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  3. 1375840071

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
jjrenman
279 posts
 
Look at my system and you won't see any strange tweaks.

This is getting laughable. Your system is full of technology that was originally tweaky. The most obvious are the speaker cables. Not all that long ago the question of wire making a sonic difference was hotly debated between those who are the technically inclined non believers and those who are the proof is in the pudding so give it a try folks.
c1ferrari
464 posts
 

Trentpancakes,

You haven't spoken of the processing which occurs to suit the producer and or talent.
jmcgrogan2's avatar
jmcgrogan2
6,346 posts
 
Then what do you think it is? Do you think it was because they used more audiophile-grade equipment in the '50s? Silvered wires, cables on stilts, dampening stones, and things like that?

Purer, simpler signal paths. They didn't over-engineer the recordings back then like they do today. Just look at all the crap you listed the signal passing through now. Back in those days, they recorded using the KISS method, Keep It Simple Stupid.
psag
518 posts
 
As flawed as the recording process may or may not be, it produces something with lots of low-level information. The playback system has to be significantly better in all regards, or else losses will occur in the playback.

Regarding distortion, many of the analogue distortions are pleasing to the ear, which is why many listeners prefer old analogue recordings to modern digital recordings.
electroslacker
375 posts
 
Many audiophiles treat music as if it was fragile, carefully passing it to speakers over kilo-buck elevated wires and through a dozen other danger spots that could break it. But music is incredibly resilient. Pump it through ninety miles of air and to a transistor radio, and it's still captivating and foot-stomping joy. It can be made more enjoyable at the playback end, but we can easily lavish useless "everything matters" obsession on its care and feeding, which is no different than other obsessions.
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