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[quote name='Big_Stu' timestamp='1355224451' post='1895479'] My post, which I stand by, was based on many people visiting the various homes that my hi-fi has been in and receiving comments along the lines of "wish I could have something that sounds as good as that". My usual response is always "What have you got now?", usually the answer to that means that they're not going to get what they ask for cheaply, which usually means it's not going to happen soon in the same way as all GAS is. I've then always proffered any one or all of my 3 suggestions. Never once have I had anyone say that they didn't think the small outlay wasn't worth the difference they heard. (I gave them credit as intelligent people that it wasn't always, in every case, psychosomatic). You views may vary which is fair enough, but I speak from my own personal experience. As I've said many times; I take all posts on this or any other forum as having an unseen but constantly there "IMHO" enclosed within each post - unless it's a quote of sorts. [/quote] Understood mate . Its all pretty subjective at that point (mate over asking how to achieve similar sounding system) I agree, and you're not wrong about any of the suggestions you are making, I'm not suggesting you are, they will all help, moving the speakers relative to the walls will tend to get different frequencies gaining a boost from the reflection off the back wall, decent stands will improve the speaker efficiency in the bass, pointing the tweeters at the ears will improve the top end since higher frequencies tend to be more directional. All I meant by my post is although they are all tried and tested ways to optimise a hifi, none of them directly address the room acoustic. Which may well be beyond what a lot of people are willing to attempt I understand that. I've always said that a decent amp is easier to get than decent speakers, and really full range speakers are likely to be big, and great ones are more often than not transmission lines IME. Love the way that speaker design will produce deep deep bass quietly. The trouble comes with finding a set of them that arent massively hyped in the low end to show off what they can do. If I had a lottery win I would be stacking a set of PMCs against some B&W diamond series to see which was my preference

[quote name='Big_Stu' timestamp='1355221249' post='1895441'] You've missed a few points, which I tried to make obvious but failed. It was £3.5k way back when, it would be a fraction of that now, time marches on with all technology but is vinyl, now that it's available in super-heavyweight, now counted as technology - or is it still & always will be "old"? Is it worth the outlay to keep up with the Joneses, the [i]experts[/i] or the sales pitches? Nor do I have any intention of investing "tens of thousands" or even one thousand in making it "sound better". There is much to be valued in being happy with what you have, being aware of it's flaws but having overall satisfaction. I don't let it possess me or more valuably, compromise the appearance of our home. A mate of mine has a full Linn & Naim system that at full whack could have cost as much as a small house; but he still has it in his living room, with a wife, three kids & a dog. Damn him all the way to hell but he also has soft-furnishing AND a three piece suite in the SAME room! Like him I listen to music for enjoyment, not to get a slide-rule out to find it's flaws. [/quote] I certainly missed something here Look, £3500 whenever is serious outlay on hifi. Good on you, glad you love music that much. I live with a family too, I dont go around measuring stuff with a slide rule (I like a bit of software now and then), I do believe in making the most of what you have. I like the idea of making the music sound better as much as the next person. I dont believe that electronics of any quality can make up for a poor room, since the way the air interacts within the space makes a bigger difference to the sound than the quality of the components in that space over a relatively low value (less than £3500 IMO). I have furnishings in the living room, with the stereo in, kids in, double bass in, etc etc. Not an issue, All I have said here is make judgements when you are in a great space, if you intend to extol the virtues of a particular system. So to clarify, if you are going to critique a system you can only critique the system if you are in a space good enough to make objective observations. Otherwise you are as likely pointing out flaws in the space as the system. I haven't said that vinyl sounds worse than CD in my space (I nolonger have a deck as it goes, although I regularly listen to a very nice deck at a friends house, and prefer his Rega CD on anything seriously well produced and mastered), I have said that CD is technically a more capable system than vinyl in terms of THD, frequency response (where it counts) and dynamic range. In order to discuss the relative merits of the two techologies it is only reasonable if you take the issue of the room acoustics out of the equation. And that means means that pretty much any claim that "vinyl sounds better in my gaff on my rig" is open to question unless the room has been sorted out. Thats all.

[quote name='Leonard Smalls' timestamp='1355213478' post='1895336'] I've tried a few room treatment options such as bass traps and absorbtion panels.Because of the room it is - very old with sound absorbing lime plaster walls, no 2 walls parallel, ceiling not parallel to floor and broken up by beams - it made very little difference, in fact a heavy sofa and curtains was all that was needed. In a lot of cases it's worthwhile, and cost effective, to try digital room correction like [url="http://www.bd-audio.co.uk/room-correction.html"]THIS[/url]. [/quote] With all due respect I think if it didnt make a fairly large and measurable difference in terms of stereo imaging and size of the listening area, tightness of the bass, room decay etc then either you didnt do it right, you didnt do it enough or you didnt address problems that can only be shown up by using some simple measurement software to allow you to target the problem nodes more specifically. Have a read [url="http://www.irishacoustics.com/index.php/acoustics/measuring-room-acoustics/"]here[/url] for some very well put together info on room measurement. There is also the chance that your room dimensions make certain modes very extreme and render the room pretty much untreatable (ok it can be treated but doing so takes up significant resopurce and can use up a lot of the rooms space), this tends to happen with smaller rooms with dimensions that are multiples of each other. You can get a good idea of the theoretical room nodes by using the calculator [url="http://www.bobgolds.com/Mode/RoomModes.htm"]here[/url] or if you like visual displays and have java then [url="http://www.hunecke.de/en/calculators/room-eigenmodes.html"]this one[/url] is really nice. Either way it suggests a room not suitable for seriously enjoying expensive hi-fi as much as it can be, so this suggests you likely to be wasting your time spending huge amounts of money on hifi in a room that cant do it justice. As for DSP signal processing, it cant fix the room, its a myth. No EQ can make a room suddenly better, without dramatically negatively affecting the playback of the source. If you cut out certain frequencies and all their multiples completely so as not to excite a room node then you cut that frequency off completely in the playback. If you turn it up a bit to hear it some, then you are back with the room ringing. Room issues are as much about time domain as frequency, the only way to prevent this is to either remove the signal completely or to attempt to play signal out of phase with the previous signal to dampen the room after the original signal has stopped. Whatever that device is doing it is manipulating the source drastically in an effort to cover up room defficiencies, which is directly distorting the source. Which is the opposite of hifi. Thats why these devices are not used in mastering suites and control rooms anywhere. If you want to get really deep into this stuff a great place to start (as ever with acoustics and studios) is the BBC:- http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/archive/pdffiles/architectural-acoustics/bbc_guideacousticpractice.pdf [quote name='lowdowner' timestamp='1355211958' post='1895328'] Surely it's all about listening? My current speakers are the result of listening to different ones at different price points - the ones somewhere in the 'middle' of the range of those I tried seemed the best compromise between cost and quality, but even without fiddling with the room, the difference was big enough to warrant the price (about £3K). Similarly with the CD and amp. I was lucky enough to be given a turntable that my father was finding increasingly difficult to use due to infirmity, but was a good few thousands worth. It runs rings round the (very good) CD player I bought to listen to my existing CD collection but which had to then at least hold its head up high compared to the stunning deck. Pretty much regardless of room, it's easy (for me) to tell the difference between a thousand pound's worth of gear and ten thousand pounds worth of gear. Whether it's personally 'worth it' to you is a question only you can answer, but the difference is very clear. I don't have the luxury to move the room around to suit though, but the positioning is pretty good anyway. [/quote] Yes. Exactly its [i]all [/i]about listening. However good a £10,000 system, or part of a system sounds is directly related to the quality of the room you are listening in. The result you hear is a combination of every aspect of the signal chain, be it vinyl (needle cartridge, tone arm, deck, phono stage, cable, preamp, cable, amp, cable, crossover, cable, drivers, [i]air[/i] [i]in room[/i], ear) or digital (CD transport, laser, DAC, cable, preamp, cable, amp, cable, crossover, drivers, [i]air[/i] [i]in room[/i], ear). Hifi 'buffs' worry about frequency response off their decks and speakers of plus or minus say 6dB, of distortion in the 0.01% THD realm. Well an average room will have [i]peaks and nulls in the listening position of easily 30dB[/i]. No amount of getting a nicer component in the system can fix that at all. If you want to hear the truth, which is what hifi is all about, then you must attempt to fix the room. Otherwise its just not going to make the difference you would like. Put it another way, spend n thousand pounds on a new component and that may increase your listening pleasure from a certain spot n%, spend the right amount of time and resource (you did spend time choosing what to buy didn't you?) on the acoustics and you will get a far bigger difference in most cases to the sound, [i]everywhere in your room[/i]. I would rather listen to a reasonable £500 hifi in a great room than a £5000 stereo in a completely untreated room. But its all IMO and personal to each of us, I'm not interested in brushed aluminium, flashy mechanisms and exotic wood cabinets, I only care abou tthe sound that hits my ears. If you like buying great kit then knock yourself out, its cool we can all coexist completely peacefully here. Just try and avoid making sweeping statements about how system A must be so much better than system B if you spend your time listening in a completely untreated space. Harsh in that space (due to the early reflections bouncing around for instance) may in fact be smooth and accurate in a better space. You can't tell. Because you are listening in a massively compromised acoustic environment. You may like system A more in that space, but it isn't necessarily the system thats better in fact, just the system in that poor space works better because it is less accurate. Which is a comment on the poor space, not the quality of system B.

Real world? £3500 worth of hifi, and here I am trying to help you get you to make it sound that much better than it does now without an investment in the tens of thousands. The whole point of doing this work on a space is the mythical 'sweet spot' becomes huge in comparison to an untreated room. So everyone can hear it. The suggestion that you can do something that can look perfectly reasonable in the context of a living room (albeit a largish one) and thoroughly improve the sound you currently get from your expensive stereo was intended to help you out. Sorry if it hit a nerve....

[quote name='Big_Stu' timestamp='1355158756' post='1894788'] When I bought it, and if I'd not had any discounts? Around £3.5k, now? Lucky to get about half that - my cassette deck goes for about £15 on Ebay as of late. As a mate of mine said years ago "your wires cost more than my whole hi-fi". Yes, the room is set up to an extent, not clinical. But I don't go to gigs & start fixing acoustic tiles to the wall either. Just do the best - within reason - with what's available & realistic at the time. You don't have to go the whole hog to make appreciable differences anyway; here's three for those who don't already............ "speakers on purpose made stands, not on shelves" "position speakers so that the tweeter (assuming it's tweeter at the top of the speaker) is as close to ear height as possible" "don't put your speakers in the corner of the room" [/quote] Different thing entirely, you dont own the room in which you are playing (unless you are the proprieter of the Dog and Duck, in which case the bitter is off). Not one of the things you have stated has any great affect on the room. Purpose made stands use mass to prevent energy being lost moving them around, allowing bass speakers to move more (because the speaker cab moves less). Coupling to the floor directly is a bad plan though (unless your floow is solid concrete, and even then). Doesnt change the room characteristics at all. Tweeter at ear height is a vain attempt to get the highest sounds to have the shortest path to the ear, but unless you do something to deal with early reflections from the side walls your sense of stereo is going to be thoroughly messed up by the room you are in. Again no change to the room. How close to the boundaries the speakers are can have some affect on the amount of low end you push into the room (since low end is omnidirectional), however in most rooms, room nodes will do more to wreck the balance of low end in any one place than speaker position. £3500? Spend less than a grand on simple acoustic improvements - some DIY will help keep the cost down - (caveat, if the room is a really bad shape and size it could cost more) and it will make more difference than spending 35 grand on the kit you have. You cant begin to make objective comments on audio or audio systems from speakers when the room you are in is completely untreated. The room will be responsible for more damage to the sound than anything else. If you move 2 feet one way or another the sound will change dramatically, and your ability to hear stereo well is completely at the mercy of those nasty early reflections. The decay of the room will not be flat casuing energy build up in some areas of the spectrum through time versus others, no amount of EQ or anything other than sorting out the problem can fix that. I'd love for you to be able to hear your hifi in a great room, but I'm afraid you probably never will.

If it weren't for the inevitable end of evening madness trying to get everything away and safe before Johnny Tosspot and his mates start asking pissedly for a quick go I would agree wholeheartedly

IMO anyone running a hifi worth more than £5000 in an untreated room is delusional.... Hell £2000

Cockos do absolutely rock - finest mindset of any DAW software engineers I've heard about to be honest.

Hmmm, for noise reduction you really would do better to install Reaper and use ReaFIR which in subtraction mode you can get to 'learn' the noise pattern you want to remove. A far better option than using a simple EQ IME. In fact I think you can just download the Reaper FX... http://www.reaper.fm/reaplugs/

Cant believe we are already back to this. CD, at 16bit 44.1KHz is a technically superior medium than vinyl in every single way measurable (those being useful frequency response, and dynamic range). The noise floor on vinyl is far far higher than that on CD, the frequency rnage on vinyl is limited by a myriad factors to do with the very physical nature of vinyl cutting. CD is not 'lossy' sampling is not losing information, and converting back from digital to analogue does not leave 'steps' wher the samples were in the wave form. If you prefer the sound of vinyl on your system, great lucky youi. If you are comparing CD to vinyl, then for goodness sake compare apples to apples, it must be the same version (right down to mastering) of both albums. If you dont like the CD then fine, its your CD player, or your ears just prefer the sound as a result of the inherent flaws in vinyl vs those in CD. Almost any complaint against CD should be aimed at mastering for volume if its aCd released in post '95. For any CD pre '90 then you have to understand a bit more about the recording process pre-digital: digital multitrack was around in major studios from the early 80's by the way (infamous Sony machines), so a lot of those favourite albums on vinyl were in fact tracked digitally even back then. A lot of tracking around this time was doen with a pure analogue tape mindset, and the gernal belief was that you needed to get as hot as you could without an 'over' - exceeding 0dBfs - which sounded like arse. In fact this often meant that recordists were pushing the analogue input side on their digital kit to hard, and it sounded harsh as a result - not the analogue to digital conversion, the analogue input, important difference. Its now understood that the whole point of the increased headroom (particularly at 24bit, where everyone who means business is recording anyway) means you should be allowing yourself at least 6dB and more like 12dB opf headroom [i]over the higherst peak level[/i] when tracking, which means you AD input is competely unstressed, and the soudn of the result is fantastic quality. But back in the day everyone (and I mean absolutely everyone) was pushing analogue tape hard and bright to get tape compression (level compression is a GOOD THING not a bad thing, analogue or digital, lossy data compression is a BAD THING, lossless data compression is a GOOD THING - lets just get that clarified) and to combat tape his (if you track to bright you turn down top end on mix time and hiss with it). If you take that same ethos and apply it to pure digital recording though you just end up with harsh sounding CDs, and less harsh sounding vinyl (due to the final mastering process being a little different to vinyl). ANyone noticed how music as late as 80's pop has no sub in it? Production/mastering for cassette tape, little radios and vinyl all caused that. 70's funk has pants all low end either. Nothing much below 80Hz (check out PFunk records on vinyl if you dont believe me) - now listen to a Daptones CD. And they are lauded over as a pure analogue production house revelling in the sound of vintage, yet on CD and vinyl they tend to have more low end than the real stuff they emulate. CD is the better medium technically, but as we all know there are a myriad ways of screwing the pooch on these things. If you have vinyl you prefer the sound of enjoy it, if you have CDs you prefer the sound of, enjoy them. Once you get to 96Khz 24bit lossless recordings (tracked that way , not upsampled later) with decent and thoughtful mastering, in a great room acoustically (all you people claiming a is better than b are listening in an acoustically treated space to make these judgements aren't you?) - it sounds pretty incredible, and the vinyl purists woudl do well to attempt a truly objective listen to it compared to anything else at all. [quote name='gelfin' timestamp='1355088418' post='1893943'] Not all. Metropolis Studios in London often cut direct to acetate live from the recording studio. [/quote] They have a huge list of digital kit, will track to any of the main DAWS, mix from any of them blah blah blah. If you want to you can go there and limit the effectiveness of your recording by tracking direct to stereo vinyl, they will be happy to lighten your wallet for the privelege

I forgot headphones, heapdphone amps etc Add another couple of hundred quid for that too (the bass is DI'ed remember). Before you completely despair, the first 3 tracks [url="http://www.invisiblelandscapes.co.uk/lh_music.html"]here (Lines Horizontal)[/url] were built in a similar way (the drums were in fact tracked with a Zoom H4n for OH with a mic on kick and another on snare, recorded in a pretty dead rehearsal room quite deliberately chosen because the acoustic allowed us to superimpose different acoustics upon it come mix time). It can be done, but its a very slow process and you have to really know your beans to get a great result out of it. You also have to understand the limitations of this approach and work within them. This is rather harder to explain really, but its to do with the feel of the track, its a construction as much as it is people playing, all the instrumentation is played live, but none is played together, its all done to a click track and the samples/programmed synths are designed and built first. Everything is subjected to the tightest scrutiny and editing (if that is deemed necessary) after the tracking process. There was heavy use of sequenced parts to help generate the right feel for the drummer, and so on during this project, he is also a genius at editing parts (I tracked the drums and mixed the results - he tracked guitars and bass, edited the work, did synth sound design and programming, sourced and sequqnced the samples - I got off easy!). It really helps that both the drummer in this band and I have been sound engineering for about 20 years each, he knows what he wants, he trusts me to be able to fashion the mix exactly how he wants it, better than he can himself. I know he can hear when its right, I cna trust him to give me great tracks to mix, with all the 'work' part done. If there is noise on a track when I get it, its because he wants there to be noise on the track in the mix at that point (he goes so far as to get the right noise in the right places) its all evocative stuff, with a purpose and it should all be there, all I do is try and get everything to really sit as well together as it possibly can. This is far cheaper in terms of gear outlay to achieve than tracking a band live. You need far less tracks, less controlled space etc etc If you band is keen to be playing 'live' then I think £500 is a little unrealistic personally.

£500 from scratch?? You are going to really really struggle if you dont really really know what you are doing. I would say that moving faders with a mouse is a lot cheaper than a great DAW controller, and whilst the Zoom devices are good as budget tracking devices, dont rely on them as DAW controllers, and about the least PITA seperate tracking devices as it gets, and as far as I can see you haven't budgeted for mics, or cables. Oh the Zoom stuff is crap as a straight ahead interface IME too. A decent cheap large diaphragm condensor (for vocals) is close to £500 (AT4045), a pair of good small diaphragm condensors (CM3s or Little Blondies) are going to cost you £200 at least. You could get a drum micing kit (Red5Audio's one is about the best bang for the buck at about £200) Leads will cost £20 ea, If you are trying to track live and you know your beans you can just about get away with 8 inputs, in a great room, with a great sounding drum kit played brilliantly. Of course to keep the sound of a laptop and recording interface down it needs to be a fair way away, so you'll need a couple of stage boxes with say 8m multicores, £150ea. DAW software to mix on $60 for Reaper. The best cheap 8 input interface is a Steinberg ur824, and thats going to blow your budget without any mics so dont go that way (yet). DO that once you have outgrown the Z16 (in a year or two). My advice? Dont record 'live', consider the Z16 a tracking device and mix on a laptop. Free VSTs and Reaper will get you as far as anything else mixwise, its all about your skill. truthfully it will take you several years to learn to mix minimum. Try and find a great space to record in, bigger spaces tend to have less acoustic issues in them with nasty early reflections - great for drums - scout huts and church halls are well worth making inquiries about IME. Smaller deader spaces for the rest. Get the Red5Audio drum mics and use them for the drums, DI the bass, get a Sennheiser e835 for guitar. Get an e845 for vocals. Second hand is OK for the Sennheisers, watch out for fakes though. Get down drums bass and guitar with a guide vocal, try and get the vocal out of the way. Overdub the rest. Always mic guitar amps. Never DI anything but ultra clean guitar. Small diaphragm condensors on acoustics. You have a very very very steep learning curve ahead of you, enjoy it, consider everything you buy an investment.

[quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1354909732' post='1892003'] My preferred recording method is DI (using a passive DI box with good quality transformers) straight from the bass and a nice mic in front of the best sounding speaker in my rig. Ideally the signal from the mic with a bit of corrective EQ will be the right sound for the track. The DI is there as a safety in case we decide we need a radically different bass sound. It can be treated with amp sim and other plug ins, or used to re-amp or with other outboard gear. [/quote] If I'm recoring someone for whom their rig is their sound then thats what I do in terms of tracking, but I tend to use the DI for the lowest octave, since a close mic on a speaker wont have much if any of that octave going on. [quote name='project_c' timestamp='1354909965' post='1892010'] Thanks for the extensive reply! I'm really interested in what the Joe Meek does to your signal. I know what it does in terms of functionality, but I'm more interested in how you would describe the result of sending your signal through it. Do you get a tighter / more focussed / more balanced clean signal than if you were to record without it? Or does it bring out a bit of grit and grind when pushed? Is it always on the same setting, or do you use the EQ section to sculpt the signal into the track you are working on? (sorry, a million questions..) [/quote] I like to DI into it as that way I can turn on the iron switch and get some colour from the transformer. It has a great compressor, with a really musical action, as for what it does for me, it does what I want, by varying the attack, release, threshold ratio and makeup gain I can change how the bass sits in the track. Its all about transient control and envelopes. Read the Recording 101 Blog on compression for more info

Nothing wrong with the best signal you can get. An awful lot of ways of getting there, and, most importantly, the intended final result within musical context. You can do a massive, massive amount with plugins, there are some excellent excellent cabinet IR simulations out there. Equally there are some great tube saturation plugins. Doesn't beat a great sounding tube rig in a good space mic'ed with a complimentory mic and a great pre hitting superb AD converters. SImilarly the REDDI is one hell of an amazing sounding box, adds all the warmth and colour you could imagine, better than the above real amp in a real space with real heavyweight tube rig on top? For some things absolutely. There is no right or wrong, there is just sounds good and works with the music or not. Personally I've DI'ed for years (not from the amp, clean or post FX), the music I play doesn have much call for woolly mammoth bass sounds (not that I dont like distortion in truly epic measure, I just like it filtered to hell and back too, and the speaker cab filtering is immaterial since I like tweeters even with distortion) Some people struggle to get the sound in their heads out of their bass DI'ed without some EQ, and in the world of digital that means latency in most cases (RME TotalMix having got that down to tiny tiny tiny amounts with its onboard EQ), so the other option is a great EQ in the analogue path, that means a preamp of some kind. If I'm in the studio rather than at home I like the sound of opto compression a lot and often use a Joe Meek TwinQ as the bass pre-amp and use its eq a bit and plenty of compression to get a really great sound before hitting disk. At home I'm more likely to plug the FX board straight into the RME UCX instrument ins (any of the 4 inputs on the front panel will accept line or intrument, with the two mic/trs inputs accepting mic as well, and the impedances and levels are automatically set for you - clever Germans!). It sounds great (I love my bass without any fx at all - even EQ, the preamp stay flat I just play with pickup selection and right hand position). If I want to hit a compressor at I can hook up my Compounder, but generally I dont, I like to play it right to disc and then compress afterwards in context of the song when I'm at home. Just because. Like I said, no right or wrong way to go about it, just a great sound for the track or not.

Always find the positive mate, always find the positive!

Dayummm that first track is just phenominal! This is the kind of thing that should be played to anyone claiming that complressors damage your dynamics. No, they let your dynamics be heard, clearly: doesn't hurt that its his gig, and he is 'da man' and so if he wnts the bass louder than everything he can have it louder than everything. But still bucket loads of pretty transparent compression on there set up to only become obvious as he really digs in. WHich is why getting a really good rack comp and learning how to set it up properly is the way to go. Now where can I get a Distressor on the cheap?

GREAT vid Scott, really enjoyed it - a truly fine bass tone too. Thanks

The council finally outlaw silk gloves on bass players then?

Nice!

This may be of some help:- http://blog.basschat.co.uk/equalisation/

[quote name='Spike Vincent' timestamp='1354789125' post='1890307'] Also bear in mind that you're stood close to the amp,those low frequencies are big long soundwaves and it will likely sound very different to an audience. [/quote] Nothing to do with wavelength per se, everything to do with the room acoustics....

Bass too loud?? Err I'm not sure I fully understand the concept

A multitrack too.... ooooohhhhh, like the sound of that

Niiiice Is that the Maxon on the second track? Killer sounding filter!

Never fix eq or timbral issues solo when you are trying to sort out the sound in the mix. Ever...