If you were serious about sound you would...

I must say I agree with @mahgister in an important way, acoustics is missing in so many audiophiles rooms that are very serious about playback it's sad. 

The point of this thread is very simple - if you were serious about playback you would .... answer:

Reproduce a studio mixing room. Mixing studios all over the world mix music after it is recorded they take many tracks of individual instruments vocals effects and mix them together to create the musicians and producers vision for the music. In the professional world you build the best room you have money for and you use monitors and equipment that any experienced professional mixer can use when he or she sits down at the desk. If you use boutique non mainstream equipment the mixer will not know how to use it or trust the mix and the producer will pay more money and that studio will go under.

If you as an audiophile have better equipment than the studio uses you must ask yourself why? None of  the extra musicality you get from the 50k DAC is heard at a typical mixing session that extra information you are getting is not used or mixed or a part of the music that you are supposed to have.

Having musicians play for you is  not a good idea because you aren't able to mix and change the sounds in the same way the studio can, unless you are listening to an acoustic trio or quartet with no effects live musicians also won't sound as good as a well mixed group on your high quality playback system because your seat won't be as good as the microphones placement (very important) in light of the acoustics of the room, the dynamics of the instrument, the reflections of the room the loudness of the instruments and many times the quality of the musicians and their different individual talent levels. 

@mahgister Sorry brother you are still wrong about getting better sound than the studio for at least 2 reasons.

#1 The 2nd law of thermo dynamics is entropy it says that you can’t make more information unless an outside source adds it, we’ve talked about how very soon AI will have the ability to add information at a huge cost but we are not there yet. (machine learning, yes that is here now but not adding info in the same way).

#2 You are not meant to hear more than what is mixed, there are often times when the microphones as raised and lowered effects and dynamic patches are used because of non optimal (often it is when there is one bad back ground vocalist) recordings and thus mixing is always compromised and the trick is do the best with what you have, we aren’t meant to have perfect reproductions of the musicians playing because those musicians may be drunk, high or just having a bad day. Compromises always compromises and mixing defensively is more common than audiophiles ever imagined.

@jon_5912 

Yes, I mentioned those blue horn speakers because they are the speakers that mixers say “dude I got to mix on the blue horns”. They are fairly new and changing monitoring as well as the Genelec “The Ones” speakers that are much les expensive. Speakers are a caveat to my argument, speakers are the exception because they can create a better extension of the sound the mix in the studio was supposed to give you, not just high and low frequencies but more accuracy for everything. I know it sounds like I’m contradicting myself but it’s like this. At what volume level do you listen to your music well that makes a huge difference to what frequencies actually go in your ears, this is not an electronics question but an acoustic principle. Speakers are part of the acoustic mating of your listening and your ears not a DAC or an amplifier. 

Recording acoustic performances and leaving them untouched is practically never done anymore, the best imaging and hair raising recording I’ve done was with a single stereo mic for a choir with no orchestra if there is an orchestra you need multiple mics because the trumpets are always to loud and cover the important obo part which is playing ppp at the same time the brass section is playing. Conductors can’t understand why their arrangement has to follow the laws of physics when doing a -you are in the audience recording-.

@dabel So good to hear the CR-1 is very unique, I'm not sure even with digital switching and processing you can get the same outcome. Thanks for mentioning.

@onhwy61 SSL is used in top studios, Pro Tools MTRX is standard, the Meyer Bullhorns are just making there way in now but they are way ahead of everyone else. The point is this small list is what many top recording studios use and everyone knows you can't make the recording any better than the original (until AI becomes common in a few years). Playback quality has nothing to do with microphones, the signal is going to be what it is microphone placement is done before the recording so changing microphones has nothing to do with playback sorry but you are confused even as you are impugning my 40 years of experience in studios, production sound, Emmys, Oscars, Golden Reels, and millions of dollars of recording equipment purchases. 

@lalitk I don't understand this

//“How is it possible to get better sound than the best recording studio gear? ”

For starters, buy a better preamp and amp and not settle with mid-fi gear like PS Audio. //

Can you explain to me how you can record something with a poor sounding preamp then use a higher quality preamp and make it better? This is why I've spent millions on my recording equipment over the years because it had to be the best, if a piece of equipment down the line could make the recording better I couldn't have charged so much for my recording equipment originally. 

@mahgister Perfection in sound has nothing to do with this, I'm saying that the signal can't be better (more accurate) than the original. There is a limit to the accuracy of the playback the limit is the quality of the equipment doing the original recording and mix. Audiophiles often spend several hundred thousand easily on equipment but if you look at it in terms of using top recording studio equipment anything above a few hundred K is wast. I'm not talking about looks or room acoustics of course that has nothing to do with playback I'm talking about 170K$ audiophile preamps that are probably much better than any preamp that was used in the recording originally therefore wasted money. Hope that makes sense. 

@coralkong I'd like to ask you which of items on my equipment list are ridiculous. I assume you don't think the playback signal can be made better after it's been recorded so the limit on playback quality is the original equipment used. I'd like to know why you don't think the recording studio equipment isn't quality limiting? If I'm understanding your post correctly?

@coralkong The producers job in the recording studio is to help the musician get the most out of his own talent, the engineer puts the technology together to facilitate that vision. Often the producer doesn't want some instruments to sound their best as far as what the instrument maker wanted when he made the instrument, distortion, overdriving, tape saturation all kinds of "mistakes" that were used to create art. I'm not talking about that I'm talking about what should be the the heart of any good playback system. For me I have some tube amps a tube preamp and I love the way they sound but they are not accurate because I have a mixing studio in the same room as my audiophile system. If you love the music then you sorta are committed to the way the musician and producer wanted the recording to sound the day they mixed and mastered the song. Accuracy not your preference is what I mean.

So If you take 2 channels of high end studio preamps SSL, and run it through studio standard processing Avid Pro Tools, then play them back on a speaker system at least as revealing as the studio monitors (that is easy for good audiophile speakers in general) you have a limit of quality. When we buy every expensive audiophile equipment to playback these songs we are not revealing what the musicians and producers envisioned to the point that our equipment is better than the studios we are in no-mans-land because the engineer and the producer haven't heard the things in the original recording that we have and that is also inaccurate.

Also Abby Road Studios uses lots of audiophile equipment because they make a lot of money from it, product placement is the name for it in the industry. Speakers are the things that can be the most problematic I only mentioned the Bluehorn speakers because they use newest tech. 

@roxy54 Not bragging at all nor did I say I knew everything about sound. I'm just saying something that is practically never discussed here and that is the fact that you can't make the signal better (more accurate) than the original so why not use the equipment it was recorded on, in most cases that equipment is not as expensive as hi end audiophile equipment. 

@bikeboy52 Yes you nailed it I don't think the vast majority is serious about sound they are serious about feeling good about music and enjoying it satisfying their own preferences. You seem very confident in your assertion tell me why I'm wrong. Don't forget I'm talking about having the most accurate playback system.

@p05129 Just go to TAS and see what amps the editor uses in his reference system BHK 600, he could use and have used practically every amp there is but he chose that one, they don't suck. I do have to say the BHK Preamp is noisy I've had 3 of them and I can't get rid of it because it sounds nice (not accurate) but nice and it has 5 XLR input channels. The new DAC is a work in progress but has potential to fight way above its price, the SACD Transport is great. PS Audio is interesting because they are right on the edge of being great with most everything they make.
Thanks

@audioman58 Sorry I'm not getting my point across to you at all. I'm saying that since audio accuracy can't be more accurate than the original recording by definition, even if the recording is done on sub standard studio equipment it is what the musician and producers and mastering studio OKed. So why is it that professional gear is so rarely used in audiophile systems. Simply get the equipment from a top 10 studio in the world (maybe not Abby Road because of all the product placement) but then you have a very solid playback system. Room acoustics, looks and such are not part of the playback system. Why is it never considered? I'm not talking about the most accurate audiophile equipment or a debate between tubes and transistors, tubes are used in microphones in great studios but that is about all. Of course there are exceptions to every idea but hopefully this group is smart enough to understand that the exception is not the rule. 

@roxy54 The reason to use studio equipment is because it produces the original recording and you can't do better than that. The name of this discussion is "If you were serious about sound you would.." Because of that I don't care about hearing preferences of the end user the preferences of the producer musician and engineer are the important thing, tone controls no, a person who cares about sound puts money into the room not tone controls, vacuum tube or class D have nothing to do with this discussion. 

What you have to justify as an audiophile is on one hand you do know how you can get the most accurate sound and on the other hand is your ego, esthetic, look at my system factor, what else can it be. if you don't care about getting the most accurate sound then you are suiting your personal preferences, you don't care about the sound but you care about your preferences, the differences is very important, seeking accuracy in the sound is at least true and honoring to the work that the recording process and years of practice from the musician the personal preference branch is ego or something like that. Thanks for your response

@wolf_garcia I agree with you about live sound I’ve done it for many decades and it ruined live concerts mostly I only go to one place to listen to music, the Smith center in Las Vegas it sounds great and I only go when big jazz acts are there they can afford to hire great mixers. Of course you wouldn’t buy 100s of SSL preamps or a full board they sell 2 channel rack mount channels you don’t even need Pro Tools I only add Pro Tools because most every studio uses it to record. It surprisingly doesn’t take much to copy a top studio when you are only using stereo. The money is spent at the studio buying microphones, mixers and they spend a lot of money on the listening room, the speakers are usually not as expensive as good audiophile speakers but that isn’t the important thing.

If you looked through your favorite albums and looked at the most common studio they were recorded at, probably Capitol Records wouldn’t it would be smart to copy their playback equipment (they use Neve not SSL by the way) they mix analog and then record to Pro Tools at 192k. They have spent the money so you don’t have to. just copy the very good preamps top studios use and listen on top studio standard speakers someone mentioned JBLs, ya great this will get you accurate sound. If you want amazing wow sound put in 4 subs like I have and listen to the exhibition of sound but don’t say it’s audiophile or accurate. Hope that’s clear, I’m really sorry I haven’t been able to make my point very well, or this group is unwilling to accept it’s simplicity, I’m not sure.

@mapman Great answer, but do you care about the most accurate sound or do you care about your enjoyment of music accurate sound be damned? Obviously you have given your expertise to the audiophile world which all around here appreciate. One of those branches is objective the other is subjective, your objective experience and commitment to audio is valuable but to me your subjective commitment to audio is only valuable is your ideas line up to my subjective ideas promoting confirmation bias something only the marketing department of audio manufactures need. I would really like your answer I don't think there is a right or wrong answer. 

@mahgister I appreciate your point of view and I agree with all of what you said except for I feel like you have fallen into the common audiophile mindset that is simply wrong, I don't mean perspectively or subjectively wrong I mean wrong as in the difference between black and white. Many on this forum have no ability to separate the music from the sound and I should have spelled out the difference in my OP. Today live recordings of orchestras aren't recorded with 2 mics buttoned up and sent out to the masses to enjoy they have hours or days of post production, including filters, delays, reverbs, and loads of different kinds of limiters EQs and compressions. If you did get a pure recording with no post work I bet you wouldn't like the music because it's not what we expect anymore. Music today as you said is not real it is multitracked and manipulated is so many ways you would be amazed, generally it sounds much better than the original recording no doubt. The difference between the sound and the music is that the sound has nothing to do with anything in the recording or musicians the sound is simply a waveform it has nothing to do with bit rate sample rate acoustics engineers producers or microphones used in the recording the sound is what you have when the project is finished and it is the finished vision of the musicians and producers vision it can't be changed or enhanced after it is finished. Where this group goes wrong is evident in the posts even in this conversation audiophiles in general think sound engineers want detail and pureness the opposite is true most modern songs are compressed in dynamics and equalized all over, the "imaging" that is so religiously mentioned by the audio community is usually made by phasing tricks not by a producer mapping out where the musicians are playing on a virtual stage. Today because of Pro Tools and digital filters nothing is done as it was 30 years ago. The sound of the music is not real it is made up in nearly every way, the production squeezes out music like a cold line of toothpaste, the sound is unchangeable it is a baseline to be played in your listening room. By the way the models you see in magazines aren't really as beautiful as they appear Photoshop and Pro Tools do the same thing but once you have the finished product it is by definition the sound of the song. If an audiophile is not interested in accuracy of reproducing the finished product then there is no use being on a forum to learn about what other people like about a piece of audio gear or about how a sound makes them feel, it's their preference who cares.
 

@jtcf If you come across a post like "if you had to pick 3 songs for the rest of your life...." it seems like everyone (including me) pick songs they love that are from a younger time in their life probably at least 3 decades old. I think the reason for that is because music is emotional and even when we wear the audiophile hat it's not about sound it's about music. We may love old songs but we are fooling ourselves if we think those recordings can compare with new recordings.

So far no one has understood the difference between sound and music and the ironic nature of my post.

@mahgister After reading your article I remembered I used Fourier transforms when I was working for an acoustics company and in college doing some of the first sound raytracing programs.  I had a crazy smart professor who helped me out, I still feel bad about not giving him some credit for those algorithms.

 One of the first things you learn as a sound man is that microphones are stupid, meaning they do not sound the same as you hear things with your ears looking at something else, it's called cocktail effect. Our brains can filter out the sounds of many people at a party and we can focus in on one conversation across the room, AI will figure that out someday but for not there are no digital filters that can do that. it used to be that we had to be so careful about one frequency covering another now there are programs that can lift frequencies that overlap other like frequencies. 

@tablejockey Thanks for the kind words, I do have a unique perspective in audio I've been a professional working at the highest levels of the movie industry for a long time but I do like audiophiles because they love music and equipment and don't get paid for it. I was always the sound guy with the best equipment and that was an advantage for me. Starting out I worked for many successful sound mixers that weren't very good but had great personalities and got top projects that part of the sound profession was alway strange and it meant to me that professional sound jobs are not objective but ultimately emotional. There are enough different people working on the different aspects of a movie project that they can cover any single persons shortcomings. 

@nonoise Thanks for the note about Tony Minasians, I remember when I was starting out I did some really great recordings by accident just using 1 stereo mic. They were recordings of choirs using a Neumann 190i mic it was a special mic because it was M/S and you could change the polar patterns after the original recording was done. Since then I generally used many microphones sometimes hundreds but I'm not sure they were any better using a single mic. Crazy to look back at your career and make a statement like that. 

How do you find recordings that are not mainstream?

So you finally get a chance to produce your first album. You use a great studio with top mixers and you hire musicians you can't really afford, you go through problems with temp vocals drummers and bass players not understanding what the songs are all about, you have scheduling problems with musicians availability, some don't like the food you have in the green room next to the studio, your wife doesn't understand why you mortgaged the house your families future to do this project. Then after the extra loan from the bank and the emergency credit cards, you finished tracking, you cut extra parts you ended up not using (dear god why did I do that), editing, mixing buying extra time at the studio  then mastering you invite your closest friends to listen to your dreams in the control room. You are at a moment of complete vulnerability you push the play button on the mixer. Then slowly you notice the slow smiles and even a tear coming from your crusty oldest friend. 

This story is common and and is why music is so emotionally moving people give their all for projects like albums and movies. The only way you are ensured that your audience will see what your best work is to see it in the room you mixed it. I can't tell you how many times a director has been distraught about satellite compression or out of spec theater equipment. If you had studio equipment in your home you could see and hear the artists and directors vision.

If you have a playback system at home that is built on personal preferences you have no way of knowing if what you are listening to or watching is even close to the effort the artist or film maker put into the project. If you were serious about sound you would use professional equipment for playback.

@mahgister Jazz is some of the most heavily processed music, well modern jazz is real jazz was done before about 1970, that surprises many people but listen to new jazz or smooth jazz it is consistently the best recorded music there is the people who make it are the best musicians producers and engineers another genera of music that always sound super polished is new country if smooth jazz or new country wasn't recorded well it wouldn't match the rest of the music and wouldn't be popular. There are a boat load of awful classical recordings awful blues and bluegrass recordings they have the advantage of sounding however the producer wants with smooth jazz for instance the songs are very expensive because polish is not cheep. 

@onhwy61 Wow what a kind thing to say, and yes the systems I think most people have in this group are probably better (more expensive) than the recording studios. So what am I talking about, it's in the word sound not music sound is a wave it should be reproduced as accurately as possible in a satellite link system to be distributed to networks the sound should be most accurately reproduced at a movie theater (theaters are way ahead as far as specs and accuracy) but personal systems are all over the place and audiophiles have no right to pretend they are reproducing anything accurate with the extreme amount of variety in a normal 50k to 500k $ audiophile system. It's a preference system not an accurate playback system. 

@roxy54 You said my theory exactly and perfectly audiophile systems have no baseline there is no standard and all the equipment manufacturing magazine adds about faithful reproduction are BS because there is no standard. I really appreciate audiophiles and I understand, my main system is wonderful and I love the way it sounds but my professional system in the same room 90 degrees apart is much more accurate and it's not nearly as enjoyable I don't listen to it half as much, but I am serious about sound and I don't fool myself saying my bigger and more expensive speakers and amps are more accurate they aren't by a long shot but my main system is about twice as expensive as my professional system and it's a lot prettier and funner to play for my friends. 

@mahgister It won't be long, my guess in 1.5 years that AI will completely changes the home audio world. Some smart company will use a group like the AES/EBU and record companies to agree on a baseline standard for acoustics. I believe that surround sound will be the norm and there will be an objective baseline in small room acoustics. AI will change everything because the most important aspect of good playback is acoustics, I'm bias because I started in acoustics but if you look at experiments with acoustic devices (passive not DSP) they can make even cheep speakers sound amazing. When this happens great systems will still be great and produce the emotions that we connect with in music and movies but there will be a standard and people will understand that expensive huge playback systems are a train without tracks.

@phusis Great post! I also appreciate the thought about room calibration on such a "no flavorings" speaker like the Bluehorn. Honestly I didn't consider that in my thoughts and I should have never the less the reason I chose the Bluehorn as an example of studio speakers is because they are internally powered and the amps are designed for the speaker drivers individually there is no way to get to that level of accuracy buying amps and speakers that are not designed for each other. Also the speakers in a system that is trying to be accurate and not musical is spongy your brain will fill in the gaps of the music especially when you have more experience, most people have a few songs very well they know how that song sounds on different systems so when it sounds different on system A or B the experienced listener can very accurately note the differences compared to his reference, and if you listen for many many years you will also have a reference of where your reference system is accounting for it's particular deficiencies. Once again our brains are the listeners not our ears. Speakers don't have to be spongy they can be accurate simply turning the electrical signal into acoustic information. This is why there must be a baseline Wilson, Magico and the like are not flat they sound great but aren't flat, this is why you rarely see speakers with full range polar pattern test patterns like pro microphones come with. Professional speakers do come with these patters but not full frequency, even limited frequency polar patters are all over the place that's just the nature of the beast.

Room acoustics are secondary meaning other than using deep learning / AI in the near future to see the acoustic environment there is no standard because of that it isn't in the tool chest of audiophiles who are going for accurate stems to expect baseline acoustics from the manufactures built in DSP systems that is on the post playback side of the equation. 

Also yes the price is very steep on the Bullhorns but the technology is so ahead of everything else that it was the right choice for looking at a system that was reference not economic. SSL and Pro Tools are very standard, SSL, Neive, Harrison are all very good names in mixers/ preamps but SSL is probably what most high end studios use. Of course there are boutique studios not unlike audiophile playback system and recording systems that are over the top crystal clear in every facet of the recording and playback but since the standard high end recording studio doesn't have that equipment it's like having 2x the headroom in a recording and not knowing how that will sound. This exact thing happened to cassette tape manufactures in the 80s, hi end companies make cassette playback machines that made all the prerecorded cassettes sound unlistenable because they revealed information that wasn't available in standard high end cassette tape recorders.

@facten Good question why would I say If you were serious about sound you would.... When I enjoy my music tube amps and big speaker system much more. That is because of the fact that audiophiles are living is a world of contradictions. Have you ever seen a magazine article or YouTube review about a pice of 200k audio equipment that sounds wow but has nothing to do with the accuracy of the music and they say as much. They say their equipment will bring you to the the live sound experience, well concerts usually sound awful and modern recordings have lots of post processing on them even acoustic recordings, pop, jazz, country, etc.... recordings aren't made at the same time and use close miking techniques that are not the same as live recordings and you don't listen to the clarinet section 2 feet away from their instruments in a concert. I did a movie in Prague and they love classical music there, they often had wonderful musicians play in museums or churches and you would sit wherever you wanted, one of the performances has a trio playing in the middle of the stairs and it sounded wonderful. If I had done a recording it would've only been valid for where I was sitting it wouldn't have been an accurate representation of how those performers sounded as when you record a real album. 

If you as an audiophile say accuracy be damned I'm going to create an experience, perhaps 6x subs and 12x speakers all around your listen position without a system to give you some standardization like Dolby Atmos for instance you may have an incredible listening experience for a few songs or movies but when someone who comes in and knows how that song is supposed to sound or how the movies space ships are suppose to move around the room you may not have it right at all. That is a hollow and quickly fading experience. If we are to keep music alive and away from MP3 and cheep earbuds we need as audiophiles to start to agree on some baseline definitions of what playback systems should be.

Right now the marketing departments of overly expensive equipment are using rich audiophiles as useful idiots and no one is making a fuss.

@mbmi  Ok this is going to sound weird but why would you do anything to change the sound of your CDs, here’s what I’m saying, imaging being wider doesn’t mean it right and imaging is really a phasing principle that makes the sound hit your ears at different times, you could introduce a digital delay that hold the signal and then enhances right and left "imagining" easy, you don’t want to change your music you want to get everything out of it you can. Now note how many people on this forum say imaging, tighter bass and such does that mean it is correct, there is no way to know unless you use standardized equipment. You probably didn’t mean to but you showed a good point in my argument. Best

@mbmi Love that idea, here is why digital is cool. the handshake between the sender and receiver is either a 1 or a 0 so there’s really no room for error that is the power of digital. Of course there are other errors in the system like timing issues and such but the 1 or 0 is always there in digital. This is why we used to mass copy reel to reel tapes backwards because the waveform was easier to copy from the fade out to the transient start so you copy backwards. With digital the copy is perfect that’s why copy write protection didn’t kick in until digital because analog has it’s own degradation built in. You can’t get 85% of a digital to play after a transfer. Even if a recording was made at 48kHz then played back at 48.048kHz it will sputter and pop and that number isn’t even close to 85% of each other. Am I misunderstanding your point?

@mbmi No, I don't want to belabor this but I've set up many many digital recording setups (scars to prove it) and if the 1s and 0 are not exactly shaking hands the system will not work. This tells you many things for instance digital cables if they work they work perfectly and that 1k$ digital cable that they said gave you more imaging and tighter bass was not exactly accurate. 

@inna There is no way to add sonic information to the recording, it's not a matter of easier or harder to record or playback. With that in mind you can't get any value out of equipment that is significantly better than what was used originally. For instance if you used a 5k $ preamp to record the song a 100k $ preamp to playback the song isn't going to add any quality, it will get you close maybe if it is synergistic with the original preamp, the only way to get the vision of the original recording that the musician producer and engineers wanted would be to use the exact same equipment on the playback system as they did. Since that is impractical If you really cared about playback you would buy studio playback equipment not audiophile equipment. Hope that's clear. 

I guess the best argument against this idea is that the very expensive audiophile preamp for example is more transparent than even the original preamp and that is probably true but the problem with that is what you are hearing is not part of the music. At Skywalker sound they have a button that adds the air conditioner noise of a typical movie theater so they have a good idea of what the mix sounds like in a typical movie theater, all that extra headroom that the boutique preamp gives you is not the information that is being mixed, it's just information your expensive preamp reads that is not part of the vision. Kinda like a car that is never designed to go over 50 mph and your drive it 100 mph from 50 to 100 you have no idea how it will act or what it will do.

@czarivey Your right I shouldn't have made such a blanket statement, I'm a saxophone player for 50 years I love all types of Jazz, my point is how very well recorded modern jazz is. Jazz recordings today along with modern classical are probably the best recorded music technically and it's expected in those general. As far as music I would say great songs just like great movies don't have to be perfectly recorded or perfectly shot it's the melody and the story that is important. That being said having both should be the goal. 

I couldn't agree with you more. Also very interesting about finding hidden gems of music, where did you find them?