Testing t3h Awesome...
From the original Analog Industries archive. Some links and images from that era no longer resolve.
Here is an example of how the Bullshit Detector of your average musician gets defeated by gearlust. I’m as guilty as anyone, of course, and the test is not double-blind, scientific in the least, or verified. I have a gut feeling that it is absolutely true, though. In a nutshell, if you don’t feel like reading it, a self-described “audiophile” (and we all get a case of the giggles when we hear that word) admits in public that he couldn’t tell the difference between Monster M-1000 speaker cable and the same connection made with coat hanger wire.
This brings to mind the recent video that was posted of a Robert Henke lecture in Australia, wherein he goes in to some detail about how 64-bit summing busses in DAWs are simply a marketing ploy, and how it is essentially impossible for the human ear to tell the difference between 32-bit math and 64-bit math, at least as far as summing busses are concerned. (The video is well worth watching in any case, as it goes in to his process and how he designed and uses MonoDeck II. It’s 1.5hrs long, though.)
He points out, in a somewhat different manner, the same thing I’ve been saying for years: the song will out. People tend to obsess on the medium or the means of delivery these days, at the expense of the music itself. Anyone that thinks you can’t have a hit song using Acid and a Presonus Firebox, mixed on Behringer monitors, needs to go have a conversation with Soulja Boy real quick-like. I’ll be the absolute first person to admit that I’m a gear snob of the first order, but I know enough about the math of audio to be absolutely certain of one fact: my nice shit doesn’t help me write better songs.
What it does do is remove the gear itself from any question. I know that if my song sounds like shit, it’s definitely not because of my convertors, monitors, cabling, whatever. It’s my mix or the song itself. I have no illusions whatsoever of that fact.
10 comments
excellent points. My rule is to not buy better gear until I know I could hear the quality difference between the old and new. I suppose it's a law of diminishing returns as your gear gets better.
The hard part is knowing what quality to start with. Is it better to start your production studio with $50 monitors, $500 monitors, $5000 monitors, or an 80's ghetto-blaster with a car-tape adapter running into it from your computer?
they were probably oxygen-free coathangers so not really a fair test...
i was talking to someone recently about this because i am interested in buying my first semi serious mic. The conversation lead to portable digital recorders and I made a comment about being uneasy about buying any that were in my price range. the reply i got was that a: given the level that we are currently at its near impossible to tell the difference between individual recordings done on different recorders (as long as the settings are similar), but the difference becomes apparent later when you mix all this stuff together and the little bits slowly add up. and secondly b: he asked why i was so concerned, because as the voice of reason always says, its about what you say, know how it is said.
That coat hanger wire story sounds familiar. My friend has a really good not-too-expensive hi-fi system including really amazing Dynaudio 3-way speakers. Turned out the speaker cables are about the cheapest basic speaker wire you can get: the owner of the hi-fi shop he bought his rig from (a guy who apparently has $25-50k speakers that my friend says are nothing short of amazing) said he couldn't distinguish between insanely expensive audiophile cables and that cheapo wire in a blind test.
"Is it better to start your production studio with $50 monitors, $500 monitors, $5000 monitors, or an 80's ghetto-blaster with a car-tape adapter running into it from your computer?"
I think I started with the '80s ghettoblaster thing (actually, it was more like a late '70s portable radio) hooked up to an Adlib and now, 13 years later, I'm up to monitors that are $2500 a pair and pretty hot converters I'm really happy with. OTOH, I don't know if it could have been much more fun then than it was back then, even if I did have better gear. And even though I have killer monitoring and pretty awesome instruments and plugins now, I make less music and less inspired music than I've made for years...
QED
I used to have an acquaintance at the local audiophile store. We had an informal agreement: I'd bring in new CDs he probably hadn't heard and we'd listen to them on whatever sky's-the-limit system they had set up in their best listening room. I bought a couple of things from him but he pretty much dropped his salesman persona around me.
One day we were talking about speaker wire. He suggested that before I buy anything from him, I stop at the hardware store on the way home and buy about 20 feet of Romex, the 18ga solid-copper stuff that's used to wire AC in houses. I looked at him like he was pulling my leg, but he said just try it, and besides it's only like $0.10/foot anyway.
So I did, and yeah, it sounded pretty damn good. It seemed better than the heavy stranded stuff I had been using. (Did I do a blind A/B test? No. I was content that it sounded better, and that was enough for my purposes.)
Next time I saw him I reported my results, and he kind of chuckled and told me that he was using the same stuff on his home system. He also asked that I not repeat this recommendation within earshot of the store managers.
I still use it for my studio monitors because that's a short cable run. It doesn't work so well for longer runs, say over about 8 feet from the monitor to the speaker. It is, coincidentally, about the same gauge as coat-hanger wire.
--Adam
+1 for rockin the Romex.
Generally the most important aspect of cable is the capacitance per foot, but that generally only matters when you're going into high impedance inputs. With a 4 or 8 ohm speaker termination as long as the cable is big enough to handle the current you are throwing at it, it won't matter much.
Gear lust is a nice form of procrastination. "I'll record my next hit song... as soon as I upgrade to an Apogee word clock."
Or, in my own case, "as soon as I build my desk." Shut up and write something.
Ha! I'm happy to hear I'm not the only one using house electrical wire. It works great!
It's true, I think the marketing focus of audio mags is in part to blame. I buy them to learn and all I seem to learn is how inadequate my gear is. (Although I'm loving Tape Op because they seem to talk about philosophy more than gear.)
I've recently finished recording an album for the RPM Challenge and, while listening to my mix on different systems, I noticed how different speakers made me admire different sounds. Sometimes the overall mix would sound terrible but I'd really like the way the hi-hats were squashed or something.
Actually, if anyone is interested in having a go at remixing or remastering, I've put the parts for one track up to see what I can learn from other peoples approaches: http://showcasejase.blogspot.com/2008/03/remix-challenge.html
"Is it better to start your production studio with $50 monitors, $500 monitors, $5000 monitors, or an 80's ghetto-blaster with a car-tape adapter running into it from your computer?"
The one factor people tend to really ignore: the room. Spending thousands on the best monitors / convertors / cables etc don't mean a thing if you have nasty spikes and dips in critical frequencies at the listening position due to room modes.
I learned this lesson the hard way - I kept upgrading my interface / monitors / etc, and spent tons of money for marginal returns. Then I spent some real time and effort analyzing my room and treating appropriately - best time & money I've spent.
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