How To Get An Analog Sound In Your DAW

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Why Does Analog Gear Sound Good?

• Saturation: distortion and compression
• adds warmth
• Subtle compression removing dynamics, but also adding new sounds with distortion
• Makes things sound thicker and more natural
• Analog recordings have less dyamaic range, but also more highs and lows, so they’re easier to mix
• You can emulate this in your DAW, to simulate the signal flow in a recording studio and mixing process

What you need to emulate

• Signal flow: The path a sound takes from the microphone to the tape machine or computer where it is being recorded 

1. Preamp, which turn the level of the microphone up (good ones also add saturation)
2. Analog tracking board channel
3. The tape machine to record
4. After it’s recorded, it gets mixed, so more saturation from a mixing board (analog mixing board)
5. Analog summing channel
6. Master tape machine

Step 1: Add 4 Plugins To Every Track

1. Preamp (Neve 1073 from UA, Waves has this) turn up the preamp, and compensate with output
2. Tracking board channel (NLS channel?)
3. Tracking Tape (IK Saturator?) add some saturation
4. Mixing board; NLS bus

Step 2: Bounce In Place Your Tracks

Then bounce in place to “bake them in”. 

Step 3: Add Final 2 Stages Of Saturation

1. Analog Summing Channel (NLS Bus)
2. Master Tape machine (Kramer)