How Chris Kimsey Used Dolby Noise Reduction and Multi-Track Bouncing for the Punchy Drum Sound on 'Some Girls'

The Rolling Stones’ Some Girls was cut at Pathé Marconi in Paris, a studio with a famously dead room and a dated 24-track. Engineer Chris Kimsey had to get a big drum sound from a small space, so he leaned hard on a technique that accidentally created the album’s signature punch: bouncing multiple generations of drums through Dolby A noise reduction.

Kimsey would record the full drum kit onto one track, then bounce it to another track with Dolby A encoding. Each bounce added a layer of tape compression and the subtle pumping of the Dolby system. He did this three or four times, reducing the track count while fattening