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Post by Quint on Jul 6, 2022 14:35:24 GMT -6
I've most likely narrowed it down to the Lyd 48 or the kh310. I thought about the Core 47s for a while, but people don't seem to like them that much. I know Audio Science Review beat them up pretty heavily. As for the Core 59s, those are maybe just too much speaker, though I am in a fairly large room. I'm in a 24'x30' room with splayed walls on both sides of the mix position to help create a RFZ. It also has a two foot thick by 8' wide and 8' tall bass trap immediately behind my monitors at the mix position. There's also 12" of treatment on the ceiling above the mix position. So it's fairly well treated, for whatever that's worth. Anyway, just to get some clarification, the Lyd 48s do NOT have a dome mid, do they? You had previously mentioned that they did, but I thought that was maybe said in error? As for the kh310s, I didn't think you could set them up any way other than horizontally? I mean, you "can" do whatever you want. I just mean that they are designed to be placed horizontally and that is it, correct? I definitely have figured out over the years that I like soft dome tweeters. So I thought I might similarly end up liking dome mids if I ever got the chance to use them, regardless of whether or not they also had a wave guide. The kh310 only has a waveguide on the tweeter though, correct? Unless the mid dome has one and it's just really small and I can't see it? I guess I'm just trying to gather as much info as I can to narrow this down. Like I said, at this point I've probably narrowed it down to the Lyd 48 and the kh310, but I'm also open to ideas. If you look at the KH310, the midrange dome is indeed recessed slightly, and the bezel has a slight waveguide. The recess of the tweeter and to a lesser degree, the midrange, serve two purposes. Primary is to time-align the voicecoils and secondary is to allow for some depth of waveguide. (or perhaps the designers prioritized them vice-versa..) The need for a waveguide is much less for midrange frequencies as they don't beam as much. Add in that the midrange is a large dome, and dispersion is naturally much wider than a smaller dome and higher frequencies. I'm sure Neumann (or K+H) engineers modeled dispersion and devised the waveguide attributes to fit the blending of the patterns in the forward space. The KH310 are definitely designed to lay down horizontally. I suppose you can set them on end but the dispersion patterns of the tweeter will now be vertically aligned and not-optimal. The LYD48 has a conical midrange and does not look to have physically time-aligned the drivers at all. they could certainly do it electronically. Digital time-alignment requires DSP and analog time-alignment requires higher-order filters which a lot of purists frown upon. I personally have never really heard the difference, but my preference would be for waveguides and physically aligned drivers for simplicity's sake. Got it. As I looked more at the 310, I was kind of wondering if the slight recess on the mid dome was in fact a wave guide. I'm leaning slightly more towards the 310 at this point, over the Lyd 48, but I'm still kind of wondering about total available volume between these two options. To be more specific, I guess I mean total volume available before things begin to noticeably distort. I know the Lyd does have an option to engage a switch which lowers the overall volume to preserve undistorted bass volume, relative to overall volume. But that, of course, lowers the total volume available, and I do have a somewhat large room (24x30). The 310 has more wattage than the Lyd, not that that is an automatic indicator of it also being louder. Class D amps are also supposed to be more efficient than AB, so that also makes it difficult to try to make a comparison, as the Lyd I'd class D and the 310 is Class AB.
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Post by Quint on Jul 6, 2022 13:57:37 GMT -6
@ ericn I'm just following up on this again. Do you have any thoughts on this? I’m trying to find someone who has the Dyns so I can spend some time with them. Don’t think in terms of wider or narrower dispersion, think more controlled dispersion depending on the particular wave guide. A waveguide is a horn without a throat that’s all. One thing to listen to though is how low is the waveguide functional? It can get a little strange if the driver is crossed over below the where the wave guide is functional. The Neumann / KH seam to be the new favorite of guys doing video post in poor designed rooms. I was talking to a guy who has been putting the K&H in video rooms who loves the fact the KH wave guides give you 2 different dispersion characters depending if they are horizontal or vertical (unlike Amphions). Me if the room is good I prefer a dome without a waveguide, less of that horn like “honk” but the K&H are pretty “honk” free till you put them next to something without a waveguide. But we have to remember the mighty ATC and Volt domes have a very small wave guide that evens out their dispersion at the drivers upper range. I've most likely narrowed it down to the Lyd 48 or the kh310. I thought about the Core 47s for a while, but people don't seem to like them that much. I know Audio Science Review beat them up pretty heavily. As for the Core 59s, those are maybe just too much speaker, though I am in a fairly large room. I'm in a 24'x30' room with splayed walls on both sides of the mix position to help create a RFZ. It also has a two foot thick by 8' wide and 8' tall bass trap immediately behind my monitors at the mix position. There's also 12" of treatment on the ceiling above the mix position. So it's fairly well treated, for whatever that's worth. Anyway, just to get some clarification, the Lyd 48s do NOT have a dome mid, do they? You had previously mentioned that they did, but I thought that was maybe said in error? As for the kh310s, I didn't think you could set them up any way other than horizontally? I mean, you "can" do whatever you want. I just mean that they are designed to be placed horizontally and that is it, correct? I definitely have figured out over the years that I like soft dome tweeters. So I thought I might similarly end up liking dome mids if I ever got the chance to use them, regardless of whether or not they also had a wave guide. The kh310 only has a waveguide on the tweeter though, correct? Unless the mid dome has a waveguide too, and that small recessed area around the mid dome is also a waveguide? I guess I'm just trying to gather as much info as I can to narrow this down. Like I said, at this point I've probably narrowed it down to the Lyd 48 and the kh310, but I'm also open to ideas.
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Post by Quint on Jul 6, 2022 12:05:15 GMT -6
So do you (or anyone else reading this) feel like those TDR plugins like Kotelnikov can do just as a good a job as a dedicated transient designer type of plugin? Also, even if they can do as good a job, part of my original inquiry also had to do with ease of use. I like how transient designer types of plugins have a simple interface with basically two knobs. That ease of use is worth something to me, and the reason why I was interested in those types of plugins specifically. Transient designers aren’t based on a threshold, so the function is different than a compressor in that regard. I would turn to a compressor to shape overall high level transients for bus duties a la the SSL G bus comp, and a transient shaper for individual instruments. Sorry I wasn't clear before. My query was based on use for single instruments (primarily drums).
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Post by Quint on Jul 6, 2022 10:55:39 GMT -6
So I’m thinking about buying one and going this route, but I’m being told I’ll need an interface with 4x4 AES connectivity. I guess I could also go for something with Dante connectivity…but I wanted to keep the cost down because it’s basically just a dongle to connect the b16 to the computer. My guy mentioned the RME stuff. Any suggestions there? I’m kindve bummed I’ve got to lose the Apollo and learn another interface matrix. Might stop me from doing it. I thought you were liking the whole Luna thing? Though if you wanted to stay on Apollo/Luna, I suppose you could sell your Apollo x6 and just pick up an older Apollo on the cheap to use as a simple way get 8 channels of Burl into and out of Luna. Though you'd need an AES to ADAT format converter too. I'm perfectly happy with the sound of my x16, though I do use a 2192 via AES as well. However, were I committed to the idea of going multichannel Burl, I'd probably be simultaneously going HDX if I still needed a DSP based workflow.
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Post by Quint on Jul 6, 2022 7:49:24 GMT -6
What do you prefer about the Sonnox stuff? The Transmod hasn't been on my radar really, but I have sort of given thought to the Envolution from time to time. And it is on UAD, which would be an added bonus for me. It’s cleaner tonally and can have way more drastic effects for problem solving. the transmod works a little differently than a traditional spl transient designer, which kills high frequency detail because it’s like a compressor with pretty much. infinite sidechain distortion. transient shapers like a compressor split the audio into audio path (up/Down) and rectified sidechain (all up). Then the sidechain is used to generate a dc control voltage for the voltage controlled amplifier to multiply the audio signal by. Unlike a compressor, there’s no threshold or ratio controls but just smoothing filter, ie attack and release. in a compressor, attack and release are just one crazy complex low pass filter to slow down the rate of change. In a transient designer there are two in a row. One with the attack knob and instant release and then the other with instant attack and the release knob. Then it multiplies the audio path by the difference between them with a lot of program dependencies and smoothing to the filters. But still… we all know what happens when you set a compressor to instant attack or release. Thus a transient designer deadens the sound a bit compared to slow attack for overshoots on a compressor. transmod has a more control over the overshoots and can get cleaner or crazier distorted. Read the manual and Paul Frindle posts for tips. Envolution is more of a traditional transient shaper with the Sonnox harmonic cleanliness and optional distortion but it is far more controllable and better sounding than the spl brainworx plug. It’s not as open up top as the Transmod. A lot of the newer Sonnox stuff (from suppressor on) doesn’t sound as good as the old Paul Frindle Oxford plugs and isn’t as low cpu. a More subtle traditional one I like is the transient knob in Klanghelm sdrr2 but it’s often too subtle while Transmod can get crazy overshoots that get overdriven out by it or something down the line for extra crispyness I might have to demo Envolution. Though it might be a little too tweaky for my liking. The simplicity of a two knob affair like the transient designer is part of the appeal. I do sort of like the ability to do a little eqing, such as that that the Softube Transient Shaper or Boz Transgressor provides. Maybe I'll like the Envolution after I give it a try. Are there default sort of settings that one can just leave the rest of the knobs on and then just use the two main transient/sustain knobs like you would with a more traditional transient designer?
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Post by Quint on Jul 6, 2022 7:23:21 GMT -6
I love Izotope for that. A lot of companies kind of have these portfolios of "Everything you need!!!" But then most of it is just terrible.
The really impressive thing of Izotope is they have "everything you need" and most of it actually sounds pretty damn good.
Yes you can exceed them in specialty cases, or whatever, but they're a great all-round company. For my money, probably exceeding Fab Filter. For my taste and dollars anyway.
Definitely. I’m really happy that I went in on all 3 Advanced versions when they were selling them for $150. Tonal Balance and Ozone get the most use for the mastering, saturation, and bus tools, but Neutron has the transient shaper and masking EQ, and Nectar has a chorus that is nice for the 80s Harmonizer effect. The only reason why I don’t use more of the bread and butter processors in there is because Slick EQ, Kotelnikov, etc, are already integrated into my work flow and I can get results very fast there. So do you (or anyone else reading this) feel like those TDR plugins like Kotelnikov can do just as a good a job as a dedicated transient designer type of plugin? Also, even if they can do as good a job, part of my original inquiry also had to do with ease of use. I like how transient designer types of plugins have a simple interface with basically two knobs. That ease of use is worth something to me, and the reason why I was interested in those types of plugins specifically.
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Post by Quint on Jul 5, 2022 16:00:02 GMT -6
He finally put together a nice demo video of what these can do.
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Post by Quint on Jul 5, 2022 13:07:02 GMT -6
This could mean more sustainability for Merging. (On a side note - if you do not want your company to merge, don't name it "merging." ) You also have to understand that the only real retirement fund for the owners of many of these companies is, the company itself. You would be shocked at how often the owners of these companies keep going simply because that is all they have. And it's a narrative that happens all the time. 1. Company A invents/produces/sells a cool product(s), with great customer service to boot. 2. Company A grows and grows and develops a dedicated customer base. 3. The owner of Company A wants to retire, so they sell to Company B or go public as a way to pull cash out of the business to retire on. 4. Company B is run by bean counters with little or no interest in the longevity of the product and no historical context of the "brand" and the type of service that customers have come to expect. 5. Company B does away with quality customer service, cheaps out on the product itself, and generally runs the brand into the ground, eventually selling it off for parts. 6. Customers are sad. I'm not saying that will happen here, by the way, with Merging and Sennheiser. But this sort of thing does happen a lot. Or, like you said, the owner just stays with the company until they basically die.
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Post by Quint on Jul 3, 2022 21:33:11 GMT -6
Well come to the world of 3 ways with a Dome mid. A quick look at the Air 6 looks like it uses a variant of Dyns Esotec tweeter, a very very special tweet that most agree works better in a 3 way where as the LYD48 uses a more standard Dyn. Over time the LYD should open up but it’s not going to sound like the Esotec, however it mesh better with the standard Dyn mid. While not my favorite affordable mid dome the Tange Band copy can be found in some $15000 speakers so yeah no suprise you find it an improvement. As for discovering flaws in reference material, a friend was over the other day and wanted to hear the Questeds, well his taste was 90’s radio hits, stuff that didn’t sound bad in the Car Lifehouse, Vertical Horizon, adult contemporary brain worms, hey I found myself singing along in the car. Well those $75 Skanspeak mid domes showed all the edges almost buzzing distortion on the vocals, the guy said they must be broken, well 12min of listening to Rumors and Abbey Road had the guy thinking he didn’t want a good pair of speakers, he prefer to see the emporer as wearing robes than naked. Nice review keep us updated. Old thread. I know. However, I've got some debt paid down and I was looking at finally pulling the trigger on some Lyd 48s or possibly even something else more expensive, if I can swing it, like the Core 47, Core 59, or the KH310. Anyway, your comment about a dome mid on the Lyd 48 piqued my interest. Is this correct? I'm no expert on this stuff, but the mid on the Lyd 48 looks like a cone to me. I'm just wondering because the Neumann KH310 has a dome mid, I believe, and that gets rave reviews. I know that I certainly like soft dome tweeters, so the subject of a dome mid interests me, in general. @ ericn I'm just following up on this again. Do you have any thoughts on this?
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Post by Quint on Jul 3, 2022 11:22:55 GMT -6
I'll check those out. Oeksound, in general, seems to make good stuff.
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Post by Quint on Jul 2, 2022 6:24:10 GMT -6
Sonnox Oxford Transmod and Envolution What do you prefer about the Sonnox stuff? The Transmod hasn't been on my radar really, but I have sort of given thought to the Envolution from time to time. And it is on UAD, which would be an added bonus for me.
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Post by Quint on Jul 2, 2022 6:21:52 GMT -6
That boz one looks great; I need to try it out. I was going to demo this new one from Klevgrand over the weekend. klevgrand.com/products/fosfat It’s got a few pretty great looking sound design options in it that look similar to some complicated Ableton effect chains I built. Would much prefer a single plugin to do the same work. I’ll report back after I demo… ITB, I usually go with the Softube Transient Shaper or UAD SPL. I also like the Native Instruments Transient Master, but only because it’s the first one I ever got, and you can make it hiccup some weird sounds if you stack them. Mostly a sound design / experimental percussion tool. OTB, I really love the elysia nvelope 500. For whatever reason, the plugin version doesn’t sound right to me. The bonus eq mode on the 500 sounds killer for tilt-like adjustments. I'm curious about the Klevgrand and will look into this more.
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Post by Quint on Jul 2, 2022 6:13:03 GMT -6
My favorite lately is the Boz Transgressor 2. You can EQ the transient and the decay separately which I find quite useful. I own the Transgressor as well as the Softube Transient Shaper. They both have an eq component, but work in different ways. I do like how they're both relative easy to use too. I'm mostly just curious about what is considered the best in 2022. So far I'm this thread, it seems like I'm still mostly seeing recommendations for some usual suspects. Which is totally fine.
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Post by Quint on Jul 1, 2022 20:39:11 GMT -6
What's your favorite transient designer type of plugin these days?
I suppose it doesn't have to be specifically marketed to perform as a transient designer type of plugin as long as it can still excel at transient designer type of duties.
However, a nice thing about THE Transient Designer, or others like it, is that it's so easy to use, so I'm interested in plugins that can pull off these sort of duties with relative ease.
Of course, it needs to sound good doing it. I'm sure Dan will have something to say about this, so I'll be interested to get his two cents, as he always seems to be up on which compressor plugins can actually react fast enough without causing issues.
Also, where's the UAD Transient Designer rank these days? I guess I should ask about that. I could actually get it on sale right now, as we speak.
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Post by Quint on Jul 1, 2022 10:12:04 GMT -6
To the topic of compression, if you really wanted the impact of your stereo mix bus compression intact on the individual stems (or whatever you call them in Atmos), why couldn't you just get everything mixed how you want it in stereo, and then individually run and print each stem back through that same mix bus compression, using the full stereo mix, that you just previously made (minus the mix bus compression, of course), as a side chain for the mix bus compressor? great question. In "theory" that should work. In practice, IME, it rarely works. Never drives the compression in the same fashion. The same reason that stems - when recombined for film, etc. - rarely have the "punch" of the original stereo mix. Whoever is recombining stems - the remix engineers on films, or the mastering engineer for records needs to recreate that again on the recombined stem tracks. It's tricky. I guess I would wonder why that might be? It's the same exact signal feeding the side chain in both scenarios. Provided you're keeping everyone else exactly the same, it ought to work, at least in theory. Now one possible gotcha that comes to mind, is how clean or colored your mix bus compression is. I would think you would want it be pretty clean, as doing each stem this way, through a colored compressor, would cause that color to build up on all the stems in a way that it wouldn't be doing if it was just applied to the stereo mix. But outside of a scenario like that, it still seems like it ought to work. My curiosity is piqued.
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Post by Quint on Jul 1, 2022 10:00:26 GMT -6
To the topic of compression, if you really wanted the impact of your stereo mix bus compression intact on the individual stems (or whatever you call them in Atmos), why couldn't you just get everything mixed how you want it in stereo, and then individually run and print each stem back through that same mix bus compression, using the full stereo mix, that you just previously made (minus the mix bus compression, of course), as a side chain for the mix bus compressor?
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Post by Quint on Jul 1, 2022 9:09:19 GMT -6
Does anyone own a Neve 8816? I do think this summer has some of the vibe of the 88RS desk having similar topology. But I have read many times about poor build quality and dodgy pots .... is that true or just the internet rumour mill in action? I had the 8816 some years ago. Sounded great, but the build quality/design was a nightmare. Bad pots and buttons, stereo image moving. A totally unreliable piece of gear. Sent it back to AMS Neve to get it fixed. Came back the same. I gave up on it, and sold it at a colossal loss. Because of that one, and the way they handled the repair, I’ve never considered another piece of AMS Neve gear. I've heard that about the 8816 elsewhere too. For whatever reason, contemporary AMS Neve stuff just doesn't interest me. Build quality. Price for what you get. The knowledge that Rupert isn't actually involved. Whatever. It just turns me off for some reason. Contemporary API gives me the same vibe too. RND makes cool stuff though. CAPI too. (Insert some of the other high quality clones available these days too.)
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Post by Quint on Jun 30, 2022 8:14:47 GMT -6
Also, I should note that the residual power supply hum/buzz we hear in the video is one of the biggest reasons I went mostly digital. My mixing console and all the outboard gear, preamps, effects, etc, might have had noise floors in the -80dB to -90dB range, but since most of it was powered from the same AC circuit, a lot of the rectified buzz was correlated. You sum a dozen outboard units, all with analog power supplies and you start to get noise floors in the -65dB range. Add in the audio tracks with their noise floors, add some compression and all the other fun stuff you do to mixes and suddenly you can sometimes hear the buzzing at -45dB to -50dB on your final mix down track. I've fought like hell to get noise down every where I can, but, like you say, there still is residual noise buildup when you connect a bunch of analog gear together. Some of that shit will drive you mad. It's certainly one of the things that tempts me to go more ITB, but I doubt I'll ever go fully. I actually like a slight amount of hiss, like you'd get from a tape machine, so I just cover up low level hums/buzzes in that!
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Post by Quint on Jun 29, 2022 16:29:43 GMT -6
I think you're missing the point of the discussion though. I get that you're saying makeup gain is a necessary component IF you're going to use passive summing. What is being discussed though is if the wire and resistors themselves actually bring anything to the party or if it all truly comes down to the makeup gain stages inherent to a summing mixer. If it's the former, then there remains some validity to the idea of summing in the analog domain. If it's the latter, one could just introduce those same gain stages at the same points in the signal flow and basically achieve the same thing. Makeup gain is required for passive or active summing. It’s part of it, no gain is like separating mic pre gain from a mic pre. The reason summing has a sound is from the gain required of the summing amp. Summing is potentially as heavy a demand on an op amp (or more!) as a mic pre. So to your point… no.. wire and resistors don’t bring much of anything to the party. Yeah, it’s probably closely approximated by digital summing, digital pad to drop the level the appropriate amount, then analog gain. I don’t think it’ll be exactly the same because of minor details in the circuit, impedances, imperfections between channels, cross talk, etc. but probably very close. That's what I've been saying.
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Post by Quint on Jun 29, 2022 16:11:06 GMT -6
I know you know more about this stuff than I, but if you recorded noise onto 16 tracks and used those tracks for all of your tests, random as the noise may or may not be, how is that any different than playing back actual music, for the purposes of such a test? It's still comparing two identical signals, (two identically random signals, if you will), but just 180 degrees out of phase from one another. The generator creating said noise might be random but, once it's recorded onto a track, it shouldn't matter what the signal even is beyond that point. All that should matter is that the return signal is phase flipped for the purposes of the test, no? In any case, it could be whatever kind of full frequency signal you wanted. I was just throwing it out there that it might not be unuseful to have something that is truly full frequency spectrum as a test signal. Also, to be clear, I actually think I tend to agree with your position that analog summing doesn't do much, if anything, in and of itself, and that it's the gain stages that are actually what makes people like analog summing. I'm mostly just discussing the topic out of curiosity and interest because it does seem to me that there could possibly be a better way to perform such a test than what was done in the video. Ok, I see what you mean. If you had one track of noise rendered but you duplicated it many times then yes, theoretically since they're now correlated, they should null same as a sine. A sine sweep would work like this as well. Sure. A sine sweep would work too.
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Post by Quint on Jun 29, 2022 15:16:28 GMT -6
What I’m saying is… summing is just resistors tied together. No one would (or should) expect that a single resistor is going to have a sound. Passive and active summing deal with how the resulting combined signals are handled or amplified. It’s. A high gain operation. Limiting summing to resistors without the combining or makeup amp seems kind of like evaluating a mic pre using only a cable. I think you're missing the point of the discussion though. I get that you're saying makeup gain is a necessary component IF you're going to use passive summing. What is being discussed though is if the wire and resistors themselves actually bring anything to the party or if it all truly comes down to the makeup gain stages inherent to a summing mixer. If it's the former, then there remains some validity to the idea of summing in the analog domain. If it's the latter, one could just introduce those same gain stages at the same points in the signal flow and basically achieve the same thing.
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Post by Quint on Jun 29, 2022 14:53:59 GMT -6
Might as well run full frequency spectrum (20 to 20) pink/white noise thru it as well. Won't work. By nature white noise is random so there would be no way to phase shift it 180 degrees to null because there would be no correlation. You need a repeating signal that can be correlated before polarity reversal can null it. I know you know more about this stuff than I, but if you recorded noise onto 16 tracks and used those tracks for all of your tests, random as the noise may or may not be, how is that any different than playing back actual music, for the purposes of such a test? It's still comparing two identical signals, (two identically random signals, if you will), but just 180 degrees out of phase from one another. The generator creating said noise might be random but, once it's recorded onto a track, it shouldn't matter what the signal even is beyond that point. All that should matter is that the return signal is phase flipped for the purposes of the test, no? In any case, it could be whatever kind of full frequency signal you wanted. I was just throwing it out there that it might not be unuseful to have something that is truly full frequency spectrum as a test signal. Also, to be clear, I actually think I tend to agree with your position that analog summing doesn't do much, if anything, in and of itself, and that it's the gain stages that are actually what makes people like analog summing. I'm mostly just discussing the topic out of curiosity and interest because it does seem to me that there could possibly be a better way to perform such a test than what was done in the video.
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Post by Quint on Jun 29, 2022 14:22:09 GMT -6
Yeah only a time machine will do for some. In vintage hi-fi world, only the very first issue of any tube type is the best, it's a given assumption that any later variants fuck it up. It's about owning wine from 1752 that came up from a shipwreck, or something. Yeah, as much as I like the idea of some of these vintage mics of yore, I don't like the idea of the maintenance associated with them and I definitely can't deal with the price, especially when there are some great modern clones (and even reissues now) for a much cheaper price. I get the cork sniffing thing to a point but, if someone like Klaus is going to go out on a limb and say that he believes that Neumann has gotten the AC701 thing figured out to his satisfaction, that's probably (certainly?) enough to satisfy me and my champagne dreams and beer budget-ish reality.
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Post by Quint on Jun 29, 2022 14:08:44 GMT -6
I forgot to mention...I would prefer a test of this sort to include vocals in the song too. Might as well run full frequency spectrum (20 to 20) pink/white noise thru it as well.
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Post by Quint on Jun 29, 2022 14:06:04 GMT -6
I think this touches on the thing that many including myself have been wondering (and confirming) that printing a mix through a 2 buss with transformers, tubes, etc is where the 'flavor' comes from. And also that some summing boxes have mojo that this dudes' does not. Still seems a nice summing box is a useful tool depending on workflow, and folks who don't track through especially vibey/colorful outboard on the way into their DAW. IMO A couple nice channel strips and a good stereo comp would be the way to go if you want to give your final mixes a little extra special sauce. I think people are maybe missing what summing is. Combining signals through a resistor network is summing but lossy. In the end summing is gain. Gain has THD and distortion and that will depend on the characteristics of the amplifier. But if you do the makeup gain digitally instead of in analog, you're cutting that stuff out. Well, at least you're cutting out the makeup gain portion. There's nothing that can be done about the opamps and what not associated with the converters, but conversion, by any general measure, is way less impactful on the signal than makeup gain in a summing mixer. Granted you could then get into a discussion about bit loss and all of that stuff, but with 24 bit conversion I think you'd still stand a much greater chance of being able to compare what the actual summing is or isn't bringing to the table. At least that's the point I was trying to make. I can't speak for others.
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