Bruce Swedien says : ....

[malice]

"Anyone that tells you that "the gear doesn't matter" is absolutely and totally full of 100% HORSE CRAP"!!!! That person is probably SO DUMB that he/she can't figure out the gear anyway!!!!

Bruce Swedien"

discuss

malice

[Zoesch]

Gear matters...

Gear lust OTOH doesn't

But...

Gear only matters if the people behind both sides of the gear (Band and Engineer) are good enough to make the piece of hardware matter.

If your band blows with a Behringer De-composer it will blow the same with a UA1176.

Ottotune does not apply, it will make things suck independently of their original sound.

[ajcamlet]

Of course Gear matters. AND Gear is, in fact....Matter. So therfore by default, gear *matters*.. quite well. Swedien is always right goddamn it. (except about that whole compression thing he claims not to ever never ever ever use.)

ajc

[volthause]

Yes, you have to have recording gear to make recordings, and that's about as far as that argument holds up.

[Comte de St Germain]

One can kill people with many tools; the best assassins use the best and most appropriate tools to get the job done but with a skill set comes the ability to improvise, therein is where the tools fail to be of consequence.

[slabrock]

Gear starts to matter more once you've honed the flaws out of everything else.

Then again, a true pro can make do with any tools. Luckily he/she usually don't need to.
:-D

Slabrock

[bunnerabb]

One can kill people with many tools; the best assassins use the best and most appropriate tools to get the job done but with a skill set comes the ability to improvise, therein is where the tools fail to be of consequence.

You'd be amazed at the jobs I've passed up.

[mousdrvr]

discuss

malice

It is a little known fact but, sometime in the not too distant past 80% of all humans on the planet were infected with an alien virus which systematically destroyed their ability to use the inclusive OR operator in the process of cognition. Only the XOR gate remains active in their neural circuitry. If you can't spot the other signs of infection these people tend to look like reactionary ass holes. The biggest symptom is the near autonomic use of the "Reductio ad absurdum" rhetorical fallacy. Some example:


Uninfected Individual:
"I'm not sure about about this communications decency act, It seems overly broad."

Infected Individual:
"You must be a pedophile and want our children to be sodomized by Internet predators"


Uninfected Individual:
"Look, I don't like the guy either but that's a separate issue from his guilt or innocence in this particular instance no"?

Infected Individual:
"You are clearly a Neo-con water boy. It also highly likely that you are a pedophile and want our children to be sodomized by Internet predators"


Uninfected Individual:
Look I'm not saying gear doesn't mater It's just not the most important thing. Ya know, like necessary but not sufficient"?

Infected Individual:
"What an Idiot! So you're saying that you can make a record with some wax, some string and a couple of tin cans and It will sound just as good as what I do in my $2,000,000.00 facility? Now I am dead certain, that in addition to being a moron, you are a pedophile and want our children to be sodomized by Internet predators"


Like the man said "I used to be disgusted now I try to be amused"


-mous

I should add that not knowing the context of the original quote, I can't imply that Bruce is promoting this kind of silliness. He may actually have been speaking against it.
this particular virus is agnostic in every way imaginable.

[eagan]

I think Zoesch summarized nicely right off the start here, but, damn, The Mous has smacked a nail on the head so square and hard he's driven in right through the board.

I mean, aside from this subject, the whole world is gagging on the absurdities flooding everything everywhere with the kind of idiotic "reasoning" he described there.

OF COURSE the gear fucking matters. The Gear is the only way we can DO this stuff. And if you're trying to work with stuff that's not the greatest, there are certain constraints and flaws you can't get around no matter how good anybody is.

Now, sure, ears, knowledge, skill, and sheer fucking bloody minded determination can at least get the best you're going to get out of a particular collection of gizmos.

Then there's also the philosophy kind of along the lines of "if all you have is lemons, make lemonade", in this case, if the gear at hand colors things in certain ways, try to make something out of that that still "works" somehow. Maybe put another way, try to turn a flaw into a positive.

And it's certainly a good point to make that there is a difference between having good, clean, properly functioning gear and the complete obsessive gear-geek collector mentality that can be found. (The worst in the present era has to be this complete fucking obsession with stand-alone mic preamp units that are seemingly the center of the universe with a lot of people the last few years). But that's a long way from "the gear doesn't matter".

But, then, we're living in a world of TV sound bites, Fox News smackdown "discussion" shows and goofballs on web bulletin boards bringing us a billion shitheads like mouse described who all have to take anything that requires a lot of discussion to cover and boil it down to some idiotically oversimplified, to the point of being meaningless and stupid, in ten words or less.

There's a well known guitarist who has a large following among guitar players, some of them being especially fanatic about being obsessed with "The Tone". For those guys, forget anything else about the music the dude makes, it's THE TONE". On the guitarist's website they have a board, and it's constantly swamped with all these obsessive-compulsive types rattling on ad nauseum about every little minute fucking detail of anything and everything involved. (It will be an easy dead giveaway about who this is, for some of you, when I mention there's an ongoing thing about what batteries sound best in pedals)

Some endless point of discussion will go on and on with people beating some insanely trivial item into the dirt and wanting to know all of it so they know what THEY should use, especially funny since the man himself is constantly changing things anyway. (gee, imagine that)

But, at some point in thess wankfests, always, inevitably, somebody will then pipe up after three pages of argument over "will my distortion pedal sound better if I paint it red, or green?", and say "oh, it doesn't matter, the tone is all in the hands!". Just as silly and stupid as all the stuff that preceded it.

The same stuff, essentially, as what we're talking about here.


JLE

[kwiksilver]

..........I should add that not knowing the context of the original quote, I can't imply that Bruce is promoting this kind of silliness. He may actually have been speaking against it.
this particular virus is agnostic in every way imaginable.


Here's (http://www.gearslutz.com/board/archive/index.php/t-83251.html) where the original quote came from.

[mousdrvr]

Here's (http://www.gearslutz.com/board/archive/index.php/t-83251.html) where the original quote came from.

Thank You for that Kwiksilver!


It's Ok Eagan, looks to me like Bruce was indeed responding to reductionist idiocy not propagating it :grin:

[malice]

Guys, I launched this quote as a base of discussion.
I refrain totally from judging Bruce Swedien.
Don't grant me with ulterior motives here, it is not the case.

malice

[mousdrvr]

Hey Malice,

FWIW, I never thought that and I think it's a great topic. It seems to me that dialectic just ain't what it used to be and the only way to change that is for people to actually engage in it.
For my part that's all I thought you were doing. I never thought you were slagging off Bruce Swedien. I certainly wasn't trying to either. If I framed my examples as though I was, or as though I thought you were, than I apologize.

-mous

[malice]

It's cool mous, I just wanted to make it clear.

malice

PS: I'm gonna chime on this later, first I have to make coffee

malice

[malice]

It's an interesting quote.

The thing is that I believe that where the gear is making a real difference is over the performance.

Of course you can get away with what you have if you know your chops, but, a singer will give even more if he/she is hearing himself/herself with a killer sound with a great balance in a viby great sounding room.

OTOH, lack of gear is not an excuse.

What I think, is that gear is a small part of what really makes a difference. Given that you have a killer performer, the room is much more important, the chops of the AE, the vibe of the place, even the mood of the staff at the studio. Maybe the cofee machine is more important. The quality of headphone monitoring system, and then only comes the gear. The mikes first. the recording medium, and lastly... the pres a very over rated part of what really is important to capture a great performance.


malice

[eagan]

It's Ok Eagan, looks to me like Bruce was indeed responding to reductionist idiocy not propagating it :grin:

Well, yeah. Certainly. My take on it was definitely exactly that, that he was blasting exactly that kind of silly reductionist argument.

Spelled out a little more, he seems to be saying pretty much what I think about this, which is something I kind of laid out earlier.

Which is this, I'll rattle on about it just a little more for clarity.

There is a real kind of mental virus of silliness around in this world, with people getting seriously hung up on particular chunks of gear to the point where they think they just can't do anything without <insert Magic Box X> or something.

As people have already said, one particular flaw with this kind of thinking is that there is no particular gizmo that will work as a magic turd polisher, just by virtue of sprinkling some golden magic fairy dust on something that sucks at the original source.

But the absurd reductionist arguments that seem to pop up about this then go to stupid oversimplifications like what I was telling you guys about with the guitar gear conversations on a particular web board and the thoughts that go like "it doesn't matter, the tone is all in the hands".

In the case of that guitarist's web forum and all that stuff I laid out as an example, the response I occasionally make when that kind of silliness pops up is that it all matters, a guitarist's "tone" revolves around a whole complex system of things, which not only involves every bit of physical stuff involved in making the sounds, but a feedback loop involving the guitarist's hands, ears, and mind.

Moving back to recording, I think what Swedien is trying to get at is that while the fashion of obsessing over particular pieces of magic gizmos is silly, on the other hand, when you have to use gear to do something, the gear used does matter. The only problems come in when people get their sense of values out of proportion in weighing the importance of various pieces of the puzzle.

In rock bottom simplest terms, recording audio is a technical artform. It involves equipment. What makes a "good recording" is a topic that involves a whole bunch of stuff, it's a long path that starts with an idea in somebody's head and goes through a long path that ends with some physical artifact that can be read and used to reproduce audio for a listener. Everything along the way matters. It all has to work well. It's the "weakest link in the chain" idea.

But in a world where people too often snap into "either/or" extremes of nonsense, you can get people arguing where one guy says "none of it matters, anything can make good recordings", and the other says "you can't possibly make good recordings when the studio doesn't have <magic fairy dust of the moment>.

JLE

[Zoesch]

But this is not a discussion about Bruce Swedien ;)

I think most AE's don't really jive that well with the Engineering part of their job title. Any engineer will want the best tools available to make his/her life easier, but also wants good source material to work on.

People make "gear" discussions the utmost point of anything AE-related where, although important, it's only part of a process.

[dikledoux]

...OTOH, lack of gear is not an excuse.
THANK YOU. And the corollary to that is:

Great gear is not a guarantee.

Being at the lower end of the food-chain with respect to gear and room, there's another interesting factor at play here and it's the fact that at some point along the quality curve gear matters less and less. Somewhere along the way you can quit spending so much time correcting issues with gear and start spending more time working on the other things mentioned above - vibe, how you treat/cajole/browbeat/support an artist, lighting, brand of coffee... the list goes on.

All the mixing and tracking gigs I've gotten since I started trying to get gigs were definitely NOT because of my gear. In fact, I've had people come to me to track or mix after trying it first in facilities that were hands-down better equipped and better sounding.

dik

[eagan]

Being at the lower end of the food-chain with respect to gear and room, there's another interesting factor at play here and it's the fact that at some point along the quality curve gear matters less and less. Somewhere along the way you can quit spending so much time correcting issues with gear and start spending more time working on the other things mentioned above - vibe, how you treat/cajole/browbeat/support an artist, lighting, brand of coffee... the list goes on.


This is maybe a good example of something where somebody could take something someone said that made a good valid point, and walk away with a misunderstanding of it. Talking about this can be tricky because there will inevitably be people who take something like that the wrong way and it propagates from there.

I'm right there with you Dik in knowing what it's like working in the low budget gear end of the food chain, and I know exactly what you mean.

The only specific problem with what you've said there is the idea that as the gear gets better, cleaner, less difficult, that it matters less and less. I don't agree that this is a good way of stating it.

Working with better gear means you waste less time and effort trying to work against obstacles and problems in the way. But that hardly means that in that area of the curve the gear matters less.

I think a better way to put it is that the gear definitely matters in the sense that you want it to be good enough that you're not wrestling with problems revolving around the gear. It needs to be good enough that it's not eating up attention and time and work and pulling those resources away from "what are we actually doing here?".

Swedien quoted Quincy Jones as saying it's ALL important, every factor involved in the chain from idea to finished recording of a tune, and that's been said in different ways in this thread, and it's true. We just have to be careful about saying things about any of it that suggests that if any part of the chain is good enough that it's not a problem, then it doesn't matter. It all matters in having to be solid enough that it's not distracting attention away from the big picture of a project, whatever it is. A drummer who plays solidly in time, consistently. A singer who actually hits all the notes on pitch in tune. A board that doesn't turn any input into sonic sludge at the mix buss. And so on.


JLE

[crunch]

Great gear is not a guarantee.

True enough. Sticking a monkey with tin ears behind a neve will not likely yield pleasant results.

However, for someone who is even minimally skilled, using good gear makes a massive difference in sonic quality, and the quality is often directly proportional to the quality of the rooms they are recorded in and the talent level of music being recorded. One can also capture depth of tone with good gear and rooms that under normal circumstances wouldn't exist for someone with "a mackie and some 57's", of which, was me, for a very long time.

I think there is a huge distinction to be made between the "jot something down so you remember it" type of recording gear, versus gear that can make "cats in heat on a chalkboard" sound pleasant and compelling. Even the most talented recordist can't make some gear sound pleasant. Some gear just sucks.

I got into this because I got tired of being financially responsible for hourly studio time, having to watch the clock, couldn't work when and where I wanted to, and many times, was scheduled to work when I didn't want to. That was before and during the shitty recording and publishing deals phase of my existence. In an effort to escape that, I sacrificed audio quality for convenience. Ultimately, my writing improved so much that I'm glad I did it, even though I initially embrarrassed myself with a couple of mastering guys... You can't just put some speakers in a room and start to mix, that's for sure.

It's been a long, long uphill travel since. We (me, gg and blackieC) have reached a plateau where things are sounding pretty good, but it's not a mix room yet, in the Mixerman sense of the word. That fucker was the biggest wake up call I've ever had, musically speaking. He made so much look really easy, but once I began to see the big picture, I realized how calculated and professional everything was/is, how it all fits together and I now realize it's ridiculous to think that one can homebrew record something and mix it without being in a relatively "professional" environment and expect it to be competitive with other releases in said genre. Things are going to fall short and mastering will take a superhuman to get it right. This is why people track wherever, they take it to a decent facility and spend the time getting it right for mix.

I was also quick to take for granted the various engineers, tuned rooms and maintained gear. Now I'm the guy doing the maintenance, and also wishing I had done various things to our rooms before I heaped everything in there. But somehow it works, and it doesn't sound bad at all. Actually, drums and instruments sound pretty "big and bad" for what we do. Gear does matter, it's just an equal piece of a 4 piece puzzle, gear, environment, recordist and artist.

Interesting to note that 75% of that puzzle is ultimately the studio...

[dikledoux]

...The only specific problem with what you've said there is the idea that as the gear gets better, cleaner, less difficult, that it matters less and less. I don't agree that this is a good way of stating it.

Working with better gear means you waste less time and effort trying to work against obstacles and problems in the way. But that hardly means that in that area of the curve the gear matters less...
You're right - that was poorly stated, and your clarification in your previous post is a lot more like what I MEANT to say :lol:.

dik

[MacGregor]

A chain is as strong as its weakest link, and this holds true in
both directions.

If you're a killer singer (hi Seal) with a $10 Radio Shack mic your
sound is limited by the mic, so you have to invest there.

If you're a lousy singer (say, like me) with a killer mic YOU are the
limitation for the mic, so you have to invest in your singing skills.

Of course each side can compensate or hide weaknesses of the
other side up to a certain point.

Gear and talent need each other. The bad thing is you can't
buy talent!

[dikledoux]

..One can also capture depth of tone with good gear and rooms that under normal circumstances wouldn't exist for someone with "a mackie and some 57's", of which, was me, for a very long time.
Absolutely agreed. You mentioned that you got into recording because of various frustrations and financial limitations at the time, and my experience is analogous to yours - but I'm following your time line with some kinda delay.

What amazes/frustrates me the most is the amount of places and people out there that CANNOT "capture depth of tone with good gear and rooms that under normal circumstances wouldn't exist for someone with a mackie and some 57's". It just hilights how important talent is - whether it's the engineer or the musician. A talented recordist can get better sounds from a less than optimal situation than a tin-eared G.A.S. monkey can with great gear (unless it's strictly accidental).

Of COURSE better gear is better. I hear recordings from people on this forum that make me lust for gear, scheme on how to improve my room, etc. I know the only difference between some of those recordings and mine is gear and room. I also hear some recording/mixing jobs and I KNOW it's the talent and experience that separates their work from mine. That just makes me wanna work harder. Lately I've spent a lot more time trying to improve my critical listening skills than trying to figure out what to buy next. The problems with the gear chain are EASY compared to the rest of it, otherwise there would be a LOT more good recordings out there.

dik

[crunch]

The problems with the gear chain are EASY compared to the rest of it, otherwise there would be a LOT more good recordings out there.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Upon reflection, I think getting a room in decent shape and really intimately knowing what your speakers do are more important than the majority of the signal path/chain stuff (except for the obvious shit).

When we bought our console, we also bought some giant 300lbs. sand-filled speaker stands from the same guys for pennies and let me tell ya; while the console was all a big step up in signal path and summing (that beat our mackie's pants off with a tire iron), those stands and some speakers that I knew _really_ well (JBL 4312's and Yamahahahaha ns10's) made just as much of an impact, if not more so. I was hearing everything without as much crap and was getting a lot closer to what I wanted to hear outside of the studio. The first mix I did in the studio, I printed to a cd, ran in here to the office and put it on, and it sounded _really_ close to what I had in the studio. Unbelievable amounts of gratification there... But now I realize the other technical stuff that's cropping up:


I still think I'm mixing things a little too meaty on the bottom end (bass traps would really help this situation), but at least the recordings are holding up when I get them out of the room.

Our compressors (not naming names) basically suck for any fancy 2 bus work. We need "the glue that binds" (think SSL here) and the compressors we have, even though we mix to one of them from the get-go, just don't glue the jams together as much as I'd like without getting too breathy. And, they're too noisy...

Mics. It wasn't until until we got our listening and signal chain environment together more that I realized some mics we have are fucking noisy but sound good, and the some of the quiet ones sound bland or kinda harsh on most sources. This was an important distinction to make.

2 bus recording. Man, this one keeps coming back to haunt me, and I can't decide between digital back to the DAW (which is nice and clean) or hitting 1/4" @ 15ips (which glues nicely, but noisyyyyyyy). DAW it is.... for right now...


So, it's a learning process. I've learned to nail the 2 bus on the console a little hard to help glue it a little more, as well as mult big ticket items like kick and bass to not drive them so hard... Also knowing our console is a little different every day has become a realization, mostly a happy one.

Gear matters. So do well-educated ears and a room that tells no lies. My ears went to city college and my room tells the occaisional "little white lie", but it's a start...

:Thumbsup:

[Starfucker]

I like to compare gear to guitar amps. Mostly because guitarists tell me it's not the gear that matters, but the guy behind the knobs.

So I ask them why they chose their Rectifier/JCM800/ENGL/... over a Fender/Orange/JCM900/Vox... (or vice versa, or mix em up however you like)

Or I could ask them why they use a Gibson over a Fender or a PRS over an ESP or whatever.

And why didn't they (being the guitar gods they are) just buy a Squier strat and a behringer amp if gear doesn't matter.


because...

[Goes211]

I like to compare gear to guitar amps. Mostly because guitarists tell me it's not the gear that matters, but the guy behind the knobs.

So I ask them why they chose their Rectifier/JCM800/ENGL/... over a Fender/Orange/JCM900/Vox... (or vice versa, or mix em up however you like)

Or I could ask them why they use a Gibson over a Fender or a PRS over an ESP or whatever.

And why didn't they (being the guitar gods they are) just buy a Squier strat and a behringer amp if gear doesn't matter.


because...

That has to do with the popular belief that a certain piece of gear will buy you instant access to a better league.
:Roll eyes:

[oudplayer]

I'm not convinced that studios really need 25 kinds of mic preamps in order to make basic demo recordings of mediocre rock and roll bands. And when I see the studios leveraging their impressive gear collection as evidence of how they will immediately be able to make a better recording, it both confuses clients as to where they'll be able to make their best recordings, and takes the attention off of engineering skills and musicianship.

That said, my fav studios are ones where the engineers have picked top gear that works in their setup, that they know in and out, and gives them reliably rockin results. A few top-quality mics, well-matched preamps for those mics, decent converters, and functional monitoring. If I come in as a session musician, I don't want to spend hours trying out mic and pre combinations - I'd rather that the engineer has a good sense that for the song's needs such a recording chain would work best - try one or two combos, get to the music.

[Bob Olhsson]

OTOH, lack of gear is not an excuse.
I think a lot of the role gear and great rooms play is that there is no excuse. People tend to cling to excuses. A great room and great gear becomes an occasion for people to rise to.

[eagan]

So it seems like this is all developing a general sensible consensus on all this jazz. Maybe a quick summary:


-Everything along the way that's a part of the entire process and part of a signal path is important.

-Good gear that at least doesn't fuck things up (even if it doesn't sprinkle sonic magic fairy dust over everything) certainly matters, in that, if nothing else, it allows attention to focus on other things besides problems with the sound.

-Good clean properly functioning gear matters, having a certain particular piece of gear that somebody is declaring as the greatest thing in the universe does not. If it works well, it works.

-Related to the previous thing, having 25 different kinds of a particular kind of equipment is just silliness related more to fashion conformity and dazzling people in grand displays than actual functional need.


Reading somebody else's comments about guitarist equipment fetish reminds me again of all that stuff I mentioned earlier. It's the same stuff in play there, possibly worse than among recording engineers. The stuff I was talking about that basically goes like (focusing in on a specific example) "what does Eric Johnson use?". The funny part about this example is that in that particular case, the subject in question is always changing what he uses anyway.

And what he uses does indeed matter, but part of the results there comes down to including the combination of everything, AND what the guy using the stuff does. But instead of trying to learn from example about some broader general things, people go fucking bughouse over, say, whether a particular magic amp is loaded with speaker drivers that are Brand X model 111A or 111B.


JLE

[otek]

For my own part, I don't think I've ever heard anyone I respect as a professional, take the "gear doesn't matter" stance in an absolute literal sense.


I think it's mostly used to give gear-obsessive people a little pinch.


It's kind of like the "size doesn't matter" comment. I don't think I've heard that one being used 100% literally, either.


:icon_eek:


I must stop drinking the leftover Champagne.

[dwoz]

Bruce Sweiden is certainly an interesting read. The only problem I have with him, is his "posse"...you know...those posters on forums he frequents, who smear themselves with Sweiden's feces and loll around on the floor like labrador retrievers, hoping for the chance to lick the Audio Engineering DemiGod's toes.

It must be difficult, in that situation, to not start believing all the adulation, a little bit.

Anyway, Sweiden wrote:


If you analyzed all the frequencies and combinations of frequencies in the tone of a few notes from a violin, and then wrote a program for a computer to indicate that sound exactly, could you tell from the resultant computer print-out what kind of a violin it was? The human ear can discern such subtlies almost instantaneously.

The human ear can tell from exclusively subjective means, much more quickly and accurately than any known test equipment. It's like the old musical intrument makers. They didn't measure, they just listened. Stradivarius didn't have a computer. Perhaps his violins would not have been as wonderful sounding if he had had a computer.




I think he's got a good line on an important concept here, that he just doesn't manage to carry to the finish line.

The whole, "objective/subjective" thing.


Part of the problem, is in defining what you mean. Let's take his example. Say we have a big long list of integers printed on a folio of paper, that represent samples of audio data. Right there, we have enough information to decide if we have Sweiden's "good violin tone". But, that pile of integers doesn't particularly expose the various relationships and characteristics that we're interested in, and it doesn't minimize the relationships and characteristics that we're NOT interested in.

Next, let's say we render that pile of numbers into a graphic representation of an audio waveform, then do a fourier analysis and look at the frequency chart, then look at the phase chart. These graphical representations give us additional valuable information beyond what we might notice, looking at a pile of numbers. But the numbers HAVE all that same information.

Now, we render that list of numbers as an audio stream, and play it out through some speakers. All we really have done, is put the same data into a different presentation. But THIS presentation aggregates the data in a way that allows us to discern some "more interesting" characteristics.

All we have really done, in these scenarios, is re-present the data using different presentation techniques. Each respective technique shows us different things about the data. In other words, each presentation technique applies a different CONTEXT on the underlying data.

All of these presentations are "objective", in that each one simply reports on the underlying data points, Whether or not there is "goodness" in the data, is another thing entirely. But the point is, there is nothing more "objective" about a measurement of THD, than the sound coming out of a speaker.

Now. What use are test measurements? Most of them actually are marginally useful, in that they help to delineate what kind of "transfer function" a particular audio component posesses. The transfer function is a mathematical description of the "linearity" of a component. A component that has a very high degree of linearity, has a very "simple" transfer function...i.e. a transfer function of 1/1. Mathematically, "1/1" means "unity". multiply anything by "1/1", and you get that thing back unchanged. So an audio component that has a 1/1 transfer function can essentially be "ignored" by the AE, If a component is performing its role in the signal chain by seeming to be "a bare wire", then the AE can factor it out of his/her consciousness. If the component has a "significant" transfer function,then the AE may choose to apply "compensations" to the chain, to counteract the effect. A component may be added just to be a "compensation" for another component's "shortcomings".

Let's do something here, to make the discussion easier: Let's split the "system" into TWO systems...first, the system that takes sound and stores it to a recording medium, and the system that takes information from a recording system, and turns it into sound.

This is important, because the main crux of an engineer's job, is to compensate for shortcomings in the reproduction system, over which he/she has no control, by applying compensations to the recording system.

Slipperman calls this "suspension of disbelief".

Most reproduction systems have what can only be described as a "damaged" transfer function. They are NOT CAPABLE of rendering recordings into sound, in such a way as to convey to the listener the full sense and complete image of the material that is represented in the recording medium. Thus, the recordist applies COMPENSATIONS to the material going in, to help "suspend the disbelief" in the listener, and to "fool" them into perceiving a cohesive, clear image of the recorded material, which will NOT EXIST in the reproduction system, but which can be simulated.

Now, in all of this, we are STILL IN THE REALM OF THE OBJECTIVE.

to me, the SUBJECTIVE relates to the attachment of "value" to something.

The notion of "good/bad" isn't right, either. Its more like, "does this technique support my goal?". If so....good. If not...bad.

As posted by several of our typically astute membership, the use of less-respected gear doesn't necessarily mean "bad"...it means that there are now constraints on the scope of possible outcomes, and the task of the AE in this circumstance is to discover a "viable goal" within the now-shortened span of possibilities.

But now, back to the question of test measurments of gear being useful or not...remember, that any aggregation/presentation of data superimposes some CONTEXT on that data...a measurment of some single aspect an audio signal will of course not produce an assessment that corresponds to the kind of assessment you'd achieve, based on listening...the comparison involves two very different contexts that have only marginal confluence. So making the jump that something that "measures well" will "sound good", is specious. And vice-versa, for that matter. This doesn't mean that measurements are irrelevant, it means that they "don't mean what you think they mean".

:-)

anyway, my own philosophy of objective/subjective, as it pertains to "Art" (whatever THAT is), declares that both realms are perfectly valid and perfectly congruous. Subjectivism doesn't mean "less relevant". All it means, is that one must consider the CONTEXT factor.

dwoz

[vocalnick]

When I was working in TV, there were a bunch of people there who were obsessed with the latest and greatest equipment. They would lust after the new xyz lens, the whizbangomatic HD camera, the latest upgrade to Photoshop.... and anything else shiny that came along (and the company would almost invariably refuse to buy).

The funny thing was, these were the same people who had barely taken any time out to really learn how to use the tools they already had. The guys coveting the fancy lens (or the HD camera) didn't know the first thing about the optics of the lenses they were already using. The didn't know a thing about refraction, how the aperture setting related to depth of field, how to push colour balance by registering on tinted cards... they knew a few tricks (if I white balance on blue, my pictures get all warm), but they didn't know why they worked. In the meantime, the one guy who did bother to learn his craft was shooting pictures that were dramatically better, on the "worst camera in the station". The guy who was slobbering all over the Photoshop update didn't touch the 80s era Quantel unit in the corner, and so he never figured out that half of the fancy-pants effects he wanted so badly could actually be achieved quite readily with a bit of lateraly thinking on that old dinosaur - and without looking like presets.

That's not to say the whiz-bang stuff was worthless - that cameraman who had put hard work in to making beautiful pictures on the "dud" camera went on to make absolutely stunning pictures when the station finally upgraded... and all the gear addicts who'd been lusting after the new stuff found that their work actually looked pretty much the same despite all their new hardware. Funny that....

Malice said
Of course you can get away with what you have if you know your chops, but, a singer will give even more if he/she is hearing himself/herself with a killer sound with a great balance in a viby great sounding room.

I've performed some vocal sessions (not my own stuff - "singer for hire" sort of things) at a studio in my area. It's a nice little room, with racks upon racks of the aforementioned "e$o£eric" mic pres, as well as all the good usual suspect bits & pieces. Well equipped, certainly.

Could the owner/engineer even manage send me a headphone mix that wasn't clipping? Nope.

I definitely agree that in the right hands a better standard of equipment will yield a better sounding result. Without a qualified operator, the story is pretty different. My grandmother can take acceptable home movies with her little DV camera, but hand her a broadcast camera and she'll struggle to turn it on. Same deal with my headphone send friend above - he has bought every conceivable tool for moving audio from a to b (and turning into c), but apparently he has trouble with gain structure to the point where he couldn't manage to send a clean monitor mix from one room to the next. A novice AE with ideas above his station can get himself into a lot of trouble in a "proper studio".

[ajcamlet]

those posters on forums he frequents, who smear themselves with Sweiden's feces and loll around on the floor like labrador retrievers, hoping for the chance to lick the Audio Engineering DemiGod's toes.

this is certainly quotable. :very happy:

[tptman]

Well, to a guy that travels with several flight cases of his own microphones and outboard, of course the gear matters :-).

I love Swedien, and loved the little video he put out a few years back on some of his techniques, which made a huge impact on me based on where I was at that point in time.

For me, one of the key differences between the right gear and the wrong gear is not necessarily in the final product. A good engineer/artist will typically overcome the bad gear. The difference is the amount of time and or effort needed to make things sound great.

When you're miking a trumpet with a $200 condensor mic, for example, it will likely take a lot of work in placement, EQ, compression, reverb, etc. to get it to sound "right", whatever that means to you. On the other hand, throw up an RCA-44 and hook it in through a decent mic pre, and WHAM - instant trumpet gooshiness. Either way, you get there, just one of them requires much less work.

Of course, this definitely does end up trickling down to the end result since the more you're thinking about overcoming limitations, the less you're thinking about making creative music. Also, since time is almost always a bounding factor, the more time you spend tweaking to overcome innappropriate gear, the less time you have to focus on other things.

[dwoz]

A novice AE with ideas above his station can get himself into a lot of trouble in a "proper studio".

sounds like your friend there is a few sheep short of a station...


dwoz

[Comte de St Germain]

From my perspective, I'm more likely to walk away from a session if the source sucks than if the signal path does.

[Mixerpuppet]

Comte,

I have a budget Alto Preamp sitting around that would destroy any source signal... It doesn't really have a signal path per se' but it technically amplifies the source. But in most cases I tend to agree that no gear can repair what isn't there.

An additional comment I'd like to add is...

I think alot of times people get into trouble when they practice reductionism in the infinitely variable parameters of a complex system that combines so much objectiveness over infintesimal differences at the 2bus.

The Spinning Pentagram of variability

1) Song and Arrangement
2) Musicianship
3) Source
4) Gear
5) Engineer/Producer (inter-relational)

[nobby]

I like to compare gear to guitar amps. Mostly because guitarists tell me it's not the gear that matters, but the guy behind the knobs.


Or the chick behind the knobs.

[Chris Lambrechts]

"Anyone that tells you that "the gear doesn't matter" is absolutely and totally full of 100% HORSE CRAP"!!!! That person is probably SO DUMB that he/she can't figure out the gear anyway!!!!

Bruce Swedien"

I remember reading that and it made my eyebrows frown quite high to be honest. I guess , hope kinda that he doesn't mean that as 'black vs white' as he made it sound.

First thing that came to was :

'Hey Bruce, ... here's a kid with a shitty guitar, a horrible sound and he plays like a wimp .... pick your best gear and make him sound like Steve Lukater.

But then again faik he might do exactly that so I crawled back under the rock I came from and didn't reply.

I doubt however he actually meant it that 'black vs white' and think that ... being in the somewhat priviledged position he without a doubt rightfully is ... he can probably start from a point where in the tracking room everything is like it should be and from that point on ... well ... yeah ... I kinda agree with him I guess.

Chris

[malice]

I doubt however he actually meant it that 'black vs white' and think that ... being in the somewhat priviledged position he without a doubt rightfully is ... he can probably start from a point where in the tracking room everything is like it should be and from that point on ... well ... yeah ... I kinda agree with him I guess.


Yeah, as a GS mod, how could you not ? :D

kidding, my reaction and my conclusion was rather similar.

although I found interesting to extend on other aspects and their respective weight on the recording process.

This kinda statement is really the kind that makes you say "naaaah" and then : "hmmmm, actually he's right ..."

how weird is that ...

welcome to Chris Lambrecht :Thumbsup:

malice

[paulie]

Gear is like money.

The more you've got, the less important it becomes.

Try telling someone with a four track that they don't really need that SSL with protools and they should be able to make records with what they've got if they're any good at what they do.

Would that stop them shelling out for a better rig if they had the money? I doubt it. If this were the case then everyone would be cutting records on a four track cause that's all you need!

I realise that we now live in a world where microphone modelling software exists and the people that manufacture and buy those things will always be around, however anyone that's seriously into AE would not even begin to believe that having better gear instantly makes you a better engineer. Somehow I don't think Bruce would be addressing the microphone modelling crowd.

If someone took away your favourite reliable and trusted pieces of kit sure you would do your best, but would you not secretly hanker after it?

After many many hours and days of recording I'm getting to the point where I feel I've explored all of my signal chain's capabilities. Most of my time is spent trying to make it sound like a better version of what it actually is. On the rare occassions, I do get to use better gear I find the whole process takes half the time and the results IMHO are twice as good.
I'm looking forward to the time when I can afford a better signal chain. Then I too can be less concerned about the gear and concentrate more on other things, like whether the black or brushed aluminium finish looks better under the CR lighting.

So I'm with Bruce on this one.

My 2c.

Paulie

[TSTW]

Of course Gear matters. AND Gear is, in fact....Matter. So therfore by default, gear *matters*.. quite well.

ajc

Witt AJ, witt.

I think gear does matter. Of course it does, but as has been explained if you don't know what your doing with it, it won't matter if your using a £300 mixer or a £300.000 mixer.

(to a certain degree)

[otek]

to a certain degree

That disclaimer got you through! :Twisted: :Wink:

Actually, I was listening the other day to a couple of old recordings I made when I first started out. I had a great console and a 2" tape machine.

Now, back then I was still trying to find my ass with both hands. A well-meaning listener would suggest they could hear good intentions in there. Some may say the hear talent. Some may say I am still trying to find my ass with both hands. And failing. Miserably.

But regardless, there are aspects of these recordings that I to this day have not been able to duplicate on a DAW. Experience and technique notwithstanding.

So yeah, gear does matter. Even though I would like to think skill and talent (on both sides of the glass) trumps gear every time.





















































































(to a certain degree)



:lol:

[Bob Olhsson]

I really think mixerman put this the best I've ever heard, to paraphrase:

"Gear makes work easier or harder."

[Mixerpuppet]

I really think mixerman put this the best I've ever heard, to paraphrase:

"Gear makes work easier or harder."


In addition I think it's been said before that good gear fails less often...

Also, more consistant results... some cheap gear gives you a different answer everytime you ask...

Reliabilty, Maintainability and Servicibility

[Cheech]

Yes, you have to have recording gear to make recordings, and that's about as far as that argument holds up.


IM gonna go ahead and agree with Volt here.
Yes I want the most moist gear I can get my hands on, thats because I suck..... If you know what you are doing you can make 57's work on everything.

I mean really in the end regardess if the song is good....its good.
Nothing new there.

Im dumb I'll shut up.