Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 15:02:12 -0500 From: "Edwards, Bruce D" Subject: Re: speakers (or more wasted bandwidth) >From: Terry Leigh Britton >Subject: Re: mixdown > >>mark givens wrote: >> > >dear list: can you get a decent mix with pc speakers. >Well, although many (most) people would tell you that you >absolutely cannot achieve a good mixdown on computer >speakers, you can I really hate interjecting anything into this argument, partially because "good" has to my knowledge never been quantified successfully for a set containing more than two individuals . . . secondly the company, KEF, which used to make a reasonably cost effective quite functional near field has apparently absented the reference field entirely (much better profit ratio in the consumer market with a lot less headache) . . . which for some reason depressed the hell out of me . . . (like the hand lettered notice in a local coffee house: "Power Pop band (working) needs synth player (analog only) must be able to sing harmony, bass chops a plus") I am a believer in real "pro" gear . . . if it fits a budget, but busting the bank for a single piece of equipment is seldom asthetically satisfying -- and way too much consumer gear is hyped as "pro" (frequently with a wink and a nod from the "pros") so even defining what is "pro" gear is a personal adventure (I have very similar reactions to SoundBlaster as JohnIII -- & find the "live" card to be a great value) . . . spending 3-5 grand on a vintage neave compressor makes no sense if you are not using acoustic instruments with wildly varying dynamics in real space and if the cost of that piece of equipment precludes getting anything but dynamic mic's & ('&' bold & underlined) the other half of the double entry "budget" equation is what you are feeding the "product" into . . . if you are trying to work commercially, even entry level part time project studio for hire, there is a reason to spend a thousand bucks for a pair of near fields (which are then depreicated on tax files) you can do acceptable mixes with headphones, I have done "deaf" visual edits, down to the final mix, a friend has been known to do visual razor blade edits (analog tape) on commercial music if you are working with line levels, recording straight into the board, consistently doing the same type of music, have the luxury of "time", and working with a very small group of musicians . . . the type and quality of your reference speakers become less problematic -- with most speakers designed for computer use the unalterable difficulty is that you change any one parameter: tweak a killer 505 patch; adjust a filter setting, modify a resonance point and you are back to the initial learning curve (or to some unpleasant surprises): record and listen to playback; solo, in this mix in that mix on this stereo on that boom box -- the speakers, except as a function of "found art" everything is beautiful beautiful where ever the ball lands is fine by me; become a limit to growth -- story time -- metaphor first -- I have been the fortunate inheritor for several perceptual anomalies, one of which is visual, a distorted parallax field. When shooting pool, for example, If I line up a dead flat shot: cue ball, object ball straight line to the drop groove in the end pocket the object ball will consistently "pull" to the left. On a straight, two ball, no english no banks, shot it is not particularly difficult to compensate for this. Where it gets interesting, zen of spatial distortion: having to do things your eyes assure you are wrong; is with multi ball, english laden, successive bank leaving the cue ball where you want it for the next shot with this months (not next months) rent riding on the outcome. Low rent speakers are a perceptual anomaly one can chose to live without. Any time you change "forms" of energy: pressure waves to electric current to patterns of ferrous particles and then back out again (ferrous to current fluctuations to pressure waves) you lose things -- like the old children's game of gossip -- and accepting the Hisenburg principle as a broad based metaphor there is no set of speakers that will not "color" and distort the signal it's monitoring (a pre pos of nothing I know a number of club DJ's who have adapted their headphones for dual use as microphones and are vastly pleased with the result). . . I like working with a decent set of near fields because they are by design, not (as) dependent on room characteristics . . . I have a set of Tannoy's at home that cost me under $300 (US) (used) that do not fatigue my ears but do not handle power well, but I have three distinct recording zones, each with its own characterics and the & speakers are on a little adjustable rolling "stand" that track easily from room to room. I used a set of KEF's for years and they were so damn durable that I got careless and some combination of not phasing mics (in my sleep I still blame it on interns but responsibility was mine) and pulling cables with power up blew out half the pair . . . and I don't think I paid $600 (US) for the pair new (I admittedly got a deal as a Studio manager I knew did some creative bookkeeping and acquired something like a thousand pairs, gave them out as Christmas presents to engineers he liked for years) Before that I paid about $1000 for a custom set (built by the same gentlemen who did my kitchen cabinets in CA) which a included an interesting switchable passive cross over net work & were sturdy enough to be used as jack stands Couple of weeks ago I recorded a -- something: violins, viola, cello, trumpets, oboe, flute, electric bass and electronic percussion; ensemble's live performance. For once the room was cooperative. A wood stage, not veneer over concrete. That nasty corrugated curtain along two walls, "acoustic" tile clouds below a twenty foot ceiling, a reasonably unfettered rear reflective surface, but it was a small room (maybe 500 seats with an expected attendance of about 300) with lots of wood -- and proved to be warm and active -- a fairly enjoyable project. Did spend the better part of two days setting mic's and recruited a bunch of sun wallowing step sitting slackers as warm bodies for the final rehearsal but after we tranq'd the "conductor" and got the bass cabinet up off the floor and its volume turned down and convinced the guy working percussion that the current new wave in NYC was only using one hand things went pretty smoothly -- until I listened to the first reference tapes and realized I had been worrying far too much, considering what my job was, about FOH sound and what I was capturing on tape was shit. Sent my assistant to brave the guard dogs at home pick up the tanoy's . . . disparity between horns & strings was irritating at best and was getting a really nasty low mid resonance spike on the violins . . . useful for some types of music (if it had been a personal composition I might have left it in) but not representative of house sound . . . I had a moment of real panic . . . I had been messing with a good live balance and it wasn't getting to tape -- & have been doing this long enough to know better than to be that careless -- the problems were not specifically with the booths reference speakers (will not name the brand but not ones for which I have any particular respect) but with the time I had left to correct my carelessness those speakers were useless to me -- the unfortunate conundrum is that if I had not worked with house sound I would have been recording shit anyway . . . and because of my experience I got careless about what was going to tape. I am a believer in real "pro" gear. My 7' brushed aluminum 19" rack on industrial grade locking castors (lock one can still swing it 90deg for rear access) bottom shelf for CPU & UPS, one roll out tray, one intermediate equipment tray (that among other things serves as a buffer and heat sink for the power amp) one keyboard tray cost about $130 (US) new (lamps, fans and power strips were extra) is what I consider "pro" gear -- it is an investment that will last at least ten years & it facilitates the way I do business, the way I create, does not require that I bend to it . . . it has limitations (my last resident significant other thought it was industrially ugly) but was purchased to fill a specific niche in my work technique. Pro gear by definition will fall behind the curve of technology development. And I am old enough to miss a major slice of both the new & novel . . . way too old to weed through the hype so new developments could be wonderful . . . hell, with acoustic modeling synths why not an acoustic modeling speaker system, an acoustic modeling play back system . . . if 24/96 5.1 ever takes hold, since among other things even with current (and all future) DVD-A spec it demands a fairly intense data compression it will alter what the consumer regards as acceptably produced "music" even more than "stereo" did in the sixties, will change mixing requirements dramatically -- as studio's move, hesitantly, in that direction it becomes obvious that my limited commercial skills will shriek obsolescence -- my problem with current powered sub woofer systems is two fold. The first is that they are under powered. dB is a ratio a s/n 120dB defines your noise "floor" not spl -- I might record at 120 dB s/n and listen to play back at two artificially defined levels labeled 74spl (to mimic boom boxes) and 92 spl to mimic "good" home stereo systems but if s/n noise of the power to monitors is significantly different from record I am still fucked (in those late night project needs to fed ex at 7 AM moments). Secondly without a frequency analyzer "tuning" a sub woofer system to a specific room is a pain in the ass (unless guessing the relationship of music content to pink noise and moving furniture for your wife is your idea of a relaxing Sunday afternoon) is room dependent and not transportable, in a way near fields are. anyway you have heard or deleted the screed before: listen to what you record on everything, every type of system you can find -- though why limit yourself to a range of post production systems and extrapolate back stream what you need to do to "improve" the mix is a strategy I find difficult to fathom . . . if you are in an urban area make contact with commercial studio's, with colleges, even unautomated radio stations used to have remarkably functional recording equipment . . . filter for the least snotty (to your particular oeuvre) make use of their equipment to provide a bench mark of where you want to head. The honest truth is by the time you create a spatially diverse, dynamically delicate & inventive temporally mobile mix that becomes an intregal part of the composition you will realize that upwards of 90% of your potential listeners will never be able to tell (in double blind A B tests) the difference between it and something pirated with a pocket cassette recorders built in mic . . . and you will never be able to listen to commercial releases in the same way ever again. Sat in (purely for entertainment) briefly as a golden-eared obsessive compulsive friend of mine was mixing a project that a band called Marah had recorded themselves in their rehearsal space and they were beating him up note by note as they went through the recording "the sub-harmonics of the coo-ga part are kind of turning this into a different song than I had intended . . ." The conga part ran maybe eight bars and I have never been real sure that "sub-harmonics" is an officially approved term . . . but the singer was right in that the "implied" root of the hand drums was interfering with the vocal harmonies fundamental . . . this sonic "blur" would be embedded in the mix whether or not you could hear its cause . . . if you can't hear it you can't fix it (cover it up with more smears perhaps), if you don't hear it you can't learn to fix it . . . & the "fix" is purely personal. . . commercially McDonnell's will always do better than restaurants offering fresh foods uniquely prepared . . . some people like the unique characteristics of individual instruments blended to a harmonica similarity overlaid with washes of artificial reverb . . . studio magic what the hell --------------------------------------- Edwards, Bruce D Vanderbilt University Email: bruce.d.edwards@Vanderbilt.Edu ---------------------------------------