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

Showing 3 responses by onhwy61

Excellent question. One that should be taken seriously.

In direct answer to your question I say Yes! It does bother me in that studio wiring and connectors can be easily improved at fairly minimal cost. So much of the wiring in a studio is done for convenience as opposed to sound quality.

What Trentpancakes doesn't say is that you can still make good sounding recordings in these studios. It's easy enough to bypass most studio wiring, consoles and patchbays and go direct to the recorder. Many engineers bring a handful of "special" microphones and mic pres with them to a session. Skillful engineers can assess what they have to work with and adjust accordingly.

What I think audiophiles don't understand is the engineer's primary job is to capture a good performance. The studio can be a chaotic place where the sound engineer is not the man in charge. People can be milling around, eating pizza, the girlfriends are comparing shoes, the singer's on the phone, the producer is out of the room and the guitar player is just messin' around with some chords and he'll suddenly bark into the mic, "did you get that?". In that hectic environment a good engineer has decent sounding tape of what the guitarist was playing.

When all is said and done when a studio/producer/engineer does adopt audiophile standards, I'm thinking Mapleshade, you do get better sounding recordings.
I think you're underestimating audiophiles. The more resolving your playback system the more you'll hear tape edits, mismatched overdubs, vocal soundbooths with added reverb, gates opening/closing, HVAC noise, etc. One of the landmark pieces of audiophile criticism was the dissection of "The Look Of Love" track from the "Casino Royale" soundtrack.

Part of the evolution of the audiophile mentality has been a move away from systems that tell you what's on the recording, both good and bad, towards systems that prettify whatever signal they are being fed. There are valid reasons for this shift. Does it really make much sense to spend $50k on a system that makes half your record collection sound bad?

Many recordings made in the 50s were better sounding for many reasons. Basically the technology required a simpler recording path. Since you couldn't go crazy with multi-track overdubs you actually had to have musicians who could actually play together. Without elaborate EQs and effects you eliminated superfluous wiring and had to pay serious attention to microphone selection and setup. Simply put, since you couldn't fix it in the mix, the engineers back then had to know how to record properly for good sound. And even though they didn't measure that well, tube German mics feeding custom tube mixers into tube tape machines can sound oh so sweet.
Yes, emotions comes through loud and clear on even crappy recordings. Listen to anything by Robert Johnson, Louis Armstrong from the 20s, or most any mid thru late period Rolling Stones.