Boards of Canada Holy Grail & Who Mastered MHTRTC

[Xaugh]

No.

[Valotonin]

Xaugh, why have you posted "No" without any context both here and in the OOT7 poll thread?
Is everything alright or

[drhumr]

Wow! Super interesting. You know your stuff. I haven't checked out your older posts but I figure you're a musician, and if so, please lead me in the direction of where I might be able to hear your work. Thanks.

Thanks! As for my "older posts", I'm afraid you wouldn't find anything of interest as I've only joined the forum very recently. Of course I'd been a longtime lurker before that.

I'm indeed a musician but I make my living mixing records and also cutting vinyl, so my own music has been on the back burner for years now. I'm hoping to record some of my stuff this year. I do gig sporadically backing other artists though, and also do session work now and then. Sorry for slight thread hijack!

[cubistking1906]

MHTRTC was mastered by Bola? Makes a lot of sense. Nice to see the 1176's on the mastering notes.

If you all haven't listened to Bola, you really really should. Dude's a genius:

[SamuraiDrifter]

Whoa, that was awesome to see! "Make a BoC/Bola salad" lol.

Thanks to this post I started listening to Bola and I love him. Reminds me a bit of Christ.

[chimetraveler]

Wow! Super interesting. You know your stuff. I haven't checked out your older posts but I figure you're a musician, and if so, please lead me in the direction of where I might be able to hear your work. Thanks.

Thanks! As for my "older posts", I'm afraid you wouldn't find anything of interest as I've only joined the forum very recently. Of course I'd been a longtime lurker before that.

I'm indeed a musician but I make my living mixing records and also cutting vinyl, so my own music has been on the back burner for years now. I'm hoping to record some of my stuff this year. I do gig sporadically backing other artists though, and also do session work now and then. Sorry for slight thread hijack!

What a dream job, and that's cool that you have your hands in different musical pots! No need to apologize; your posts are really interesting, thanks.

[chimetraveler]

MHTRTC was mastered by Bola? Makes a lot of sense. Nice to see the 1176's on the mastering notes.

If you all haven't listened to Bola, you really really should. Dude's a genius:

Good call. I'm definitely going to explore Bola's catalog further...

[chimetraveler]

Whoa, that was awesome to see! "Make a BoC/Bola salad" lol.

Thanks to this post I started listening to Bola and I love him. Reminds me a bit of Christ.

Haha!! Thanks for checking out my post. I'm going to go further with Bola's music too. I've been a long-time fan of Christ. as well. So good. He kindly autographed a copy of Curio. Volume 1. on vinyl for me. Chris was so chill and said right away that he'd gladly sign my record. Darrell was really kind too. I love this community of musicians and artists.

[Aesthetics]

Thank you for sharing that chimetraveler! Great video too

Please send me a pm with the email address you signed up before and I'll reset your login.

[chimetraveler]

Thank you for sharing that chimetraveler! Great video too

Please send me a pm with the email address you signed up before and I'll reset your login.

Thank you for your kind comment Aesthetics! Will do, thanks...

[Soul_Slip]

This is really cool! Thanks for doing this.

What kind of baffles me are the gear references. On one hand there's Pultec, which is a legendary passive tube EQ commonly used (in one form or another) in mastering, but there's also the UREI gear, while great for tracking and/or mixing, that couldn't be less suitable for that application, especially the 1176 limiter.

Would be nice to find out what it was all about.

Glad you like it! Thank you for checking it out.

Interesting. Unfortunately I'm not up on most older music gear but now that you mention it, I'll do a bit of research soon to understand more about these.

Basically, the "problem" with the 1176 compressor is that it's super fast. As in, the fastest attack time is 20 microseconds, which is kinda insane, considering it's a piece of analog equipment designed in the 1960s.

Now, these attack times are quite desirable for smoothing out peaks while tracking vocals, bass etc. (I've got one right here for that very purpose) What would one be generally aiming for in mastering is a lot slower, to let the transients through while still providing the "glue effect", around 10-30 milliseconds. The slowest time the 1176 is capable of is 800 microseconds.

The thing is, while there's definitely compression all over MHTRTC (as with any other record), the master doesn't sound squashed, which is what would happen if the 1176 was used. Come to think of it, a quite plausible explanation would be that the compressor (actually compressors, it is a mono unit) was used only as a "color box", meaning just passing the signal through it would impart a certain sound due to its being transformer balanced.

aha! Another audio engineer! Quite interesting find we have here... I have also noticed this “compression color-effect” you mention... i hear it the most on Geogaddi and CH but definitely on MHTRTC.... Pultec sounds nice... live the vintage sound... I recently picked up a tube Akai M-8 reel to reel and it sounds a lot like some of the tube tones the brothers have achieved... i may look more into pultec

[drhumr]

aha! Another audio engineer! Quite interesting find we have here... I have also noticed this “compression color-effect” you mention... i hear it the most on Geogaddi and CH but definitely on MHTRTC.... Pultec sounds nice... live the vintage sound... I recently picked up a tube Akai M-8 reel to reel and it sounds a lot like some of the tube tones the brothers have achieved... i may look more into pultec

Aside from the reissue of the original and the likes of TubeTech or Manley Massive Passive, there are some very affordable Pultec clones being made right now worth investigating, such as the Warm Audio or Klark Teknik.

[Chime Traveler]

Got my old account back!...Man, all of this talk about compressors and effects makes me want to become an audio engineer. I’m glad that the technical aspects of studio notes I received are more understandable to me now.

[747Music]

Basically, the "problem" with the 1176 compressor is that it's super fast. As in, the fastest attack time is 20 microseconds, which is kinda insane, considering it's a piece of analog equipment designed in the 1960s.

Now, these attack times are quite desirable for smoothing out peaks while tracking vocals, bass etc. (I've got one right here for that very purpose) What would one be generally aiming for in mastering is a lot slower, to let the transients through while still providing the "glue effect", around 10-30 milliseconds. The slowest time the 1176 is capable of is 800 microseconds.

The thing is, while there's definitely compression all over MHTRTC (as with any other record), the master doesn't sound squashed, which is what would happen if the 1176 was used. Come to think of it, a quite plausible explanation would be that the compressor (actually compressors, it is a mono unit) was used only as a "color box", meaning just passing the signal through it would impart a certain sound due to its being transformer balanced.

COLOUR BOX! I love it!
I didn't know that technique had a name. I've been doing that since shortly after I picked up my ART Pro VLA II tube compressor. And what wonderful colour it has.
Likely all of the successful experiments and tricks I've figured out and have been doing have been done a million times before and have names. I just hope they're all as cool as "colour box"! hahaha

Great post, drhumr!

[goonstock]

cool

[HappyCyclist]

This is dope. Thanks for sharing.

Regarding the postcard, has anyone looked into the records Mike mentioned? Desert Scores, and This Film’s Crap Let’s Sample the Soundtrack. I’m curious to listen.

[Perch]

only been able to find the soundtrack album on
spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/album/7qx2zx6QYiuzInG4GdMYo8

and google play:
https://play.google.com/music/listen?gc ... oundtrack)

and Desert Scores is scattered around youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPmV1-hcW4Y

[irv]

Hey Twoismers & BoC fanatics!

I haven’t posted in eons and I no longer have access to my old account, (under the same name) as a result I’m sure, but I want to share with you a BoC holy grail I got off of Discogs earlier this year. I bought it from the gentleman who mastered MHTRTC, Hi Scores, the Aquarius single and the Boards track on Mask 100!!! I think you’ll all appreciate what came with the purchase and who the mastering engineer is!…I’m not 100% sure if this is common knowledge or not. I did a quick search and found nothing. Instead of me explaining everything in this post, I’ve created a YouTube video about it. I can post proper photos later if you’re interested...As diehard BoC fans I know that we all appreciate this kind of thing. Thank you if you do decide to check it out!

https://youtu.be/Tv70Nm4XTo8

Jason

Absolutely awesome – what an incredible piece of history you have your hands on!

On Mike's recommendation, I just listened to Dunderhead - First & Last... it's excellent, and can definitely hear shades of BOC in there:

[HappyCyclist]

only been able to find the soundtrack album on
spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/album/7qx2zx6QYiuzInG4GdMYo8

and google play:
https://play.google.com/music/listen?gc ... oundtrack)

and Desert Scores is scattered around youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPmV1-hcW4Y

Thank you

[Geogandhi]

It does not mention the 1176 so could be the stereo La22 and agree could be used so subtley that it is just colouring.
I have a random analogue delay unit by tamtec and while the delays are very short, really usuble and bloody lovely in the right circumstance if I set it to barely audible short it just glues mixes like nothing else. One of the things that is missing from loads of electronic music nowadays, people mixing with too much space, everything having it's own spot to shine, makes for boring listening I find. And I guess that's why we're all here, love some boc glue.