1990s style downtempo ambient chill production
Here we are again with a new track, “Time by the cloud” this track was originally started when doing a test of the Scaler 2 plug in. Here is the track and the production write up follows. It is a nice, mellow and relaxing listen, so why not take it easy for 5 mins. There is a 1990s authentic analogue project studio twist towards the bottom of the page :
The production process :
A standard preset pad was selected within the Scaler 2 plug in itself and I played 2 chords on the keyboard, created largely without thinking, out of nowhere. Not even using the chord facilities in Scaler 2, I just heard a superb pad and the rest flowed from there. The 2 chords were quickly recorded in. I find great pad sounds almost influence what you play with them. And thus the whole track, which is far from came into being.
It is a downtempo track, something mellow to kick back to and we all need to take time out and relax. One to soothe the nerves. It is relatively repetitive and I did not personally tire of it even when very sparsely arranged at the very beginning. I took note of this and decided this would be a track that played on a specific feel and that anything added should not disrupt that feel.
The pad has an ethereal quality to it and has a nice phaser producing some movement. It was mesmirizing and so I just had to embellish it with some nice sounds and melodies from a variety of other synths which will be outlined below.
Cubase arrangement, ambient downtempo breakbeat chill
Very much a track based on a feeling and vibe, much less so technical perfection. And there is a super fun 90s authentic analogue master bus twist. More on that later. It is quite ambient in nature, it has some nice 90s-esque 808 style bass boomers common in Jungle and D&B at the time. (Courtesy Rob Papen Sub Boom Bass 2) At one point it sounded a little FSOL – Future Sound of London, less the additional, cool soundscapes and sound effects.
The broad production choices
One of the first things I did after selecting a drum break to use was edit the break sequence and then add D16 Decimort to bit depth reduce it to 12 bits. This was to emulate the sonics of an AKAI S950 which was a 12 bit sampler and would still have been in common use before AKAI S1100 and S3000 had been more prevailent. This made a surprising difference and suited the break just right. Just to add, I also reduced the sample rate using the resampler control and a little tweak of the jitter control.
Bit reduction to 12 bit on the break for a S950 sound
The synth line up here was a mix of emulated classic analogue’s, I used :
Cherry Audio Elka
Cherry Audio Elka, classic Italian synth
Cherry Audio Mercury 4
Cherry Audio Mercury 4 retro analogue for 90s breakbeat chill zone production
OPX Pro II also producing one of the bass sounds
More analogue synthesis for 1990s style retro vintage aesthetic
XILS Poly KB III
Xils Poly KB III a truly wonderful VST synth 1990s style analogue project studio
Avenger 2
VPS Avenger 2 I paid for an update so thought I had better use it.
Most 90s studios would have had a few analogue synths in the mix, though they would unlikely to have been any of the above. I had these synths loaded up and used a few sounds that sounded nice. They inspired some little melodic lines to keep things moving forward and to keep some interest. A couple of the synths had a little Super VHS to add a retro tinge.
Pad sound inspiration from Scaler 2
I broadly used all the usual 90s style desk emulation (Slate VCC) that I have written about extensively in previous 90s blogs. This time I wanted to add another layer of authenticity to the sound and in lieu of not owning a multi channel out audio interface and Mackie 8 bus then next best thing was some authentic 90s analogue mixdown stereo bus processing. There are a couple of United Plug Ins Front DAW’s in the mix.
I preface the following 1990s analogue project studio rack with the following crystal clear statement.
I will not use this 90s rack equipment in mastering anyone’s music of course. However, if you are a 1990s music enthusiast and are adamant it is of interest, drop me a line.
This is my own budget 90s hobby rack purely for authentic 90s analogue grit, blur and processing which fits my current 90s style hobby music making needs perfectly. Essentially using them for retro analogue effect adding authenticity to a sound of an era. (especially as I do not have space for an Mackie 8 bus or a multi output sound card on my hobby machine.) With that provisor out of the way……….
One man and his loft
I was in my loft recently and found 2 classic budget 19 inch studio units that have not seen the light of day for a very long time. I had an original 90s MDX 2100 compressor and an Edison EX-1. I turned the knobs and recall how well built early Behringer equipment was, solid, heavy and a very nice look to the front panels. The knobs have a tight feel and are uniquely, finely and smoothly detented.
The Composer I had since the mid 90s (£279.00 at the time) and I recall purchasing the Edison around year 2000 second hand for £40.00 or so. The Edison was purchased predominantly for its phase correlation meter which are pretty much free in software form these days. As such the Edison is a very unique budget analogue box. By ear alone it seems to have a M/S (Mid/Sides) decoder which allows control of depth and width of the stereo image. (Using a knob labelled ‘Centre distance – near/far)
Quadruple rack of doom or authentic heavenly 1990s analogue cloudiness and grit ? From top to bottom : Composer MDX-2100, Ultrafex II EX3100, Edison EX-1, Autocom MDX 1200 – Original 1990s audio processors. (Gain reduction emphasized for image)
Mid / sides processing is very much taken for granted these days in software. There is a very interesting process labelled “LMF spread” and a smidgen of this adds a little extra width, precisely what it is doing I do not know, but it sounds quite nice. Lower mid bloom and width would be how to describe it, very easily overdone so a tiny bit is enough.
I used to own a original 90s Ultrafex II (£269.00 new in 1995) which I had gifted to a friend much later on for use in his hi fi system. It got so much use it eventually broke, he liked it a lot. As such I picked one of these up for a low price second hand in excellent condition.
Basic stereo width enhancer (most likely based on phase invertion of L / R channels and feed and blend each into the opposing channel) a bass enhancer and and an adjustable high frequency exciter. It also has a noise reduction system, the NR does seem to add a “processed” sound, a seemingly dynamic process, which may or may not benefit the sound, depending on what you are attempting to achieve. Here is an old scan….
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I used to use (overuse ? Like everyone then.) the Ultrafex II in the 90s and enjoyed using it in my project studio attached to the insert points across the master outputs of a Studiomaster P7 analogue console along with the Composer. Back then I did 1dB of gain reduction on any mix I did and 1dB of make up gain and then into the Ultrafex II)
I also found an Autocom MDX 1200 dual mono compressor (almost given away and in very good condition) which has a dynamic high frequency enhancer facility which is not the same as anything on the other 3 devices. The output on this device is not balanced though it does have TRS servo balanced inputs.
One man and his rack box
As such I have a 90s “quadruple the grit” analogue mix bus rack, purely for my own personal 90s hobby. The units are in a rack box with 30cms short TRS patch cables and a surge protected 4 way. So I can move it around and it need not be permanently installed in any one place. I can patch it onto my music making PC or add it in the mastering studio where I can really hear what it is doing once the track is finished. With all the LED’s dancing around it is a lot of fun to physically/aurally engage with. And this of course is a big part of the feel and interaction with analogue equipment in general. Even budget gear is a lot of fun to work with and why many people have a few boxes in their home studios.
This quadruple rack is perfect for adding 90’s width, blur, grit and transient softening. I run them in the following order. 1dB GR on the Composer, into the Ultrafex II, then the Edison with its phase correlation meter. (Thus logical to have it after all stereo manipulation shenanigans) then the Autocom MDX 1200 for another 1/2 dB -1dB “rounding”. I see the Autocom as being able to be set up with fast or slow attacks depending on what the track I have produced needs, super fast transient rounding (this is a VCA compressor afterall so can do “fast” very well.) Or slow gentle levelling and another layer of grit plus add a bit of the unique dynamic HF enhancer which is a 1 knob control per channel.
The Autocom MDX 1200 is rather filled with gold and brown banded tolerance resistors so these are 5 and 1pct tolerance respectively. The fact it does not have a stereo link button does not matter very much, (we could expect up to a 5pct difference per channel in action anyway) the detented controls are easy enough to match up and with 0.5dB – 1dB gain reduction it is more of a solid state line amp with an HF enhancer than much else. The HF enhancer is very subtle indeed, especially at the slight compression being used. The Autocom is a little faster and more obvious than the Composer.
It is not really possible to do more than 1dB of gain reduction on the mix bus with a utilitarian compressor that has no HPF in its side chain. And doubly so given this chain has 2 stages of compression, subtle and lightly does it, is the order of the day. Composer is set up as a very sensible 10-15ms attack and fairly swift release of 80-100ms. The Autocom at the bottom of the rack can be for more creative purposes as any given track I make requires. (i.e. take the top of transients off with an fast attack (0.5ms) or just as a gentle levelling device, and never digging in more than a 1dB, an occasional flash of the first gain reduction red LED)
Let’s face it, no one in the 90s was running their entire mix through a stack of these boxes. However, for the purposes of 90s-ification, it’s just the ticket when you have no room for a 24-32 channel project console like the Mackie 8 bus (The VLZ series never even existed in the 90s and are a different kettle of fish.). That and lots of flashing LEDs is fun !
That being said it won’t win any awards for transparency or ultimate flexibility. A little of each goes a long way. And let’s face it who knows how long this box of 90s fun tricks will last from a reliability stand point ?
I could not see any obvious swollen electrolytic capacitors in any of the units I opened even after 30 years. Which brings me nicely onto the next section…….
The inside take 1990s PCBs – The Gutz
The inside gutz of the 90s quadruple rack of doom (or is that heavenly 90s blur?) Here are the PCB photos, they are scaled down on the blog but fairly high res off my phone so you can right click, open image in new tab and zoom in. It is difficult not to consider the design remit for the Composer MDX-2100 being : How many resistors can we fit into a 19 inch rack space ? Distortion through these boxes is benign and minimal, being mainly opamp based. Much of what is happening through all of them can be done in software albeit of course in the digital domain and not as authentically of course given these are actual 1990s units.
They all have typical operating THD specs of 0.1pct down to 0.05pct so is minimal even chained through 4 units. They seem to add a nice little fuzz to the 808 bass boomers, and breakbeat of special note. The 4 units together add a little sparkle and grittiness.
Composer MDX2100 PCB insides – THAT VCA – stereo linkable no HPF in side chain
Ultrafex II EX3100 exciter enhancer PCB insides
Edison Model EX 1 PCB insides – M/S mid sides, stereo and LMF enhancer with LED phase correlation meter
Autocom MDX1200 PCB insides – dbx VCA – dual mono – no stereo link – HF enhancer (subtle under GR)
I opened all the units up and took a photo of the gutz for added interest, pcb and insides before screwing them in my rack box.(I know some people like to modify these units so an online peak inside may be useful for those people.) They are actually built to a high standard for being budget equipment.
Much better built inside than for example the Alesis 3630 which I also owned in the 90. I have also looked in at the PCB, maybe 20 years ago. That looked more like 80s build with not a metal film resistor in sight. And a rather low budget looking PCB material.
Inside these units you can see “through hole” components, many metal film resistors (Blue) some carbon resistors (Beige) and various of 1 and 5pct tolerance. Also a mix of 4558, 4560, 4580, TL074, BE027 and BE037, BA14741 (Quad DIP8) 2 x dbx 1252 VCA in the Autocom and 2 x THAT 2159 VCA in the Composer.
The 2 compressors are very different from each other on the inside and in sound. I have owned a budget dbx (266XL) compressor back in the very early 2000’s and have to say I was not very impressed, it was an incredibly low noise piece of kit but the compression came across as all or nothing to me, it always felt a bit too fast and clamp-y to my ears. dbx compression always sounded a bit obvious to my ears.
All powered with a non toroidal, laminated transformer PSU.
You can find the insides of the Alesis 3630 by searching as follows “Alesis 3630 pcb”
Earlier vintage 90s units
This is all original authentic 90s kit before the branding convention determined them “Pro” and they all shifted to surface mount components. In is interesting to note that according to online sources Liam Howlett of The Prodigy and engineer Rob Playford (Goldie) owned the Ultrafex II. And no doubt many 1,000’s of other project music studios.
Even budget yet decent quality kit benefits from ultra high end monitoring (Crane Song Solaris Quantum DAC, Hypex amps PMC IB1S) to understand what it is actually doing by how much and fine tune the results. (Don’t worry I will not be using for any mastering jobs here, unless someone specifically has a penchant for an authentic 90s blurry, transient softening fuzz !)
There is a little noise, by no means excessive and this is just another layer of 90s analogue authenticity in my view. Noise in the 90s was a non issue really, you had vastly more noise coming out of a Roland SH-101 . (which you could resolve use MIDI muting automated mutes on your console if it had that facility.) And also some budget effects processors, the Digitech studio quad was quite noisy as I recall from owning one, quite a hiss coming out of it compared to my Lexicon Alex and Reflex.
You can see the settings on the 90s quadruple mix bus rack, nothing overdone (track suited the HF enhancement level), just a little tweak here and there, especially on the Edison where a little goes a very long way. Very moderate. I ran signals at a nominal 0VU/dB on the meters for this track and maybe in future can experiment with driving it a little harder to provoke whatever it might impart. That is something interesting that I look forwards to when I make the right track for it.
Boxes of fun – 1990s analogue rack box
It was totally fun to tweak the knobs and get the right enhancements for the track. Overall it has a certain cloudiness, grit and blur (90’s budget glue?) and a nice gentle fuzz going on on the 808 bass boomers that you would not achieve from high end analogue equipment. With these boxes you are getting a little noise, crosstalk, distortion and maybe level dependent overload is a something I will delve into more in the future on my own tunes.
In mastering it was very straight forwards a pass through the hardware MANLEY Massive Passive hardware with the following settings. (This EQ still amazes me, it has one of the best top end’s of any eq I have ever heard, though the SSL Bus+ has a nice single top band as well) and super gentle limiting with the best limiter that exists to my ears. Again this is 90s vibes so no point hitting a limiter hard.
Jumping up in quality a notch or 2
Massive Passive Hardware mastering EQ settings
The hardware Massive Passive is often read about for mids which are also amazing but the top end is superb. (First built and released in 1998 so it just about fits into the 90s) I can honestly say neither of the 2 plug ins (UAD and Pulsar) of the Massive Passive come close. I always knew the box tone was wrong on the UAD MP and I was right having checked the harmonics. And the curves do not sound right to me either on the Pulsar. Analogue is still not matched quite yet. Something that a human mastering engineer will always have an advantage with.
I hope this track was in some way inspiring and hope it inspires you to make a track yourself cause that is what it is all about, fun and enjoyment, and the creative process, the ultimate reason for making music. I find it marvellous how you can make something very simple and have a nice feel to it. Sometimes the easiest pieces of music are still enjoyable and satisfying.
I also hope this delve into 90s semi pro gear was fun, of interest, unusual and provokes some curiosity of these fine looking, yet slightly cloudy sounding processors. It was one of the most fun of tracks to make thus far and I am sure this enhancing (or degrading ?) set of boxes will be across some more of my 90s style tracks. (I look forwards to sending them a little too much level and hearing what happens.)
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2026 Barry Gardner