Gear vs. Experience

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famous beagle

famous beagle

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Didn't really know where to put this thread.

I was wondering what percentage people thought this would break down into.

On the one side, you have gear. This includes everything from instruments (guitars, amps, etc.) to outboard compressors, EQs, etc. to interfaces to plug-ins/tape machines, consoles, and even acoustic treatment and monitors .... whatever. Basically anything that can be added to (or removed from) a system at any time, provided you have the money.

On the other side, you have experience. This is simply everything that an engineer/producer brings with him inside his head (or her head).

If you had to break it down into those two categories only, what percentage do you think each contributes to the final product?

For example, I know that, without a doubt, a pro engineer with decades of experience could get a much better sounding recording from my setup and gear than I could at this point. But I wonder how much better? I have a pretty humble setup including (have a few analog recorders too, but I'll just list digital here):

Yamaha NS10s
Reaper and various plug-ins (some free and a few affordable ones)
M-Audio Delta 1010LT 8 in/out interface
A few outboard delays from the 80s (Roland and Fostex)
DBX 166 stereo compressor
(2) DOD R-825 compressors
80s Tascam M-216 mixer
Few decent pairs of headphones

Mics:
Studio Projects C1 LDC
(2) Oktava MC012 SDC
Some 58s
Some 57s

That's the gist in the studio equipment.

I've treated my control room (11 x 14 ft bedroom with hard floors) with absorptive panels at reflective points and bass traps. I have an adjoining "live room" that's a converted den with wood floors. It's about 12 x 20 ft with 8 foot ceilings and has been treated with bass traps, some diffusers, and some absorptive panels on the ceiling.

Regarding instruments, I've got decent enough stuff (nice tube amps and guitars, nice drum kit, etc.)

So ... having that and only that at their disposal, could a pro engineer come in and create a full-professional-sounding recording that would impress not only the general public, but other recordists/musicians as well? In other words, would it be good enough to stand on its own, or would it need the disclaimer "really good for what he had to work with" or something?

Curious to hear what y'all think.

Thanks!
 
I'm pretty sure a good producer/engineer will get great results out of cheaper gear. Recording/production is a craft after all. Not some you can just do naturally. They just have the bonus of having quality gear. But I'm sure they all started at he bottom. Either with lesser gear like us amateurs or making the tea.
 
If you want "numbers"...I would say it's about 65% experience and 35% gear.
However, when good experience is combined with good gear...it's always 100% good product.

That said, good experience will not carry crappy/cheap gear on all occasions.
There's a point where even ___________ (insert you favorite engineer) can only get so much out of a $50 preamp/interface/microphone/etc...etc.
 
I think it's a constantly shifting thing. I think it starts off with the higher percentage being slanted towards the gear but only because the experience isn't there. I think it changes as time goes by.
I suspect that with my primitive set up a professional experienced engineer could do wonders. But I don't know that. I don't know that someone used to working with high end stuff could go back to doing it on relatively shitty stuff and make a great job of it. But I suspect they could.
I notice that I've improved as time has gone on. I'm more confident than I used to be. As experience grows, confidence should.
In the end, the gear is pretty much always by the by. Because one has to use what they have, whether it's top of the range or bottom of the pile. Which is not to say gear is irrelevant, it's not. Ultimately though, gear is kind of neutral whereas experience isn't.
 
ido1957 said:
Better gear = better results. SM58 vs Neumann U87? Cassette deck versus Pro Interface and DAW Or Neve console
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But surely this isn't a steadfast rule. Someone who doesn't know what they're doing could make easy work of f*cking up a track recorded with a U87 and a Neve pre, whereas a pro engineer would have no problem getting a pro result with a 58 or 57 (as has been done many times).
 
Gear first. Experience in time.

Professionals are made, not born.
 
famous beagle said:
But surely this isn't a steadfast rule. Someone who doesn't know what they're doing could make easy work of f*cking up a track recorded with a U87 and a Neve pre, whereas a pro engineer would have no problem getting a pro result with a 58 or 57 (as has been done many times).
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Well, how about if you have little or no experience....do you think you'll have better odds with a U87 or a 57...?
 
It’s all about knowing what a good sound is and having options at your disposal. Most recording musicians don’t know how to get a good sound or have the patience to experiment to get good sound and don't understand what has to be done to mix the sounds they capture. You need to understand transient characteristics in various frequency ranges and not only how to mix your tracks but how to be creative with your tracks. Understanding your options and how to get a competitive result only comes through trial and error. Good sounding tracks come easier with good gear but it's all irrelevant if you don't know how to assemble a mix from a frequency balancing perspective or placement, width, and volume i.e. putting your sounds on a sound stage of two speakers.

I would suggest most of what you own is good enough except your preamps and compressors. You would save some results time by upgrading. I would also want to upgrade the convertors. So here's my final answer: Tracking Gear is about 20% of it, performance & arrangement about 40% of it, experience, and lots of it, takes you the rest of the way. The most important parts however are the experience, performance, and arrangement. These will shine through if the gear is lacking.
 
miroslav said:
Well, how about if you have little or no experience....do you think you'll have better odds with a U87 or a 57...?
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With no experience or very little, I really don't think it would make a difference. As you got more experienced, I think the difference between the two would become more and more noticeable with time. IMO
 
the first thing came to my mind was Todd Rundgren making his Arena CD, on a modest HR setup all done in the box.

Line 6 UX8 and DAW..guitars and drum samples.forget which one. its a great sounding album, and obviously good enough to sell at his level. didnt win the best recorded album of the century, but was damn good imo. any who know of him realizes his lifetime of recording experience.

so what does this mean?
it means you can make a damn good recording with HR stuff if you have the "ability"/experience.
thats my vote...experience over gear.

(was his tracks mastered and polished in a pro-environment, I dont know that either and am curious.)

Bruce Springsteen did the Nebraska recording on near to nothing, is another example that comes to mind. vocal and acoustic, basic stuff. probably mastered and polished up before release though.

should have done a poll?
 
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I think there is one extra ingredient needed. Talent or the ability to express yourself. If you can convey what is in your soul then that is 90% of the formula. A cell phone recording such a thing is all you really need. The rest is ego.
 
Manslick said:
I think there is one extra ingredient needed. Talent or the ability to express yourself. If you can convey what is in your soul then that is 90% of the formula. A cell phone recording such a thing is all you really need. The rest is ego.
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This is what I was thinking.
It's not always the case, but in the HR environment budget gear is almost always accompanied by inexperience, bad sounding rooms, bad sounding instruments, and weak or at least inexperienced performers.
Sure, it's not always the case, but it's too much of a correlation to be able to compare gear to experience without taking these things into account.

I mean, you could give butch vig and mbox and an nt1a and expect a mental record from him, but is he using his own perfectly tuned kits, prized amps and guitars, finely tuned environements etc?
Is he doing it at your house?

Maybe you can argue that instruments fall under the gear bracket. Does the environment also?
There's too much to take into account.


That said, Lb for Lb talent/experience is much more important than gear IMO.

Put it this way, if you had to strip me of one you can have my gear.
(That's not to say that my talent/experience or gear are worthy of evny! :p)

I upgraded several times because I felt the gear was holding me back. I feel now that I could take a few steps back gearwise and it wouldn't massively hinder my recordings.
 
I was thinking of my grandfather when i made that post.

When I was a wee lad, my mother recorded him singing I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now. She had a Sears reel to reel with a built in mic. After he passed she would play that on occasion and it had a profound effect on us. You can imagine the audio quality.

I realize the emotional element is unique here. But that is what we all respond to. One human expressing a feeling that rings in another human heart. Gear be dammned.
 
Manslick said:
I was thinking of my grandfather when i made that post.

When I was a wee lad, my mother recorded him singing I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now. She had a Sears reel to reel with a built in mic. After he passed she would play that on occasion and it had a profound effect on us. You can imagine the audio quality.

I realize the emotional element is unique here. But that is what we all respond to. One human expressing a feeling that rings in another human heart. Gear be dammned.
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I think is certainly true. The material being recorded is indelibly a large part of the recording itself.

Robert Johnson is a perfect example. I mean ... recordings like his were "professional" back in the day. If someone posted a recording like that on HR today, they may get someone saying, "Great song/performance, but ..." but they'd most likely hear things like "What the hell did you record this on? The noise floor is way too high. It sounds thin and lacks [whatever]. You need to read up on basic miking technique." etc., etc.
 
famous beagle said:
With no experience or very little, I really don't think it would make a difference. As you got more experienced, I think the difference between the two would become more and more noticeable with time. IMO
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Well...like some have said, if you listen, you can hear it....and that is where the beginnings of "experience" come from with audio. So I'm sure most people would hear some differences between best and worst options.
What to do with them...?....is where the newbs get stumped.

The only reason most will start off with lower-grade gear....is because they don't have funds or they haven't yet found the serious commitment or reason to invest in major gear...and those things will come over time, but I don't think just because you are a newb that equipment doesn't matter.
 
Steenamaroo said:
I feel now that I could take a few steps back gearwise and it wouldn't massively hinder my recordings.
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Yes...but would you really want to? ;)
I occasionally think about how great it would have been if the studio/gear I have now was available to me when I was just starting out in my early twenties with recording. I'm positive it would have made a big difference even though I was just starting out. I had a lot of fun back then with what I had because I was "just starting out"...but if that's all I had today, it wouldn't be as much fun.

This gear VS experience question comes up a lot on home-rec forums...people are most likely looking for a reason not to have to spend more $$$ on gear (which is understandable), so they hope they can use experience to fill in that gap (once they get some experience, that is). If you go to a few of the real upper end pro audio forums, they're usually all pretty experienced, so they just talk about gear! :D

It's like when I was in Home Depot a few months ago looking for a saws-all and circular saw. I know what brands/models the pros use, you can go to most any home construction site and you see the same gear....but it costs more.
So the HD guy sees me grabbing the pro-gear, and tells me that the more pro-sumer stuff would be just as good if all I'm going to do is use it occasionally for a project around the house and that there was no need to buy-up just for that, since the pro-sumer stuff could do the same job.
I walked out with the pro-sumer tools, because that made sense, and I saved some $$$....but the minute I started using the tools I could see why it was not used by the construction pros. In the end it cut the wood and other stuff I was working with the way I needed it.....but I knew that it wasn't going to last or repeatedly do as fine as job as the pro-gear.

So.....what's my point there?
Well...if you are planning to keep a studio going (for whatever reason...personal or commercial) for many years and to make recording something of a life-time passion...better quality gear will last a long time and give you lots of good service, or you can go the "disposable gear" route and buy cheap every few years.
That said....there's a lot of good "inexpensive" audio gear out there...so I'm not saying you need to have a million dollar investment in pro gear like the top commercial studios, but gear does matter. Experience will not always override lower quality gear AFA as the sound is concerned, and it's not just about the sound quality coming out of the gear if you plan on using it for a long time to come.
 
I agree, the long term gear is usually the mics, preamps, instruments.

but what ive seen is the recording unit changes....reel to reel to cassette to adat to minidisc to other odd things like those oddball roland plastic memory whacky things.....then to Hardrives and next is ??????????????
from tape hiss to 16bit to 24bit....48k, 96k, 192k.....always changing. I could imagine everything being stored online, including the DAW etc...and the old Hiigh End expensive pc from 1999 doesnt hold its value, neither does the $1000 MiniDisc recorder 10yrsd later.

the debate over high dollar rack gear versus plug-ins/software is always a good shootout, then its dollars for sure.
definitely the average hr hobbyist will be using 10qty virtual 1176 plugins versus having 10ty of the real deal.
 
famous beagle said:
For example, I know that, without a doubt, a pro engineer with decades of experience could get a much better sounding recording from my setup and gear than I could at this point. But I wonder how much better?
Click to expand...

First off, you didn't mention something that might be somewhat important: The musicians.;) The composition, performance and arrangement are what matters. The instruments and the room come next. Engineering is of course quite important, but it's the first categories that matter most.
 
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