Räre Birds at Omnivox Studio

Comfortably in control

The overall idea at Omnivox is to keep a flexible approach and make possible for you to work in any way you feel comfortable with. You can choose between analogue and digital recording. Bring whatever equipment you need from your own studio or use our gear.

The studios Otari MX80 was owned by great producer Douglas Carr and used for recordings with artists such as Meja, Ace of Base, Leila K and Army of Lovers.

Analog recording — pros and cons

Analog recording differs a lot from digital, both in production and sound quality. How hard you hit the tape, the formula and recording speed highly affect the final result. So why go through all the extra work and also have the limitations in tracks? The simple answer is: because it sounds so much better! But there is more.

Dif­fer­ences
The ana­log record­ing process dif­fers great­ly from the dig­i­tal one. Ana­log record­ing is a bit like per­form­ing with­out a safe­ty net. In the dig­i­tal domain it’s easy to edit any­thing and to undo deci­sions. In ana­log it’s quite the oppo­site. Which makes every­body, musi­cians includ­ed, more alert. When record­ing ana­log it is more impor­tant mak­ing a real­ly great take, sim­ply because it’s not so easy to make changes afterwards.

The MX-80 at Omnivox is a 24-track. If you decide to work pure­ly in ana­log, thats the num­ber of chan­nels you have got. (There are meth­ods of cheat­ing – more lat­er). Prob­a­bly rew­er than you are used to, but many clas­sic albums have been record­ed with less. Few­er chan­nels means you have to take more imme­di­ate deci­sions. con­sid­er track-space, and think about whether you real­ly have room for 12 mics on the drums alone.

Prepa­ra­tions
Prepa­ra­tions for ana­log record­ing are more exten­sive than dig­i­tal record­ing. The tape machine is demag­ne­tized and cleaned sev­er­al times dur­ing a day of record­ing, 2″ tapes are demag­ne­tized and pos­si­bly baked.

If you would like to record by ana­log and then dig­i­tize, which is quite com­mon here, you can bor­row stu­dio tapes for free and have them dig­i­tized, after which stu­dio tapes are erased and then reused in oth­er projects.

 

Impor­tant!
If you want to save your tape-record­ings in phys­i­cal form you must bring your own tapes. If you are plan­ning to bring your own tapes, always con­tact us well in advance as the tape machine might need to be cal­i­brat­ed accord­ing your tape type.

The 2″ machine at Omnivox is set up for recording with 499-tapes.
The 1/4″ machine is set up for 900-tapes.

Hybrid technique — the best of two worlds?

We often like to track live to tape, dig­i­tize and con­tin­ue work­ing in the dig­i­tal domain. It’s a hybrid tech­nique, not strict­ly puri­tan but you get the best out of the ana­log domain along withe the ease and the pos­si­bil­i­ties of the digital.

(If you like the idea of keep­ing every­thing in the ana­log domain you might get inspired from read­ing this arti­cle about the real­i­sa­tion of Siena Root’s album “The secret of our time”.)

Gear:

Mix­ing con­sole: AMEK TAC Mag­num, 26 chan­nels. Beau­ti­ful ana­log mix­er from 1991 in great shape. Over­hauled and re-capped in 2022.

Mon­i­tors: Urei 813 + Gen­elec 1032

Tape machines: 2″ 24ch Otari MX80, 1/4″ Stud­er A807

Com­put­er: MacPro 2013, 48Gb RAM, 8‑core proces­sor, 2 TB HD.

DAW: Log­icPro X

Out­board: UAD LA-610, Tube-Tech LCA-2B, Stock­tron­ics RX4000 plate reverb, Roland RE-501, Even­tide H910 etc. Out­board is eas­i­ly accessed via the mix­ing con­soles’ ban­tam patchbay.

Micro­phones: Ehrlund hand­built tube micro­phones, Ehrlund Ehr, ‑D, ‑E and T micro­phones,  Bey­er­dy­nam­ics and GA rib­bon mics, Shure SM7, SM 57s, Sennheis­er, Rode etc.

Lis­ten­ing: Hear­back sys­tem with 5 per­son­al mixers.