Translation of the German review:

Portrait RN Audio

Sinking between tape machines and mixing desks. Be absorbed in the music. Being a music freak with every cell in his body. That is Rainer Neuwirth. A portrait about a special person, his microphones, machines and tapes.

As a self-taught recording artist (marketing communications specialist by profession), Rainer Neuwirth equipped himself with studio condenser microphones in 1987 and, because of his love of organ music, had a nine-meter-high tripod made so that he could position the microphones more or less directly in front of the organ pipes. In the beginning, he moved from church to church with his Akai GX 635 and created a music archive. Until 2013, the recordings were made on a part-time basis. For seven years, Rainer Neuwirth has been mainly concerned with the medium of music, which resulted in the expansion of recording studio activities until the foundation of the RN Audio brand. Since April 2020 tapes with organ, choir and orchestra music are offered on the homepage https://www.tapemusic.eu/. This also includes a store. Standard formats for tape recording (e.g. NAB or CCIR) are given there. However, if the customer has a special request, it can be accommodated in many cases. This includes copies for quarter-track machines (NAB equalization only) or also the audio cassette. Inquiries or orders must be made by e-mail. There will be an answer about the feasibility or a cost offer. In the extended offer Rainer Neuwirth accepts recording orders resulting e.g. in CD small series up to 200 pieces.

Rainer Neuwirth runs two studios in his house. Upstairs, under the sloping roof, the tape recordings are made. Here, it's mostly analog. In the digital studio in the basement, the recordings and productions are processed.

To find out firsthand how RN Audio works, I asked Rainer Neuwirth the following questions:

Claus: How did the love of organ music come about?

Rainer: I grew up on the organ stage, so to speak, both parents sang in the church choir (and so did all the aunts and uncles). When I became a member of the choir at the age of 17, the organist Friedrich Storfinger, 23, had just taken up his duties as cantor. With his organ playing, which also demanded respect from us young people, he quickly got a lot of fans. With the Akai GX 635 tape recorder, which was new at the time, I made my first recordings in 1980, mainly of large, spectacular-sounding organs in the region. To be able to produce these dynamics, from a single-voice flute to a giant symphony orchestra, with two hands and two feet, I always found terrific to listen to. In 1987, with the first condenser microphones and the new nine-meter-high tripod, the first professional recording was made, including the 5th Symphony by Charles-Marie Widor, a "smash hit" of the organ literature. The fascination of the sound of large, romantically registered organs has never left me. This is equally true for similarly structured, large symphony orchestras.

Claus: The spectrum has been expanded. I see in RN Audio's portfolio practically only live recordings of acoustic instruments. Is there a reason not to record power-supported instruments?

Rainer: For a long time, I only recorded the music that I conducted myself (choir) or liked to preserve (organ, symphonic, chamber music). With the ever larger ensembles (e.g. oratorio choir with symphony orchestra) and requests e.g. from gospel choirs, the number of microphones and recording tracks also grew. Some ensemble, organ or choir recordings were also made under studio conditions, with the corresponding effort for recording and editing. For recording rock or pop, there is a lack of appropriate equipment. Jazz works very well from a recording point of view, choir with band (gospel, Schlager, pop) as well. I will not record rock in the future. There is simply a lack of interest and know-how. And "sampling" is not my thing at all.

Claus: The music on the tapes comes from digital master files. Why is digital technology interposed?

Rainer: I recorded with the Akai mentioned above until 1986. This was followed by a short phase with Hi-Fi Video, until the first DAT recorder arrived in 1988. Soon there were four of them. The clean recording quality of DAT recorders, the small size of the mini-DAT units, and the significantly lower tape costs made me largely forget about analog tape. All usable professional archive recordings since 1988 are available digitally. I "sift" them in the MAC, normalize where it seems reasonable and prepare that for the playing master recorder Tascam DA-3000. From there it goes symmetrically into the Studer machine, always with standardized studio levels. This process leads to clean, optimally controlled tapes. And: there are quite a number of enthusiasts who dub a CD to tape to "deburr" it and only then find it "beautiful". I use this in the same way. Current multi-track recordings are recorded in High-Res up to 192 kHz/24 bit. With this, the tape produced from it is then really fun. Recordings made in analog in the future will also be copied in analog.

Claus: Is there a plan to record completely analog as well?

Rainer: That just happened (again) for the first time: a talented organist, who studied both church music and jazz (with Kurt Edelhagen), plays jazz improvisations on a phenomenally good organ. Under studio conditions. This is much more difficult to record. Three tapes are to be kept on hand, just in case. Clean fade-ins and fade-outs are not easy to do technically. Basically, you need artists who can record a track like this "in one go" if you want to avoid too much editing of the tapes. The level has to be right, it can't be changed afterwards. If you want to record ensembles with several microphones, the tuning in the analog mixer must be correct, because no correction is possible afterwards and usually only one headphone is available for tuning. Live recordings have to be edited in a complex way if you want to avoid too long pauses between the pieces. Subsequent fade-ins and fade-outs are hardly possible or can only be "cut in" with digital help and experimentation and a lot of work. And you have to agree on visual cues with the ensemble leader, because the tape has to be changed every 30 minutes or so, which requires a short caesura (pause or marked cut in the course of a piece of music). The fact that the costs are incomparably higher than for a digital recording becomes clear at this point at the latest.

We have received several requests for live and studio recordings of professional ensembles (from my region and further afield) to be recorded in analog, which will be processed in a time after the current Corona pandemic (salon orchestras, jazz bands, various jazz ensembles, big band, Egerländer brass band).

Claus: What were the highlights in your recording career?

Rainer: Definitely a choir festival in Tourcoing, France, in 1992. There was a choir there from every country in the European Union. There were real professional ensembles there. I was part of the invited German choir and took with me on spec: 2 condenser spheres, a preamplifier, 2 stands, several meters of cable and a mini-dat-recorder. The first recorded opening concert was listened to by the hosts the same evening with the headphones and they were thrilled. Two more concerts followed, one of five hours duration. At that time I produced cassettes for six or seven choirs all over Europe. The host choir ordered over 250 cassettes. Enthusiastic thank-you notes came from all over Europe.

What made me very proud was the first review by a hi-fi lover of a sampler CD I gave him. He wrote back that it was great and in places better in clarity and spaciousness than highly praised competitive products. He listens meticulously, with McIntosh amps and acapella speakers.

Claus: Were there also flops or bitter realizations, especially those that brought important experiences for the future?

Rainer: Actually there were no recording flops, there were sometimes very good and sometimes only good recordings. But as far as a bitter realization is concerned, there was occasionally something like this: An excellent recording is made with a lot of effort (large symphony orchestra with organ), but the ensemble plays so badly that the sale of CDs was very laborious and at a low level.

Claus: How do you see the future of tape and analog recordings?

Rainer: Tape is a niche for "sound gourmets" with the necessary financial background. At the moment there are quite a few people who put professional machines in their living rooms and are willing to spend 200 € or more for good tape recordings and also to maintain the machines regularly or have them maintained. Whether this is transferable to the younger generation of today's thirty or forty year olds, I am not able to say. However, the LP has gained popularity with a not small number of the younger people addressed.

Claus: Thank you very much for this interview.

Contact: RN AUDIO, Rainer Neuwirth, Nibelungenweg 94, 46240 Bottrop, Germany.

Internet: https://www.tapemusic.eu/

Photos: RN Audio

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)