[AdamM]

If you haven't checked out the site of Cikira (Amanda Pehlke), and you're into synths,  you should.

http://www.cikira.com/who/

Massive gearlist, custom built studio, largest AIBO robot dog litter privately held?!  SONY contacted her about borrowing a specific AIBO!



Got Nord?   




/A

[Russell Dawkins]

Once again, I see an absolute fortune being invested in time and money for music production and almost any old thing for amp and speakers in order to judge the results. 

[AdamM]

It is interesting...  But i wouldn't say 'any old thing' regarding those monitors.

Both of those monitor pairs she's using are very common 'industry standards'.  You'll see those Mackie monitors in a LOT of studios.  You could argue that they are 'This NS10M for this decade'

NS10M's don't sound great, yet they were what was in the vast majority of studios.  EVERYONE had a pair - it was expected - so engineers moving around from studio to studio had a reference point.  Those Mackies are somewhat like that.  Same with Genelecs.

The old addage:
"If it sounds good on these, it will sound GREAT on a good pair of speakers"

You'll see a crappy single driver Auratone monitor in most studios too , to emulate car stereos and the such.

Here's a shot with the NS10M's and an Auratone (small one in the middle) rocking the desk, as well as some nice monitors.



Are all these people crazy?  Are the people who make the music less concerned with quality than those who listen to it?  It's a bit of a rhetorical question, but even in a 'price no object' studio, i've never seen them go crazy on power cords / speaker wire / mojo doo-dads, etc.    I've spent a bunch of time in a $1.6M studio and they used Bryston amps, Westlake monitors - all hooked up with standard Belden speaker cable.

I'm not saying those elements do not make a difference, but they're rarely if ever used in recording studios.  (not wanting to breathe air into that old argument again!)

You know, if you haven't heard those Mackies, you might be surprised.  They're accurate and flat and not especially exciting. And that's about what you want when you're mixing. Similar with a calibrated reference televion/display - it's not the 'best' looking one in the room, but it's the one you trust and set your levels to.

/A

[JohnR]

Hey, that's a nice collection of synths. A friend of mine has bought a couple vintage synths recently, IIRC the last one was a Prophet 5. And he's building a modular synth from scratch. I might get to hear it next time I'm in the US.

[Daygloworange]

How the NS 10M's became ubiquitous in studios is a bit of a mystery. Yamaha intended them to be consumer bookshelf monitors as far as I've heard, they never intended them to be marketed to pro audio.

Although they are in studios all over the world, I've never known anyone to mix using them. They are intended as a nearfield tracking monitor. The single Auratone was used years ago to check for phase problems during playback in mono (back in the days of mono televisions, and AM radio). If you see an Auratone now, it's kinda like fuzzy dice in a car, mostly just nostalgia. 

The old addage:
"If it sounds good on these, it will sound GREAT on a good pair of speakers"

A dangerous adage.     Monitors with a bad frequency response will lead you to try and ameliorate it with EQ and compression. A proper speaker (playing back this mix)will only highlight those areas that were done improperly as a result of bad monitoring.

I listen to tapes now that I made years ago and cringe. I can capture sounds way better now because I can hear problem areas in miking before I commit and print them to tape (sorry about the vernacular, old habits die hard).  

The other really important thing is low end. I have a 4 way system now, I can more precisely mix very low information, as opposed to resorting to rolling off very low bottom end because my monitors weren't capable of playing cleanly or accurately in the low registers.

Ditto for the high end.

In short, I couldn't be happier since I upgraded my monitoring and added diffusion and bass trapping to both my studio (which is still evolving...)and to my home 2 channel environments.

I have to admit that I was guilty of what Russell Dawkins remarked about. Monitoring, and room treatments were last to be upgraded.  

It's all good now though!  

Cheers

[AdamM]

The modular-synth-from-scratch thing is so unbelievably bad-ass cool.  You'd learn so much about how it all works.  There's some great kits out there...  it would be awesome to jump into a project like that, you know, if we didn't have to go to work and all

I think at this stage, given the choice, i'd pick more time over more money.  There just isn't enough hours in a day!

[AdamM]

Hey DGO, FULLY agree about room treatment and setup.  That's all too often overlooked.  It's bizarre.

I also don't disagree with the point of Russel's - tons of investment in gear, and the playback is often neglected.   That said though, how many studios have you seen those Mackies in?  How many mixes have we heard done on 'less than ideal' setups?  - especially with bass and sub frequencies?

It's like the people making the music error with 'too little concern' for playback, and the hifi people listening to the music error on 'too much concern', and almost everyone errors with 'too little acoustic treatment'  !!

A horrible generalization, to be sure, but more often right than wrong?

[IronLion]

I wonder if she's ever made a piece of music with all that gear?  Or is it just a shrine to her own...ego?  Wonder how her plastic dogs fit into that picture.  There certainly isn't any music up on her website.   

[Daygloworange]

How many mixes have we heard done on 'less than ideal' setups?  - especially with bass and sub frequencies?

I know that when I listen back to things I did years ago, I'm not very happy. Some of that was due to lack of good equipment, some of it due to lack of proper monitoring and room treatment, but most of it due to inexperience. At least in my case.

There are many reasons why commercial recordings don't sound commensurate with the tools at the disposal of the people that created them.

Agendas.

You have to remember that record companies are businesses. First and foremost, they are there to turn a profit. They are at the top of the food chain.

Good music sells records. It's not good sounding records that sell the music. In general, at least. Although a better sounding record might arguably sell a few more records, it's the law of diminishing returns.

Artists create the music that sells. Engineers and producers capture and record the music. Mastering engineers take what engineers and producers have recorded, and reshape it.

When you think about it, that's an awful lot of people with different agendas, tastes, ears and so on, all getting their mitts on the way the music ultimately comes across played back on 2 speakers.

The you take a guy like Lenny Kravitz  who goes out of his way to make his records sound retro, and like low fidelity 8 track( multitrack) demos.

Budgets are another big factor. Good sound costs money. How good do you want it to sound?

The hourly rate of a top notch studio can run several hundreds of dollars an hour. Producers, engineers, mastering engineers charge top dollar as well.

Having said all that though, I still think that records in general could sound better than they do.

It's like the people making the music error with 'too little concern' for playback, and the hifi people listening to the music error on 'too much concern', and almost everyone errors with 'too little acoustic treatment'  !!

Yeah, I would agree. But.... I think that if records were better sounding, a lot of the audiophiles that exist today, wouldn't have become as enamoured with the gear in an effort to get better sound. I think they would have stopped short and not pursued having as high resolving, full range systems as they do.

But at least with audiophiles, they at least give some thought to room interaction with their system, if not actual room treatments.

I've had my system played in a few different locations, with different room treatments, and different room volumes, and it makes quite a difference in overall sound.

A bad recording, is still a bad recording though, no matter what room, or system.

Cheers

[Freo-1]

There has been a lot of press about modern recording quality being poor. When a late 1960's Savoy Brown recording sounds better than the latest pop/rock recordings (eg: Killers), something is very wrong.

Thankfully, most of the classical recordings today are excellent.

Here is a link on this issue:

http://georgegraham.com/compress.html

[ooheadsoo]

Hey DGO, FULLY agree about room treatment and setup.  That's all too often overlooked.  It's bizarre.

I also don't disagree with the point of Russel's - tons of investment in gear, and the playback is often neglected.   That said though, how many studios have you seen those Mackies in?  How many mixes have we heard done on 'less than ideal' setups?  - especially with bass and sub frequencies?

It's like the people making the music error with 'too little concern' for playback, and the hifi people listening to the music error on 'too much concern', and almost everyone errors with 'too little acoustic treatment'  !!

A horrible generalization, to be sure, but more often right than wrong?

Russell happens to be on the recording side of things, not the hifi side.

[Quiet Earth]

Need to add another Nord lead to that set up . . . .

[santacore]

That's a very 90's studio. I bet 80% of that equipment is not used today. Maybe the Mackie monitors and mixers are still going but I bet that's about it. It seems most pro's are using mainly soft synths today. Apparently they sound great, save a lot of space, and are more flexible.

As for studio sound quality I think most guys today either A) just don't know better, B) don't have the money to own better, C) don't have the time and energy to deal with things properly. In most commercial studios people are trying to do way to much, way to quickly. Back in the 70's-80's they would spend days getting a good drum or guitar sound. Today most engineers are lucky to get an hour to set up the whole band. Faster, faster.....cheaper, cheaper......better, better???? I don't think so. 

Audiophiles are a very small percentage of the buying and recording population. I have worked in a number of studios and ALL the owners that's I've tried to talk Hi-Fi with just laugh at me. Sad but true.

[nathanm]

I don't even wanna think about how long it took to wire all that stuff up.  Just the mental organization seems bewildering.

[Russell Dawkins]

The old addage:
"If it sounds good on these, it will sound GREAT on a good pair of speakers"

You know, if you haven't heard those Mackies, you might be surprised.  They're accurate and flat and not especially exciting. And that's about what you want when you're mixing.

/A

I believe this old adage is just an old adage that happens to be fatally flawed and is primarily what keeps mastering engineers in business.

The argument about any speaker being a standard, like the NS 10Ms and now the Mackies, was used in the early 70s when most of the studios used JBLs. The result was a slew of (especially pop) recordings that sounded great on JBLs and dismal on other speakers.

There existed a huge disparity between the sound out of California and sound on mixes coming out of England, which were mixed on flatter speakers. If you played those on JBLs, the bass sounded massive, because the bass was massive on JBLs - not to say accurate! If you played mixes made on JBLs on flatter measuring speakers of the time, like IMFs, Tannoys, the big KEFs, Celestions, Wharfdales they would sound thinner in the bass than had been intended, because the JBLs added false body (read "they typically had a massive hump around 70 Hz").

I've heard many Mackies and Genelecs and in my view they are the modern equivalent of those old JBLs, although nowhere near as bad. Nevertheless, they do "hype" the sound a little - a little too much energy in the bass and treble regions, a "smiley-face" EQ. Others would call this a little "hi-fi". Still others would say they're client pleasers - they flatter a mix like most Sony headphones. Another term for this used to be the "west coast sound" - boom and tizz.

I have been educating local studios in the fallacy of the adage you cite for the last 20 years. Many have come around.
My argument for seeking the most accurate playback you can manage, even for mixing (tracking is much less critical) is that if your mixing speakers (and environment) is more accurate you will hit the target on more other playback systems, whether they be car, boom box, clock radio, T.V. or real hi-fi than if your mixing environment is less sonically accurate.

Generally, the cheaper the speaker, the more coloured (excuse my Canadian/English spelling) - that is the less linear the frequency response and the messier the impulse response. These imperfections can be thought of as "character" . Trouble is, if the speaker has too much character it will be imposed on everything that passes through it, tending to make everything sound similar. This gives rise, for example, to the dreaded "one-note bass" syndrome.

Once you have gotten past the stage where you are easily impressed by sheer quantity of bass you begin to look for refinement, in this and other things. Refinement in this case also carries with it articulation.

The corollary of this last point is that on a speaker which has a clean impulse response and a wide and linear frequency response and thus does not have much character of its own, then the character inherent in the recordings being played, which include EQ, reverb, panning and balance decisions, can be heard more easily. That is, one recording (or mix) sounds maximally different from another.

You want this.

Love my SP Tech Timepieces!

[AdamM]

It would be very interesting to compare some SP Timepieces with a set of Mackies or Genelecs.  I would love have a chance to hear them side by side.

Studio familiarity is an important thing to consider.  As many engineers bounce from studio to studio,  a consistency between them has the beneficial aspect of at least knowing what to expect.  Is familiarity a beneficial thing over improved performance?  Ideally i suppose, the studio should have the superior mains plus a set of 'Mackies' for control.

Canadian / English spelling welcome.  I grew up in Victoria BC

Your original point about the emphasis asymmetry between sound generation VS playback is a good one.  Why do so many people skimp out on monitors?  Room treatment? etc.?  Does this phenomenon not create an opportunity for you though?  For those who have the better playback rooms, the improved ability to refine and articulate like you mentioned - your work is going to sound better than your competitors!  Isn't this appreciation and understanding a benefit for those who 'get it' ?

I still think Mastering people will continue to keep their jobs, regardless of how good studios sound.  The skill-set and knowledge base required to be the finest at everything from recording/tracking to mastering is just too wide.  I'm sure people will disagree, but look at the legends:  Mutt Lange or Rick Rubin - they both still hand it over to mastering guys.  An example might be a how a mechanic can keep your entire car running, but on a formula 1 team, there's a guy who just specializes in aerodynamics or suspension etc. At the top it's always about specialization.

I'm seriously thinking about a set of Timepiece mini's.... Just wondering how to ship them here to Australia......

Which Timepieces do you have Russell?

[Quiet Earth]

That's a very 90's studio. I bet 80% of that equipment is not used today.

I bet it is. Ain't nothin' wrong with any of the gear in that room. Except for the Mackies.

[Russell Dawkins]

Adam,
I have not compared the TPs to the Mackies and Genelecs side by side, just from memory, though the differences are not so subtle. It would be fun to do though, even if only unequivocally to hear the difference.

I have a good friend who owns another good studio in town (works with the likes of the Cowboy Junkies)
and when he heard the TPs, he just plain wanted them. He runs Mackies and Genelecs and NS10s.

I have another friend who had a mastering facility with decent equipment and who immediately recognized what he was hearing with the TPs driven by the Nuforce ref 9 SE V2 as the highest fidelity he had ever heard and sent his brother over to hear what was currently possible.

I have the 2.1s which have not yet been modified with the Mundorf components. I have to pick a time when I can send the crossover back to Bob. As you can imagine, the TPs have become a key part of my studio and I have to pick a time when I'm away, because otherwise I'm using them on and off all day long.

I'm using mine with a pair of Hsu 10" subs crossed in at 35 Hz (flat to 18 Hz, 6 dB down at 12 Hz!). Integration was very easy, The bass on TPs is very sweet.

I wouldn't be surprised if the same were true for the minis - easy grafting onto subs. With a modded Behringer DCX feeding the subs and keeping the lows away from the minis, I'll bet you could get surprising clean levels, too.

I'm still growing up in Victoria BC.