How much does it all matter?

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Goldilox

Goldilox

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Reading through the threads here, they're often very gear fixated and most opinions seem to be that the kind of cheaper gear I own is a waste of time. So, given that I still feel like the talent is the weakest link in the signal chain, should I be throwing it all away and spending £1000 on a new vocal mic?

I've spent this morning listening to a recording of blues master Fred McDowell made on a reel to reel on a porch in Mississippi in the mid-1960s and (after the current remaster) it sounds absolutely sublime, in a rough-about-the-edges kind of way. I just found myself wondering, if great things can be achieved with very little gear, how far it's worth me throwing money & effort at the recording side, as opposed to trying to write better songs, and play and sing them better.
 
In my opinion a recording is 99.999% about the source.

If the talent is the weakest link, work at it and practice and whatever but don't waste money on top recording gear


Having said that, If you have a recording of yourself, please post it up.
You could just be overly critical of yourself.

That's just one penny's worth. I'm sure there'll be more.
 
Not everyone is a gear snob. I recorded my CD (released last year) with a Boss BR600 digital recorder and an SM57 mic. Could the sound have been better? Yup. Could I have waited and recorded into Reaper (like I'm doing now) and made the songs sound better? Yup. Do I regret not having waited? Nope. For me, it's about playing my songs. Recording them can be a challenge, but it's also fun and if I can get 1 unsolicited compliment from someone, then I can say to myself, "It's all good."
 
IDK, you say the talent is the weakest link.
I'll admit the performance isn't perfect (band's last project), but it's certainly good enough to merit taking your sound seriously.


What are you using at the minute?
The two big things that caught my ear were the guitar tone and the roomy/boxyness of the vocals.

Have you considered room treatment as an upgrade?
 
Goldilox said:
I've spent this morning listening to a recording of blues master Fred McDowell made on a reel to reel on a porch in Mississippi in the mid-1960s and (after the current remaster) it sounds absolutely sublime, in a rough-about-the-edges kind of way. I just found myself wondering, if great things can be achieved with very little gear, how far it's worth me throwing money & effort at the recording side, as opposed to trying to write better songs, and play and sing them better.
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I don't think that it's essential to own expensive gear. :) Cheap gear is not necessarily "a waste of time". You can have a heap of fun using cheapo equipment, mixing on crummy headphones, and doing all the things that many enthusiasts and pros will say you shouldn't. But that doesn't mean that using poor quality stuff is actually a good idea, because it's not. It definitely can be worth improving both your gear and, probably more importantly, your knowledge of how to use it. And "trying to write better songs, and play and sing them better" doesn't have to cost cash, so there isn't really a direct competition between doing that and buying reasonable gear anyway.

Old stuff can sound just fine when you add a healthy seasoning of nostalgia, but using crappy gear isn't a particularly good move, in much the same way that settling for a junky old guitar is a good idea just because it was all some old timer could afford. I've had crappy guitars and then bought decent ones - and the difference was worth every cent I paid. Ditto for other instruments, amps, etc. Going more expensive doesn't guarantee better quality, but it's certainly a good place to start looking...

My main aim is to improve the quality of my playing and songwriting, but that is a slow and never ending quest. Buying better quality recording gear (not mega-bucks but just good quality hobby level stuff) was a much shorter and more achievable journey by comparison. It has been well worth doing. It works better, it sounds better, it does more for me, and it's a pleasure to use. Learning to record well can be an enjoyable goal in its own right too. But if you don't put a value on any of that, or can't hear or feel the difference, then it might well be a waste of your money. There's no right or wrong way, just an endless series of choices that suit some better than others, so pick the answer you like the sound of..;)

Good luck finding your own comfort zone.

Chris
 
Goldilox said:
Reading through the threads here, they're often very gear fixated and most opinions seem to be that the kind of cheaper gear I own is a waste of time...
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Personally I differentiate between cheap and inexpensive. Cheap gear gets in the way... the drivers are buggy, it works unreliably, and fails soon after the warranty expires. Inexpensive gear works, lasts, and can be depended on. The challenge is knowing which is which. I've bought... and thrown away... a lot of cheap gear and personally I'm sick of it. If I had all of the money that I've thrown away on cheap gear gathered together in one spot I'd have several thousands dollars to put towards a studio. So... yes, I'm something of a gear snob in that I'm dropping approx. twenty-two hnundred on my latest and greatest recording chain (mic-pre-ADA-software-computer-monitors) but I have a high level of confidence that THIS time I'll be able to rely on it for years instead of months and for me that's the real definition of 'buying cheap'.

  • Sennheiser MK4 large condenser microphone $300
  • Sound Devices USBPre 2 computer interface $650
  • Sony Sound Forge Studio 10 audio software $40
  • Toshiba Satellite Pro laptop w/240GB SSD internal/500GB HDD external $600
  • Yamaha HS80M Monitors $580 pair
 
The amount of gear I've not bought far outweighs the gear I've bought. It's all about what works for you.
 
First off...you buy what you can afford, and then make the most out of it. For the majority of people, having/building a studio is an ever-evolving process..but we all started with less than great rigs and then moved up from there.

There is NO myth about expensive/higher quality gear. It really IS better. Usually the only people that argue hard against the need for better gear are those who can't have it.
That said...there's inexpensive gear that can work very well and get you most of the way there, but there's also a lot of garbage.

AFA expensive/Hi-Q gear...I've yet to be let down by a higher quality mic or comp or EQ...etc.
With better gear it really IS all about your talent as a performer and engineer.
That's not saying you can't capture great talent with less, but when you have the gear, you can then focus only on the task at hand and not how to make a cheap $50 mic sound like a $1000 mic.

And if you want to sound like Fred McDowell...you have to be Fred McDowell, on the porch, in the '60s.
 
I suppose when I said "talent" I meant as producer/engineer as well as an artist. I know if we can hold a room for 2 1/2 hours when we play live we must have something going for us, even if it's just enthusiasm...

Steenamaroo said:
What are you using at the minute?
Click to expand...

Well I've got a Tascam US1641 interface into either my laptop or desktop running Cubase LE.

Mic wise I've got a Sontronic-STC2 LDC, two Samson C01s, some good AKG dynamics and some cheapo Behringer dynamics. On more recent sessions we've also used and AKG kick mic and two SM57s belonging to the drummer.

However, apart from the kick mic, the gear hasn't changed since the last recording session. The drum sounds on the latest one are dramatically better because of improving technique, not better gear.

I can't really treat the room, as we tend to record in the function room of a local pub, which we use for rehearsals. It is, to my ears however, a nice sounding space & I used a room mic over digital verb on our last recording session.

Hakea said:
Old stuff can sound just fine when you add a healthy seasoning of nostalgia, but using crappy gear isn't a particularly good move
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I only used the Fred McDowell disk, as an example because it was fresh in my head at the time. There's other examples of records I love - early Black Keys, Hank Williams III - that have been done on what you might consider 'low end' gear (the Black Keys used to call it 'medium-fidelity recording'). My point was more that great records are made by great performances rather than great gear I suppose.

I'm also not sure your guitar analogy stands up - my two favourite guitars at the moment are an Ibanez archtop that cost me a lot of money (by my standards anyway), and a no name electro-acoustic that I got second hand for nothing and customised with a soundhole pickup to get a really huge sounding electric guitar.
 
To me there are a few considerations

1) song and talent always come first. If you have crappy material played by crappy musicians, the best rooms and gear and engineers in the world will give you a pristine recording of crappy material played by crappy musicians

2) gear does matter... to the extent that it lets you do what you want to do easily, effectively and reliably. In the scenario that many of us have of being: writer, arranger, performer, recording and mixing engineer, good gear that can get you good sound without hours of fine tuning is important.
For example I find my Neuman mics have a much more forgiving sweet spot where they will reliably sound good than the cheaper mics that they replaced. This is important to me since I now don't have to spend SOOO MUCH time on mic placement and can get on with playing and recording. I don't have so many needs to retake because I moved out of the much more limited sweet spot while recording.
That's not to say you can't get great sound with the cheaper mics, you just have to work a lot harder at least IME and if I couldn't afford the new mics I would just continue to work harder with the cheaper stuff

3) Better gear is better.. Notice not expensive gear there is plenty of reasonably gear that is very good. Art Pro VLA and FMR Really Nice compressor are a good example of good gear that is not expensive and does a better job than just "Cheap" gear
I've read a lot of statements about how Butch Vig or other famous recording/mixing guys could do a far superior job on cheap gear than amateurs could do in a full on pro studio, and that is true but those same guys could do a far better mix in a full on pro studio than they could on amateur set ups because better gear is...well.. better.
There is a reason that pro's choose the gear they choose. if a $50 mic with a $90 mod really sounded like a vintage U87 that is what recording pros would use because no one wants to spend $3,000 if they don't have to. It's interesting to go to a real studio to see what they really use. There is plenty of inexpensive gear mixed in with the higher end stuff because it works and plenty of expensive stuff that never got bought because it's unnecessary

In the end, you have to do the best with what you have and do stuff that makes you happy as a musician because that's what's important
 
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Goldilox said:
I've spent this morning listening to a recording of blues master Fred McDowell made on a reel to reel on a porch in Mississippi in the mid-1960s and (after the current remaster) it sounds absolutely sublime, in a rough-about-the-edges kind of way. I just found myself wondering, if great things can be achieved with very little gear, how far it's worth me throwing money & effort at the recording side, as opposed to trying to write better songs, and play and sing them better.
Click to expand...

I've often wondered this too. I have some old recordings of Blind Boy Fuller and Rev Gary Davis made 70+ years ago, single mic thrown up in front of them playing wherever they happened to be and they sound great, the performance shines through all that hiss, crackle and no high end.
What would happen if I could jump in a time machine and put an XY stereo pair of KM84s on the guitar and a U47 on the voice and a nice mic for some room ambience and record to a really nice Studer multi track tape machine. Or jump back to EMI and put a 48 track mixer in front of the Beatles so that they didn't have to keep bouncing tracks and end up with the drums and guitars all on one side and the vocals and bass on the other.
Same performances, same talent, just better gear to record and mix it

Of course you'd have to play both versions to someone who'd never heard the originals before to get expectation bias out of the way and get a somewhat more objective view of which one is "better". I don't know if I'd like Blind Boy Fuller without all that hiss and poor quality or the Beatles without the funky "Stereo" spread due to track limitations since it's a part of the sound I expect now and to me wouldn't sound like them without it
 
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For me it's a paradoxical thing because both are true and both can be demonstrably false. It is also crucial that one knows what one wants or discovers this at some point as one goes along. Ultimately, only you know what makes you happy.
Some El cheapo gear can be really limiting but often, it takes a while to find this out. Being part of a recording forum may speed the process up somewhat, because by the very nature of the things that get discussed and asked, it's unavoidable that you're going to run into lots of ideas {and in turn, gear} that challenge your staus quo. Sometimes, this will cause you to critically look at what you have and assess the limitations. Other times, it'll strengthen your resolve.
I've bought little snippets of gear here and there that were a major league improvement on what I was using before. But when push comes to shove, it's a means to an end. I like my daft songs, I want to record them, I don't intend to go into debt or break the bank in doing so, neither am I content with the Shure Prologue mics that I was using 20 years ago. For me it is 'only' a hobby, albeit a passionate one. I'm not a gearslut elitist but I'm not naive and in denial either.
I like the recordings of yesteryear despite their 'flaws'. I also like recordings of now so somewhere along the line, I'm working with a number of production values in my head.
 
Goldilox said:
I'm also not sure your guitar analogy stands up - my two favourite guitars at the moment are an Ibanez archtop that cost me a lot of money (by my standards anyway), and a no name electro-acoustic that I got second hand for nothing and customised with a soundhole pickup to get a really huge sounding electric guitar.
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The analogy only doesn't work if you're determined that it doesn't! :)

Nobody is saying that expensive, or even good gear automatically improves the underlying performance or that it is somehow more important than the artist. What we are saying is that the idea of good recording equipment is not just some kind of gear snobbery or a case of people wasting money and kidding themselves that it works. It really DOES make a difference when used properly.

Of course, buying something expensive doesn't guarantee success, but there IS such a thing as improved quality. I bought an expensive guitar that I ultimately gave away because I never clicked with it in the way that I hoped. Another guitar that I play regularly wasn't very expensive. But that doesn't prove that cheap guitars are always as good as expensive ones. There are always exceptions, but what you really want is quality coupled with something that's a good fit with whoever uses it. And, more often than not, you usually have to pay more to get better quality.

If you're not interested in getting better recorded sound, and you're happy with what you get now, then that's absolutely fine and good. There's no absolute 'need' to keep buying better. Most of us will find our own comfortable level of gear quality and stop there, at least for a while.

People who don't want to pay more for music equipment in general will also often tell you that buying better gear won't or can't make you play better. Depending on who you are that might be true for some people, but it's not true for me. For instance, I had an old but adequate amp, which certainly could have been used to play good music on. But when I bought a really good one the difference was not just immediately obvious, it was inspiring. I sat there for hours just playing and playing and revelling in the quality of the sound and the places that it could take me that the old one couldn't.

If you don't want to spend any more money on more recording gear then don't. If the art of recording doesn't interest you much then there's no reason to push yourself along a road that has no attraction for you. If you can't hear the difference between a cheap drum kit and a better one, or don't value the difference, then why bother with it? If you can't hear what good equipment does for sound, then wait until you can or until you really feel that it would be worth having. But if you can appreciate or value what makes something better then it might be worth the money. It might even encourage you to lift your game all round. Only you can find the answers for your own situation.

Do you personally 'need' more expensive recording gear? No. Don't buy it because you feel pressured to do so, or because you think people will look down on what you have. But don't kid yourself that we're all wasting our money on better gear that doesn't do much, because we're not. Honestly. :)

Chris
 
Take this thought out of the recording arena for a while, and put it into some other activity, e.g. driving racing cars or playing golf.

A highly skilled golfer can probably do quite well using a crappy set of clubs, but will most likely fare much better with high quality clubs.

Putting a turbo on a run-of-the-mill car might make it go a bit faster, but it's not going to make as much of a difference as putting it on a car that has everything else optimised for speed (e.g. suspension, tyres, etc). A skilled driver is likely to achieve faster times in a run-of-the-mill car than an unskilled driver in a purpose-built car.
 
Whatever gear you have, spend as much time learning how to use it properly as possible. As a followup to the post above, great gear is only great in the hands of someone who knows how to use it.
 
Geclo's post above brings up a useful analogy (racing cars). If your goal is to run/win the Daytona 500 or Indy 500, then you really do need the best car (equipment) possible. But every weekend there are hundreds (sometimes thousands) of SCCA (Sports Car Club of America) amateur racers who race the cars they can afford and have a great time doing it. they have fun, enjoy the camaraderie, and come back and do it year after year.
Could I ditch my wife, sell the house and buy better recording equipment and instruments and dedicate even more time - well, probably only partially. Would I have more fun, would I get more fulfillment from it? Doubtful.
 
These are my thoughts:

1. There's not just good gear and bad gear. There's the right gear and the wrong gear. Lots of folks spend tons of money on gear that was meant to do something they don't even want to do. Cheap shoes that fit are better than expensive ones that don't.

2. Gear is often a learning tool, and you can learn the skills of recording with cheap gear, or expensive gear. Often the benefit of cheap gear is not what you recorded, but what you learned.

3. As everyone above agreed, if the source sucks, expensive gear won't help, and may even make it worse. What you learned (see above) may help- a little. Note that the room is a *huge* part of the source. Ignoring it will amplify the suck factor every time.

4. Everybody has a different budget, and great project studios are usually unholy alliances of cheap gear that works, and a few pieces of top shelf gear that have to be very versatile. Yeah, I've got an Avalon AD2022 in my rack, one empty space away from a Behringer ADA8000. They both have their uses. Would I like 8 channels of Avalon pres? Hell yes, but I sure would miss my wife.

5. Sometimes, not having all the gear you would like makes you use things in ways that the manufacturer never intended. Limited gear is the mother of invention.

Don't sweat the gear, until it starts to bug you with its limitations. Spend more time researching gear than buying it. Record on.-Richie
 
Thanks to all for your thoughts, I've found this a really interesting debate.

I'm not sure how clear it was that my question wasn't "does high end gear sound different", which it clearly does but, "does having it matter"?

I still think cheap guitars sound great. ;)
 
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