Yeah Baby!
a Rioja Gran Reserva.... say no more!!!

You are right - The best California wines are better than most French and Italian wines. But, Spanish wines are better because they are decent and soooo cheap.....

Audio - "The more expensive gear always sounds better"




-tINY

youve lost your mind. I like this California wine, 2005 Night Train. Pleasing to even the most discerning of palettes. Fruity and Flavorful.

people have made great sounding records with 57's and a mackie.

there's not as much good music being released these days.

plug-ins keep getting closer, and therefore one day will surpass.

george massenburg only makes fantastic sounding records.

the reissues sound as good.

people who talk a good game can probably deliver the goods.


gregoire
del ubik

Oh more....
Good equipment inspires creation.
Lack of gear options will inhibit your productivity and creativity.
You can not make a good totally cool recording with Allesis, Art, Behringer, Presonus et al within 400 yeards of the control room.
Most casual listeners can tell the difference.
Most casual listeners care.

And the biggest one.... the beauty is with the Wand and not actually with the wizard.

White Instruments passives are cut and no boost, right?

Not always untrue.


Always untrue.

disagree completely on the old guitar idea. there's no question that guitars improve with age AND having been played. if it sits in the case, forget it. years of vibrating definitely bring out more overtones in both acoustics and electrics. i've heard it many times with my guitars even over a 10-15 year span, let alone 40-50. i haven't played a single "new" guitar that impressed me like the best of the older ones. then there's the whole pre 1968 brazilian rosewood component for acoustics.
most every other point, i fully agree with and found myself chuckling heatily.
david lawrence

Another that piss me off is when you do an album where there´s little money and the artist drives a Porshe. ( there´s no money ???? )

The Porshe will probably be reposessed when they catch him too ...

that ¨people can be induced to liking a type of music or band because of $$$$$ promotion¨

The reason that i'm not sure how well I believe this, is that 50 years isn't that long for many instruments such as Piano, Cello, Violin, etc... They don't become magically 'better' after that amount of time. I can't see why people pay so much for a Fender Strat when in the early 60's the Jaguar was their top model. People pay a TON for a 59' les paul, but nowhere near as much for a 60' les paul. I don't believe that there's an audible difference that is worth sevearl thousand dollars between the two, nor would one make a better record than the other. Also look at the Fender Esquire guitars from the late 50's. They really weren't any better of guitars than the ones being made at their Masterbuilt Custom shops, but a first year one costs way more. I'd venture to say the new ones are better in many respects.

Now that is one I completely 100% agree with. Carbs are food for your brain, plain and simple!

Expensive cables (especially IECs) are just stupid. Mmmmm... 25 dollars a foot or pay about 3 dollars a foot and not be able to tell the difference in a blind test...oh I'll totally shell out 22 extra dollars a foot just for peace of mind!

Exactly.

hey tibbon,
i totally agree with you- you're talking about "collectors" guitars, and i'm referring to "players" guitars. collectibility of a certain year or model has always baffled me. i love the sound of a deluxes and 335s and am glad they're not as desirable, which makes them cheaper. goldtops, on the other hand.....
regarding older pianos, the guy who tunes my piano ( not an expensive model...) is a 2nd generation steinway craftsman, and says that the quality of today's pianos is not nearly what it was one pianos before the 70s. they change design to be more efficient, etc...
david

that's the point...

a 60's guitar in 1990 was a LOT better sounding than most 70's guitars in 2000... it's not that they're 30 years old, it's that they were better from day ONE.

for one thing, the thing that never makes any sense to me, is that we have RECORDINGS of thsoe guitars when they were brand news! and they sound as terrific then! that's WHY they became classics.
they hadn't "AGED" when they were recorded back then.
they started OFF, great.

not every old guitar... but the ones that are great always were and the crappy ones made in the 70's or now will always be crappy.
they won't EVER become something great (although that doesn't mean they won't become expensive!)

Yeah, like a tarnished turd.

And of course there's always it's sister atruism:

A bad mix can't ruin a great song.

Things I dont believe:

omni patterns are really omnidirectional

there is a "best" anything

that there is any difference between 44.1 and higher sampling rates (to the human ear)

that anyone who hears "night and day" differences between very subtle things (like sample rates) has actually done BLIND A-B testing

that ALL ELSE BEING EQUAL, there is any difference between the sound of the summing in different DAW's.

that analog summing is unanimously "better" than digital summing

that a LDC is always the way to go with vocals

that the TLM103 is anything other than a prestigious logo slapped on a mic on par with a dozen sub $500 LDC's

that new gear is as amazing as the posts it gets on Gearslutz in the first 6 months

Dan Fox

Passive speakers can be "high resolution".


25 years ago Vanderkooy, Lip****z and Stanley proved that pasive crossovers cannot be blameless.

Proof

Spanish wines are excellent, not "decent".

Maybe only the cheapest stuff is imported from the USA ?

Fun thread!

One thing I actually knows a little about (as opposed to gear): Wine. Californian wines are fine, but they cannot compete with the best French wines. Show me a Californian wine that beats a Haut Brion or similar. And in Europe Californian wines seems to be overpriced.

If you're into whites, then Germany is a place to watch. A grüner veltliner or grauer burgunder from a top wine maker is bliss.

Oh, and I don't believe that analog sounds better (in a clinical sense). It sounds more distorted in a very pleasing manner.

I don't believe that plug-ins sound as good as the hardware they are trying to emulate.

They're cheaper, easy to automate, have tons of pre-sets and don't need parts replaced or serviced. Yes, these are all brilliant reasons to desire in your heart of hearts that it sounds exactly like the hardware the GUI is so faithfully emulating, but it just ain't so.

Over the years I have spent a ton of my own money on audio gear so i really don't "believe" in Santa Clause anymore......now that I think about it, I'll bet that Easter Bunny guy is a crock also.
heh

I like Spainish wines, but they are a bit bright and not complex enough for some folk. On the west coast of the USA, you can get a very good bottle for $20 and a good one for $12. You can pay more, but it's only a little better. (look for the Napa Valley reds from 92-94, though...)

Oh, yeah, audio myths that I don't believe:

-NS10s are useful
-Replacing every capacitor in older equipment is desireable.






-tINY

"Broken gear sounds like ****." <--- I've had magical moments with really screwed up stuff.

-C

Wow. That paper doesn't say anything like that at all.

Passive crossovers may not be blameless, but they can be made inaudible.

California and Washington vineyards make some of the best and most coveted wines in the world right now. They also churn out a lot of grog, like their European counterparts.

The Sinsky wines are absolutely incredible - best Sauvignon I've ever had (and I'm not the first to say this), though very hard to find. Washinton Pinots are currently arguably the best in the world. "Global climate change" has temporarilly swung in favor of the west coast of the US - the climate is simply more favorable for high quality growing of certain grapes - but this could change in a few more years.

There's a lot of French wine makers who have relocated to California to produce Californian wines, and Californian wine experts who have relocated to Europe to produce wines. If a French winemaker is making French varietals entirely in California, is it Californian or French?

Back to the audio, the biggest revelation for me has been observing that the majority of the gear produced today is really best suited for taking a ****ty musician playing a not-very interesting part and making it glisten as if it were actually a piece of music. Distressors are great at making ****ty parts sound more like good ones. However, in the end, they're still lousy drum parts - just higher fidelity lousy drum parts. I think the vast majority of audio equipment in fact focuses our attention away from the truly lousy musicianship and mediocre performances we capture. When I get a good musician in the studio, it takes a minute or two to mic, I can use most any preamp, and the sound will sound like that musician playing their part well. Thus, if we say that our job is to record great music, most of this gear is actually not all that necessary.

I imagine I will be in the minority opinion here, at least on the gear issue...

"don't get drunk during sessions, sean!"

pure bull****.

That analog sounds better than digital.

That there's not enough DSP power in DAWs to make plug-in reverbs sound as good as high-end outboard verbs.

That plug-ins don't sound as good as external hardware.

That a digital summing buss can't sound as good as an analog buss.

That analog summing sounds wider + has more depth than digital summing.

That aggressive compression is inherently bad.

That DAWs have ruined the sound of modern records.

That vocal tuning is evil.

That Pro Tools sucks.
That mixing can be learned, but it can't be taught (sorry, couldn't resist).

That you can't polish a turd.

Actually, the best Pinots on the west coast here are in my backyard in Oregon. (But let's just keep that our little secret - I don't want to pay more than I have to for good Pinot).

And, or course, you are right on the gear part as well. There are a few exceptions to the lousy musician rule of thumb out there, but rest easy in the fact that only the good musicians will still be listened to 20 years later. Look at all the crap that came out in the 50's and 60's with the few good ones we still listen to.




-tINY

That there's a wrong way to do anything in the studio.