The listening sessions...

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tjohnston

tjohnston

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I have been listening to that Listening Sessions website where samples of different mics and preamps are posted. After listening to everysingle thing a couple of times I came to a conclusion. I was really surprised to hear how small the difference was between the cheap stuff and the good stuff. I can hear the difference between mics but its not as big as I thought it would be. Another thing that struck me after viewing other peoples equipment list is that not many people have those thousand dollar mics. Even the studios in the phone book in my area didnt have an extensive mic locker.. I looked at their equipment list and didnt see any 1000 dollar neumanns or Blue or that sort of thing. The thought kinda of struck me that mabey I really dont need that 1000 dollar vocal mic.
 
The differences are larger when listening with a good monitoring stsyem and better source... (RA, MP3, etc... suck).
 
You'll need better monitoring, and even 16/44.1 isn't really the greatest. I'll guessing you don't have an audiophile DAC? The jitter alone in your DAC can destroy differences. Combine that with a MP3 and it's useless. Also, try using a cheap mic preamp over 16 or more tracks, and then use an expensive mic preamp over 16 or more tracks, and the differences start to become even more apparent. Cheap stuff makes things much harder to mix also...the tracks almost fight each other.

Nathan Eldred
atlasproaudio.com
 
Are there samples other than MP3 on the site? I could only find 192 kps mp3s


:)
Chris
 
The other differences become much more apparent when you're mixing a track in the context of a song. Great mics need very little, if any, EQ'ing, and usually just sound "great" in a mix. That particular quality is very hard to hear when you solo a vocal track, especially if you don't know what it is that you're looking for.

-mg
 
BTW, I had the exact same reaction to the Studio Projects listening CD's the first time I heard them. After time, and really careful listening, I started to understand...

-mg
 
I applaud Dot for all of the effort he put in to the tests, but frankly, you need to hear them in the context of a mix . . . and you need to hear them on several different types of singers / instruments in order to really get the jist of things.

I've heard many a great-sounding tracks in solo mode pull a disappearing act once you add other instruments / voices. Good mics give their tracks more substance . . . more staying power.
 
Once you get past the minor miracle that music can travel over a wire... it's all a game of inches. As you add tracks, as you build the composition, the arrangement of not only instruments, but of sonic textures it all begins to add up. Does it really make a difference? Maybe, maybe not.

Often you can use the equipment to assist you with the presentation of the musical statements and wring every ounce of available emotion out of each performance by selecting the appropriate bit of hardware... but the hardware employed to capture and combine the various aspects of the recording are far less important than the emotion of the performances, the arrangements, the depth of writing.

It's a game of inches... sometimes those inches can add up to be yards... sometimes they're absolutely irrelevant. Audio for the sake of "audio" is boring as hell... audio for the sake of supporting the musical statement can be down right inspiring.

Best of luck with it!!
 
NathanEldred said:
You'll need better monitoring, and even 16/44.1 isn't really the greatest. I'll guessing you don't have an audiophile DAC? The jitter alone in your DAC can destroy differences. Combine that with a MP3 and it's useless. Also, try using a cheap mic preamp over 16 or more tracks, and then use an expensive mic preamp over 16 or more tracks, and the differences start to become even more apparent. Cheap stuff makes things much harder to mix also...the tracks almost fight each other.

Nathan Eldred
atlasproaudio.com
Click to expand...
True. I did vocals with a Neumann TLM103 and a "chinese" Neumann copy. Standalone, the vocals sound good and close to each other. When mixed in a 20 track song, the TLM vocals standout far better than the copy. The copy gets buried badly.
 
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