studio equipment that makes it into home hifi


In recent years I have begun to take more notice of professional/studio hifi gear. Really ever since i got the Yamaha NS1000 my attention turned. Amongst other well known studio products that have managed to cross over into home audio is the Technics Sp-10 turntable rogers ls3/5a, revox equipment, etc. And hey a lot of these ended up being classics!

What's more they often seem to cost a lot less than home audio and sound very accurate and neutral. For example I picked up the Yamaha P3200 power amp for $150. Built like a tank, I was not expecting much from this warhorse. What the hell at 500w per channel they were only to be used to drive subwoofers. I put it into my smaller second home rig replacing the Jadis DA7 and driven by a valve preamp. Was I in for a surprise. It was subtle fast had good transparency and soundstaging and equal detail to the Jadis. Its bottom end as you would imagine was wonderfully taut deep and powerful. I was very pleasantly surprised. Only let down was a raggedness at the top end and it missed the last few ounces of tonal purity. BUT in no way did it sound cold sterile or hard, quite the opposite it was emotionally very engaging.

Has anyone any other studio products that can be used in home hifi systems even high end systems and look good???
audiojoy4

Showing 2 responses by chadeffect

The thing to remember is just like domestic hifi studio gear comes in a different price levels.

Just to say studio engineers use this or that can be misleading. A studio engineer in a project or budget studio uses this or that, but would much rather be using XXX if the studio could afford it!

The famous Yamaha NS10 studio monitors and 100m monitors were used at the time (late 80s & 90s) by everyone because it was a sound everyone knew. It was rubbish, and everyone hated them, but if you could get a mix to sound good on them it usually meant it would sound good on anything else. They were impossible to judge low bass on though. You still see them everywhere but not many people use them as a first choice now.
Hi Shadorne,

Much of the monitoring in the studios in your link, are relatively cheap, but sound good. They are just in well designed and treated rooms, placed carefully, and fed a clean signal.

The genelec active monitors sound really nice and are easy to listen to for long periods near field. The ATCs are used for higher SPL listening usually and to check on deep bass levels. These will also be used when the people paying for the music being created come to visit!

The Neve 8078 is a beautiful mixing desk. My favorite.