If your audiophile quest is to get the best sound then buy the best equipment used to make the recordings originally. One of the few things nearly every audiophile agrees about is that you can't make the signal better than the original. So:
Solid State Logic 2 channels preamp 5k$
Meyer Sound Bluehorn powered speakers 2x 140K$
Pro Tools MTRX system 10k$
Mac Studio Computer 8k$
Total about 170k$
How is it possible to get better sound than the best recording studio gear?
@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.
As Fourier analysis is an abstraction tool working in a linear way , out of the time domain of natural sounds where there is a a temporal duration order which define speech perception and all perception of sound in nature , which are highly non linear, as evolution train our body to perceive for survival...
Music and speech are concrete qualitative experience for a trained body...
@jtcfIf 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.
I totally agree with your analysis i just quoted under , this is precisely why i listen music , classical and jazz mostly and world music , music coming from an era where the recording engineer was a craftmanship work...No commercial or pop or anything else...I dont like unnatural acoustic programmed effects and electronic sounds... ( i only make few exceptions for musical reason )
I dont listen to "commercial industrialized product" at all...
It is so unnatural that i put them in a trashbin so to speak...
Then i dont need to be "serious about sound" and buying the mixing engineer pieces of gear i guess to listen to such manufactured products 😁...
I use basic good gear well embedded electrically, mechanically and acoustically... I dont need any upgrade and my sound is already more than good... ( my only future upgrade will de BACCH filters)
I dont understand what you speak about by "being serious about sound " .... I am serious about music and recorded acoustic instrument and natural human voices and chorus...
What is exactly your point ?
If your point is criticizing audiophiles for their upgraditis and lack of acoustic understanding i am ok with that...It is evident ...
Otherwise my position is clear ... Psycho-physico Acoustic define sound experience not the gear price tag and specs which are only tools for acoustics and for acoustic experience...
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.
@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.
Stereo listening from two speakers in a room is not a NATURAL nor an OPTIMAL way of listening music and sound...
There is a crosstalk destructive effect coming from the two speakers interaction for each ear that make accurate spatialization of sound and even timbre accuracy inexact and artificial...
We can control mechanically crosstalk to some minimal degree and imperfectly , i did it myself in my system/room; or we can completely control it and optimally by some filtering DSP as the BACCH filters do it perfectly this time compared to my mechanical gross tools for doing it ...
Then it is not the mixing in studio that matter the most and certainly not the purchase of the same audio components as the mixing engineer that matter; it is the accurate recording information process to begin with and after that his TRANSLATION by a DSP as the BACCH filters did because they were created to make stereo more natural by eliminating crosstalk in your system/room keeping in a more accurate state the original acoustic LIVED recorded information or the STUDIO recorded one ...
Nevermind the gear you own , if it is of the necessary relative minimal quality to begin with , the goal is RETRIEVING the original LIVED acoustic recording condition and the information related to all acoustic factors masked and degraded by stereo crosstalk and by measuring your room acoustic and Inner ear and head related transfer function to do so adequately and perfectly ...
I am pretty sure that Dr. Choueiri , an acoustician will never claim that to experience good sound we must buy the same piece of gear as some chosen mixing engineer...😁😊
And upgrading any component with a costlier one will not eliminate crosstalk either even if we choose to buy the gear recommended by the OP...
Acoustics knowledge matter much than the gear choice...
@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.
Most misunderstanding in audio debate comes from acoustic and psycho-acoustic ignorance...The misunderstanding comes from the focus put on the price tag and on gear upgrades instead of the acoustic...
But the OP commit the same sin , claiming that if we are serious about sound we must buy the same piece of gear as the studio sound optimization tools...He focus here on some specific type of gear as the only one possible SOURCE for " good sound"...
Which idea makes no sense at all , because the source of sound is not DSP nor the gear used to work with it, but first the original physical acoustic INFORMATION conditions in most music albums , especially jazz and classical... LIVE RECORDING and STUDIO RECORDING differ completely and mixing serve the recording process in classical and jazz not the reverse...
And the accuracy TRADE-OFF acoustic process of recording is not the studio process of mixing or optimizing which is a digital and DSP accuracy , nor the translation of these two conjugated process the same as the system/room physical acoustic accuracy conjugated with the psycho-acoustic accuracy..
What is accuracy? one thing is sure digital accuracy cannot define alone the complexities of physical and psycho acoustics accuracy and it is subordinated to it anyway ....
Then what is the source of sound ?
For the playing musician it is himself playing in some acoustic conditions, for the audio engineer it is himself modifying the recorded sound for the better or the worst, for the listener the source of the sound is his system room , for an acoustician the source of the sound experience is the psycho-physical process around the ears structure and the brain in some controlled or uncontrolled room for a specific listener or for an average listener ...
The source of the music experience is ALL that together... Then proposing to buy the same gear as those picked by an arbitrarily chosen studio engineer is preposterous claim as preposterous as throwing money on too costly gear...
I will let extremely processed sound albums out here....Most of us dont buy that anyway...
The processing studio works in classical is there to HELP the original timbre playing instruments translations from some chosen recording microphones positions and choices TRADES-OFF, the studio job is done to help this recording process not to modify it or change it artificially for some results making the recording engineer the creator instead of being the servant in the recording process ...
The studio engineers working in the classical field recording work to help these initial acoustical choices in some acoustic location by the recording engineers ... They dont work thinking that all the potential listeners will buy the same studio system as them, but they know that customers will listen in many different room and acoustic conditions... They dont optimize the sound in a way that what they intended will be heard and decoded by a system exactly as their own, if they were doing so they will create a product completely different than the microphone trade-off recording process intended by the maestro or the musicians ALSO involved often in the recording process to begin with...
Then saying that playback studio is the source of the sound is false... It is confusing the recording process of live recording with the studio recording and mixing process among other confusions ...
The sound quality is not defined only by mixing and digital accuracy but by other acoustic factors as time and timing and different ratios of reflectivity...Then speaking as if " digital audio accuracy" was the main factors is confusing digital mixing with acoustic recording or worst subordinating recording to mixing as if the mix in itself was the goal...And it is forgetting that dsp mixing are secondary compared the sound experience psycho-physical acoustic factors in the recording concert hall and in the listening room ...
@mapmanGreat 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.
And to answer this comment above, the subjective and objective factors in hearing are inseparable at the beginning and at the end... It is called psycho-acoustic... And digital audio is ruled by psycho-acoustic not the reverse... bit are not more true and more objective than some brain/ears experience.... Thinking this is reversing the acoustic science and subordinating it to digital process of translation.... Sound is not a digital signal... It is FIRST AND LAST a qualitative perceived experience...
Saying that audiophiles throw money to costly system and claiming that this can be preposterous in many case is a claim i can endorse but claiming that music is reducible to sound and sound reducible to digital signal is not even wrong... It is not even false.... It is a meaningless claim made with half truths around a way more complex interdisciplinary scientific matter and physical phenomenon ....
My guess is that a recording engineer wants to hear everything with the greatest detail possible when recording an artist. The engineer then takes those tracks and modifies them if working in the digital domain, according to the engineer’s and artists’ tastes. And now, above all, the engineer wants to hear in great detail what effects the the digital processing have produced. Then, there is the whole process of volume control for the individual tracks. This is done for analog recording also, or adjusting where artists stand or microphone position if recording a "live" performance. I see this akin to a cook deciding on more or less salt. The engineer is messing with how much each track proportionally contributes to the final mix. Yet again, the engineer wants to hear exactly what these modifications have done to the mix. So I am naively assuming that the engineer wants a playback chain that is extremely fast and highly detailed. Whether the playback system "sounds good" is of secondary importance. I do not think that equipment used in a recording studio is even designed to appeal to the tastes of the majority of home users.
I know very little about how a recording engineer captures and mixes an artist, and I know absolutely nothing about the Pro Audio choices recording engineers make to practice their craft. Since this is a forum, and everyone has an opinion, here are my two cents.
My guess is that a recording engineer wants to hear everything with the greatest detail possible when recording an artist. The engineer then takes those tracks and modifies them if working in the digital domain, according to the engineer's and artists' tastes. And now, above all, the engineer wants to hear in great detail what effects the the digital processing have produced. Then, there is the whole process of volume control for the individual tracks. This is done for analog recording also, or adjusting where artists stand or microphone position if recording a "live" performance. I see this akin to a cook deciding on more or less salt. The engineer is messing with how much each track proportionally contributes to the final mix. Yet again, the engineer wants to hear exactly what these modifications have done to the mix. So I am naively assuming that the engineer wants a playback chain that is extremely fast and highly detailed. Whether the playback system "sounds good" is of secondary importance. I do not think that equipment used in a recording studio is even designed to appeal to the tastes of the majority of home users.
And finally, it is we, the consumers, who purchase the final mix and play it at home. And, no surprise, we all like flavors, different flavors. As consumers of audio gear, I think what we do over time is refine what flavors we like, and if we are lucky, we find equipment that reproduce those flavors for us. If we are luckier still, we are able to afford the equipment that checks all those flavor boxes for us.
So to answer the question of the post, "If you were serious about sound you would..." I would continue listen to as much gear and as many home systems as I can and see if said gear and systems appeal to my flavor profile. Then figure out what gear contributes the most to my tastes, and then figure out how to recreate that sound in my home. Most of us reach a point where it is "good enough", or we run out of money. In summary, I have no interest in the Pro Audio gear choices an engineer makes (but I think the whole process is fascinating and I would love to see the process in action), and neither should you. What we care about a recording is whether it sounds good on our flavored home system, and that it has just enough salt and not too much coriander.
@mapmanGreat 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.
I really don't care about reproducing the exact sound of the recording equipment since 80% of my 2k+ collection of older vinyl is far from sounding perfect to my ears. In fact about 50% sounds mediocre to poor. Hence I have both a Loki Max and a Puffin in my system. Puffin for secondary TT, Max for everything digital. Primary TT is only pure unaltered sound source on which I only play the 20% of my vinyl that meets my ears criteria as is. Recording quality is a crapshoot. Not so much poor equipment, but poor engineering and mastering. Why not tweaking their deficiencies.
And of course, perfect audio equipment, studio or home kind, will never sound to their full potential unless installed in a properly built and setup listening room.
...thought I’d provide / share my squeaky clean listening update … I’m lovin’ It!
( "....It had gone too far when the McD Synthdrome had spread to the audiodefiled immunity...Nothing could be done to curtail the use of ultrasonic record cleaning fluids as a ’chaser’ for hallucinogens mixed into ’adult beverages’ in the paltry few ’b&m, pro-sound dealers’....
All one had to do to find this illicit activity was to follow to the source the unrestrained ’giggling’ into the back area of said store.
The sight of a ’defiled ProAudChaserChooser’ using the fluids in a bidet wash unit to ’anoint their vinyls’ was Not a sight to be put into the gay discplays in a storefront window...." *
* - Excerpt from the "Now We Are InSync’ed" Manifesto, marked up with pink "Barbaberbe’ highlighters and held up with pinheads."
@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.
@roxy54The 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
I don’t believe in the deification of studio engineers, producers, or mastering technicians. Many are very good but plenty of recordings for whatever reason aren’t. Also, often live music is mixed badly so there’s that issue for your reference needs (sat through a disturbingly bad sounding otherwise major players jazz show a couple of years ago, and thought..."Did the live sound tech pass out?"). I recently bought a Schiit Loki Max for this exact reason (recordings of course, although years as a pro live sound mixer has been a guilty pleasure), and although it’s usually out of the mix, I can put the Max in the mix if I think I need to. Also, most here likely don’t have any pro studio mixing or live mixing experience, and to say you need to listen to playback on what the studio used is silly...you going to buy a huge mixing board and hook it up to dozens of effects boxes and run it through a shipping container for reverb with Pro Tools on board and then send the mix to a mastering lab? Nope, you’re not gonna do any of that. I just read the previous post so consider this one el redundo...maybe roxy54 and I are the same person...
To answer your question: The reasons why we don't use the same equipment are many, including size, cost and esthetic considerations, but more importantly, what the studio and producer consider perfect is often at odds with the hearing preferences of the end user who may choose to tailor the sound with digital frequency adjustments or simple tone controls as well as their choice of either solid state, vacuum tube or class D amplification.
Humans have very specific tastes in everything, so it's hard for me to believe that this wouldn't have occurred to you.
@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
@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.
@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 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.
That list that you mentioned is not high on in any category ,andi have owned a audio store went to many audio shows and built many audio systems. System
synergies by far the best important , and many pieces of equipment I have seen in mastering studios is just not that good , for example many use Mugabi Audiocables
or others it’s not that musical. Now Bricasti is a solidAudio brand that started in mastering studios and is well respected . There are many Loudspeakers -Audiophile that use better quality Loudspeakers for much less monies.
Musicality is what counts most ,,the mastering is sometimes. The biggest limitation
who mixes the recordings . Vacuum tube has always given the most natural
presentation, playing guitar pretty much the vast majority of amplifiers are Vacuum tube , even Vacuum tube mikes Many use . That’s why many older recordings sounded more natural , the majority of Beatles ,masterpiece Pink Floyd Dark side of the moon , solid state can be verygood , look at Manley again Vacuum tube mixing boards,
Since you obviously believe that you know all that there is to know on this subject, why did you even start this thread? I suppose it was to brag about all the money that you've spent and the awards that you've won. Very impressive...
@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.
Lalitk- you don’t know what you are talking about. I would take ps audio equipment over most of what you own.
If you want the true sound, get it at the source, before the recording. The amps that rock/blues/jazz groups use for example are fairly cheap, like the Fender tube amps or Marshall amps.
If you ever wish to recreate the sound of a rock/blies/jazz concert, it would cost much to get the exact amps and speakers that the band uses.
@donavabdear, I don’t think you understood my post correctly.
Perhaps my fault.
Look, the premise of a $5k preamp with $100k speakers (add whatever multiplier here you’d like) is ridiculous.
My experiences in a recording studio were many, many moons ago. Think early ’90’s. I’m sure things have changed, but the premise stands.
I looked up Flood Studios and they’re using Focal Studio Monitors w/ Be tweeters for mixing tracks. Not cheap, sure, but surely nothing like what you have listed.
It seems Abbey Roads now uses Bryston as well as some older Classe amps. They do seem to have a lot of B&W home speakers in some of the rooms, but they’re also using studio monitors in the booths as well. Certainly nothing in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, though.
I dunno, not a recording studio engineer.
I DO know that the recording/mixing is done on monitors because they are analytical and unforgiving. They’re not designed to sound pleasing, they’re designed to be accurate.
I do think there’s an art in there somewhere. Something professional engineers know and can do, that makes the sound on the a$$ end of the recording sound excellent. It doesn’t sound that way in the studio, though, or when you’re mixing it down. That’s why they get the big bucks.
I would argue that the end result most certainly CAN be better than the original equipment it was recorded on.
It’s why some people prefer tube pre’s, amps, and warm speakers in their house.
Depeche Mode sounds great on a tube setup. One of my favorites.
Also why upscaling, digital filtering, etc...on many modern players is so desirable on older copies of recordings.
DSOTM sounds excellent on SACD.
JM2CW. You do you, man. Enjoy the journey! Happy Listening.
Many newer smart tvs apply very sophisticated digital image processing in order to get the most out of their devices and in a/b comparison I have observed the results can be more eye catching than the real thing.
Apply some effective digital image processing and most any picture can be made to do certain things better than real life.
Same true with modern digital audio. Anything is possible. Merely reproducing the source accurately leaves a lot of possibilities on the table.
I apologize because i misinterpreted your intention...
We think the same it seems...
@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.
//“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.
@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?
@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.
@onhwy61SSL 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.
@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.
@donavabdear, mi compadre. I’ve set aside more precious hours during evenings these past couple of month’s fine tuning & dialing in thee JL Audio CR-1 and thought I’d provide / share my squeaky clean listening update … I’m lovin’ It!
You can make great recordings without state of the art electronics, rooms and monitors. They can all be compensated for by the engineer.
@onhwy61Or, indeed (works a lot better) by quality of musician. A good musician will start and finish a track without an interruption. Some studios have backing silled musicians that can outdo any celebrity you can think of and correct if those mishap on flight.
@donavabdearbased upon your equipment choices I don't think you have a solid understanding of the recording process. The key to great sounding recordings are the microphones and the talent of the engineers. You can make great recordings without state of the art electronics, rooms and monitors. They can all be compensated for by the engineer.
In another life, I did some recording work in a couple of different studios with a couple of different bands I was in.
While not on the level as say...Abbey Road Studios (which last I heard used stacks and stacks of Classe equipment), every single mix was done on studio monitors (a couple of different brands and types, actually). These were performed by paid engineers.
There is no "perfection" in sound... There is optimums levels for some specific acoustic factors in some specific physical and neurological conditions .... "Perfection of sound is a marketing myth sales pitch AT THE END ... Because each brain/ears is a specific "imperfect" toys/tools at the same time , the only one toy/tool we had and acoustics/psycho-acoustics do not distinguish between toys or tools...
Acoustic law apply for a toy room and for tool room the same with sometimes better result in the toy room than in some tool room or the reverse...
There are tools and they are toys. Toys are for consumers and tools are for professionals. That is the difference. Perfection in sound can be from both toys and tools.
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