Thank You, Blue Bear!
Hey Bruce!
Thank you so much for posting sound clips for the rest of us to hear. I thought the disclaimer in your original post was crystal clear, and even with the all the variabilities you mentioned plus the obvious limitations of MP3 files, the clips were still informative, useful, interesting to compare, and fun to listen to!
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It's interesting to me how much of what we actually experience sonically and musically is split between our physical hearing capability and our brains.
For instance, at 52, my hearing is getting worse to the point that I've been researching hearing aids (and the news isn't good, folks). I can't hear the birds chirping in the dawn that my wife hears clearly, I frequently mistake what people say, I felt I needed to quit singing in ensembles awhile back... the usual indications that I'm slowly losing my hearing.
Even so, I still hear differences in recorded sound that younger listeners occasionally miss. I hear differences between Ma's Guarneri and his Stradivarius, for instance. Sometimes, passing by a cheap boombox at the bookstore I will recognize not only the piece but the exact recording on the FM radio within a couple of seconds. I don't mean this as self-praise -- I'm simply amazed by this ability of our minds.
So even with irreparably damaged instruments, my present and past experiences of sound continue to inform my perceptions.
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For those of you patient enough to have read this far, the relevance to this thread is that I hear significant and useful information in the increasing number of sound clips that forum members are sharing with us. I completely understand the argument that brief clips of music compressed to MP3 and played back through $14.95 speakers on my office desktop are meaningless for comparison purposes, but I respectfully disagree.
To me,
the Studio Projects C-1, for instance, sounded just like itself from the beginning. I immediately wanted to ask Bruce if he had
a Neumann U-87 he could use to add to the demo, to confirm my impression that they both have a distinctive and useful (if unnatural) quality that could in fact be perceived as a bit of compression, or as a forward-sounding but almost flat dryness.
Likewise the clips of the other mics were useful individually and especially in comparison to one another. To those whose initial reaction was to find fault or to dismiss the whole exercise as meaningless, I'd offer this advice: listen through, not to, the sound. There really is something on the other side, whether it's played back on a state-of-the-art rig or a pair of cheap no-brand computer speakers.
Also, depending on the type of music, more and more listeners are going to be hearing recorded music -- at least for the first time -- on their computers as MP3 files. This alone would argue that it is not such a bad idea to hear what a take might sound like online.
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I remember an older recording of a piano sonata that I used to keep as a demo disc. On a normal stereo, it sounded fine. But when played back on a highly accurate full-range system, the pedal and floor-thumping were so loud that no one could resist laughing after about 30 seconds of listening. The producers, who mastered it on 1960s studio "monitors," had never heard the full range of what they recorded.
To play back an MP3 clip on a good system is asking to have an unpleasant experience. There needs to be something of a match, I suspect.
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To Bruce and others, please keep those clips and microphone comparisons coming. I learn a lot from these clips, whatever their limitations, and I'm grateful for the time and energy invested by those of you who post them.
In appreciation,
Mark H.
