Why "audiophiles" don't use VSTs?

[notsodeadlizard]

Perhaps for the same reason accordion players don't use chainsaws.
It just isn't necessary.

 

[w00b3r]

I enjoy using VSTs on my journey.
People will argue audiophiles don't like to tamper with the sound... but swapping equipment is just adding and subtracting circuitry, that will inevitably do just that.
The difference is.. 200 bucks for a good harmonics distortion plugin can give you more "emulated" changes to your circuitry in 15 minutes, than most audiophiles might go thru in equipment in a lifetime.

if you are rocking a newer Class D like Hypex NC or Purifi, adding some second order harmonics can give you that perfect sweetness on top that might be missing, and bring some musicality back into the amp.

In other words, as an audiophile seeking new experiences, i would say it may hurt you more having NOT tried VSTs, than to have tried them and decided they werent for you.

 

[Sokel]

if you are rocking a newer Class D like Hypex NC or Purifi, adding some second order harmonics can give you that perfect sweetness on top that might be missing, and bring some musicality back into the amp.

[ominous dramatic music]

 

[w00b3r]

[ominous dramatic music]

Haha.. Not that they arent already musical, but oh man.. I wish you could have seen the look on my girl's face when I enabled Saturn 2 with clean tubes preset, and barely turned the drive up, while listening to solange - cranes in the sky. (gotta keep her entertained)

It was night and day. drive and emotion in the voice. orchestral elements got much thicker. there was a sparkly air that came thru behind her voice. the snare was more playful. a lot more movement overall. we were both speechless the whole song.

 

[kemmler3D]

An """audiophile""" using a VST to improve the sound doesn't happen for several reasons:

1. Most VST interfaces assume some familiarity with how audio actually works, which is a problem for them (not ONLY being snarky here)
2. VSTs are all digital, which for many """audiophiles""" means they are inherently incapable of improving the sound
3. The idea that software can improve the sound in a similar way to physical gear conflicts with their entire "career" of chasing small distortions through large price tags
4. The nature of a VST is to actively participate in changing the sound by making concrete, specific choices about what you want to hear, by tweaking knobs or changing settings. """Audiophiles""" like to imagine that changes to sound are in some way unknowable or unmeasurable, inherent to some alchemical aspect of the gear. This is exactly the opposite of how VSTs work.
5. VSTs are too cheap for them to imagine they actually sound good. (mentioned by others.)
6. Using a VST means being pinned down on exactly what it is you like about audio. Is it harmonic distortion? A little extra compression or boost in the lows? mid-side processing? If you just buy gear randomly you can keep talking in subjective terms like "musicality" and "flow". If you use a VST you have to finally admit you just prefer more H2 and H3 distortion, it takes the mystery out of your own preferences.

Bottom line, I think the type of audiophiles we're talking about aren't really interested in chasing down genuinely better sound. If they were, they'd behave very differently, VSTs or no. They enjoy the process of swapping out gear and telling themselves how it sounds. IMO this isn't really a problem except when they start telling everyone how ignorant they are for not hearing (read: imagining) what they do.

 

[egellings]

Why "audiophiles" don't use VSTs? Concept is pretty clear - you would get objectively saying the most precise amp, speaker - entire audio rig - and then colorize signal digitally at source (well, you could route analog signal to the actual analog rig, but plugins mimic analog rigs so well already), add up some distortion (Ozone Pro Exciter, Fabfilter Saturn etc), EQ (Pro-Q etc).

I've been observing the audiophile community for a pretty long time now and I've noticed all conversations come down to one thing:
People just don't like the mix, it's literally that simple, either song is actually poorly mixed or people just don't enjoy the tonality that audio engineer offered them.
Also why don't we have DSP's with support for VSTs? (I don't know any, if you know one, let me know)

Maybe money is the issue as always? Amp can be sold for 5k USD, typical plugin goes for <500 USD (and that's most often the price of entire bundle!), so it might not be worth it for audiophile companies to change the mindset behind the "audio quality"

Or maybe, I don't like to put it this way, but maybe audiophiles are just too dumb and they think measured gear distortion is different from the same but digitally applied one? (Same thing goes for EQs etc)

What's a 'VST'? When using an acronym that not everyone may be familiar with, please spell it out once in the beginning, and then use it as needed later.

 

[Trell]

What's a 'VST'? When using an acronym that not everyone may be familiar with, please spell it out once in the beginning, and then use it as needed later.

Virtual Studio Technology - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

>>>Virtual Studio Technology (VST) is an audio plug-in software interface that integrates software synthesizers and effects units into digital audio workstations. VST and similar technologies use digital signal processing to simulate traditional recording studio hardware in software. Thousands of plugins exist, both commercial and freeware, and many audio applications support VST under license from its creator, Steinberg.<<<

 

[dorakeg]

An """audiophile""" using a VST to improve the sound doesn't happen for several reasons:

1. Most VST interfaces assume some familiarity with how audio actually works, which is a problem for them (not ONLY being snarky here)
2. VSTs are all digital, which for many """audiophiles""" means they are inherently incapable of improving the sound
3. The idea that software can improve the sound in a similar way to physical gear conflicts with their entire "career" of chasing small distortions through large price tags
4. The nature of a VST is to actively participate in changing the sound by making concrete, specific choices about what you want to hear, by tweaking knobs or changing settings. """Audiophiles""" like to imagine that changes to sound are in some way unknowable or unmeasurable, inherent to some alchemical aspect of the gear. This is exactly the opposite of how VSTs work.
5. VSTs are too cheap for them to imagine they actually sound good. (mentioned by others.)
6. Using a VST means being pinned down on exactly what it is you like about audio. Is it harmonic distortion? A little extra compression or boost in the lows? mid-side processing? If you just buy gear randomly you can keep talking in subjective terms like "musicality" and "flow". If you use a VST you have to finally admit you just prefer more H2 and H3 distortion, it takes the mystery out of your own preferences.

Bottom line, I think the type of audiophiles we're talking about aren't really interested in chasing down genuinely better sound. If they were, they'd behave very differently, VSTs or no. They enjoy the process of swapping out gear and telling themselves how it sounds. IMO this isn't really a problem except when they start telling everyone how ignorant they are for not hearing (read: imagining) what they do.

I think we need to definite what is "better sound" and I believe there is no clear answer to what is better or worse.

I am saying this because we all have different definition of what is better or worse. To some, better means its as close to the recording as possible. If there are flaws in the recording, the gear should reproduce it faithfully. Some might have personal preferences. They may not like the way the recording sounds and prefer to have it the way they want.

While software based VST is something very new. Hardware solutions that has similar effects do exist. Some amps have built-iin controls like treble or base, reverb, etc... treble/bass controls exist on pretty much every AVR in the market as well. No doubt they aren't as versatile compared to VST, but they do alter the sound.

Btw, Marantz SACD players have built-in filters which allows use to alter sound quality.

 

[Keith_W]

I am saying this because we all have different definition of what is better or worse. To some, better means its as close to the recording as possible. If there are flaws in the recording, the gear should reproduce it faithfully.

Why do you want to get as close to the recording as possible? Don't you want to get as close to the performance as possible?

That's my point, I don't necessarily believe that mastering engineers know what's best for you. I have enough bad recordings in my collection to know that.

 

[jae]

I regularly use them with SoundSource on mac and eq apo on Windows. Foobar recently added support for 64-bit vsts as well which is nice. I don't typically use many "effects" but mostly practical things like a good PEQ for headphone/room correction (I use Crave/Kirchhoff/ReaEQ, as far as I know fabfilter is not using simple biquads and/or proportional Q?). I also like using them for practical stuff or in testing- things like swapping stereo channels, crossfeed, muting a channel, inverting polarity, L-R balance, or a highpass for less bass at night time, things like that. Or for turning on or off a treble tilt. Rnnoise as been a godsend for voice chatting with new macbooks since Apple apparently did not find it sensible to have have anything to assist with rejecting speaker noise on the internal microphone. I also also apply it to other's incoming noisy mics as well.

 

[symphara]

In other words, as an audiophile seeking new experiences, i would say it may hurt you more having NOT tried VSTs, than to have tried them and decided they werent for you.

I'd rather seek new experiences by listening to new music, instead of monkeying about with sound plugins. I think you get way better bang for your time.

 

[fpitas]

Why do you want to get as close to the recording as possible? Don't you want to get as close to the performance as possible?

That's my point, I don't necessarily believe that mastering engineers know what's best for you. I have enough bad recordings in my collection to know that.

I think you should do that if it makes you happy. It's no longer high-fidelity, but maybe you don't care.

 

[Keith_W]

I think you should do that if it makes you happy. It's no longer high-fidelity, but maybe you don't care.

With the flick of a switch I can turn all the VST's and all my processing off and it will be "high-fidelity", but then it sounds a bit too dry for my taste. I get that my approach is not for everyone, but for me VST's are a way to tune my system even more for not much money, or even for free. What's there not to like about "free"

 

[fpitas]

With the flick of a switch I can turn all the VST's and all my processing off and it will be "high-fidelity", but then it sounds a bit too dry for my taste. I get that my approach is not for everyone, but for me VST's are a way to tune my system even more for not much money, or even for free. What's there not to like about "free"

As I said, I have absolutely no problem with that. You realize that you're striking off on your own to fix perceived problems in the recordings.

 

[Londek]

While software based VST is something very new. Hardware solutions that has similar effects do exist. Some amps have built-iin controls like treble or base, reverb, etc... treble/bass controls exist on pretty much every AVR in the market as well. No doubt they aren't as versatile compared to VST, but they do alter the sound.

"but they do alter the sound" - Yeah sure, but it's imprecise as hell! "Reverb", "Treble", "Bass" are very general terms.
What reverb, how does the virtual room look like? What is the decay time?
What is treble? >3khz? >4khz? It is 1khz difference and its totally noticeable, 3khz - 4khz is zone where technically much of "harshiness" happens.
What is bass? For who? Classic music people can say its 100-200hz-ish zone, electronic music people are gonna get closer to sub-bass zone.

I think you should do that if it makes you happy. It's no longer high-fidelity, but maybe you don't care.

I don't think there's anything low-fidelity in eqing the sound. Do you also call audio engineer's work low fidelity? He uses eqs too, MULTIPLE eqs. Do you call mastering engineer's work low fidelity because he increased harmonics in transients? How max 3db eq (that's the upper limit in my understanding of eq'ing the sound to your flavour) relates to "losing fidelity"? While mixing engineer nails the overall balance of sounds in music, mastering engineer gets the tonality just right for his ears, why wouldn't you want to become your own mastering engineer just to get that 1db of presence in voice louder, or remove just a little bit of boxiness from master? I'm using subjective terms here intentionally (even tho I'm hard objectivist), I think people's perception on sound can vary, depending on genres they listen to and there shouldn't be anything low-fidelity to applying little eq.
Please notice I didn't mention colorized speakers anywhere in this post.

 

[fpitas]

I don't think there's anything low-fidelity in eqing the sound. Do you also call audio engineer's work low fidelity? He uses eqs too, MULTIPLE eqs. Do you call mastering engineer's work low fidelity because he increased harmonics in transients? How max 3db eq (that's the upper limit in my understanding of eq'ing the sound to your flavour) relates to "losing fidelity"? While mixing engineer nails the overall balance of sounds in music, mastering engineer gets the tonality just right for his ears, why wouldn't you want to become your own mastering engineer just to get that 1db of presence in voice louder, or remove just a little bit of boxiness from master? I'm using subjective terms here intentionally (even tho I'm hard objectivist), I think people's perception on sound can vary, depending on genres they listen to and there shouldn't be anything low-fidelity to applying little eq.
Please notice I didn't mention colorized speakers anywhere in this post.

Once you purposely modify the sound from the original recording, you deviate from fidelity in any normal sense. This really has nothing to do with the creation process. People do any number of things as they record music that are completely inappropriate for reproduction.

 

[Keith_W]

Like I said in my post somewhere on the first page, objectivists and subjectivists don't use VST for the same reason - both are purists. I think that having "fidelity to the recording" is a misguided approach, as @Londek argues very well. And as I said early, mastering engineers are "subjective objectivists" - they might use objective methods, but the sound they produce is entirely subjective and to their taste. And not to mention, on their studio monitors (some of which were horribly flawed like the BBC LS3/5A). They don't know what YOUR taste is, let alone what kind of coloration your speakers, room, and electronics might introduce. So I think the real goal should be "fidelity to the performance", and the only way to get there is to be a "subjective objectivist" yourself. Use objective methods, but tune the sound to your subjective taste. And the best way to do that is to use the same tools the mastering engineers use ... VST.

I didn't assemble my system to re-create square waves or perfect impulse responses, although it can certainly come close with all the DSP I have in it. It is there to listen to music, and if I have more tools at my disposal then all the better. DSP for driver and room correction is not controversial on ASR. But somehow going the extra step and using the same tools the recording engineers use is controversial. After all, both are a form of digital manipulation.

If you want to have "fidelity to the recording" and ignore all the subjective fiddling that the recording engineer performed, regardless of whether it might be detrimental to the sound ... then yeah, go ahead. Your music, your system, so you can decide

 

[Trell]

Once you purposely modify the sound from the original recording, you deviate from fidelity in any normal sense. This really has nothing to do with the creation process. People do any number of things as they record music that are completely inappropriate for reproduction.

So? I've no problem using tone controls to adjust to my taste or compensate for mastering/recording. I use dynamic loudness as well, and for me that is a needed feature when listening at lower volumes.

 

[fpitas]

So? I've no problem using tone controls to adjust to my taste or compensate for mastering/recording. I use dynamic loudness as well, and for me that is a needed feature when listening at lower volumes.

And as I said, I'm not loosing sleep. Modify to your heart's content!

 

[Ricardus]

An """audiophile""" using a VST to improve the sound doesn't happen for several reasons:

1. Most VST interfaces assume some familiarity with how audio actually works, which is a problem for them (not ONLY being snarky here)
2. VSTs are all digital, which for many """audiophiles""" means they are inherently incapable of improving the sound
3. The idea that software can improve the sound in a similar way to physical gear conflicts with their entire "career" of chasing small distortions through large price tags
4. The nature of a VST is to actively participate in changing the sound by making concrete, specific choices about what you want to hear, by tweaking knobs or changing settings. """Audiophiles""" like to imagine that changes to sound are in some way unknowable or unmeasurable, inherent to some alchemical aspect of the gear. This is exactly the opposite of how VSTs work.
5. VSTs are too cheap for them to imagine they actually sound good. (mentioned by others.)
6. Using a VST means being pinned down on exactly what it is you like about audio. Is it harmonic distortion? A little extra compression or boost in the lows? mid-side processing? If you just buy gear randomly you can keep talking in subjective terms like "musicality" and "flow". If you use a VST you have to finally admit you just prefer more H2 and H3 distortion, it takes the mystery out of your own preferences.

Bottom line, I think the type of audiophiles we're talking about aren't really interested in chasing down genuinely better sound. If they were, they'd behave very differently, VSTs or no. They enjoy the process of swapping out gear and telling themselves how it sounds. IMO this isn't really a problem except when they start telling everyone how ignorant they are for not hearing (read: imagining) what they do.

NAILED IT.