Tape hiss as a compositional element, not a flaw
Removing the hiss removes the room. I keep forgetting this and re-learning it.
I removed the hiss from a four-track demo last week and the room went with it.
The hiss was not just noise. The hiss was the low-amplitude, high-frequency content of the room — the air, the HVAC residual, the room’s natural noise floor — mixed with the tape’s own noise floor, and recorded together. iZotope RX did a good job removing all of it. The result was clean and dead.
I keep doing this. I keep removing what I think is a problem and discovering it was structure. The hiss is structure. The 60Hz hum from the cheap preamp is structure. The pre-roll air on a vocal take is structure. The space between the notes is structure.
I am not arguing for leaving noise in. I am arguing for knowing what the noise is doing before you remove it. The four-track demo went back to having hiss.