Chuck Ainlay: Going both ways

By Bruce Borgerson - Pro Sound Web, 2000

The article was removed from the Pro Sound Web website.

For nearly two decades, Chuck Ainlay has been in constant demand as one of Nashville's top session engineers.

Though he has credits on scores of million-selling country albums, he is best known to rock fans as engineer and co-producer for Mark Knopfler's recent album and soundtrack recordings. A pioneer of digital in the 1980's, Ainlay is now a strong proponent of 'hybrid' (analog plus digital) recording-a technique he used with notable success on Knopfler's acclaimed Sailing to Philadelphia.
PSW - When did you first start working with digital?

Looking back on it, I was an early proponent of digital. In fact, when I was chief engineer out at the Castle I talked the owners into buying the first digital system in town, a 3M digital machine. I probably also had some influence on Jimmy Bowen, that helped get him into using digital, and with him being most prolific producer here in the 80's that kind of got Nashville ahead of the game.

But, all that said, I sort of went through a reversal when I first started working with Mark Knopfler. When he started working here, he asked who's a good engineer in Nashville, he was looking for an engineer to do the last Dire Straits album. Paul Franklin, who was with him at the time said, "You should call Chuck Ainlay, they call him 'Mister Digital.'" That's how I got stated with Mark.

But in doing that album, he and I got to talking more about the philosophy of making records, and how we wanted to get back to a warmer sound. So we started talking about for his next album, a solo album [Golden Heart], doing it analog.

We did that one all analog, but recently I've gotten into this mixed thing where I like to track analog, and then transfer to digital and carry on doing overdubs in the digital domain, because you have the ability to make copies of tracks without generation losses. For doing comps and to transfer into a hard disk system, at some point it's necessary to go digital. But I still like to get that analog warmth and tape compression in tracking.

So that usually means my records end up being a real hybrid sort of thing. After tracking analog, I go digital, do all the overdubs and comp work, and do any hard disk fixing. Generally prefer to mix on my Axiom MT console digitally, then come out of the desk into a 1-inch 2-track analog to mix to and master from.

PSW - What was it that attracted you to digital in the first place?

I remember at the time, this is going back many years, in the early 80's being freaked out at the noise floor being lower, and being able to hear deeper into things by using digital. But this was back when 456 was as good as you could get in tape, maybe even before that. So tape noise was more significant than it is these days with higher output tapes.

I also remember being intrigued by the way the low frequency was not distorted. There is a sort of harmonic thing that you get on basses and kick drums from analog, which now I dig, there is something very musical about it...but at the time I was intrigued by the accuracy of the bottom end.

And then there's the way the impact of the transients were not taken away by the tape compression. All of that impressed me at the time. And so those are the positive attributes of digital. Anytime you want to capture those qualities, digital is probably the preferred recording medium
PSW - So what was your technique for Sailing to Philadelphia?

On that album we did bass and drums was 16-track analog, and the rest of it was locked to 48 track digital.

PSW - Was it for the sound, the extra tracks or both?

I think for me, using the 48trk was for the extra tracks, but also for convenience, and not having to deal with locking up machines. I knew that with Mark we would get into doing multiple guitar passes, and then do comps, same with vocals. We had a lot of other stuff going on during tracking, lots of keyboards and another guitar player so it made sense to go with the 48 track Sony.

PSW - Was that the HR version?

No, it was a regular 3348, 16-bit, but then sixteen bits when it's done right still sounds pretty good to me. That's the way that album was done, with the16-track analog locked to 3348 48 track. I have used the HR and it sounds great, but with only one machine in town, it's sort of expensive and confining. Recently, I've done stuff on Radar and Pro tools, and now I'm looking at other digital systems. There are a lot of things out there that are available now, so many different ways to do it. I haven't landed on any single digital machine or format that does it all, though right now I am looking really seriously at Steinberg's Nuendo system, doing 96K, 24-bit with it.

PSW - Did you use Pro Tools on the project?

We did a lot of work on Knopfler's record on Pro Tools, but I was very careful to transfer only what I needed to be done. We did a lot of fixes, but only the fixes were put back into the multitrack. I did not put it all into Pro Tools and then work from there.

But I know many people in town are wanting to go the way of doing it all on Pro Tools, and it's purely for convenience..and cost. It's handy because you can stay within this format, cart the system to your house and do comps, do vocal overdubs in an office, and just save a lot of dough. My feeling is yes, if you've got to do that, go ahead...the music should speak for itself, and you'll probably sell records anyway.

But if you're really trying to push forward the art of making records, you're not doing justice to the project. And ten years from now, I'm not sure those projects will hold up against the ones where people really took time and effort, and spent the extra money to do it right.

In fact, I'm afraid in the future people will look back at the late 90's and early part of this century and say, you know, audio quality really suffered there for a while. But still, I think things will move forward from here, quite drastically and soon, and things will be better than where we are right now.

PSW - Why did you do only bass and drums on analog?

Well, sixteen tracks is just one of those things, it really sounds amazing. The low end and top end is better, but you give up one track for time code and one for guard band, so you really have only a fourteen- track machine. And since I usually need ten or twelve tracks for drums, that's about all I can do. I use 24-track when somebody wants to do analog, and we'll just do 24 tracks, like the old days, cut the all basic rhythms and transfer to digital and go from there.

PSW - What tape do you use?

I'm still a big fan of the BASF 900. I find it very musical sounding. The Quantegy has more headroom, but to me it sounds a bit more crystalline. The BASF sounds softer to me, getting into the....well, it sounds like 456 to me, but quieter. I guess it's a matter of taste.

PSW - How is it different working on a digital console, like your Axiom MT, as opposed to an analog board?

Basically, I'm always the kind of guy that wants to make it work with whatever I have. If the producer has a thing for the sound of a Neve console and wants to mix on that, then I will go in and just make it work. For example, on this George Strait album which we're doing right now, the producer had an idea to go back and work on an older SSL, and I think that sounds amazing as well.

Still, I prefer to work on the Axiom for many reasons. There is so much you can do in the digital realm with compression and EQ and automation of all the functions. Also, you can sit in the sweet spot while you're working at all time. Those are huge pluses.

Also, having the outboard gear running digitally, it seems to lower the noise floor so much...it's just amazing sounding. But at the same time, it is a different sound and takes a little getting used to. But...I also like moving around from studio to studio, just to keep myself fresh.

PSW - Is part of it staying in the digital domain once you've recorded digitally?

Yes, I try to avoid converting back and forth as much as possible, which is sort of the idea behind the digital desk. Because so much of what we're doing these days eventually gets to digital, so why go back to analog to mix? So even if it's been recorded analog, it usually gets transferred to digital...goes to 3348 or Pro Tools, why go back to analog just work on an analog desk?

PSW - Do you have any favorite outboard A-D or D-A converters?

When you're multitracking, because of the different latency of different converters, you really need to use the same throughout. Since I can't afford a rack full of my favorite converters, basically I'm at the mercy of whatever multitrack digital machine we have. However, I'm a big fan of Pacific Microsonics if I'm mixing out of an analog desk and going to digital.

But coming out of my digital desk, I've compared every converter to the internal converter and find it on par with everything I could put my hands on. That's one reason I'm into the Axiom--the converters sound so wonderful.

Although I like the Pacific Microsonics a bit better on the top end, I like the low end better out of the Axiom. And there were some popular converters I tried that I didn't think even came close.

PSW - Does tracking analog make any sense these days at the project studio level? Or is it a luxury for big studio cats like you?

Today I think the cost is prohibitive to project studios, and the maintenance needed, tends to be found only in big studios. The machines have to be looked after and tweaked daily. You can't just have some guy come around to your house once a month and align your analog tape machine. And then there's just the cost of tape these days. It's a whole lot cheaper to record into your hard disk system, and copy off to a CD, than it is to buy a bunch of analog tape.

On the other hand, that's part of the reason I think there is a huge difference in the sound quality that comes out of most project studios. Sure, I think there is a justification to the project studio thing, in that it allows people to create music that could never have been done by people on limited budgets and usually it is of sufficient quality to be put out as a record.

But the down side, I think that people are sidestepping the quality issue and doing things cheaply, or just for convenience, when they really have the resources to do it better. And I think there's a real shame in that.

A few people here and there are mixing to analog from DA88s or ADATs, and I think that's a great idea, to get the analog stage that way. It's not that I think the conversion is a great idea, to take digital and convert to analog, but the idea of going through analog tape is a great idea because it is like a unique signal processor, really. There are things that you can get from the analog tape that you can't get any other way, still.

PSW - Is the project studio phenomenon still affecting business here?

From what I gather, there is a gradual movement of people who had been trying to do everything at home to come back into the studios, to go to a proper mix room to use that environment, to use some of the analog gear that they don't have at home. Spend a little extra cash and do that.

For myself, I do try to get an analog stage in there somewhere, and I know this is contradicting that fact of not going through more conversions than is necessary. But there is benefit to the tape compression, so I try to get that in there somewhere, whether I track analog or have it in the final mix, maybe both. But sometimes I don't have a choice, because often the producer or the budget will dictate the media I use.

Noted Nashville engineer Chuck Ainlay discusses his innovative "hybrid" analog-digital recording techniques, with a focus on Mark Knopfler's latest release For Part I of the Chuck Ainlay interview, click here.

PSW - How about with Sailing to Philadelphia? Who decided the recording formats for that project?

This was a bit different situation because I was co-producer on the project, and there are a few times when I actually do have the power to make those choices. Being a co-producer with Mark, we talked about the feeling of what we wanted to do. Since we've started doing these solo things, it's been about trying to capture sonically the heart of music, and we feel as though analog best does that. It has the warmth, maybe it's a throwback to what we grew up with, whatever-there is something about the analog stage that is reminiscent of music that has affected us in the past.

So that's why, with that album, the tradeoff was between convenience and analog. I wanted to get the compression to where it would best help me out, that's on the drums, and the roundness on the bass. Like I said earlier, this seems to be the harmonic distortion that comes along with low end in analog, and I think that's something that helps out bass guitar.

So drums and bass were cut 16- track analog, then we locked up to 48-track 3348 16-bit DASH for everything else. That's where convenience came in, being able to do multiple takes on marks guitars on different tracking dates, being able to comp later without generation loss.

A lot of what we do in Nashville, and a lot of the charm that Mark finds here, is that things are recorded pretty much live in the studio, so we are trying to get a performance going, a musical event happening in the studio, and we not only go for vocals but also for Mark's guitar. But there might be an odd note here and there that's missing, so we'll take passes of guitar directly after we cut the track same with vocals, then later down the road, we'll comp that all together. That's why the second time around with Mark's solo projects, rather than do it all analog, I decided to go with a 48-track digital.

PSW - Did you bounce the analog tracks over to digital for the overdubs?

Yes. We did not have to have the analog locked up for overdubs. We played them once on initial playback and then transferred them to the 48 track. They were put away until mix. Then in the mix we locked up the analog-except for a couple songs where we had done some multi-track editing in the digital domain, and so we couldn’t use the analog tracks on those songs.

PSW - That's an expensive approach. Was it worth the extra money?

Yes, but I don't think I could do that on a typical Nashville country record. Mark's album is different in that, the way it is budgeted is more open ended. A typical country record, on other hand, at best will have a $350,000 budget, in fact that's pretty good. I won't even talk about how much Mark's records cost!

PSW - But they have shelf life. They make money over the long haul.

Yeah, that's it. That's something that gets lost in the record company situation today. Everybody wants to have that big current hit record, and not thinking about the longevity of the record. A lot of new artists are here for one record, then gone the next year. Just another new face on the block. Mark just happened to be an artist that came along at a period of time when labels were interested in supporting artists for more than one or two albums, has been able to keep that mystique about himself, and keep creating great music along the way.

PSW - For the analog basics, did you run that 16-track at 15 or 30 ips?

Well, the first album, Golden Heart, we did 15 ips SR, but this latest one was 30 ips with no NR on the 16-track, using the BASF 900.
PSW - Where did you do the tracking?

We tracked at various studios. The first tracking dates were at Emerald Studio A, some others at Ocean Way Nashville, others at Emerald’s Tracking Room. All the tracking was in Nashville, and all the overdubbing in London at Mark’s studio, including comping and editing. Then we did the final overdubs at AIR in London and mixed there. With exception of one which I mixed at BackStage , because of time considerations.

PSW - So you carted the original 16-track analog masters to London?

Yes, we took the digital and analog tapes, my ATR 1-inch two-track, and a couple racks of my favorite analog gear, so we had decent stuff to work with in Mark's place. Mark's studio is minimally equipped. It's basically a living room in a guest home, with an inexpensive console. But it adds that home recording element to the album, which is a lot of fun. You can take your time, no pressures of economics. We worked off a 3348, also had the Pro Tools for fixes.

PSW - What analog machines did you use for tracking and mixing?

They were all Studer A800s, both in Nashville and at AIR. The console we mixed on at AIR is the famous AIR Neve There were only three of them built. These were the last Neves made before going to 8100 series. They look very similar to an 8078, but electronically they are very different. It was actually Rupert's precursor to Focusrite. He left Neve at that point, and started Focusrite, in fact, that console has the first 16 channels of Focusrite as a sidecar attached to it.

It is an amazing console to track on. All the mic preamps are out in the studio and remote controlled. AIR had three of them built, then one went to AIR Montserrat and eventually to A&M, the other ended up at Bryan Adams’ place. It’s a pretty amazing console. AIR has done a lot of mods, so it now has GML automation, all the aux sends are automatable in and out.

PSW - Whose choice was it to mix at AIR?

Both Mark and I decided to mix at AIR. He has always recorded or mixed at AIR, he’s good buddies with George Martin. I met my wife at AIR, so it’s like home, and that Neve is an amazing sounding console. And the concept on the albums was to try to get back to the quality of recordings of years gone by, that heartfelt sonic thing that seems lacking in a lot of the cold recordings of today.

PSW - Are you disappointed that it didn't have a huge hit single?

Not really. With Mark, he’s going to sell a lot of records anyway. He has a huge fan base, regardless of getting any airplay. So though we had little airplay in America, it's done great in Europe.

PSW- Where was James Taylor's overdub done?

James' vocal was done at Emerald Tracking Room. Mark and I were co-producing some sides on James, and Mark had the idea of doing this one song and having James sing on it. Unfortunately, James had not gotten to town when we cut the track, and the key is maybe a step too low, but it gives it an interesting …gives it a personality. Probably could have been a step higher if James had been there, but it works.

PSW - And the Van Morrison track?

Van was done at his studio in Bath, England. We got off the airplane, got in a car and drove to Bath where Van has his studios, the old Tears for Fears studio. It's an interesting studio, with the control room is upstairs, and the studio downstairs. They rented in a 3348, and an interesting thing about that, sad thing,…the engineer who did the recording was not all that familiar with the 3348. The way Van does things, he sings it once and that's that. So we're recording…or think we are recording the first vocal pass, about midway through the song the engineer stops the tape and Mark and I just about died. Because it was an unbelievable vocal take, but the engineer didn't have it in record. So Van reluctantly did give us two more passes. Primarily it was all the second pass, with a few words from the third. Mark was ready to kill the guy.

Most of Mark's lead vocals were either the tracking vocal, or were done directly after the tracking date, so they were done at wherever we recorded. So at his studio we mostly did guitars and background vocals.

PSW - Now, let's move on to mixdown media. Where do analog and digital fit in there? Did you ever go through a DAT phase?

Not really. I only mixed to DATs for backups, and I've never been an Apogee fan. I’ve always mixed to other digital media. I got started early on with the 3M digital machine, which was really an excellent sounding machine. So I’ve always tried to find the best possible converters. There was a stage after that when I did a lot of work for Jimmy Bowen, and he used the Mitsubishi 800s and 850s, which were just horrible sounding machines. But it was work. For mixdown during that period, we mixed to the JVC _-inch VCR system, which was actually quite good compared to the Sony that was the alternative at the time. When standalone converters started showing up…I can't even remember the names of all that I tried. I know we went through all sorts of them. We were mixing to the PCM9000 Sony MO. But it was during Mark's Golden Heart album when we went to mix it purely analog, to half inch, when we went to master we went through every converter known to man, had a shootout that lasted for three days. That's when we came up with the Pacific Microsonics HDCD process. That was one of the very first HDCD recordings. In fact, the converter was just a prototype in a copper box hooked up to a laptop.

I was always chasing the highest resolution possible. When 20 bit came along I tried that, then 24 bit. When 88.2 came along, I was there with that. I’m still not totally convinced that 96 is any better than 88.2, but the Pacific Microsonics at least until recently with the model it only did 44.1 derivatives.

PSW - Now where does the 1-inch ATR fit in?

What I do is I come directly out of the D-to -A converters of the Axiom and go to the 1-inch, though at the same time I'll store the digital output to the Genex. More recently I am transferring straight from the Genex through the Pacific Microsonics D to A converters to get into the 1-inch machine after the fact, while mastering. We’ll come straight off the repro head of the ATR to use the analog EQ mastering EQ, and then back to digital through the Pacific Microsonics A to D's to save the mastering EQ. So there is no tape sag at all from the tape sitting around. It’s also more economical, rather than having to save all the different versions that we do to analog tape. Basically we’re just using the analog machine as a signal processor. That way, we are also able to use all the analog EQ because we're bringing it out into the analog domain. Then at the very end, after we’ve maxed out what we can do in the analog domain we’ll usually use some digital compression and EQ.

So we're going from the record head, straight to the repro head, with no chance of any self-erasure. It does its whole analog thing in that split second. It’s just something I started doing last year, and it's pretty amazing.

PSW - True, but think of the poor tape companies. You don't use very much tape that way! Aren't you worried tape might go away?

I don't think tape is going to go away anytime soon, though it will likely keep getting more and more expensive, as people make fewer, smaller runs, smaller batches.

Though it's true that tape sales guy is freaking out. He tells me, "When I don't have a job in a couple years, because nobody is buying tape anymore, will you hire me?"

PSW - Is this the technique you used for Sailing to Philadelphia?

No, on that one we did mix straight to the 1-inch, because we were coming out of an analog board and there was no sense in going to digital and then back out again.

PSW - So you do this only when you mix digitally?

Yes. I never did it like this before, but I've only had the digital console a couple years. The concept makes the most sense off a digital desk, because you’re not going through any conversion process, just the mix out of the console being saved to a digital machine. Whether I went to analog machine in the mixdown or at mastering, it’s still one round of conversion, so waiting until the last possible moment to make the transfer to analog seems to make more sense, so I thought, why not just do it like this? And it just happened to sound pretty cool!

Before I got into doing it this way, I would mix to an analog machine as well as to the digital for backup, but I also used to go to a second digital machine that was straight off the repro head of the analog machine. So there would be a digital backup of first generation analog. So it used to be that I would have three masters…in fact, that’s what we did on Mark's Golden Heart Album, and at that time I was using the Wadia converters.

PSW - What speed do you run your 1-inch ATR?

I run the 1-inch at 15ips. There's a head bump associated with any analog machine and with the ATR-100s, it's down around 60Hz at 15ips, where as at 30 ips it moves up closer to 120. If you just think about it, 60Hz is that area which is pleasingly plump, it has this nice low end oomph that hits you in the chest, where 120hz gets up into that muddy area. Yes, 30ips makes the snare fatter, but it also can muddy the bass.

Also, there's a rolloff below that bump, so 30 ips has a significant rolloff where at 15ips it goes flat on down to DC pretty much. So I like the low end bump at 15ips, but I also like the top end off the 1-inch in particular. You get a presence boost rather than the boost way up there that you get from 30Hz. So at 15Hz, vocals seem to jump out from the track, and guitars have more bite, snare drums crack more.

Almost every artist that has listened to the playback of the 1-inch machine has gone, "God, that's the way I've always wanted to hear my voice sound." It seems to be something that other people dig, besides myself.

PSW - But you do the rhythm tracks at 30ips on the 16-track?

Right, because of the need to keep the noise level down. Even with 16-track, it's still not that quiet when you add up all those tracks. And another thing about the 1-inch two-track is that, compared to a half inch machine at 30ips, it's about 7dB quieter even at 15 ips. It's pretty amazing. But I don’t know if that's partly due to the electronics, but it is spectacular. Mike Spitz at ATR Services, really has made a great machine.

PSW - You started that Knopfler project a long time ago. Would you do it any differently today?

Probably not. We're planning to begin Mark's next album soon after he gets off the road, and we'll probably do something similar with 16-track analog locked to something digital.

PSW - What about for surround? I suppose you have to go digital for that.

Yes, we just did Sailing to Philadelphia in 5.1, just finalized mastering. Warners is eager to get it out. The DVD will also have the full 88.2 resolution of the stereo mix.

PSW - And what is the standard for surround- these days?

It's an issue of debate at the moment. Basically, I think the stance for DVD audio, when mixing from analog archive, is that it should be mixed at least 96K, 24-bit. But if it's a current project, if more than likely a generation of 48K is involved, if you tracked on a 3348 or have gone through Pro Tools and at some point reducing the multitrack to 48K, then at that point 48K is acceptable.

My preference is to mix on a digital console with automated panning and automated aux send functions, all of which is more involved in surround than in stereo. You are very restricted if you don't have those functions.

Still, I'm giving a lot of consideration to going to an analog stage. In fact, Elliot Scheiner kind of took my idea. I'll give him credit, he actually did it first, but it was my idea. He's mixing to a two-inch 8-track and it really does sound spectacular. I heard the Van Morrison album he just did, and he's just finished an America album and it sounds amazing as well. He’s using SR on that, which I understand you have to because when authoring DVD audio, if there's any noise at all it causes problems. Supposedly that analog 2 inch 8-track is the "bee's knees" for doing surround.

PSW - So, in summary, how do you get the best out of analog and digital media?

I think the main thing is just to strive to make whatever you've got the best it can possibly be, within the economics of what you have to work with. Try to go beyond what's been done before, always try to make it better. But then, more than likely somebody else has done it better than you ever thought you could possibly do it. Still, the whole point is to keep trying to push forward the art of recording.

Chuck Ainlay: Going both ways

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