is the low-end gear quality getting better?

[El Caballo]

I think part of the reason that expensive gear sounds better is that the average person using it will be a better engineer or producer.

 

There aren't a lot of random amateurs sitting behind a desk full of Crane Song, Telefunken, and Neve -- they're mostly at real studios with real engineers to set them up.

 

Those same real engineers would do a lot better with a Mackie and a few cheap Chinese mics than the average owner of cheap Chinese mics would.

[cereal]

i'm a few months away from yet another complete studio overhaul. this next round is going to be as small and virtual as i can make it. no more racks and racks of outboard gear with dozens of plugs, cables and wires.

 

macbook

logic pro

small 28 key controller

 

some ada i'm looking at:

rme multiface (upper mid-end, needs prees, very low latency,)

motu traveler (mid-end, has 4 prees)

 

some prees:

if i get the motu, i will probably get a joemeek channel strip for guitars, bass & blues harp.

 

if i get the rme, i'm looking at possibly getting the matching rme 4 channel prees.

 

and 2 channels of outboard compression: the rnc.

 

a small outboard f/w drive.

 

it's all got to fit on a desk in my little house, and be portable.

 

it's fun to plan!

[GZsound]

I agree with everyone here. Let me explain why I wonder about comments about high end gear getting better along with cheap gear getting better.

 

I read a recent microphone review. Several mics were compared to the "benchmark" mic, a Vintage U47.

 

So here are brand new mics using the same tube, same mic capsule, same design, etc. and simply trying to copy the venerable U47.. For prices that are, to me, quite high.

 

It appears paying well over three thousand dollars for a "clone" of a vintage mic is pretty much standard practice.

 

So are the high end mics getting "better" or simply hugely expensive copies of a historically great mic?

 

And in the meantime, "cheap" mics are getting better and better.

 

So it seems the really expensive equipment is really not designed to be "better" but more designed to sound like "benchmark" gear that somebody decided decades ago was really good sounding stuff. How many times will we hear that some multi thousand dollar preamp has captured that "Neve" sound?

 

In the meantime we get preamps like the Brick, like the RNP coming up the back stretch for literally thousands less.

 

And a lot of great music being made with SM57's and 58's..and board pre's.

 

I really wish there was a way to get an actual honest blind test of sub thousand dollar mics in a head to head comparison with the multi thousand dollar mics. It always seems mics get reviewed and tested in their "class".

 

I think it would be very interesting...

[aerorockjax]

 

Originally posted by GZsound I really wish there was a way to get an actual honest blind test of sub thousand dollar mics in a head to head comparison with the multi thousand dollar mics. It always seems mics get reviewed and tested in their "class". I think it would be very interesting...

 

 

Yeah, that would be interesting.

[C JoGo]

Definitely-- Low-end pricing does not necessarily describe poorer quality ! Some ultra~usuable gear manufactured and obtainable for all budgets--Especially when that same gear::: is on the used market !!

 

Used ^^ weighing~in at $100/ or so ::

 

AT 4033

Behringer DEQ 2496

SEK'D 2496 A/D

Lexicon LXP 5

TC M-300

[2manband]

I'm suprised that nobody has mentioned economics of scale yet.

Inexpensive gear sells more units, so the manufacturers can take a smaller profit margin and give the consumer more bang for the buck than they could, say 20 years ago. The really high end gear probably sells more units than it did in 1976, but that segment of the market hasn't seen the exponential growth that the entry level stuff has.

[UstadKhanAli]

Originally posted by 2manband I'm suprised that nobody has mentioned economics of scale yet.

 

We were waiting for you to step in and point it out.

[blue2blue]

Originally posted by cereal i'm a few months away from yet another complete studio overhaul. this next round is going to be as small and virtual as i can make it. no more racks and racks of outboard gear with dozens of plugs, cables and wires. macbook logic pro small 28 key controller some ada i'm looking at: rme multiface (upper mid-end, needs prees, very low latency,) motu traveler (mid-end, has 4 prees) some prees: if i get the motu, i will probably get a joemeek channel strip for guitars, bass & blues harp. if i get the rme, i'm looking at possibly getting the matching rme 4 channel prees. and 2 channels of outboard compression: the rnc. a small outboard f/w drive. it's all got to fit on a desk in my little house, and be portable. it's fun to plan!

 

At the risk of getting offtrack, here, lemme just sidebar my take on your A/D/A choices... I have a MOTU 828mkII and it's fine, OK, reliable, you won't rip your ears off the sides of your head.

 

BUT the two mic preamps (which I'm thinking may have something in common with those on the sister product, the Traveler) are fairly dark, some might even say muffled. Definitely NOT a first choice in my book for utility preamps as you might want on your portable interface. The pres were an afterthought when I bought it but I would probably haul my 14 year old first gen Mackie 1204 with me if I had to do any 'serious' work. (I also have problems wtih the near zero latency monitoring in the MOTU, so I always use a board no matter what I'm doing. I couldn't get as virtualized as I wanted.)

 

 

If I was faced with your that choice (of course there are a lot of other options, as well) I would really do what it took to justify the RME to myself.

[Duardo]

 

Take a company like Apogee. They've used advances in technology to make wonderful sounding products, each being better than the last. Same with companies like Crane Song, Dangerous Music, Brauner, RME, EMES, the list can go on for days and days.

 

 

There's a big difference between what companies like Apogee and Crane Song have done and what companies like Dangerous and Brauner have done. Digital technology has advanced quite a bit but analog technology hasn't, and where is there for it to go? Not to knock the Dangerous and Brauner products, but they're not really that much "better" than similar products that have been around for decades. Sure, Brauner's microphones are amazing, and they've certainly used technology to improve specs, push self-noise down, and so on, but how many people would say that they're "better" than old Neumann or AKG microphones? And the Dangerous stuff is really just simple, high-end analog gear as well...they've taken thinks like the summing bus and master sections out of high-end analog consoles and packaged them in individual boxes to meet the needs of today's marketplace. The only reason it wasn't done earlier is because there was no use for such products earlier. People like Rupert Neve still find it funny that there's such a big market for outboard preamps these days.

 

 

Why does the high end gear claim to be clones of "vintage" equipment if the high end stuff is getting "better"?

 

 

Exactly...not many people would claim that today's gear is "better" than a vintage U47, ELAM 251 or C12, or a Neve 1073...sure, there's new stuff that's on par with those things, but not "better".

 

 

No one has mentioned in this discussion that in the end, most of you will output to this relatively low audio standard which has not significantly changed in many years.

 

 

That standard really isn't that "low"...that's one area where the quality really has improved over the years. If you take today's best converters, even running at 16/44.1, and compare them to converters from ten and twenty years ago, there's no comparison and there's certainly still room for improvement (which is a good thing, as the consumer marketplace isn't exactly demanding higher-resolution formats).

 

 

Perhaps higher end equipment also pursues a higher audio quality which is not yet in widespread implementation?

 

 

If you record music with higher-end gear you can still hear the difference on a CD...but as others have pointed out, the gear is a relatively small part of the equation when it comes to overall quality. That's where the improvements in lower-end gear really have made a difference...before things like the Mackie mixers and ADAT's came out years ago, the quality of the gear used really did play a large difference in sound quality. There's still a difference, but the gap has narrowed and the gear is typically no longer the limiting factor.

 

 

In one recent thread on NFMs, one of the posters said something to the effect of, "Gee, I respect everyone's opinion, I guess, but, a couple years ago everyone was saying the Mackie top of the line was the schnitz [schiznitz? Whatever] and now everyone disses the speaker. It's the same speaker... doesn't that suggest that people either don't know now or didn't know then?"

 

 

They still sound as good now as they did then. There are just a whole lot more choices now. At the time they came out there weren't so many powered nearfield monitors on the market...you mainly had the 20/20BAS speakers which were a bit less than the Mackies or the Genelec 1030-series monitors which were quite a bit more. Now who knows how many choices there are?

 

-Duardo

[UstadKhanAli]

 

Originally posted by Duardo People like Rupert Neve still find it funny that there's such a big market for outboard preamps these days.

 

 

Even though he makes them himself?

[MoreGuitars]

Originally posted by Phil O'Keefe A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. And YOU are a important part of that chain. Me at Abbey Road vs Geoff Emerick at my place... Given the same material and the same artists, my money for the better recording would be on Geoff Emerick. That doesn't mean that good gear is unimportant (and I am fortunate enough to have some very nice gear ), but the skill of the person using it IMO trumps everything else, given a certain level of basic quality. As far as preamps, it's subjective, but it's also application-specific. For example, for one sound source, in one genre, a Neve preamp might be just what you want. The low-mid "thickness" and color may compliment some sound sources in a very cool way. Guitar amps would be a good example... but if you're trying to make a ultra-pristine acoustic recording, you might prefer something else. That doesn't mean the Neve is "crap", just that something else may be subjectively better in that application. Of course, the mic you couple to the preamp makes a big difference too. That mic / preamp interaction is an important consideration IMO. Some preamps sound great with some mics, and not as cool with others... and again, that is sometimes source-specific. But at the end of the day, if you can't make a bitchin' sounding recording with a FMR RNP and a couple of decent mics, it's not the gear's fault.

 

Even though Abbey Road is famous for good reasons, there is a lot of problems there. A friend produced an alum there about 15 years ago, and he had a lot of problems getting stuff to work, and when it broke, it took a long time to fix it. It got so bad for him, that he ended up coming back to the US and finsihing the Album in LA. So it might not be the great equipment there that made the great albums......