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Studio gear vs. Hi-Fi gear Is Hi-Fi a ripoff?

I'm relatively new to hi-fi (bought my first "hi-fi" system one year ago), but I've been an amateur musician for nearly 10 years now (blues guitar mainly). It recently occured to me that pro studio equipment should be at the same level of performance as "hi-fi" equipment. Yet, good studio equipment, while expensive, isn't expensive for the sake of being expensive, as I think many hi-fi items are. For example, Dynaudio makes both studio monitors and hi-fi speakers. Their studio monitors are made under the name Dynaudio Acoustics and they have their own website. They sell a mini-monitor called the BM-6. It has nearly identical specs to the 1.3MKII, except w/o the wood veneer. Yet BM-6's MSRP is less than HALF that of the 1.3. I don't know much about line conditioner's, but I know that decent studio line conditioners can be had for under $200, are made like tanks, and are easily taken apart if you like to tweak. How they compare to hi-fi line conditioner's I have no idea, but I bet they can hold their own. Quality all tube equipment (many of which are completely hand assembled w/ point to point soldering) of all different designs are availble at down to earth prices. Build quality on studio equipment is simply outstanding, far exceeding hi-fi equipment at the lower price levels (<$2000). My question is, is there really a substantial difference between studio equipment and hi-fi equipment? After all, it's studio equipment that captures all the nuances in the CDs/LPs that hi-fi equipment strives to reproduce. Yes, I know the fancier studio's have equipment tabs that run into the many millions, but not if all you want is a pair of quality monitors, amp, and CD player. My theory is, the people buying studio equipment are mainly gear heads with extensive knowledge on what sounds good and why, and they know what to look for, and they know how much it should cost, and are usually on a budget because there is so much more to buy than just monitors, amps, and sources. The typical buyer of home hi-fi equipment is probably not as knowledgable as a studio engineer, is probably much more susceptable to marketing and hype, and is therefore probably much more likely to dump a ton of money on a pair of speakers, amp, source, conditioner, cable, etc., especially since they only need one/few of each thing (vs. the hundreds of components a larger studio would need). I would also venture to say that typical hi-fi customers, especially the more affluent ones, are much more likely to fall for the "extremely expensive = extremely high quality" marketing strategy that any studio engineer w/ experience would never fall for. So, the manufacturer's price their equipment accordingly for the two demographics (studios and audiophiles). For example Dynaudio charging substantially less for their studio monitors than their home hi-fi monitors, and then tucking their studio monitors away under a different name and a different web-site so that us audiophiles don't easily take notice to them. Also telling are the desciptions of the studio monitors vs. the hi-fi monitors. The hi-fi descriptions have tons of "fluff" to them compared to the straight, to-the-point, studio monitor descriptions (Tannoy does something similar, but at least it's on the same webpage). Now all this is pure speculation, and I'm not accusing dynaudio or anyone else of being unethical, on the contrary, they are simply practicing good marketing tactics and charging as much as they think we are willing to pay based on demographic research (i.e. they know we are willing to pay more than the studios are). Hell, for all I know, I may just be rationalizing my inability to buy the hi-fi gear I want. But in my recent quest to upgrade my stuff, I can't help but ask if I can get a lot more bang for my buck by purchasing studio gear, or perhaps a combination of studio gear and hi-fi gear. The more I think about it, the more I really think good studio equipment has the nearly the same quality as good hi-fi equipment but at a substantially cheaper cost. I suppose the only way to find out is to do some testing (after I get my x-mas bonus). Yes, studio equipment can be butt ugly, but they're built to take a beating, literally. Again, being somewhat new to hi-fi, I may be totally misguided, and I'm not trying to make anybody look bad, I'm just sounding my observations off to the fellow members of this board.

Thanks for listening,
Gil
poor_airman

Showing 3 responses by slartibartfast

slartibartfast
100 posts
 
Having been a recording engineer in a prior life (primarily 2 channel but also multi-channel) and a high-end audiophile, I was often at odds with people "in the business". In a studio setting, keep in mind that the sound is in a sense "artificial" to begin with and the sound an engineer is trying to achieve isn't necessarily directly proportional to the transparency of their gear. It is more based upon that "right drum sound" which doesn't sound anything like the drum kit to begin with.

You can very easily spend the equivalent money on studio gear as you do with hi-end gear. However, often times the need simply isn't there to record a pop album.

If you take a look at Abby Road, at one point in time they used to have a pair of B&W Nautilus as their primary monitors. I will wager that they probably got a lot less use than a pair of Yamaha NS-10 sitting on top of the mixing console.

Technology has also made it such that you can get a pretty good recording without spending a lot of money. Similarly, you can get pretty good playback without spending a lot of money.

However, for people on either side of the fence, raising the standards of both playback and recording gets exceedingly expensive. The best 2-channel digital recorder on the market today is A Nagra-D and runs close to $30,000. Couple that to a DCS A/D and a high quality mic pre and you are exceeding $50K. You haven't even talked about microphones at this point which could double that number depending if you are trying to obtain vintage mics... this all for a 2 channel recording. Now on the flipside, I can buy a cheap digital recorder, Mackie mixing console, and half way decent microphones for less than $5K.

The point is, the majority of the time nobody cares to achieve that extra 10% to make a sensational recording because 98% of consumers are simply happy with the results of the $5K recording setup.
slartibartfast
100 posts
 
Rgd-

The reality is that when recordings are played on high resolution systems, every little flaw in the original recording, mixing, and mastering process can be heard. You can hear punch-ins, bad fades, noise in the recording gear or instruments, etc... It can make recordings down right unlistenable on such systems. For the most part, most engineers, producers, and mastering engineers are making recordings for the mass market and don't bother (if even capable) of listening for the minutia that drives this hobby. Some of the reasons the old classical recordings sound so incredible is that the engineers paid very close attention to that extra stuff because if you didn't do it right, it truly did sound bad. It just so happened that the recording gear of the time was vastly superior to the playback gear.

Gregm-
I completely agree... it is truly insulting sometimes what is on the masters that is lost in production...

Musicslug-
It depends... its not that a monitor is designed for the studio or not, its whether a speaker is designed to operate in the nearfield or the free field (I guess that is kind of what you are asking). Some can do both well... I know people that listen nearfield with a pair of Wilson WATTs when recording and then go home and listen to the recordings at freefield with the WATTs. You have vastly different characteristics when the room starts to interact with the speaker and each speaker reacts differently.
slartibartfast
100 posts
 
Gil-

I guess I am as well a bit confused... studio monitors aren't cheaper because they are studio monitors. Any speaker in question is simply cheaper to manufacture when produced in mass. Take a cheap pair of JBL studio monitors (don't remember the model #s anymore) which I had the great displeasure to monitor with on a project... they were of no greater or lesser cost than their consumer counterpart. They were also of no better quality in sound or construction.

What I was trying to point out is that quality studio gear is equally as expensive as quality home gear to achieve the same level of sound quality. Cheap studio gear is equally priced as cheap home gear and is of the same caliber as well.

Furthermore, you said that the high cost of mixers, mics, and recorders would drive down the prices of other gear. One has no bearing on the other. The price of a $200 Yamaha monitor is not going to effect the price of a $5,000 Neumann microphone. What it might do is weigh where the studio decides to spend their money. You can substitute a $5,000 pair of monitors with a $250 pair and still get decent results in the finished music product. You cannot replace a $5,000 microphone with a $250 Shure and think that you will get even 50% of the quality of the finished product.

If what you are looking to do is justify buying a pair of studio monitors thinking they will be better than a more expensive pair of high end speakers, that equation doesn't work out. My golden rule is that no matter how expensive or how cheap the product, you have to listen to it and decide for yourself whether it sounds good to you. This is a completely subjective hobby and all you can do is trust your own ears and go exploring what is out there. There is a lot of crap in the high-end and there is a lot of great stuff and the same goes for recording gear as well.
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