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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
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.
poor_airman OP
11 posts
 
Thanks for everyone's input so far. To clarify my original post, I do agree that the "high end" of hi-fi represents the best sound that you can get, and is therefore used in some of the nicer studios in the world. However, I think that more affordable hi-fi gear ($0 -> ~$3000+), specifically CD-players, amps, and speakers, can be matched by quality studio gear costing much less. To go back to my original example, I'll bet that the Dynaudio BM-6 monitors ($899 new) are nearly identical in sound quality to the Dynaudio 1.3MKII's which cost more than twice as much (they use the same ESOTEC tweeters, same woofers, have similar construction, and have nearly identical specs). MusicSlug, yes these are "near field" monitors, but that's just a fancy way of saying that they are not full range speakers. There are 3 general types of studio monitors: near fields, mid fields, and main monitors. Near fields are just your basic mini monitor, mid fields are bigger and give you more extended bass, and main monitors are full range speakers. Jeffloistarca, while it is common practice for studios to use cheap speakers to simulate how the majority of the population will hear their music(especially on music geared towards younger people), I do not consider this to be quality studio gear...it is just cheap stuff that happens to be used in a studio. And finally, Slartibartfast, I agree with everything you've said so far, and I may be missing your point on this one, but I want to say that the cost of high quality mixers, mikes, recorders, etc. doesn't matter, because I'm only concerned with using good studio monitors, amp, and possibly CD-player to replace my existing (lower-end) hi-fi speakers, amp and cd-player. Indeed I think it is the high cost of the associated recording equipment that keeps the price of studio monitors and amps and such down. Thanks for the feedback and keep it coming.

Gil

p.s. Here's my current setup for those that are curious

Monitor Audio 5i speakers
Audio Refinement Integrated Amp
Cambridge Audio D500 CD Player
Transparent Audio MusicLink Super interconnect
Transparent Audio MusicWave speaker cable
lpim
8 posts
 
There are studios that cater to high-end consumers and studios that cater to more typical consumer audio setups.

I recall a post where the writer bragged about how a studio used zip cord cabling throughout (he indicated that it proved cables don't make a difference, but let's not get into that). Okay, that's fine for rap and boy bands, but you won't find that garbage used for audiophile recordings.

Is high-end audio a rip-off? Well, quality is definitely not cheap. That's the reality for any small niche market. It's too bad some audiophiles happen to be millionaires. If filthy-rich people were all deaf, perhaps we could see more reasonable prices on the best equipment.
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.
rayhall
393 posts
 
My father was an engineer for almost 40 years and he engineered many number one pop hits, as well as many of the jazz greats, and even has a Grammy for a classical recording. I can tell you, having been in the studio a fair number of times, that, except for classical, the session and mixing is not usually about being faithful to the original sound at all. Their job is to sell product and they do so by trying to capture the sound that people are either buying now or that they think that they can entice the public to buy. Generally, their monitoring equipment (speakers) are not neutral at all. They tend to be quite forward sounding. My father preferred to do most of his mixing with headphones because he found studio speakers to be so bad. That is not to say that their isn't tremendous snob markup in the audiophile arena. You don't have to be a genius to see it. Nevertheless, most of us would be very unhappy with the sound of certain professional audio products.
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