Pro Audio Folklore

[Palmer]

I really appreciate your reply. That said I've heard this kind of thing for as long as I've been around audio. I used to assume without much thought that it was all true, and that good sound was magic.

I don't have any decent rebuttals other than to say that without someone doing serious work with comparative measurements the situation will remain murky.

If you actually have two versions of In the Air Tonight we can compare them using measurements, but I suspect you are only making a rhetorical point.

Well, I have to say - got Adobe Audition, got Ableton, heck - got the Push, too (1), still in the wrap ... Life can throw you off the path for reasons unrelated to audio, and the pursuit. I appreciate your reply as well, courteous and brief.

The "In the Air tonight" would be nice, but I am not sure when I can make that happen - I am not being rhetorical at all, Kepex rack in good condition, as well as Lexicons - are hard to find in good shape, and I spent a pretty penny getting that stuff - putting it to use is where your financial circumstances come into play even more, pun intended...
Tape is Time is Money is rolling...

By the way, if you are like me and always looking for the morsels - I picked up an ATI 8MX2, which is 8 ATI mic pres in a single rack unit - I always liked the ATI consoles. Sweet...

I have some stuff that I have to get out of the way, but I will try to come up with something to see if we can get a handle on it, the equipment should not just hang in the rack.

Cheers...

 

[Curvature]

I completely support the need for measurements in general. But it's also important to understand that different compressors operate completely differently. They don't all have the ability to adjust the ratio, attack, release, knee, etc. They have different ways of detecting the signal coming in (opto vs FET for example) and they respond to the signal differently. Some compressors (SSL console for example) have a variable attack that changes depending on the amplitude of the input.
So, a 4:1 ratio should always be the same in a compressor if the circuitry is the same. There's no incompetence in design, but there are many limitations in the parameters that we can control in many of these compressors. So, they don't all do the same thing because they have different circuitry and different ways of manipulating parameters based on their design and that's what makes them so unique for specific jobs.

I would only add that I'm confident we would be able to make enough adjustments and line up the behavior for a good comparison. We should be able to say exactly how different one device is from another.

 

[dfuller]

I would only add that I'm confident we would be able to make enough adjustments and line up the behavior for a good comparison. We should be able to say exactly how different one device is from another.

Well, we can certainly analyse their transfer functions.

See what I wrote a few posts above. True peak limiters are the most unlikely to have any audible signature.

Oh, I wish that were true. Limiters are intensely nonlinear and no two have the same release circuit (well, "circuit"). They can sound pretty audibly different even with the same gain reduction etc.

 

[Curvature]

Oh, I wish that were true. Limiters are intensely nonlinear and no two have the same release circuit (well, "circuit"). They can sound pretty audibly different even with the same gain reduction etc.

True peak limiters? For others a case can be made, but for true peaks? These are intersample level events. Too fast to hear unless sustained.

There can be plenty of stupidity in digital design too. No dithering in plug-ins was an issue at one time (and might still be).

 

[dfuller]

Every DAW has its own sound

This one is complicated because they often do sound different when pan laws are set differently. Otherwise, there should be no discernable difference. If 1+1 doesn't equal 2, we have problems.

But capacitors? What's wrong with capacitors?

Nothing inherently; electrolytics can be problematic, though, as they drift readily and have relatively short service lives (consoles throw off a lot of heat and don't have a lot of airflow internally).

True peak limiters? For others a case can be made, but for true peaks? These are intersample level events. Too fast to hear unless sustained.

There can be plenty of stupidity in digital design too. No dithering in plug-ins was an issue at one time (and might still be).

The TP is just an oversampling feature, usually; but they can do more gain reduction which will sound different (and arguably worse). And yes, considering how many plugins modeling nonlinearities lack meaningful antialiasing filters, there's a lot of bad plugin design.

 

[Curvature]

This one is complicated because they often do sound different when pan laws are set differently. Otherwise, there should be no discernable difference. If 1+1 doesn't equal 2, we have problems.

Nothing inherently; electrolytics can be problematic, though, as they drift readily and have relatively short service lives (consoles throw off a lot of heat and don't have a lot of airflow internally).


The TP is just an oversampling feature, usually; but they can do more gain reduction which will sound different (and arguably worse). And yes, considering how many plugins modeling nonlinearities lack meaningful antialiasing filters, there's a lot of bad plugin design.

I'd add that none of the examples you gave are examples of an individual "sound". More examples of errors in judgment, errors in design or something breaking, or differences in individual settings. The differences disappear once the behaviour is understood.

Thing is with pro gear that you often have no idea of the exact behaviour and learn what a unit does by feel. It's often not even worth it to investigate since you have to work quickly, often in new settings. I think a pretty valid approach held by many is to stick with gear that gives the results they want. A lot of the folklore comes from rationalization of these choices, as far as I can see.

 

[dfuller]

I'd add that none of the examples you gave are examples of an individual "sound". More examples of errors in judgment, errors in design or something breaking, or differences in individual settings. The differences disappear once the behaviour is understood.

Thing is with pro gear that you often have no idea of the exact behaviour and learn what a unit does by feel. It's often not even worth it to investigate since you have to work quickly, often in new settings. I think a pretty valid approach held by many is to stick with gear that gives the results they want. A lot of the folklore comes from rationalization of these choices, as far as I can see.

Yes, exactly. The problem is, a lot of the behavior is either insufficiently understood by end users or is intentionally obfuscated by manufacturers.

It doesn't help that lookahead brick wall limiters (for example) are incredibly complex plugins. The only company that really exposes most of the controls that are usually hidden that I know of is DMG - and there are a lot of things going on under the hood. Lookahead time, release shape, program dependent vs fixed time release, etc etc.

 

[Ropeburn]

There's the good old "digital synths sound like shattered glass" thing - the producer version of the age-old digital vs analog debate.

Especially in hobby producer circles there will always be this one guy ranting about how much more power and warmth analog synthesizers have, and how digital ones sound harsh and cold. "I'll show you the incredible power of analog!"

Proceeds to post the most awful, harsh and overprocessed sounding piece of shit music you ever heard - 30 seconds long. The guy NEVER finished one song in his life despite having a 10000 moneys home studio. Meanwhile, the obligatory teen genius of the group posts a full track with wonderful pleasant sound and considerable musicality, made entirely on a 100 moneys piece of shit laptop

 

[dfuller]

re: Analog vs Digital recording: they do actually sound different (and are quite easily measurably different, too).

Tape is not flat. Running at typical 15ips (inches per second, the speed at which the tape crosses the head stack) there is, depending on the machine, some head bump in the upper bass. Tape also has a nonlinear transfer function, and it starts to compress pretty heavily once you get towards its limits. Given its noise floor, you actually want to be up near its limits, so printing hot to tape is pretty normal. So, effectively it acts like EQ, dynamics, and a little bit of distortion applied to whatever is recorded on it.

The last generation of tape machines (see: Studer A80, Ampex ATR102, Otari MTR mk3s, etc) are actually quite high fidelity, and are limited mostly by the medium of tape itself.

If you're used to what tape does, the utter cleanness of digital is going to sound weird to you. If you're used to what digital doesn't do, you're either going to love or hate what tape does.

 

[ThatSoundsGood]

re: Analog vs Digital recording: they do actually sound different (and are quite easily measurably different, too).

Tape is not flat. Running at typical 15ips (inches per second, the speed at which the tape crosses the head stack) there is, depending on the machine, some head bump in the upper bass. Tape also has a nonlinear transfer function, and it starts to compress pretty heavily once you get towards its limits. Given its noise floor, you actually want to be up near its limits, so printing hot to tape is pretty normal. So, effectively it acts like EQ, dynamics, and a little bit of distortion applied to whatever is recorded on it.

The last generation of tape machines (see: Studer A80, Ampex ATR102, Otari MTR mk3s, etc) are actually quite high fidelity, and are limited mostly by the medium of tape itself.

If you're used to what tape does, the utter cleanness of digital is going to sound weird to you. If you're used to what digital doesn't do, you're either going to love or hate what tape does.

Your contribution here is most welcome and certainly full of gems.
I have run into the "cleanliness of digital" problem many times. I also see it in hifi with really well measuring speakers and amplifiers that are accurate. People find it to be sterile.

 

[Purité Audio]

I have never found accuracy in reproduction ‘sterile’, you can of course add as much distortion as you like in the creation of music but not in its reproduction.
Keith

 

[Palmer]

I have never found accuracy in reproduction ‘sterile’, you can of course add as much distortion as you like in the creation of music but not in its reproduction.
Keith

My experience is that things are never black and white, which would be better than sterile as an analogy - there is always a graduation, and the granularity of it seems to be the issue. Plus, while there certainly is distortion in play, not all of it is in that particular geography, methinks.

 

[ThatSoundsGood]

I have never found accuracy in reproduction ‘sterile’, you can of course add as much distortion as you like in the creation of music but not in its reproduction.
Keith

I generally agree but the transition to Class D amplification was a difficult sell at first. It took me a minute to realize that it was more accurate. Now, I only want to use Class D because I realize how much more accurate it is. And yes, distortion and all kinds of mayhem are quite nice in the production process.

 

[Curvature]

Your contribution here is most welcome and certainly full of gems.
I have run into the "cleanliness of digital" problem many times. I also see it in hifi with really well measuring speakers and amplifiers that are accurate. People find it to be sterile.

I generally agree but the transition to Class D amplification was a difficult sell at first. It took me a minute to realize that it was more accurate. Now, I only want to use Class D because I realize how much more accurate it is. And yes, distortion and all kinds of mayhem are quite nice in the production process.

Hard to make these opinions work with each other.

Why would you want this kind of unpredictability? https://www.endino.com/graphs/

 

[ThatSoundsGood]

Hard to make these opinions work with each other.

Why would you want this kind of unpredictability? https://www.endino.com/graphs/

It's actually easy. The "Cleanliness of Digital" problem is when people hear what's actually going on more accurately but think it's a problem. One example is when I switched to a more modern digital console to mix on for a band and they all started hearing problems that they never heard before. It was just more transparent. Another example is when people switch to Class D amplification (Hypex or Purifi specifically) and they think that some of their music sounds worse. It's just more accurate and they hear poor production quality. The sterile quality is the lack of distortion (and other problems inherent in amplifiers).
Another example is when I was involved in comparing two major line array PA systems. One of them was much lower distortion and sounded thinner even though it measured the same in frequency response. When we added some harmonic distortion people preferred it. This was less accurate, but more preferred. There is a time and place for distortion and people obviously prefer it often if it's done tastefully.

As for the tape inaccuracies, I think that there is a place for them because of the harmonic texture they add in the production process. Yes, they are inaccurate, but engineers learn how to work with that. At some point, the listening experience leaves the measurements and becomes more important. Someone has to make the decision on what sounds better, so I think it's valid to use inaccurate devices in the production phase.

Distortion in production (both recorded and live sound).
Accuracy in monitoring.

 

[EERecordist]

re: Analog vs Digital recording: they do actually sound different (and are quite easily measurably different, too).

Tape is not flat. Running at typical 15ips (inches per second, the speed at which the tape crosses the head stack) there is, depending on the machine, some head bump in the upper bass. Tape also has a nonlinear transfer function, and it starts to compress pretty heavily once you get towards its limits. Given its noise floor, you actually want to be up near its limits, so printing hot to tape is pretty normal. So, effectively it acts like EQ, dynamics, and a little bit of distortion applied to whatever is recorded on it.

The last generation of tape machines (see: Studer A80, Ampex ATR102, Otari MTR mk3s, etc) are actually quite high fidelity, and are limited mostly by the medium of tape itself.

If you're used to what tape does, the utter cleanness of digital is going to sound weird to you. If you're used to what digital doesn't do, you're either going to love or hate what tape does.

Thanks. In our professional analog studio 50 years ago we used Dolby A. If you know how to listen, you can hear it pump. I have Dolby A at home for my tape machine until I digitize my reference recordings from that time.

BTW, a long time online friend in the Vancouver Canada area rebuilds audio magnetic tape machines. Previously he rebuilt CRT video projectors. There is also a tape machine rebuilder in Seattle.

 

[Curvature]

It's actually easy. The "Cleanliness of Digital" problem is when people hear what's actually going on more accurately but think it's a problem. One example is when I switched to a more modern digital console to mix on for a band and they all started hearing problems that they never heard before. It was just more transparent. Another example is when people switch to Class D amplification (Hypex or Purifi specifically) and they think that some of their music sounds worse. It's just more accurate and they hear poor production quality. The sterile quality is the lack of distortion (and other problems inherent in amplifiers).
Another example is when I was involved in comparing two major line array PA systems. One of them was much lower distortion and sounded thinner even though it measured the same in frequency response. When we added some harmonic distortion people preferred it. This was less accurate, but more preferred. There is a time and place for distortion and people obviously prefer it often if it's done tastefully.

As for the tape inaccuracies, I think that there is a place for them because of the harmonic texture they add in the production process. Yes, they are inaccurate, but engineers learn how to work with that. At some point, the listening experience leaves the measurements and becomes more important. Someone has to make the decision on what sounds better, so I think it's valid to use inaccurate devices in the production phase.

Distortion in production (both recorded and live sound).
Accuracy in monitoring.

So this is the kind of reasoning that I'm against. I mentioned before that the biggest gap in the profession is found in psychoacoustics. People talk about sterility and so forth but they haven't actually isolated the issue, and assume they have come to the correct conclusion without doing the hard work of testing. They talk about equipment endlessly but not about the circumstances of signal transmission and so forth, which you can only do effectively with measurements.

Tape saturation and compression applies only at high signal levels. If frequency response is corrected, and the signal is above the noise floor and within the speced operating range, there will be little to distinguish tape and digital media.

For speakers, distortion has a much smaller role than the radiation pattern. One of main problems in audio engineering is that you can diagnose problems incorrectly, apply a fix that doesn't make sense and then be none the wiser because our hearing is so dynamic.

Remember, distortion in real settings is never ever harmonic. Harmonic distortion is measured and seen only with single tone diagnostic tests. With music or any other signal is always a complex mess of nonlinearities, and many kinds of distortion are active at the same time.

It's not that measurements don't help, usually the measurement is done incorrectly or there are a lack of tools. The latter is normal and is unlikely to change, particularly for accurate electrical measurements. So I think the right way to approach a situation when you dont have all the tools to make the right assessment is to resist jumping to conclusions, make careful controlled listening tests and reason from what is known of psychoacoustics.

 

[Palmer]

Hard to make these opinions work with each other.

Why would you want this kind of unpredictability? https://www.endino.com/graphs/

Speaking of hard work, I have acted, done comedy, drag, been dead, briefly, twice - but I have never transitioned. That's, like, Tracy Chapman being recorded on a Mitsubishi 850... it can't be.

 

[Curvature]

Speaking of hard work, I have acted, done comedy, drag, been dead, briefly, twice - but I have never transitioned. That's, like, Tracy Chapman being recorded on a Mitsubishi 850... it can't be.

You bring a whole 'nother level to the collective professionalism we have here.

 

[Philbo King]

Re: Compressors (& various other types of dynamics processors) -
There are huge differences between various types. Attack time, release time, side chaining abilities, dynamic processing such as being able to compress/expand only between 2 arbitrary frequencies, look-ahead time settings (on plugins), are a few that spring to mind. FWIW, I've been into studio audio since around 1978.