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Does it bother you?

I'm a recording engineer who has worked in some of the world's top facilities. Let me walk you though an example signal path that you might find in a place like, say, Henson Studio A:

1. Microphone: Old. Probably a PCB inside. Copper wiring.
2. Mic cable: Constructed in house with $1/ft Canare Star Quad, solder, and a connector that might have been in the bottom of a box in the back.
3. Wall jack: Just a regular old Neutrik XLR connector on the wall.
4. Cable snake: Bundles of mic cables going to the control room.
5. Another XLR jack.
6. Another cheap mic cable.
7. Mic preamp: Old and lovely sounding. Audio going through 50 year old pots.
8. Patchbay: Another cheap copper cable is soldered into a patchbay where hundreds of connectors practically touch.
9. TT Cable: Goes from one patch to the next in the patch bay. Copper. No brand preference.
10. DB25 connector: Yes, the same connector you used to connect a modem to your computer in 1986. This is the heart and soul of studio audio transfer.
11. DB25 cable to the console: 25 strands of razor-thin copper wire, 8 channels of audio, sharing a ride.
12. The mixing console: PCB after PCB of tiny copper paths carry the audio through countless op amp chips.
13. DB25 cable to the recording device: time to travel through two more DB25 connectors as we make our way to the AD converters or tape machine.
14. AD conversion: More op amp chips.
15. Digital cable: nothing fancy, just whatever works. USB and Firewire cables are just stock.

...and this is just getting the audio into the recorder.

Also:

None of this equipment has vibration reducing rubber feet, it's just stacked haphazardly in racks. Touching.

No fancy power cables are used, just regular ol' IEC cables.

Acoustic treatment is done using scientific measurements.

Words like "soundstage" and "pace" are never uttered.

Does it bother you? Do you find it strange that the people who record the music that you listen to aren't interested in "tweaks," and expensive cables, and alarm clocks with a sticker on them? If we're not using any of this stuff to record the albums, then what are you hearing when you do use it?
trentpancakes
schubert
7,386 posts
 
Any kind of popular music is a business, 98% of the people who buy it have zero concept of what sounds good or doesn't.
Why waste the money on good gear ?
trentpancakes OP
13 posts
 
This is just half of the signal path, and for one channel. Now imagine this happening across 24 tracks, and including the playback signal path through various stacks of effects units. No vibration damping on a single one of them! Every vacuum tube (and there are lots) without a single damper ring on them.

It's likely that the audio you hear on a full-band production has passed through a DB25 port thousands of times in total before reaching the mastering stage. And the vinyl that it was pressed to, every single one of those masters were made on a direct-drive servo lathe with an aluminum platter, with a similar signal path to the ones I described above.

I just can't understand, in the quest for pure playback, it's always "I could hear deeper into the soundstage" and "highs seemed to lift into the air and trickle down" and "timing and pace were more brisk(??)"

..instead of..

"I could hear more of the rumble of the cutting lathe" and "a pronounced 50hz hum from the recording console became apparent" and "an air conditioning unit in the studio ticked annoyingly in the background."

How is it you're only able to hear this amazing stuff that we never heard when you buy more equipment?
trentpancakes OP
13 posts
 
Robsker, the reason why those recordings sound better is because the musicians playing the music were better. It's that simple. In the recording world, it's all about performance over equipment. You want to catch lightning in a bottle, and these old recordings did it.

There was nothing magical about the recording process. In fact, the equipment, by today's standards, was fairly poor. And just going by pure specs it was a nightmare. THD, wow and flutter... these things were off the charts.

I'd rather catch a breathtaking performance on a Tascam cassette 4-track, than a lifeless take through a Lynx AD converter.
mapman's avatar
mapman
22,305 posts
 
Well, I'm sure there are good recording studios, production companies and engineers and not so good ones. The variations of sound quality I hear recording to recording help confirm that.

For me, its a reasonable audiophile goal for their system to reveal all the variations present recording to recording. Forget about "The Absolute Sound", though it might pop up on occasion with certain recordings if you are in a good place home audio sound wise.

Recordings are what they are. Audiophiles that seek to make a recording into something that it is not are unfortunately doomed, for the most part, since they also poo poo any form of sound processing, digital or otherwise. Audiophiles that can appreciate each recording as a unique work of art will probably be happier. If it takes a clock with a sticker on to achieve that, well......
nonoise's avatar
nonoise
10,884 posts
 
There are some recording engineers who go to great lengths to make a decent recording: Todd Garfunkle of MA Recordings, Pierre Sprey of Mapleshade, whoever does ECM, etc.

Just because you came across someone who runs a crappy recording studio only goes to show just how stymied his results are. He's not in it for the sound. It's just a business for him.

You can go to any job site where new home construction is being done and see first hand all the shortcuts and shoddy work being done and when finished, you'd be hard pressed to see any faults. Only after living there for a couple of seasons will reveal the poor workmanship.

When it comes to music, a great system will reveal the limits of the recording at first listen. All of those limits you tallied up show up in the final product. A better run and managed studio would put out a superior product.

Unless you're satisfied with poor recordings, you don't have a leg to stand on, if that is your reference.

All the best,
Nonoise
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