Logical Thinking About Gear

[soundchaser59]

I have probably $7k worth of gear that I use now to do everything, including the mics and the amps and the guitar. 20 years ago I had $27k worth of gear, and I was not getting half the quality I'm getting now. Is it better gear now? Sure. Is that why my quality went up? No. Experience and learning from others is why the quality went up. I believe that somebody with professional experience could use my gear to make a cd that rivals anything store bought. A good oscilloscope might be able to detect the difference, but your ears wont.

There is a point where gear quality matters, I dont believe there are any professional engineers or producers who can get the same quality making a Steely Dan recording even if they use radio shack mics and a four track cassette. But technology has lowered that point enough that cd quality production is within reach of Joe Public's budget. You "need" to spend as much as it takes to make recordings that you enjoy listening to and you are eager to play for your friends and colleagues. I am doing that with a $500 dollar piece of hardware (the piece that has the converters in it). You could bring a $3000 dollar piece or even a $30,000 dollar piece into my studio and make the same recordings, but I doubt you would be able to hear the difference on my gear using my stuff. Part of what I paid for was the added convenience and ease of use and streamlining of my rig and my process. But I also think it sounds better, partly because I bought better gear than I had before and partly because I know more than I did before. And if I were going to open a studio for business today, I dont think the converters would be at the top of the list of weak spots in my setup. The top spot on that list would undoubtedly belong to microphones, and those can be a lot more crucial and more expensive than good converters.....and they have changed a lot less in the last 20 years.

but I digress.........

 

[xstatic]

Personally, I do not think that the typical Home recordinst needs to or maybe even should run out and just buy the expensive stuff. Is it necessary to make a deent recording? Not really. Does it help? Certainly. My thinking is that when you are ready to take advantage of those things, then you will know it and that will be the time for you to do it.

I also don't think that any trends in current music should be used to make your decisions about not buying good eqipment. What should be used is things like your purpose and your experience. The biggest things I hate are when people try to use current productions and techniques to justify not getting better equipment. To say that the same stuff will get made using the cheap equipment as the nicer stuff is just silly, and often times seems like a way of justifying not caring. If you can't afford it, you can't afford it. Just because you can't afford it though does not nullify the differences in equipment. My theory is that with a good band and a good engineer, a good recording can be made out of virtually any funtional set of equipment. However, almost always in that same case, if better equipment was used, then a better result will be had.

 

[NL5]

I'm sure you can reach that goal without the $3000 ad converter. Especially with the quality of todays budget gear... Nothing wrong with getting an ad converter, but for home recording, let's keep it around a grand.

See now, for me, converters made a bigger difference than preamps to the overall sound.

Personally, I do not think that the typical Home recordinst needs to or maybe even should run out and just buy the expensive stuff. Is it necessary to make a deent recording? Not really. Does it help? Certainly. My thinking is that when you are ready to take advantage of those things, then you will know it and that will be the time for you to do it.

I agree with this 100%. Homerecordists, in general, don't need super high end gear. Most IMHO would be better off at that point paying for a pro studio. It will be cheaper than buying all the gear, plus they will have the facility and the know-how to take advantage of the gear.

 

[Robert D]

Great posts. This is really all about balancing expectations against realities. The realities involve budget over time, time and commitment to invest in skill development, natural talent (ear) possesed, and limitations of recording environment. If it's all about recording yourself, then add musical talent to the realities.

Having said that, I think part of living a full life is, within reason, allowing yourself a few things that just make you happy even if they don't make that much sense. If that's owning gear that puts a smile on your face and doesn't impinge on your responsibilities, then great...enjoy! But if it becomes a source of frustration because you spent all this money and it still doesn't make your home recordings sound like they came out of Ocean Way, then it's time for a reality check.

 

[mwthompson]

Is it really worth spending too much anyway, if you're going to master the final result into a squashed, dynamics-free, LOUD recording to "compete" with what's typically coming out today?

I kinda think the so called "loudness war" is making all that expensive equipment a waste of money.

...and also a total waste of good recording engineer's time.


But, on that note, is the sum of the parts in a Neumann U87 worth $3000, or is that price inflated due to the reputation? Seriously, what's in there, enriched plutonium or something? (Not that I have any doubts that it's a bad-ass mic.)

 

[Lt. Bob]

I think the answer really varies from person to person.
If it's a money making studio then it's worth the money to bring in clients.
But the vast majority of us do it as a hobby.
Though I earn my living as a musician, that's live stuff and the studio is just for my own art done for myself more than anyone else. So I need whatever equipment I can afford that'll make me satisfied with the recordings that I will be the main listener to. Yes, I make CDs to sell at gigs but any quality is good enough for the bulk of the people that might buy one of mine.
So the main point is for me to be happy with it.
I think it boils down to this for a lot of us and the difference comes down to how picky you are before you can be happy.
I'm mainly interested in the notes being played and the musical aspects of the song itself and as long as the quality is fairly good, I'm happy. It doesn't have to be super duper almost pro for me. And strangely, I'm a bit of an audiophile ..... picky about vinyl vs CDs ... expensive-ass turntable and such. But my original stuff just has to be ok.
But some of us are obsessive about every little teeny tiny minutae of perfection and those are the guys that probably should spring for that good gear if they have the money, but often those kinds of musicians still won't be satisfied with anything they do 'cause they'll always be looking for that next increment of improvement ..... it's just how they are and part of why they do it.
Different strokes and all that .....

 

[Robert D]

Is it really worth spending too much anyway, if you're going to master the final result into a squashed, dynamics-free, LOUD recording to "compete" with what's typically coming out today?

If you are passionate about audio, it isn't about what happens to it by the time it gets to the average consumer and their I Pods, it's about what comes out of your monitors while you're mixing it. How are you going to argue against destroying the fidelity if it's not there to destroy? Don't give in to the dark side.

 

[MCI2424]

Today I read this article about "the death of high fidelity": http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/17777619/the_death_of_high_fidelity

And so I began to ponder the common trends in audio production. Especially the use of high end gear, and the growing number of engineers that decide to spend a stack of bills on adda conversion.... and the point of it all...

I realize that adda conversion is critical to the work, however, do we need to spend 2000 + for conversion in our home set-ups?

Also, after reading this article, I began to revisit Harvey's "do you really need the expensive gear" thread.... in my mind.... or, at least the title...

Anyway, I have come to a point where I feel that "the death of high fidelity" must pop up in my mind when considering gear purchasing...

Just food for thought.

You have to draw the line at where you are going. A home based recording studio is for your personal use and is used whenever you feel like it. A pro recording studio has to be able to record anything thrown at it and the gear has to take the use and abuse all day long everyday. Expensive stuff has a forgotten quality in that it will usually never break down and is totally reliable. Harvey does some great work with low cost equipment,but if he had the serious amount of work that Abbey Road had, he would be forced to either buy plenty of cheap extras or invest in pro quality equipment. It is not always about pristine sound that is the value of expensive well built equipment. The lowliest equipment in every studio has to be the mic stand. Pro qulality stands will last for years where those cheap Atlas type stands last for months (if that). There is no snobbery in real pro studios, they just have to invest in good tools to make money.

 

[mwthompson]

If you are passionate about audio, it isn't about what happens to it by the time it gets to the average consumer and their I Pods, it's about what comes out of your monitors while you're mixing it. How are you going to argue against destroying the fidelity if it's not there to destroy? Don't give in to the dark side.

That I can agree with. I think my "squashing" zealotry got the best of me there.

I like music that gets as soft as it does loud. Now I wish I had a turntable to listen to my Stevie Ray Vaughan albums. Again, I'm veering off topic...


I just wish I could hear why the uber expensive stuff is so much better. To my ears, many of the mixes I've heard on this site compare with commercial stuff. I'm sure not all of it was done on $100,000 worth of equipment.

I know a $5 radio shack mic isn't going to be very good, but what's wrong with something like the MXL mics?

Maybe when I get my room treatments done, I'll borrow/rent some better equipment and do some real world tests. If I still can't hear the difference, good. I can't afford a $3000 mic and a matching $5000 pre anyway.

 

[Harvey Gerst]

Harvey does some great work with low cost equipment,but if he had the serious amount of work that Abbey Road had, he would be forced to either buy plenty of cheap extras or invest in pro quality equipment.

You're right, and while we do get pretty good recordings out of our "B" room, our "A" room does contain a lot of high dollar equipment. But, that doesn't mean that we won't use a mic like the MSH-1O or a Studio Projects T3 if it's the best mic for the sound we want. When we get a piece of equipment in, we try to judge it by one factor: Is it of use somewhere on a song?

While we have a lot of MSH1O's and Shure SM57's, we also have an RCA 44BX, an RCA 77DX, a pair of AEA R84's, and a Coles 4038 - none of them exactly low dollar mics. We have 30 different guitars and basses, and a ton of Marshall amplifiers. We have some cheap OnStage mic stands, but we also have some mic stands that weigh in at over 75 pounds, and four LatchLake mic stand boom arms.

The trick is to have priorities and choose your equipment carefully.

 

[dgatwood]

Well, as long as this is bumped, I might as well chime in. There's a principle in the video world that applies just as much to digital audio called cumulative degradation. Each process you apply to a video signal, whether that be copying it, feeding it through a color corrector, video switcher, titler, or other device, or even just projecting it in the screen, degrades the signal. These affect the picture quality in a negative way (and audio quality, though the effects on video are much more noticeable).

The important thing to understand, though, is that each processing stage makes the final output worse by a given amount. If you start with a source that has 640 lines of horizontal resolution and it goes through a HF roll-off that drops the effective resolution by 10%, you end up being at 576 lines of horizontal resolution. If you start with 720 lines, even if you lost 15%, you still have a higher quality signal than if you had started with 640.

Audio processing is similar. If you start with a great recording and compress the heck out of it with a lossy encoder, the quality will be not so good. If you start with a lousy recording and compress the heck out of it, the resulting quality will suck. As such, content recorded at a higher quality to begin with should still results in a higher quality final output no matter how much processing you do to the signal. (Well, maybe not quite, but at least for processing that you are likely to actually do.)

Where I am seeing iPods and other devices subtly change things is the way people tailor the music itself. If you know that content is going to be compressed with AAC, you really don't want to have someone keeping crash cymbals going constantly, as they can sound rather bad when encoded (swirling), doubly so when the listener no longer perceives then as transients. If you know that the content is going to be compressed with MP3, you might choose to do a less dense mix with thinner orchestration since much of the subtlety will be lost and you'd rather not lose as much of the more important instruments like the vocals. And so on.

In short, musical styles are shaped by what sounds good, and lossy compression is a big part of that these days. This, too, will fade in time, though; lossy compression will slowly become taboo as Internet bandwidth increases just like 22kHz and 11 kHz audio faded into obsolescence years ago.

Just my $0.02.

 

[ofajen]

I just think that a wave form should look like one big, solid block. When played back, I think the meters should also just look like one big, solid, unmoving block ... extending vertically from the top to bottom of the meter.

Otherwise, you might as well just be listening to Karen Carpenter or James Taylor.

.

Darn tootin'! The meters should just function like a light bulb... all on all the time during "play" and all off when you hit "stop." That's the only way you can be sure it's loud enough.

Cheers,

Otto

 

[pohaku]

Well, as long as this is bumped, I might as well chime in. There's a principle in the video world that applies just as much to digital audio called cumulative degradation. Each process you apply to a video signal, whether that be copying it, feeding it through a color corrector, video switcher, titler, or other device, or even just projecting it in the screen, degrades the signal. These affect the picture quality in a negative way (and audio quality, though the effects on video are much more noticeable).

The important thing to understand, though, is that each processing stage makes the final output worse by a given amount. If you start with a source that has 640 lines of horizontal resolution and it goes through a HF roll-off that drops the effective resolution by 10%, you end up being at 576 lines of horizontal resolution. If you start with 720 lines, even if you lost 15%, you still have a higher quality signal than if you had started with 640.

Audio processing is similar. If you start with a great recording and compress the heck out of it with a lossy encoder, the quality will be not so good. If you start with a lousy recording and compress the heck out of it, the resulting quality will suck. As such, content recorded at a higher quality to begin with should still results in a higher quality final output no matter how much processing you do to the signal. (Well, maybe not quite, but at least for processing that you are likely to actually do.)

Where I am seeing iPods and other devices subtly change things is the way people tailor the music itself. If you know that content is going to be compressed with AAC, you really don't want to have someone keeping crash cymbals going constantly, as they can sound rather bad when encoded (swirling), doubly so when the listener no longer perceives then as transients. If you know that the content is going to be compressed with MP3, you might choose to do a less dense mix with thinner orchestration since much of the subtlety will be lost and you'd rather not lose as much of the more important instruments like the vocals. And so on.

In short, musical styles are shaped by what sounds good, and lossy compression is a big part of that these days. This, too, will fade in time, though; lossy compression will slowly become taboo as Internet bandwidth increases just like 22kHz and 11 kHz audio faded into obsolescence years ago.

Just my $0.02.

Cheap storage has an impact as well. I finally broke down and bought an I-Pod the other day. My kids have them, but I've been resisting because I detest MP3s. So I bought the 160 Gig I-Pod and I'm now loading part of my music collection on it in Apple Lossless format. It won't hold everything, but it will hold enough for me to travel with. Between that and the abysmally cheap 500 Gig outboard hard disk that I bought to store I-tunes on my computer, I figure I ought to be set until the next technology shift comes.