-to-30-year-old selves didn't make an effort to get in front of him and tell him how much his writing had impacted me. I suppose I'll have to wait a few decades and tell him in the afterlife, if there is one, although I'll settle for resurrection. It was great hearing George share tidbits about his life, if only briefly.
That is a great story. We are glad we could bring this to you.
Completely bonkers, I loved every minute so many twists and turns!
Thank you so much for this ITW... and for all this série of interviews.
I made in 2000 a technical report for my audio school final test (BTS audiovisuel in france), and it was on the GML8900. I was 20, had never been in studios and I wrote an email to George who answered me. He was so kind and put me in touch with his engineer Jeffrey Warren at GML who answered all my questions... hope I’ll meet someday George to tell him all that and give to him my school report !
Thanks again !
excellent!!!
What an absolute legend. I'd still be listening if it was still running.
What a joy to hear the stories. I’m a fan of George’s honesty and approach to producing, recording and mixing and have followed bits and pieces of his stories over time, but great to hear the evolution and how many things he did.
Thank you
Massenbourg is just lovable, and what a brain! Which applies to Scheps as well, great interview... Thanks!
The whole
"This is Mixing, this is bullshit.... stop shopping for sounds on plugins, bullshit, shop for sound sounds in your brain" ........ Brilliant :-)
So good!!! I pick away at these on my studio breaks. Thanks for these Andrew and Pure Mix. The effort isn’t gone un noticed or un appreciated
thank you for the kind words Brad!!
Great stuff, Andrew is a natural host and George puts everyone to shame. Thankfully, I always knew I was not really anything approximating a proper audio engineer, which makes listening and learning from pureMix Yotube videos these past few weeks an utter joy, instead of an ego shattering experience. (Though these videos never held up that mirror nearly as cruelly as Steve Albini's article, where he describes what an engineer should know.) Thanks for making these videos available to us, they are invaluable. This is why: Sitting in my half-assed DIY treated room with my attainable gear, I try to make music sound like music, and it sometimes feels like I'm feeling my way blind. With no real oportunty to gain experience through watching good engineers work around here, the practical experiences of those that walked the path so majestically offer glimpses into the vast plethora of various skills, knowledge, experience, like little peaks above the canopy, so we can at least know where to look to next.
The EMT 250 in PT's Space is quite amazing. THe short setting is just amazing.
AES paper in 1972, geeking with 3D diffusors calculatior AND touring with rock stars at the same time ? this man had and is having 100 awesome life! well deserve, great great man.
First 5 Minutes I always think "oh, I don't like that guy/girl" but after half an hour I'm just loughing my ar** of and having fun listening to all the stuff they have to say. Andrew is such a good interviewer.
That's a new drink isn't it, Vodka with Scheps.
Thanks for sharing and you're a surprisingly good interviewer Andrew.
Effing Damn! George Massenburg! I have been telling myself for years to learn more about him and here it is. Thanks Andrew and Mark:-)
Thank you Robert, Geroge Massenburg is someone that inspires for sure!!
Really awesome interview. Loved this one. The stuff on room design is gold
it's stellar!!
One of the longest most interesting interviews I’ve seen. Thanks for all the inspiration and knowledge!!
sweet!
It's so lovely, in this era of bluffers, to listen to people who know what they're talking about, talking. Thank you.
Two incredible engineers and people, love the long form discussion
cheers Steve!
Brilliant. And what a nice guy GM is!
Hi. I just wanted to listen 30 minutes and the rest when I got more time. Now I'm into this wonderful interesting interview for 2 hours in one piece. I simply hanging on your lips and enjoying those stories a lot. Thank you very much for this. Highly appreciate that detail and richness. Could go on for hours. But I must set a break here now as I really got things to do now. Coming back out course. Please don't forget your word :)
All the best for you two guys.
You can find them in podcast as well anchor.fm/andrew-scheps
@@PuremixAudioTutorials thank you, great tip. Cheers
Great, great show!
Wow, Massenburg, you guys done it again! I want to work with pureMix please!!!!!
Thanks so much for the kind words
On the edge of my seat, bull´s eye!
Would love to hear Andrew talk to Steve Albini!
We will see if we can make that happen??? Hopefully we can.
Yes!
get Gareth Jones on here, I'm sure him and Andrew would have a great chat
@@PuremixAudioTutorials I'm sure he would love to talk with Eddie Offord. Please make that happen!
😞
Fantastic !!
The Reverb question can be traced back to our ancestors. Don't forget that we used to live in caves and some caves with particular reverbs were considered places of gods. There is one of this caves in Italy called Grotta Cavallo (you can find it on wiki) that means Cave of the Horse because the reverberation inside and the delays(or echoes if you like) could resemble the sound of horses running. This was considered a sacred place from our ancestors.
Reverbs has always been connected with spirituality and mistery
Almost but not quite, "Lets groove tonight" has the most killer bottom end of any mix ever, maybe 2nd to "serpentine fire", that is thee question to ask George
What a great episode!
cheers Kyle!
@@PuremixAudioTutorialscheers!
George is my all time fav engineer bar none, that said... th-cam.com/video/V0QgYgWnDfI/w-d-xo.html WTF? first George contradicted himself on his GML plug sounding "identical to the hardware", second and most importantly "every hardware 1176 sounds different from the one next to it", YES! and that is why OTB mixing will always ALWAYS be superior to ITB mixing, the 20% variances of every electronic component in a piece of hardware or channel strip is unique unto itself, there is a CHARACTER AND UNIQUE SONIC QUALITY TO EVERY INDIVIDUAL PIECE OF HARDWARE BECOMES THE SONIC SUM OF ITS PARTS, the channel strips and every single instance of the same plugin sounds EXACTLY like the one next to it, and still worse is all the other millions of users channel strips and plugins sound exactly like the ones you own... EXACTLY! This is the reason why a stale homogenized sound has spread like a virus on every single piece of music you hear these days! Be original, be artistic, achieve unique character, create and record music analog OUT the F-ing Box!!!!!!!!
Good stuff
"Later on, we can talk about the nostalgia for tape.:
"Or not."
It's always funny to me how most the guys who grew up with tape absolutely hate it, and those who didn't lionize it as some magic potion.
OMAG. Interview Ron Fair! Do it! Do it now!
OMAG interview Allen Sides!
My apologies, my family invented mp3 at the Fraunhofer institute as a side project to light prism and light optic work. I hate mp3 and more so shuffle on the iPod, it stops us from properly listening to a concept album from start to finish.
This also ads up on why i always kinda had patience for listening to a cassette mix vi@ Walkman while doing math in school period, it made me more at peace with music and i could listen a track even if i did not liked it that much, but i had mixed stuff on it so i could not be bored.
Now it is kinda hard to focus with music all around and i am in process of going back to cassette again, simplifying my life again to that point to raise appreciation for the music again.
5 people are incorrect
😎😇😘😮
Albini looks like an angry, unhappy dude.
At around, 38 minutes in. They are talking about Biasing, Analog Recorders. And nobody knows how to Bias an,, Analog Recorder. Better than Me. There are different ways to do it. And each way features a different clarity of sound.
And so neither, of them. Worked. For one of the most Legendary, American Manufacturers. Like I did. Where I was In Charge. Of the entire Production Floor. And worked. To improve the quality of the machines. Which I did.
And in so doing. I checked out all the ways. To bias up a recorder. Along with my test bench. Filled with the best, test equipment and distortion analyzers.
We still had to order our Test Tapes from MRL and STL, both. Which we regularly replaced. Every 3 months. And one day. We got a new set of tapes from MRL.
When, suddenly. None. Of our machines. Would pass spec. What the hell? What changed? Nothing changed! Except the test tapes. Hmmm?
So I pull an old tape out of the trash. I put it on the machine. The machine tests out, beautifully! I put the new tape on. The machine will not meet spec. What the hell?
Our test calibration tapes. Were a special type. They were a Fast Sweep Tape. From 500 Hz through 20,000 Hz. Pulsed very quickly. That would display on an oscilloscope. With a Spectrum Analysis. Between 500 Hz and 20,000 Hz. At the scope had to be triggered. By a start pulse. At the beginning of the frequency sweep.
And so I zoom in on my oscilloscope. And I look at that start pulse. It's going positive. On the old test tape. It's going negative. On the new testate. Hmmm?
So I call up, Jay McKnight over at MRL Labs. And I tell Jay. You made your test tape wrong. He didn't like that. He got all upset. He called me every nasty name in the book. Told me I was an idiot! And hung up on me. Oh poo. This ain't, going to work.
So I had to tell the owner of, Scully. We can, no longer use those specialized MRL test tapes. We will have to use different ones. They will slow us down. He was not happy.
The following day. An announcement comes over the factory floor speakers. I have a phone call in the front office. This is not good. The only people that know I am working for Scully is my younger brother and mom. And so I know what this means. Grandma, has passed on and died.
So I pick up the phone. Spec to hear a sobbing mother. And it's Jay McKnight! He's apologizing to me. Telling me I made him really angry. But then he went into check. Undiscovered. I was absolutely right. And he had already shipped out. New test tapes. With a positive going start pulse. Because I told him. It was charging up the input, electrolytic capacitor, Backwards. At he didn't believe me originally. I thought it was very funny. I one upped. The World Authority. On Reference Calibration Alignment Tapes. And how many others did he send out like that? I could only laugh.
Of course. It will not have this adverse effect. On other brands of machines. Because other brands are designed, considerably different from, Scully's. As we had no, playback head, input transformer. Like all other manufacturers, had. And our machines, sounded better and different. Then the other American, manufacturers. Such as Ampex, 3M and MCI. Whom, I had also been trained by at the factory. On their machines also. And I knew them inside and out. Just like, Scully's. And there was another manufacturer that was little-known, Stephens by John Stephens. And he had a unique way of, Adjusting Bias. It was done by ear. Not by voltmeter. Not by VU meter. You did it by listening and tweaking. For Lowest Modulation Noise. It was his method. That was best for Bass Guitar. And other extremely low frequencies sources. Such as Synthesizers. And it provided for a much cleaner sounding signal recorded upon magnetic tape.
The unique thing about his method. You need a Function Oscillator. That can deliver a low distortion, 10 Hz, sine wave signal. Yes that's right. 10 Hz, 10 cps.
Now, No Recorder can record, 10 Hz. It won't do it. But what it will let you do. Is, to hear that modulation noise and the gravel. It sounds like gravel. Like you are walking upon, gravel and broken glass. And you don't want to hear that. That's Modulation Noise. Most of which can be eliminated. By using John Stephens, bias adjustment method. Its unique. And it can only be done through Headphones. DO NOT ATTEMPT THROUGH YOUR SPEAKERS! YOU CAN VERY EASILY DAMAGE YOUR SPEAKERS. And that's why you must do this with headphones and headphones, only. Your speakers must be Muted. And so few people have used, this method for themselves. For, Analog Tape Bias Calibration.
The most popular method is Over Biasing at 10 kHz. Or Peak Biasing at 1 kHz. Or, 1/2 dB over at 1 kHz. The least accurate of the 3. And an older, earlier, method. That fell out of favor to the 10 kHz method. Of over biasing, 2 or 3 or more, dB's. What most folks, use. Because they don't know how to do the, 10 Hz, method. For Lowest Modulation Noise. Of low frequency source material. Such as Bass guitar and Synthesizers. Where you can hear somebody walking on gravel and broken glass in the background. Ugh! I don't like that modulation noise any. Neither should you. Digital doesn't do that. That's why so many of us love, Digital Recording. I've been Digitally Recording since, 1983. 41 years ago. As it's not new. And it is not the most Recent, Digital Format. There is a far better one. That everybody has chosen to ignore. So they don't really want better sound after all? And because they cannot write the software for real-time effects. And it disappeared.
So most Audio Engineers are nothing but a bunch of, Hypocrites! Ugh!
RemyRAD