What about "Pro" vs. Audiophile ?????

Like Timwat, I'm classically trained and have worked as both a symphony/chamber player and as a studio musician.

I emphatically agree that many studio folks have ears that the rest of us--even the touted Golden Ears among us--would kill for. In my time as a player and later as a recording consultant for a small label specializing in English choral music, I was repeatedly astounded at what engineers and producers could hear that I...and the singers...and the players...and the conductors...could not hear.

I also agree that much of the equipment used in major studios equals or exceeds in quality anything the audiophile is likely to have at home. OTOH, I've seen those Neumanns and Nagras connected by right-off-the-reel comm cable and XLR connectors bought in bags of a hundred; signal cables and power cables run side by side in the same chase; NS-10s with one tweeter original and one reconed with a non-OEM driver ("I just listen around it"); transgressions that would make an audiophile weep yet result in recordings that audiophiles die for.

This says something to me; it may say something else to you.

will

Bishopwill - you're absolutely correct. My worst experience in the studio was being brought in to lay keyboard tracks at a studio in the worst part of the East Bay Area here in California.

I walked into the control room and gazed in horror onto about a hundred bare lines running on the floor, running out the back of an dusty old board with not faders, but big peppermint patty channel volume knobs.

The owner of the studio proudly told me that 1) the board was used in several Elvis Presley recording sessions and 2) the 60hz that I might hear occasionally in my cans almost never made it onto the final track.

And not just Elvis recordings, Timwat. You can see that same kind of business in studios that produce "audiophile" recordings.

will