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Post by Johnkenn on May 17, 2024 12:51:44 GMT -6
The problem, *for me*, is about human rights, mainly ! I avoid chinese and russian products for the time being. Not an expert here-obviously. But... If working on the Oktava/Soyuz assembly line, keeps one more person NOT in a Munitions Factory. That's A-OK with me. AFAIK some Chinese Factories treat their workers better than others. Chris *Yep. I was real tempted to make some Russian and Chinese jokes. Honestly never thought about it like that, but that’s actually true. I remember seeing a Stossel about American liberals shutting down some factory in Malaysia or somewhere and the people that actually worked there were begging them to stop…because even a dollar a day was better than the alternative of nothing.
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Post by svart on May 17, 2024 13:04:28 GMT -6
When I see these things, it always makes me think “someone” decided they could increase profit margins by having China build it for them, thinking they are climbing some ladder of wealth. And after the first run, the factory over there is like.. “well we could just sell these ourselves and make more profit than being hired out” That's how places like Alctron ended up doing their own line of audio gear..
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Post by gravesnumber9 on May 17, 2024 14:02:32 GMT -6
Not an expert here-obviously. But... If working on the Oktava/Soyuz assembly line, keeps one more person NOT in a Munitions Factory. That's A-OK with me. AFAIK some Chinese Factories treat their workers better than others. Chris *Yep. I was real tempted to make some Russian and Chinese jokes. Honestly never thought about it like that, but that’s actually true. I remember seeing a Stossel about American liberals shutting down some factory in Malaysia or somewhere and the people that actually worked there were begging them to stop…because even a dollar a day was better than the alternative of nothing. I think I saw that same thing. American view is "who could live off of $5 per day?" and they're like "umm, $5 goes a long way around here and it's a whole lot more than $0." The American ability to misunderstand the rest of the world and to underestimate our own wealth (even when we're genuinely trying to be compassionate) is unsurpassed.
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Post by ragan on May 17, 2024 14:24:40 GMT -6
Also worth noting that more stuff than we think is actually made, or partly made, in China. It’s not a coincidence that suddenly everyone will come out with a C800 clone (usually about 2mo after 3U comes out with theirs…) or a cheap LA2a or whatever. There is functionally no IP in China so when people farm out the engineering and/or assembly (even if they don’t tell us about it) that design, or little variations of it, is going to start going out the door under the names of anyone that has the right contacts and can meet minimum order quantity.
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Post by bikescene on May 17, 2024 18:15:58 GMT -6
I’d rather first turn to audio gear which has more of a tradition in the audio transformer manufacturing. I’ll wait for the hype to die down before seeing if it is a reliable and good sounding tool. Behringer’s synth line does sound good, and I’ve checked some of them out after the initial chatter died down on them.
I’m an American, but with many relatives in China, some who at one point did make goods intended for export to the US. It’s just a job to normal people, churning out big quantities of goods and clocking out at the end of the day. Some circumstances may be more screwed up, and I definitely see how people can’t support that.
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Post by ragan on May 18, 2024 9:33:11 GMT -6
In the GS thread, someone is referencing a Behringer Facebook comment suggesting that a 670 might be next.
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Post by nick8801 on May 18, 2024 12:46:06 GMT -6
In the GS thread, someone is referencing a Behringer Facebook comment suggesting that a 670 might be next. I’m in
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Post by Johnkenn on May 18, 2024 13:41:54 GMT -6
In the GS thread, someone is referencing a Behringer Facebook comment suggesting that a 670 might be next. Race to the bottom! Just like plugs…but you can bet your ass I’m gonna get one. I’m actually going to get on the preorder list for this 609. If it’s not that great, I doubt I’d lose money considering they might be hard to get.
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Post by Johnkenn on May 18, 2024 13:46:50 GMT -6
Kind of amazing how quickly I can start to think I deserve lower prices lol. I saw a plug for like $59 the other day and was like, “screw that.” Kinda hope these smaller manufacturers force the giants like UA and Neve, etc to lower prices. Who the hell is going to pay $4500 for a new LA2A?
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Post by andersmv on May 18, 2024 14:58:55 GMT -6
Kind of amazing how quickly I can start to think I deserve lower prices lol. I saw a plug for like $59 the other day and was like, “screw that.” Kinda hope these smaller manufacturers force the giants like UA and Neve, etc to lower prices. Who the hell is going to pay $4500 for a new LA2A? UA and RND were not subtle/gradual with their price increases. Seemed like overnight they just went up like 30%-40%
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ericn
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Balance Engineer
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Post by ericn on May 18, 2024 15:24:03 GMT -6
Kind of amazing how quickly I can start to think I deserve lower prices lol. I saw a plug for like $59 the other day and was like, “screw that.” Kinda hope these smaller manufacturers force the giants like UA and Neve, etc to lower prices. Who the hell is going to pay $4500 for a new LA2A? The thing you have to keep in mind is 2 fold, the expensive Clone manufactures proved their was demand for new versions and without them we would not have all the options for specialized parts like transformers. The market is changing but, yeah it’s easy for someone like STAM or Audioscape to bring a something like a Sta- level to market after Retro has taken the risk and proven there is demand.
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Post by thehightenor on May 20, 2024 2:12:36 GMT -6
In the GS thread, someone is referencing a Behringer Facebook comment suggesting that a 670 might be next. Race to the bottom! Just like plugs…but you can bet your ass I’m gonna get one. I’m actually going to get on the preorder list for this 609. If it’s not that great, I doubt I’d lose money considering they might be hard to get. The real key to knowing if you got a bargain is to have the actual original hardware there to make a direct A to B comparison. Any gear in isolation can sound really good. It's when you compare A to B that the differences either jump out and you get why the original costs $3000 more! .... or the differences are so subtle you know you just got a bargain. IME there a very few genuine bargains in pro audio .... with the best of the best being AudioScape who to my ears put out "bargain" priced gear that sounds truly fabulous!
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Post by saltyjames on May 20, 2024 6:01:29 GMT -6
Ask any dealer, Behringer has the same delivery issues as Stam, only bigger. This is completely silly. Stam has a wait that is sometimes years, with myriads of excuses. You'd have to be crazy to go through that. Behringer is basically the complete opposite.
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ericn
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Post by ericn on May 20, 2024 6:25:19 GMT -6
Ask any dealer, Behringer has the same delivery issues as Stam, only bigger. This is completely silly. Stam has a wait that is sometimes years, with myriads of excuses. You'd have to be crazy to go through that. Behringer is basically the complete opposite. Behringer has always had a reputation for long waits as gear trickles in ask any dealer, & yes in the past some pieces took years from announcement to actuall delivery. I was talking this weekend to a guy wh waited 6 months fo a cable tester.
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Post by Johnkenn on May 20, 2024 6:37:23 GMT -6
Ask any dealer, Behringer has the same delivery issues as Stam, only bigger. This is completely silly. Stam has a wait that is sometimes years, with myriads of excuses. You'd have to be crazy to go through that. Behringer is basically the complete opposite. I just bought something and got it a week later.
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Post by Dan on May 20, 2024 7:08:27 GMT -6
The question is will this be better than say TDR Molot GE or the Softube Weiss DS1 or Chandler Germanium that usually go for 20 to 200 bucks?
The Softube Germanium is instant awesome except for phase shifting cymbal bleed when used on acoustic drums from the thousands degrees or more of phase shift in the anti-alias filters.
Molot GE is a warm monster. The talk of the og molot being better than it in gearspace is crazy talk from people who cannot set the ge by ear or presets.
Weiss DS1 is instant awesome set half decently or even 15 db off but doesn’t have a high pass filter but the way you can get it to push down the too loud pass and pump up guitars is so cool and it has these little oddities in the response that remind me of the germanium but better but they’re all from the how it controls the audio.
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ericn
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Post by ericn on May 20, 2024 7:48:43 GMT -6
This is completely silly. Stam has a wait that is sometimes years, with myriads of excuses. You'd have to be crazy to go through that. Behringer is basically the complete opposite. I just bought something and got it a week later. Like Stan it’s so hit and miss because they have such a large product line.
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Post by gravesnumber9 on May 20, 2024 8:00:09 GMT -6
Mine is arriving today. I won't be back in town until Thursday though so... gonna have to exercise patience.
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Post by thehightenor on May 20, 2024 8:08:06 GMT -6
The question is will this be better than say TDR Molot GE or the Softube Weiss DS1 or Chandler Germanium that usually go for 20 to 200 bucks? The Softube Germanium is instant awesome except for phase shifting cymbal bleed when used on acoustic drums from the thousands degrees or more of phase shift in the anti-alias filters. Molot GE is a warm monster. The talk of the og molot being better than it in gearspace is crazy talk from people who cannot set the ge by ear or presets. Weiss DS1 is instant awesome set half decently or even 15 db off but doesn’t have a high pass filter but the way you can get it to push down the too loud pass and pump up guitars is so cool and it has these little oddities in the response that remind me of the germanium but better but they’re all from the how it controls the audio. Maybe not. But the thing is Dan, what you don't seem to connect with - there's something very visceral and organic about making music with real physical gear. My racks of tube and solid state gear are very inspiring and the work flow very fast and forgiving - it just feels like home. I think you either get that experience or you don't - clearly you don't (fair enough - you're not alone) but I do understand people who do - I'm kinda half way house with this as I like the precision and recall of software too. For some folks it's not just about sound (understandably your posts always focus only on sound) but it's about touch, workflow, and inspiration we all want our studio's to feel like home - be it software or hardware based - whatever floats your boat
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Post by Dan on May 20, 2024 9:11:05 GMT -6
The question is will this be better than say TDR Molot GE or the Softube Weiss DS1 or Chandler Germanium that usually go for 20 to 200 bucks? The Softube Germanium is instant awesome except for phase shifting cymbal bleed when used on acoustic drums from the thousands degrees or more of phase shift in the anti-alias filters. Molot GE is a warm monster. The talk of the og molot being better than it in gearspace is crazy talk from people who cannot set the ge by ear or presets. Weiss DS1 is instant awesome set half decently or even 15 db off but doesn’t have a high pass filter but the way you can get it to push down the too loud pass and pump up guitars is so cool and it has these little oddities in the response that remind me of the germanium but better but they’re all from the how it controls the audio. Maybe not. But the thing is Dan, what you don't seem to connect with - there's something very visceral and organic about making music with real physical gear. My racks of tube and solid state gear are very inspiring and the work flow very fast and forgiving - it just feels like home. I think you either get that experience or you don't - clearly you don't (fair enough - you're not alone) but I do understand people who do - I'm kinda half way house with this as I like the precision and recall of software too. For some folks it's not just about sound (understandably your posts always focus only on sound) but it's about touch, workflow, and inspiration we all want our studio's to feel like home - be it software or hardware based - whatever floats your boat the workflow is important but much of this stuff just makes more workflow more difficult later on and impedes translation to different playback systems unless the musician is using it like a pedal or something. it gets in the way of you, the musician with instruments, the mixer processing it to come out of a stereo and be audible without the visual cortex telling the brain how to filter the inputted auditory signal, the masterer fitting it all together, and the listener experiencing it on systems from hifi towers to a cellphone or is mostly use to make work more difficult for the mixer, i.e. 1176 and la2a hit outside of their small sweetspots because the engineer wasn't turning the knobs as it was being played so what could be simple automation for emphasis or verse / chorus becomes word by word or lets be real, syllable by syllable automation sometimes. or most analog eqs being broad tonal shapers or problem solvers but often eqed without decent monitoring or in the context of everything else to filter out the thing the brain filters out naturally just creates more work later on (scooping scooped guitars with a broad channel strip eq) when what they often really need are just filters (and these can be much more drastic than soloed or prominent in a monitoring mix) and a bell in the mid mids or the high end to get out some ringing or fizz that isn't immediately audible until you think about it or listen to the halfway done mix and realize it's highly annoying. you're not recording to tape anymore so there is no need to maximized the signal to noise ratio to hit the tape as hot as possible before the transients disappear to try to get as most done as possible because additional dub downs will further kill the immediacy of the sound just like additional truncation events but much much worse.
then you have to consider that "workflow" in many analog processors is from barely doing anything like how a 1-2 db cut on many eqs is more a volume boost or drop than anything else especially if q increases with greater bell shapes like api 550 or more drastic cuts can become a volume dip on a modern paratmetric eq with constant q unless you know this and have your fingers on both the q and the filter boost/cut knobs. or consider dynamics, many of these processors don't do that much outside of distortion or protecting the tape that doesn't exist anymore by making it quieter. they are set up for that and to not totally fuck up unless they are something that doesn't have good "workflow" unless it's some later vca compressor set up so it's action does a lot but it is inaudible like a drawmer 241 or aphex 661 auto settings. i love the daking compressors but 500 ms fastest release is lol for peak suppression. that's some protect the radio transmitter, cutting lathe, tape, or pa thing but it will even out a drummer or a singer, it just won't change stick hit/shell resonance blend of a drum and the auto releases seem a little faster on transients but not that much and have the cushion to even out the whole thing a bit but they're faster than an ssl bus or la2a but still designed to not fuck up the sound by design. then there are other things like the mpressor or the drawmer 1978 or chandler germanium whose whole purpose is to fuck up the sound.
a behringer diode bridge compressor will probably just add a ton of noise, distortion, and smack/thump/goop in ways you don't want unlike the ones not designed to fuck up the sound or made with 60s-80s parts that people using years after they were released, unserviced, and out of spec decided sounded cool because they fucked up the sound but often that limits the translation, fidelity, and dates the recording see the overmixed 80s records and the late 90s early 2000s distressored and L1/L2 records or the current popular music and most commercial hip hop that abuses very specific processors to get a sheened, gritty, poly carbonate goop. they are using these because they want to belong, to conform, to sound cool, to pass as legitimate music because they know they're music is not that unique so they must sublate themselves into the zeitgeist and then their physical releases will end up in used cd bin somewhere and be described by the clerk as "like x but not as good". then the worship of stuff used to mess up the sound of drums entirely like the compex and boss samplers but most people don't really want to sound like bonham and dilla. ive built the my bloody valentine and slowdive chains for shoegaze wannabes in hardware and sometimes an almost equivalent software template to just import into their daw and play if they are diing but often they don't really want to sound like that, they want to sound contemporary or find the comformity strangling. madlib's work with freddie gibbs is excellent but mostly clean outside of beats from old, oft poorly recorded records he dirtied up to sound like old hip hop and the fx sends.
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Post by thehightenor on May 20, 2024 9:16:38 GMT -6
Maybe not. But the thing is Dan, what you don't seem to connect with - there's something very visceral and organic about making music with real physical gear. My racks of tube and solid state gear are very inspiring and the work flow very fast and forgiving - it just feels like home. I think you either get that experience or you don't - clearly you don't (fair enough - you're not alone) but I do understand people who do - I'm kinda half way house with this as I like the precision and recall of software too. For some folks it's not just about sound (understandably your posts always focus only on sound) but it's about touch, workflow, and inspiration we all want our studio's to feel like home - be it software or hardware based - whatever floats your boat the workflow is important but much of this stuff just makes more workflow more difficult later on and impedes translation to different playback systems unless the musician is using it like a pedal or something. it gets in the way of you, the musician with instruments, the mixer processing it to come out of a stereo and be audible without the visual cortex telling the brain how to filter the inputted auditory signal, the masterer fitting it all together, and the listener experiencing it on systems from hifi towers to a cellphone or is mostly use to make work more difficult for the mixer, i.e. 1176 and la2a hit outside of their small sweetspots because the engineer wasn't turning the knobs as it was being played so what could be simple automation for emphasis or verse / chorus becomes word by word or lets be real, syllable by syllable automation sometimes. or most analog eqs being broad tonal shapers or problem solvers but often eqed without decent monitoring or in the context of everything else to filter out the thing the brain filters out naturally just creates more work later on (scooping scooped guitars with a broad channel strip eq) when what they often really need are just filters (and these can be much more drastic than soloed or prominent in a monitoring mix) and a bell in the mid mids or the high end to get out some ringing or fizz that isn't immediately audible until you think about it or listen to the halfway done mix and realize it's highly annoying. you're not recording to tape anymore so there is no need to maximized the signal to noise ratio to hit the tape as hot as possible before the transients disappear to try to get as most done as possible because additional dub downs will further kill the immediacy of the sound just like additional truncation events but much much worse.
then you have to consider that "workflow" in many analog processors is from barely doing anything like how a 1-2 db cut on many eqs is more a volume boost or drop than anything else especially if q increases with greater bell shapes like api 550 or more drastic cuts can become a volume dip on a modern paratmetric eq with constant q unless you know this and have your fingers on both the q and the filter boost/cut knobs. or consider dynamics, many of these processors don't do that much outside of distortion or protecting the tape that doesn't exist anymore by making it quieter. they are set up for that and to not totally fuck up unless they are something that doesn't have good "workflow" unless it's some later vca compressor set up so it's action does a lot but it is inaudible like a drawmer 241 or aphex 661 auto settings. i love the daking compressors but 500 ms fastest release is lol for peak suppression. that's some protect the radio transmitter, cutting lathe, tape, or pa thing but it will even out a drummer or a singer, it just won't change stick hit/shell resonance blend of a drum and the auto releases seem a little faster on transients but not that much and have the cushion to even out the whole thing a bit but they're faster than an ssl bus or la2a but still designed to not fuck up the sound by design. then there are other things like the mpressor or the drawmer 1978 or chandler germanium whose whole purpose is to fuck up the sound.
a behringer diode bridge compressor will probably just add a ton of noise, distortion, and smack/thump/goop in ways you don't want unlike the ones not designed to fuck up the sound or made with 60s-80s parts that people using years after they were released, unserviced, and out of spec decided sounded cool because they fucked up the sound but often that limits the translation, fidelity, and dates the recording see the overmixed 80s records and the late 90s early 2000s distressored and L1/L2 records or the current popular music and most commercial hip hop that abuses very specific processors to get a sheened, gritty, poly carbonate goop. they are using these because they want to belong, to conform, to sound cool, to pass as legitimate music because they know they're music is not that unique so they must sublate themselves into the zeitgeist and then their physical releases will end up in used cd bin somewhere and be described by the clerk as "like x but not as good". then the worship of stuff used to mess up the sound of drums entirely like the compex and boss samplers but most people don't really want to sound like bonham and dilla. madlib's work with freddie gibbs is excellent but mostly clean outside of beats from old, oft poorly recorded records he dirtied up to sound like old hip hop and the fx sends.
As I said, this isn’t something you connect with as I and others do. The workflow of analog and the physical feel of analog gear are what get me into my studio each morning. Whatever floats your boat - it’s all good with me.
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Post by thehightenor on May 20, 2024 9:18:44 GMT -6
I think I’d like one for drum OH - I like them in that particular setting - can be nice on bright rock n roll piano too. The price is right - that’s for sure!
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Post by kcatthedog on May 20, 2024 10:03:58 GMT -6
^^This^^, my feelings exactly: how can it not be better ( more dimension, tone, soundstage), than a plug in?
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Post by Johnkenn on May 20, 2024 10:05:07 GMT -6
I think I’d like one for drum OH - I like them in that particular setting - can be nice on bright rock n roll piano too. The price is right - that’s for sure! I mighta gotten a little too excited. I put my name on the list at SW…and I’ll make a decision when they arrive in several months.
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Post by seawell on May 20, 2024 11:19:33 GMT -6
I do wonder whether stuff like this is better than a quality plug emu...I have no idea honestly. What's your take on this, seawell I love the idea of more people being able to give hardware a try to see if they enjoy working that way. On the other hand, I've tried some clones that really weren't that "special" to me. So, I don't think all hardware beats plug-ins, just great hardware which unfortunately always seems to be a good bit more expensive than this. I hope I'm wrong, I'd like to try it out at some point but I'm very skeptical that anything truly special can be made in this price range. ...and not that it's just about price because that would be a dumb way to judge things but I can't even imagine how you'd buy proper transformers for this unit in that price range. I'm no gear manufacturer though 🤷🏻♂️
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