What is trully important?


So I read about all these expensive bits of gear here and I have some thoughts. In the world of large money bands and their touring where individual seats can cost well north of 5G is there any sort of restriction on equipment they can buy? I don't think so and they want fidelity. What do recording studios use for session recordings? Is the idea of true to life important and what do you use to get there? Does real life reproduction matter or is some sort of electronic pure tonal thing the most important even though you will never hear that in live venues.
  I am fascinated by the amount of money spent that the pros never spend to get results and the pros are a purely result driven group.
mahlman

Showing 1 response by ghasley

Look at it another way, many studio monitors are designed to be flat and revealing to a fault so as to allow the engineer to tame certain parts of the performance so it will sound acceptable played back on the many different playback methods most likely for the audience. For pop/wide appeal music. First, they will compress it so it will sound ok in a car. Then through earbuds on an iphone. Many engineers stop right here because that covers the majority of the buying public and they are on the clock. Next, they might master a little for computer speakers but there are so many different models they stop here. They will then master somewhat for a dance club PA setup. Classical and jazz typically get mastered on nicer speakers if the engineer understands the audience. Typically less compression. The dynamic range for a car is tough as alot of music is typically happening below the noise floor in a car.

Anyway, if you really believe that any speaker designed to surgically dismantle a performance is what you are after then knock yourself out. You will save alot of money over time if you can be happy with the sound you get. I prefer a speaker that reconstructs a reasonable facsimile of a performance rather than deconstruct it. Additionally, since no one has a living room with the ambient and acoustic characteristics of a good recording studio why would you try to recreate that for your home rig? If you were successful, then your rig would be suitable to replay only those things recorded in that particular studio! You’d drive yourself nuts.