Attn. Ethan Winer + Beginners

  • Thread starter Thread starter DougC
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DougC

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Attn. Ethan Winer: I have been doing home amateur recording for a few months now and happend upon your articles. It's good to see somebody else willing to admit that one does not need the most expensive equipment available just to cut a home-CD with; newbies can do themselves a service by visiting the E.W. articles page. I motion that we need a new common audio standard named "CD-indistinguishable":
-----I agree that for a cheap stereo-input card ($40 OEM online), a Soundblaster Live 5.1 is a great deal. It even supports soundfonts, which are also very cool when you're poor. It's definitely a major step up from on-board sound chips, which is what many off-the-shelf PC's come with these days. When beginners ask about upgrading from on-board sound, it's common to see people suggest expensive audiophile soundcards as required but unless the whole rest of your recording equipment is of comparable-quality and you have a good (quiet, sound-dead) studio to record in, you're simply not going to hear any difference from a high-end card. The quality of the SBL is CD-indistinguishable: that is, the card produces background noise, but average people listening to the end-product CD on average stereos will not notice the difference in quality between something produced with an SBL and another card that has only half as much THD.
-----It's much the same story with portable stereo digital recorders: a consumer-grade minidisc recorder used with good mini-mics is CD-indistinguishable; most people/stereos/conditions won't detect any degradation in sound quality from a CD. DATs get recommended, but they cost $800+. Now, portable CD recorders get recommended, but they cost $700+. There's even "pro-studio" MD recorders, if you really want to waste money. The practical reality is that a consumer-grade $150 Walkman-style minidisc recorder [with good mini mics] will record basically perfectly: it will give 95% CD-quality, for roughly 20% of a CD recorder's cost. Most people simply don't notice the difference between a MD recording and a straight-through 16-bit/44Khz recording.
------Software is similar too: it's common to see people recommend that beginners buy $500 recording software software, $500 mixing software and $500 sequencing software because "it's pro-quality". I got news for you, kids, the software probably isn't the reason you can't make top-40 hits, and you may want to ask anyone who says you need this stuff how many top-40 hits they are responsible for. A fully-capable audio multitracking+looping+MIDI sequencing program can be had retail for less than $100; that includes a legit CD, user manual and tech support. CD-burning software comes free with CD-RW drives and there's audio editors often included free with both. You simply don't need $1500 of software to mix and cut a decent CD, and "pro-level" software isn't better: it will have lots of features you'll never be able to use because you lack the associated (expen$ive) hardware, and warez copies often have suprising technical glitches that legitimate users will be loathe to help you with, if they help at all.
~
-----Of the several CD's I've recorded and put together for friends and myself, people would sometimes say they wanted different mixing one way or another (and that much I can handle), but nobody ever complained about the distortion from me using an SBL card or recording the stereo portions to a minidisc and then transfering to the SBL through the headphone->line-in jack. - DougC
 
Interesting perspective........ not incorrect, but most people learn by moving forward, not staying where they are....

If you didn't have any knowledge of how good things could be, then you couldn't make a decision about any inadequacies in your current system.........

You glean what you can from the pros, and adapt the knowledge to fit your own situation! But don't expect a pro to recommend less than adequate equipment when they know better -- it's YOU who has to make that determination......... ie "Yes, that Avalon sounds amazing, but I probably won't hear much difference running the output into my Soundblaster.........."

Make the pro's advice work for you, instead of as a knock against your own gear.......!
 
You're too hung up on noise, which is a *very* small part of a much larger picture.

I would rather newbies be advised about higher quality gear than to have them all pulling their hair out in a perpetual cycle of cheap purchases, confused by meaningless terms like "CD-indistinguishable."

Recording and mixing are considerably more enjoyable once you start capturing reasonable representations of what you're actually hearing. You'll spend less time fighting your recording equipment and more time fighting with your guitars, which is how it should be.

Slackmaster 2000
 
FYI- Among exprienced engineers Ethan is in the minority by pushing SB's for recording. 'CD indistinguishable' is a bullshit term because mastering formats should be of a higher resolution than distribution formats. And the analog to digital convertors on a SB are hardly going to give you an exact reproduction of anything.

It doesnt take any more effort to record with a good sound card and the benefits are obvious to anybody who uses them. In fact it is easier to get great results with a better sound card. Personally I would rather spend the extra $100 bucks and have a finished product that sounds better than 'good enough'.
 
As I've said before, I think a Sound Blaster Live / Audegy is an excellant beginners tool to learn with, and if your source material sucks (like transfering old cassettes to CDR) than you can do a decent job with it.

However if you are recording your own original material, you will reach a point wher you will want better tools to work with. They don't have to be super-expensive professional gear, there is a growing market of "semi-pro" 24 bit gear out there which can give you much better results than a Sound Blaster product.
 
Doug,

I'll just make one point:

> a consumer-grade minidisc recorder used with good mini-mics is CD-indistinguishable <

In many cases you're hard pressed to hear degradation with the type of gentle data compression used in minidisc recorders. But, and this is a big but, if you later want to make an MP3 file from that recording, the double compression can become very audible.

The same goes for broadband noise reduction software. Those programs work in a similar manner as data compression - they remove content below a so-called audible threshold. So if you apply noise reduction to a compressed file, that too will all of a sudden make the original compression much more objectionable.

--Ethan
 
Tex,

> Among exprienced engineers Ethan is in the minority by pushing SB's for recording. <

I don't actually "push" the SB Live. And there are reasons other than fidelity to recommend something other than an SB Live. For example, better cards usually yield much better latency in a DAW.

> Personally I would rather spend the extra $100 bucks <

I'll also mention that when I compared an SB Live to a CardD Plus ($550) and an AWE 64 a few years ago, the CardD was the only one my friend and I could distinguish every time. And I don't mean that in the good sense!

--Ethan
 
is THD(Total Harmonic Distortion) the proper term for the back ground noise an Sblive gives? I thought that was a property of the analog domain and what helps give analog its 'warmth'
 
Ethan- I had a feeling that article was probably a few years old. Maybe it's time for an update ;)

Teacher- That noise is due to the low Signal To Noise ratio and I wouldnt use the terms 'analog warmth' and 'SoundBlaster' in the same sentence.
 
Teach,

> is THD (Total Harmonic Distortion) the proper term for the back ground noise an Sblive gives? <

No, noise is noise (hiss usually) and distortion is distortion (grit and grunge). Completely different things.

> I thought that was a property of the analog domain and what helps give analog its 'warmth' <

Warmth is an overused and abused term. In fact I'll go so far as to say it's mostly a myth. You can add warmth to any track by applying a little EQ boost at 200 Hz while cutting some of the high end. To some people warmth is a little added fuzziness. I can do without any fuzziness, thanks, except maybe on a B3 or guitar track. :)

--Ethan
 
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