Time to stock up on Behringer gear!

[robgb]

ELitest is what? Top notch pro recording equipment is made to be used 24/7 and get the best preformance possible.

Man, you just don't GET it, do you? Elitist is not about wanting and using top notch pro equipment. Everybody wants that, although few can afford it.

Elitist is ASSUMING that if it doesn't COST a lot, it must be crap. Elitist is turning your nose up at a perfectly respectable product simply because it doesn't have a "designer" label.

This isn't a debate about cheap gear vs. expensive gear. It's about idiots who think it's worthless if it doesn't cost the price of a small car.

 

[CoolCat]

here in my car..

This isn't a debate about cheap gear vs. expensive gear. It's about idiots who think it's worthless if it doesn't cost the price of a small car.

thats what i'm talkin bout.
i got some good cheap gear and some sht cheap gear.
i don't have any cheap expensive gear.

PLEASE SEND ME MONEY OR EXPENSIVE RECORDING EQUIPMENT
TO HELP FIGHT THE ELITISTS (E-bucks at ZZsound's ok too):

PO BOX 0091287632864734872634

HELP STOMP OUT RECORDING ELITISTS-
VINTAGE TUBE PRE-AMP BURNING PROTEST MARCH coming soon....

this is agas...

 

[robgb]

Am I the only person on this forum that thinks the quality of commercial recordings has taken a huge nosedive over the last 10 years?

I agree. Most of it is overcompressed crap.

As for "pro-quality," I also agree. What exactly does that mean? If you're talking to a recording engineer, it means one thing. If you're talking to Joe Public, it means another. If you're talking to an average musician, it means something else altogether.

Pro quality is usually about PERFORMANCE more than anything else. But for the engineers in the crowd, I'm sure pro quality means that it has that "sheen," that smoothness that we associate with today's music.

For the musician, he's usually wondering what he can do to get that "pro" sound and you know what the answer is nine times out of ten? Be a better musician. Write better songs. The most expensive equipment in the world won't help him.

I was recently listening to Crosby/Nash's new album and while it sounds great, certainly pro quality (soundwise as well as performance wise), sheen and all, I guarantee I could produce something at home on low cost equipment that would, if not equal it, certainly come very close. So close that Joe Public wouldn't know the difference.

Why? Because he cares about the ARTIST, the SONG, the PERFORMANCE, much more than the quality of the recording. Otherwise he wouldn't be compressing them into Mp3s, or listening to bootlegs.

I don't really give a crap what some recording engineer thinks. There's certainly no such thing as "quality control" in "pro quality."

 

[acorec]

What do you mean by Pro quality? Do you mean the heavily compressed "shyte" that usually has recorded & mixed with Pro-Tools on the sleeve?

A lot of budget gear now including Mics are perfectly capable of producing "Pro quality recordings". Does not "Pro" simply mean someone who makes earnings from a given discipline, are you saying no one ever made money from a recording using say an SP C1.

It makes me laugh when I read the Magazine articles where the engineer pontificates on how they had to scour the country to obtain a vintage "Superduper 1500xlx" compressor or a "Nevey 1985" pre to obtain the perfect sound and its pretty obvious to anyone with a pair of ears that they could have done the job just as well with a Portastudio.

Pro Quality-- my arse

Am I the only person on this forum that thinks the quality of commercial recordings has taken a huge nosedive over the last 10 years?

Tony

Sorry but I was getting splinters from sitting on the fence

Most of the recordings of today are relaesed to compete on the radio waves. The recordings you are referring to have been slaughtered (most times) in the mastering process. The heavy compression and EQ is applied at mastering to get the levels up so the listener will notice the recording on the radio or in a CD player. If you can get to a pro studio and listen to a good recording, I assure you that the sound will kick the shit out of damn near any home recording. Yes, the commercial CDs have gone way downhill, but it is the record comapnies forcing the mastering houses to do it. The original recordings are intact and may see the light of day the way they were *originally* intended to sound someday, maybe.

 

[acorec]

I agree. Most of it is overcompressed crap.

As for "pro-quality," I also agree. What exactly does that mean? If you're talking to a recording engineer, it means one thing. If you're talking to Joe Public, it means another. If you're talking to an average musician, it means something else altogether.

Pro quality is usually about PERFORMANCE more than anything else. But for the engineers in the crowd, I'm sure pro quality means that it has that "sheen," that smoothness that we associate with today's music.

For the musician, he's usually wondering what he can do to get that "pro" sound and you know what the answer is nine times out of ten? Be a better musician. Write better songs. The most expensive equipment in the world won't help him.

I was recently listening to Crosby/Nash's new album and while it sounds great, certainly pro quality (soundwise as well as performance wise), sheen and all, I guarantee I could produce something at home on low cost equipment that would, if not equal it, certainly come very close. So close that Joe Public wouldn't know the difference.

Why? Because he cares about the ARTIST, the SONG, the PERFORMANCE, much more than the quality of the recording. Otherwise he wouldn't be compressing them into Mp3s, or listening to bootlegs.

I don't really give a crap what some recording engineer thinks. There's certainly no such thing as "quality control" in "pro quality."

I think I have lost what your point is. Pro studios do major label recordings. When labels pay over $100/hr, do you think it is important that the tape machine croaks out? Any pro equipment is designed with the best sound/performance amd *reliability* in mind. I am only arguing that pro equipment costs tons because it costs tons to design and manufacture. Any pro studio who values their clients and reputation will not go running to get abudget gear period. Home recordists can get away with budget gear. Elitists are people who have no real use for high-end gear, but dismiss low end gear because of name. A real pro dismisses budget gear because of *reliability* issues *more* than the sound. Sure, you can use that SP C1 mic until the switch breaks, the stand mount snaps, some wires open up, and a host of other reliability issues happen. Budget gear is not designed to be used in a pro studio on a daily basis.

 

[Mr. Moon]

THIS is all you need to be a "Pro!!"

...Need I say more??!!

 

[SonicAlbert]

Today’s market has come so far, that what costs $250K a few years ago, costs a few thousand today. The result is that even modest priced gear can produce very good results.

I think this is a false conclusion. Name ten pieces of audio gear that used to cost $250,000 and now cost a few thousand. No computer gear allowed.

We are talking about audio gear, not putting a Neve in a software DAW mixer. Big difference. I am truly interested in having you list some gear that used to cost in the hundreds of thousands and is now cheap. For the list to be valid, the newer gear must has similar or identical performance in any way.

If you mean mixing boards, there are of course $250,000 mixing boards now. The high end boards have not come down in price.

 

[Ed Dixon]

Digital recorders is the first thing that comes to mind. They are much cheaper today than even a few years ago. It's a little like DVD players. When they first came out for PCs, they were in the $1000 range. Today they're less than $100.

Most consumer electronics has gone up in capability and down in price. The business PCs I bought 10 years ago cost about $10,000. A Dell today, with more capability, is $500.

10 years ago, doing audio recording in a digital form involved lots of gear, most of it not low in cost. Today you can buy an 8 track digital recorder for less than $500. Add a $500 PC and some software and you can mix up to 48 tracks of pure digital data. The results can be quite good.

Ed

 

[wilkee]

Yes, the commercial CDs have gone way downhill, but it is the record comapnies forcing the mastering houses to do it. The original recordings are intact and may see the light of day the way they were *originally* intended to sound someday, maybe.

I have no doubt that what you say is indeed correct and there has to be loads of producers that must be very frustrated at what the marketing guys have forced them to do to their masterpieces. But at the end of the day they heve access to gear I can only dream about and still produce crap.

I do think that one element of "Pro Gear" that does perform way beyond that of the budget variety and that is the Monitors. Although a lot of the gear that I use is most certainly of the Budget variety my monitors are not * and they grace some of the large studio's around the world.

I am always frustrated when I see people discussing the pro's and con's of specific gear when I know that the monitoring gear that they are using is not up to the standard to allow for meaningfull evaluation.

Because of the technology involved in true monitors the good ones will NEVER be cheap.

Tony

* ATC SCM50's

 

[SonicAlbert]

Digital recorders is the first thing that comes to mind. They are much cheaper today than even a few years ago. It's a little like DVD players. When they first came out for PCs, they were in the $1000 range. Today they're less than $100.

Most consumer electronics has gone up in capability and down in price. The business PCs I bought 10 years ago cost about $10,000. A Dell today, with more capability, is $500.

10 years ago, doing audio recording in a digital form involved lots of gear, most of it not low in cost. Today you can buy an 8 track digital recorder for less than $500. Add a $500 PC and some software and you can mix up to 48 tracks of pure digital data. The results can be quite good.

Ed

Okay, but this kind of not what we are talking about. This whole discussion has been about pro gear versus prosumer/consumer gear pretending to be pro gear. In your response you literally describe how consumer gear has gotten so much less expensive. Kind of made my point for me, regarding this whole thread.

Name ten *pro* audio pieces of gear or types of gear that cost $250,000 and now cost thousands. The important factor is that the current gear be of equal quality ot the old, and that the same type of gear existed then that exists now.

I am going to throw this out there: an analog Studer 24 track sounds better than a cheap $100-500 digital soundcard. So those units are not comparible, because the sound of the new cheap gear has to match in order to prove your theory.

I will agree that digital can probably equal analog in the sound satisfaction department, but that the actual costs of acheiving that have not changed too much. In order to have a comparably high quality digital recording to old high end analog tape machines, you need high end converters. I'm talking converters like Prism, top model Davry, and a few others. Needless to say, these units cost probalby in the same area that the old fine analog machines cost. Same performance, same cost.

That's what I'm looking for: to back up your statement you need to come up with a few less expensive units now that match the performance of old high end. I highly doubt you, or anyone can come up with such a list. Most of the units I expect to see on a list like that will be prosumer home studio stuff that will have a good feature list, but not the same kind of performance beyond that.

It's tough challenge, I'm really interested to see if anybody can come up with a list like this.

 

[acorec]

Okay, but this kind of not what we are talking about. This whole discussion has been about pro gear versus prosumer/consumer gear pretending to be pro gear. In your response you literally describe how consumer gear has gotten so much less expensive. Kind of made my point for me, regarding this whole thread.

Name ten *pro* audio pieces of gear or types of gear that cost $250,000 and now cost thousands. The important factor is that the current gear be of equal quality ot the old, and that the same type of gear existed then that exists now.

I am going to throw this out there: an analog Studer 24 track sounds better than a cheap $100-500 digital soundcard. So those units are not comparible, because the sound of the new cheap gear has to match in order to prove your theory.

I will agree that digital can probably equal analog in the sound satisfaction department, but that the actual costs of acheiving that have not changed too much. In order to have a comparably high quality digital recording to old high end analog tape machines, you need high end converters. I'm talking converters like Prism, top model Davry, and a few others. Needless to say, these units cost probalby in the same area that the old fine analog machines cost. Same performance, same cost.

That's what I'm looking for: to back up your statement you need to come up with a few less expensive units now that match the performance of old high end. I highly doubt you, or anyone can come up with such a list. Most of the units I expect to see on a list like that will be prosumer home studio stuff that will have a good feature list, but not the same kind of performance beyond that.

It's tough challenge, I'm really interested to see if anybody can come up with a list like this.

I think what his argument means, in reality, is that some equpiment, like digital recorders, serve the same *function* as the old school multitrack tape recorders at a fraction of the cost. His argument falls apart in that the new digital recorder (that is now a fraction of the cost of the analog tape recorder) will not even get close to the sound of the analog tape recorder. A digital system (RADAR, for example) that gets the same quality of sound as the old analog tape recorder costs about the same as a new analog tape recorder.

 

[robgb]

I am going to throw this out there: an analog Studer 24 track sounds better than a cheap $100-500 digital soundcard. So those units are not comparible, because the sound of the new cheap gear has to match in order to prove your theory.

Well, you're certainly taking the recording engineer's approach to this and that's understandable. And in that mode, of course you're going to prefer the pro gear over the budget gear.

But to the public at large, the audience most of us are targeting, they cannot tell the difference between something produced on pro gear and something produced on budget gear, IF the talent is there.

So maybe we're talking apples and oranges.

But for someone to look down his nose at budget gear because it can't get that "pro" sound is just silly. The pro sound is completely subjective.

If you're collecting bucks for the tunes you mastered off your portastudio, you've achieved the pro sound....

 

[SonicAlbert]

But to the public at large, the audience most of us are targeting, they cannot tell the difference between something produced on pro gear and something produced on budget gear, IF the talent is there.

But here's where we differ: I think the public *can* tell the difference. They of course are not trained in identifying exactly what part of the signal chain they don't like, but they certainly will have the correct response intuitively most of the time. At least that's what I believe.

Record sales stink for most labels. I personally don't believe it is only because of pirating of records. I think new records are not thrilling people, so they are not buying. Record sales are poor since DAW's took over. Coincidence? Maybe, but not entirely.

You saw 80,000 people boo a terrible performance at the college national championship football game.

People *can* tell the difference.

I'm not a recording engineer, and I am not taking the recording engineer's approach on this. I'm a composer, and a lover of good music, and good sounding music.

I have to keep reminding everyone about the point of my posts:

There's nothing wrong with budget gear, there's a place for it in the scheme of things. But let's just call it what it is and *not pretend* it's something better than it is.

What's so hard about saying "I bought this cheap Behringer thing, it's the lowest price I could possibly find for an item like this, and it's not nearly as good as what else it out there but it serves my purpose".

What is so freaking hard about saying that?

Instead we get: "I bought this cheap Behringer thing, it's the lowest price I could possibly find for an item like this, and it's as good as anything out there at any price, and even if it isn't it doesn't matter anyway because nobody can tell".

I'm just saying to stop kidding oneself with this kind of talk. Yes, budget gear has a place, but let's acknowledge that it is what it is. Only then can we really have a decent discussion about how to *compensate for the weaknesses* of the gear. If we are blinded by ego or whatever into having to feel like we have great gear for $69, then the discussion never gets past that into more productive areas.

 

[noisedude]

My theory on record sales is quite simple. All the tunes and chords have already been used ... you need something that's either innovative (increasingly rare) or something with genuine emotion/passion that connects with people to make your music stand out above the generic sterile humdrum.

Maybe that generic sterility has come from digital gear ... maybe not. But if your music does not connect with people, it won't sell. Simply re-hashing the music of a decade ago with new production techniques doesn't cut it, because all the music of the 90s still sounds modern enough to not need replacing.

 

[wilkee]

Simply re-hashing the music of a decade ago with new production techniques doesn't cut it, because all the music of the 90s still sounds modern enough to not need replacing.

Nik

I think quality original music is still out there but because of the rampant rise in commercialism we hardly get the chance to hear it.

One of my fav. records of all time is one of the first digital productions (Rush-- Moving Pictures*) and it still sounds better than 90% of modern stuff with that use way better convertors etc.

Tony

* Rush hated it and went back to analogue for the next recording

 

[noisedude]

I know what you're saying. I just think that real people with passion and good musicianship will not go out of style. I can't stand to listen to Robert Johnson because it's so noisy ... but I will sure as heck by the Eric Clapton covers album. Jeff Buckley will never sound dated to me. Franz Ferdinand or The Strokes will not last long though, because they are a stylised sound with no substance. Once people are bored of their impersonation of older acts they will disappear off the scene.

I might be wrong of course

 

[robgb]

Record sales stink for most labels. I personally don't believe it is only because of pirating of records. I think new records are not thrilling people, so they are not buying.

I'm sorry, but aren't they, for the most part, putting out records that have the "pro" sound, using "pro" equipment?

The reasons records aren't selling is because the MUSIC sucks. End of story.

I don't buy into the old, they-"sense"-something-wrong-with-it argument. Most people are listening to mp3s or the radio, for godsakes.

I've heard the same about video vs. film. The purists say, gotta use film, the audience will sense it's not film, no matter how good the video looks.

Yet Michael Mann makes a great movie on video called Collateral and nobody's complaining. In fact, nearly everyone I know who saw the movie and loved it, didn't even realize it was shot on video.

You overestimate the public. If the story's good, they'll watch it. If the song is good, they'll buy it (or download it).

Like I said before, the great oldies were recorded on systems that are considered antiques today, the sound is unsophisticated and raw to our modern ears, some of it was even released monophonic. Yet people love them because the SONGS and the performances are great.

As for your stance on budget gear, I agree for the most part. Budget gear is inferior. But I DO believe that you can produce a PRO recording using budget gear.

And, as for the Studio Projects C1 discussion that was part of this or a related thread -- Apparently many well-trained ears think it comes very close to the U87. So, to my mind, it's POSSIBLE to find budget gear that can compete.

Generalizing about ANYTHING is foolish.

 

[ggunn]

Excuse my newbieness, but isn't this BB supposed to be about Home Recording?

Yeah, I know, the stuff I can afford sounds like crap to you "golden ears" professional types, but I didn't come here to be patronized. I'm looking for ways to make my Home Recordings (there's that name again) sound better, as good as I can make them within the limits of what I can afford. I will never have my own recording facility that will compete with Electric Ladyland (or whoever is the hot studio du jour); I've got a good day job in another field that I have no intention of leaving. I'm a semi pro player in a couple of bands, and I'm looking to document our work and generate some demo material.

The kind of info I am looking for is whether the Behringer (or whatever) XYZ is a better choice for my needs than the Mackie (or whatever) comparable model, not that they are all crap and I should go out and spend $300K on some real gear. I'm not going to do that, and that's not home recording, izzit?

Sorry for the rant, you guys; I really have found some good info in here.

 

[DJL]

FWIW, I have a Behringer CT100 cable tester (I've had it for years)... and it still works great.

 

[acorec]

Excuse my newbieness, but isn't this BB supposed to be about Home Recording?

Yeah, I know, the stuff I can afford sounds like crap to you "golden ears" professional types, but I didn't come here to be patronized. I'm looking for ways to make my Home Recordings (there's that name again) sound better, as good as I can make them within the limits of what I can afford. I will never have my own recording facility that will compete with Electric Ladyland (or whoever is the hot studio du jour); I've got a good day job in another field that I have no intention of leaving. I'm a semi pro player in a couple of bands, and I'm looking to document our work and generate some demo material.

The kind of info I am looking for is whether the Behringer (or whatever) XYZ is a better choice for my needs than the Mackie (or whatever) comparable model, not that they are all crap and I should go out and spend $300K on some real gear. I'm not going to do that, and that's not home recording, izzit?

Sorry for the rant, you guys; I really have found some good info in here.

The best way to get better at recording within the limits of your equipment is to record. Behringer, Mackie, whatever is all the same. There are really such limited differences that it is a tossup. The best choice for your needs is the one that works best for your needs. That is best decided by you and your experience. Buy, try, return if your needs are not met.


Now, the difference between high-end equipment and the buy, try, return policy is that high-end stuff works and sounds like what you hear on the millions of commercial recordings you hear everyday. The buy, try, and return low end stuff sounds like what you hear on the billions of basement recordings you hear everyday.