High end recording gear vs high end audiophile listening gear.

[Slouching Raymond]

I think McIntosh and Manley are on the same level of Neve and Api, rather than the super high end audiophile systems. I’m thinking more like this:

It is not the hi-fi that intimidates, but the chinese writing on the wall.

 

[Scott Baxendale]

And as usual, I pulled up a CD today. Gino Vanelli - Powerful People. That's just a good sounding, well crafted album. This was on the Vandersteens with the Onkyo receiver in the bedroom. A nice shower, fire up the music and relax for the next 45 minutes. I love laying in bed listening to music. I did that a bunch when I was a teenager (with those vinyl records, even!)

Then, just to support the artists, I took a friend of mine to the state fair for the Happy Together tour. Cowsills, Association, Vogues, Jay & the Americans, Turtles and Joey Molland of Badfinger. She loves her oldies and it was a fun night. The Cowsills and Association were really good. The Vogues and Jay & Amrericans had some great harmonies. Joey Molland seemed to struggle with vocals on a couple of the songs. I wonder how long Mark Volman will be with us. He's got Lewy Dementia, the same thing that Robin Williams had. You could see the tremors in his right hand, but he was still out there having fun. Good for him.



BTW, no matter how gently I treated my albums, they always developed that odd click and pop. Once they happen they almost got ingrained in you mind. I had a Kansas album that had 2 clicks at the beginning of Carry on My Wayward Sun. I listened to that album so much that even when I hear the CD version, I hear those clicks in my mind. It's almost like I miss them.

I also have two boxes of records with no jackets. They were on the bottom shelves when my basement flooded years ago. I tossed the wet nasty jackets, but kept the records. I've cleaned quite a few, even came close to buying a VPI or Record Doctor record cleaner but I don't know that they would remove all the crap in the grooves. I would probably take an ultrasonic cleaner to really do it, plus new sleeves and jackets are going to cost as much as many of the records cost me originally. However CDs that got wet were wiped clean and sound the same as they did before the flood. Oh yeah, I tossed out about 20 reels of 1/4" tapes. A few were irreplaceable. Alas, transferring to digital wasn't something that had done, otherwise I would still have copies.

The Interesting thing is that I really don't spend a lot of time listening to music on the JBL monitors that I use for my recordings. I tend to listen mostly on the Vandersteen/Onkyo/Sony system. The Polk 5.1system is almost exclusively TV related. I do like listening to the Vandys.

You can transfer a scratchy record without the scratch sounds if you spray down the record with water before you play it while it’s wet.

I saw a video on this and it was amazing how well it worked. I would try this if I had an album that was trashed and I wanted to save it.

Weirdly for me, I think the fragility of the record and the protocol to take them out of the sleeves and place them carefully on the turntable and then place the needle down is part of the charm that makes the listening experience better. It does force you to slow down and move off your D-vise for a half hour, which is another reason records are a better listening experience.

 

[TalismanRich]

I've tried playing a record while still damp using my old D3 discwasher. I didn't notice a lot of difference. I was a bit uncomfortable about doing, as I don't want to risk gumming up the cantilever or my Ortofon cartridge.


AND... I just saw story on the news that GenZ is on another oldies kick. They are wanting point and click cameras. I'm hoping my old Pentax cameras will be worth 5X what I paid for them! I should pull them out and see if they even work. I've got an ME super with autowinder, and a full manual K1000, and about a half dozen lenses. They haven't had a roll of film in them since my daughter used the K1000 to take patron photos at the zoo about 30 years ago.

Where can you go to develop film? Maybe I can find an old Fotomat booth somewhere. Anyone remember those?

 

[Scott Baxendale]

I've tried playing a record while still damp using my old D3 discwasher. I didn't notice a lot of difference. I was a bit uncomfortable about doing, as I don't want to risk gumming up the cantilever or my Ortofon cartridge

I’d have similar concerns for my AT cartridge.

 

[TalismanRich]

I ran across this yesterday and it reminded me of how we can perceive things that don't exist. He takes a while to get there, but in the end, proves that it isn't wise to trust people's comments about how wonderful tweaks to audio gear can be just by "listening".

 

[DrewPeterson7]

This goes to my original point. If the record was originally recorded and mixed through Neve preamps shouldn’t the best playback experience also be through those same type of Neve preamps? That monitor is mounted on a swivel arm and is just pushed in front of that speaker for the photo. The engineer can position that monitor anywhere he wants over the console.

Very late to this party...

But I think this gets to the difference between what an audiophile is looking for and what an engineer is.

Audiophiles prioritize transparency and perfect reproduction.

Engineers like Neve preamps because they're NOT perfectly transparent and clean, and because they add a lot of color.

Very different purposes, using something akin to a Neve on playback would be adding additional color that wasn't in the original.

 

[Scott Baxendale]

Audiophiles prioritize transparency and perfect reproduction.

I think mix and mastering engineers do that as well. I wager that any record will sound as good or better in a $200,000 mastering studio than on any 2 million dollar HiFI system in someone’s house. It will also sound less colored in the Mastering studio.

 

[rob aylestone]

The snag with the hifi brigade is that they go beyond what the artist, the studio and mastering folk ever heard.
In the studio and mastering studio, they strive for the best product. However, they dont have gold plated mains power plugs, oxygen free cables, monitor speakers balanced on razor sharp micro points. They dont spend money on mains power filtering unless they have dirty power. They spend money on important stuff. Not hype. The hifi folk are ‘hearing’ details in the mix that the producers never did. Sometimes, some recordings have amazing clarity captured, even older tracks from the late 50’s. That was captured and then limited by the home technology available, and maybe even by the studio equipment. That, I am certain, is what sometimes they uncover in a few recordings, but probably because their system has low noise floor and very good speakers. NOT because of the speaker cable or cheap mains cables.

 

[TalismanRich]

People hear with their eyes, the cost, and their expectation as much as their ears. I'm sure we all do.

Someone recently commented here that they played a cassette recording they had into a reel to reel recorder and it sounded "better". To me, that simply doesn't make sense. It's like saying I have a Youtube video at 360P, but play it on my 4K TV and it looks better. The resolution doesn't change because of the display, it is what it always has been. We're not talking about upsampling a signal.

If anything, you've added an extra layer of degradation, noise, head bump, high frequency roll off, however small. If that is an improvement, then I don't understand audio at all!

 

[ecc83]

"Audiophiles prioritize transparency and perfect reproduction." Not at ALL what I recall Drew P.

I have not bought a "hi fi" magazine in a decade or more. I was a devotee of Hi Fi News for many years, along with Studio Sound. The other mags, "What HiFi " and such had always been subjective and tweaky and then, with a change of editor, so did HFN go that way.

One of the old guard, Peter Walker of Quad set out a challenge. He tasked anyone to demonstrate a detectable difference between two competently designed* and built power amplifiers in a double blind test.
I think the prize was 2 grand and AFAIK the money has never been collected.

Why? Because ANY amplifier company that tried to set up such a test would have to enlist the aid of the PROPER audio engineers in the back room who's voice is never heard and they would say to the Adpuff PR person..."Err, well ACTUALLY Gerald, our amplifiers are no better nor worse than all of our competitor's products" . They actually DO all sound the same!"

Audiphools are also fickle. Take the Quad 303 PA? When it came out it was universally acclaimed as one of the lowest distortion and best amps ever made to date.
Then the beardy,tweaky brigade began to slate them. "Harsh and unmusical" Move on another ten years and the same group is paying through the nose for the old amps.

*Only amplifiers of similar power output and operated wholly within their limits.


Dave.

 

[TalismanRich]

I remember when Bob Carver was challenged by Stereophile to do an amp that was equal to a Conrad Johnson amp. He ended up tweaking his M1 amp to null out and the Stereophile staff was unable to tell the difference between the high dollar CJ and his $400 M1 in double blind testing at their own place.

Carver Challenge | BobCarverCorp.com

www.bobcarvercorp.com

 

[rob aylestone]

I remember Sound on Sound magazine getting all hot and twisted when they did a double blind test on a bit of gear the hifi community loved. Hugh Robjohns reviewed something and he is a ‘real’ BBC type facts, education and good ears. His conclusions did not go down well. Its a long time back now, but my memory was that all the products you could hear, were actually accidentally or deliberately faulty by design. Everything else just was good, and unidentifiable between items.

 

[ecc83]

I remember Sound on Sound magazine getting all hot and twisted when they did a double blind test on a bit of gear the hifi community loved. Hugh Robjohns reviewed something and he is a ‘real’ BBC type facts, education and good ears. His conclusions did not go down well. Its a long time back now, but my memory was that all the products you could hear, were actually accidentally or deliberately faulty by design. Everything else just was good, and unidentifiable between items.

Maybe before my time taking the mag Rob? (Feb? 2005) Their most enlightening tests was on mic pre amps where several pres ranging in about a 10:1 price point were used on a MIDI controlled acoustic grand with the same microphones.
The clips were published blind and readers invited to 'match' recording to pre amp. The results were no better than chance.

N.B. The pre amps were all operated well below any "attitude" generating level!

Will try to dig out a link.

Interestingly the current issue has an article about the the Zeplin film. The songs were actually taken from the best vinyl records they could find for good reasons given in the text. I have not read it all yet.

Dave.

 

[DrewPeterson7]

I think mix and mastering engineers do that as well. I wager that any record will sound as good or better in a $200,000 mastering studio than on any 2 million dollar HiFI system in someone’s house. It will also sound less colored in the Mastering studio.

I think that's probably genre dependent.

If you're recording an orchestra, or maybe even an intimate jazz quartet, then sure, I could see a mix engineer philosophically seeing their job as a documentarian, there simply to capture and preserve the magic in the room as transparently as possible.

But, the number of engineers who have a mic library full of reference mics and reference mics only, is likely a very, very, very small number. Especially in the rock world, there's a lot of very conscious tone-shaping that's part of the recording process. Color is part of the process - a lot of the appeal of vintage preamps for example is the way their transformers could color a sound while pushed, tape was prized for its compression and very subtle distortion when recorded hot, etc etc etc.

The idea that the only way to truly hear a recording the way it was intended is to play it back through the same preamps it was recorded on... well, doesn't seem to align with what I know about the process of recording a rock album, at least.

 

[DrewPeterson7]

"Audiophiles prioritize transparency and perfect reproduction." Not at ALL what I recall Drew P.

Well, they probably claim they do. There's a lot of that world that doesn't make much sense to me.

But, on the recording side, there's absolutely a time for transparency and getting a sound from source to disc with as little coloration as humanly possible... but more often than not, the process of capturing a sound is *also* an excuse for artistic tone-shaping.

 

[TalismanRich]

Maybe before my time taking the mag Rob? (Feb? 2005) Their most enlightening tests was on mic pre amps where several pres ranging in about a 10:1 price point were used on a MIDI controlled acoustic grand with the same microphones.
The clips were published blind and readers invited to 'match' recording to pre amp. The results were no better than chance.

N.B. The pre amps were all operated well below any "attitude" generating level!

Will try to dig out a link.

Interestingly the current issue has an article about the the Zeplin film. The songs were actually taken from the best vinyl records they could find for good reasons given in the text. I have not read it all yet.

Dave.

I just spent some time reading that article, and if anything, it points out how flawed the mastering system has been in the past. For me, the most telling statement is "We made a very conscious choice to go with the discs" says MacMahon "and the reason is that the tape is often so different from what the public heard". and "What the public heard on their record players is not what you would have heard played back in the studio".

Vinyl mastering requires massive compromises, and varied a lot from lacquer to lacquer, yet it's so often held up as the "gold standard". Then we finally get a system that can provide exactly what the artist heard in the studio and we don't want it.

 

[rob aylestone]

That sits well with my feelings Rich. Back in the 70s/80s, i worked selling hifi. We also sold music centres, with everything in one box, no really good components, and we would get every new item in, put on tales of mystery and imagination or dire straits and decide if, for its price it was going to be a seller or not. We took on a brand of speakers just because they sounded good. Hifi separates sold less well and were often overpriced, but quite often people would aks what was our most expensive turntable or amp or speakers and even though that combination was rotten sounding, they bought them. We had a speaker comparator. Play the track and switch speakers with a button. This was always amazing. Often we would get local bands in with their two track master and dub off cassette copies. The chrome tape BASF copy was always clean and clear. I liked the DL8 celestions and still use them. The adams i bought last year are good speakers, but not the same sound. At all.

 

[ecc83]

I agreed with the logic of going with the vinyl copy because, as they say in the article, that is the mix the fans will know and love. A fresh mix from master tapes would be technically better but would always be some OTHER persons idea of how it all should go. Plus I seem to recall that not all of the tapes were available anyway?

Then, they did not use any old record! They sought out the very best virgin or one or two times played copies. They were played on an EMT TT with SME arm (I am betting the 12 incher?) and they even optimized the tracking geometry for each track! Something I don't think even THE most ardent audiophile would do? I was slightly hissed off that there was no mention AFAIK of the cartridge used nor the pre amp. Had I been given the job (dream on!) Ortofon MC and a Self pre amp.

At its very best vinyl is comparable in sound quality to the best analogue tape but such quality can rarely be realized in the real world. FAR too much of a faff.

Dave.

 

[Scott Baxendale]

I think that's probably genre dependent.

If you're recording an orchestra, or maybe even an intimate jazz quartet, then sure, I could see a mix engineer philosophically seeing their job as a documentarian, there simply to capture and preserve the magic in the room as transparently as possible.

But, the number of engineers who have a mic library full of reference mics and reference mics only, is likely a very, very, very small number. Especially in the rock world, there's a lot of very conscious tone-shaping that's part of the recording process. Color is part of the process - a lot of the appeal of vintage preamps for example is the way their transformers could color a sound while pushed, tape was prized for its compression and very subtle distortion when recorded hot, etc etc etc.

The idea that the only way to truly hear a recording the way it was intended is to play it back through the same preamps it was recorded on... well, doesn't seem to align with what I know about the process of recording a rock album, at least.

That is a little off of what my point is, but I get what you are saying. I am saying that there is a point of diminishing returns when listening to an album recorded on these super high end systems and I do not believe that there is any improvement in the sound once you cross that point. I think that point is exactly at point of the quality of gear used to capture the recording. Sure a million dollar HiFI system in your home will sound different than it sounded in the mastering studio but it won’t sound better, just different.

 

[DrewPeterson7]

That is a little off of what my point is, but I get what you are saying. I am saying that there is a point of diminishing returns when listening to an album recorded on these super high end systems and I do not believe that there is any improvement in the sound once you cross that point. I think that point is exactly at point of the quality of gear used to capture the recording. Sure a million dollar HiFI system in your home will sound different than it sounded in the mastering studio but it won’t sound better, just different.

No, not really... My point is that in a studio, your choice of preamps, EQs, compressors, what have you... the point there is to change the sound, to shape it, to make it fit together in different ways, but overall to make creative changes.

When playing it back, while maybe perfect transparency isn't the goal, it's also certainly not to make creative changes to the music you're listening to. You have a different set of musical objectives than creative tone shaping.

It has nothing to do with diminishing returns and everything to do with objective and intent and desire to make creative changes to the source sound you're recording. That's why running a Neve hot in a recording studio is a desirable option, but no one suggests running a record player into a Neve bus before sending it to your mains because "that's how the record was intended to be heard."