Markus76,
I have one friend who is building a studio in his home. He has played drums for years but it is not his primary profession, he is in the electronics sales and design end. I have to bite my tongue when he tells me some of the equipment that he is going to use. I just don't think that you can make a quality recording with a cheap mixing console, the noise in those boards is just not something that is acceptable in most cases for a final recording. Now I expect that he will just make demo recordings for some up and trying new bands and that is okay, but there is a big difference in the sound of a SSL desk and a Soundcraft or Mackie board for hundreds or even low thousand dollar range. And what he expects to use as main monitors would make an engineer cringe. He knows enough to get himself in trouble, but I don't expect to hear any commercial records coming out of that type of studio. Of course doing rough takes is fine, but it shouldn't get to the final stage like that, you and I would probably hear that on our systems and hear all the noise and just turn it off. I guess you can listen to music on U-Tube, but I can't listen to MP3 sound, not going to happen. I might as well get out my old 7 transistor radios, put one on each side of my head and call that binaural sound....... Tongue in cheek there, okay.....
I have one friend who is building a studio in his home. He has played drums for years but it is not his primary profession, he is in the electronics sales and design end. I have to bite my tongue when he tells me some of the equipment that he is going to use. I just don't think that you can make a quality recording with a cheap mixing console, the noise in those boards is just not something that is acceptable in most cases for a final recording. Now I expect that he will just make demo recordings for some up and trying new bands and that is okay, but there is a big difference in the sound of a SSL desk and a Soundcraft or Mackie board for hundreds or even low thousand dollar range. And what he expects to use as main monitors would make an engineer cringe. He knows enough to get himself in trouble, but I don't expect to hear any commercial records coming out of that type of studio. Of course doing rough takes is fine, but it shouldn't get to the final stage like that, you and I would probably hear that on our systems and hear all the noise and just turn it off. I guess you can listen to music on U-Tube, but I can't listen to MP3 sound, not going to happen. I might as well get out my old 7 transistor radios, put one on each side of my head and call that binaural sound....... Tongue in cheek there, okay.....
That's the story of most "musicians". But there are many examples of fantastic sounding recordings that were made in basements (not necessarily by people that didn't know what they were doing). There really is no big difference between a SSL and semipro equipment anymore. It's more the difference in workflow.
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Wonder why Cabar is not more popular ?
It is supposed to represent a culmination of Watkinson's loudspeaker science.
Thinking more of it, maybe it is operating in Heisenberg-Cabar limit
- Elias
Like every product. Price, performance, availability. Never heard, nor even heard of it. A TV speaker or something?
Two different use cases. Two different ways of looking at the job of a producer. One is where the goal is exact reproduction of a sound.(science) The second where the producer is part of the creative team and the goal is an artificial but pleasing result. (music)
This carries over to the reproducing environment. If the goal is exact reproduction or if it is a musical experience. Totally different problems with totally different solutions.
Actually, this is quite perceptive. Never looked at it from this angle but I'd say it's spot on.
Markus,
Not to belabor the point, but to say that there is no differences in how these boards sound is a little bit of a push. If that was the case just daisy chain a bunch of Mackie boards and save a whole lot of money. Have you ever listened to the noise of the sliders on those cheap boards, not something you would want in professional recording and I would have to think that there are many other areas where this is also the case, such as the EQ functions on the boards. Here we are were people are arguing over the smallest change in a couple of opamps and you can say that the implementation of the circuits and quality of the components are comparable? I think not, otherwise SSL is laughing all the way to the bank.... Similar function does not make the sound equivalent, I think that perhaps at least we can agree upon that. And no most of the time a recording is not the same as a live performance, but in a live session we can't go back and listen over and over and hear the mistakes that are made either, we just pass over those. Doesn't mean that the musicians can't be having fun in the studio making music, just that they can as you say polish the sound and do things that are just not usually possible in a live situation. It is kind of hard to overdub yourself live unless you have a soundtrack made before hand, so we are not comparing apples to apples here. Some live performances hold up over time, but most don't if listened to enough times. I see your point about the purity of a live performance but it is the exception to the rule for most people to hear enough live music. I have sat in peoples homes and listened to them just play and it is magic, but there were only a couple of people who could be there. When I sat there and heard Herby Hancock, or Stanley Clark play by themselves, it was a once in a lifetime thing, and I have heard others like that. But you will never be able to hear that performance since you weren't there, so recorded music is for the masses to be able to enjoy that person. Again, if we only heard live recordings would you really want to hear all those little girls screaming when the Beatles played, it would be terrible to say the least. They really did become a studio band just like Steely Dan, who almost never played live.
Not to belabor the point, but to say that there is no differences in how these boards sound is a little bit of a push. If that was the case just daisy chain a bunch of Mackie boards and save a whole lot of money. Have you ever listened to the noise of the sliders on those cheap boards, not something you would want in professional recording and I would have to think that there are many other areas where this is also the case, such as the EQ functions on the boards. Here we are were people are arguing over the smallest change in a couple of opamps and you can say that the implementation of the circuits and quality of the components are comparable? I think not, otherwise SSL is laughing all the way to the bank.... Similar function does not make the sound equivalent, I think that perhaps at least we can agree upon that. And no most of the time a recording is not the same as a live performance, but in a live session we can't go back and listen over and over and hear the mistakes that are made either, we just pass over those. Doesn't mean that the musicians can't be having fun in the studio making music, just that they can as you say polish the sound and do things that are just not usually possible in a live situation. It is kind of hard to overdub yourself live unless you have a soundtrack made before hand, so we are not comparing apples to apples here. Some live performances hold up over time, but most don't if listened to enough times. I see your point about the purity of a live performance but it is the exception to the rule for most people to hear enough live music. I have sat in peoples homes and listened to them just play and it is magic, but there were only a couple of people who could be there. When I sat there and heard Herby Hancock, or Stanley Clark play by themselves, it was a once in a lifetime thing, and I have heard others like that. But you will never be able to hear that performance since you weren't there, so recorded music is for the masses to be able to enjoy that person. Again, if we only heard live recordings would you really want to hear all those little girls screaming when the Beatles played, it would be terrible to say the least. They really did become a studio band just like Steely Dan, who almost never played live.
"Cabar" is a kind of Watkinson's "BBC LS3/5a", a professional nearfield monitoring system designed for specific purposes and working conditions, active, all-in-one, I think it was too peculiar and also fancy-looking to succeed on this market
his consumer loudspeaker is the omnidirectional Legend, also an active loudspeaker which makes it commercially doomed from the start, despite trying to make it look like a "normal" speaker
anyway JW is not a businessman type of guy, Celtic Audio has been sold to TSL eventually: TSL - News Story
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ps.
I think that Cabar and Legend represent "limits" of JW's thinking
he is too professionally educated to discover such thing as SSS or a flooder, just as Snell was too professionally educated too discover and try a pure flooder, his "limit" was the odd-looking "Type 1" - an "almost flooder"
I think that Cabar and Legend represent "limits" of JW's thinking
he is too professionally educated to discover such thing as SSS or a flooder, just as Snell was too professionally educated too discover and try a pure flooder, his "limit" was the odd-looking "Type 1" - an "almost flooder"
Anything that involves actual instruments as opposed to virtual ones.
The two guys I learned the most from recorded, produced and designed the studio for UB40 if that helps you in any way. But that was a long time ago.
"Cabar" is a kind of Watkinson's "BBC LS3/5a", a professional nearfield monitoring system designed for specific purposes and working conditions, active, all-in-one, I think it was too peculiar and also fancy-looking to succeed on this market
his consumer loudspeaker is the omnidirectional Legend, also an active loudspeaker which makes it commercially doomed from the start, despite trying to make it look like a "normal" speaker
anyway JW is not a businessman type of guy, Celtic Audio has been sold to TSL eventually: TSL - News Story
Cool. All I could find in a search were comments. Never found the OEM.
Love it. I was trying to get some ideas on how to turn a basement into a listening room. Looks like there are some similarities with a BBC concept posted in a different thread.
this is(was) the nearfield monitoring system for professsionals
see: Man with long beard on loudspeakers - Gearslutz.com
post #15
It strikes as a bit misguided (to say the least) to put the differences in tonal balance down to control rooms rather than the tastes of the individual artists/producers.
For example jamaican albums had to be remastered when released in the rest of the world. This mostly involved dramatically reducing bass levels because Jamaican artists, producers and purchasers love a lot of bass, much more than the customers in Europe were comfortable with.
Also no decent engineer would only listen in his control room, the work has to be checked for translatability in say a car, through a boombox and someones living room stereo. Failing to do that will likely lead to a sub-par product or one which does not reflect the artists/producers intentions.
Going by the diagrams of the proposed control rooms I would not want to work in those as they appear to be almost completely dead and overdamped making it very difficult to produce mixes which translate well.
Basically you really do not want your control room to be like an anechoic chamber but neither would you want it to have the acoustics of an empty swimming pool.
The paper doesn't exclude the tastes of the individual artists/producers. It's both, control room acoustics and deliberate decisions made by the artists/producers. Non-environment tries to take the control room out of the equation hence removing a great deal of uncertainty.
You'd still have to check for translatability, especially because it is exceptionally dead, which in itself removes most of the uncertainty. In other words this solution increases the problem if anything by increasing the difference between where the end product will be heard and the control room.
And it still leaves the differences due to the specific monitors used.
For example many engineers like to use NS-10s while others hate them like the plague.
Personally I have never managed to get a decent mix using them. The problem is when I use NS-10s the tonal balance is all wrong ie if it sounds ok on those there will be no treble at all on other speakers regardless of the room.
I know this is due to my ears which are about 8dB more sensitive (referenced to 1kHz) exactly where NS-10s have a bump in their FR.
It all seems like a solution in desperate need of a problem.
And it still leaves the differences due to the specific monitors used.
For example many engineers like to use NS-10s while others hate them like the plague.
Personally I have never managed to get a decent mix using them. The problem is when I use NS-10s the tonal balance is all wrong ie if it sounds ok on those there will be no treble at all on other speakers regardless of the room.
I know this is due to my ears which are about 8dB more sensitive (referenced to 1kHz) exactly where NS-10s have a bump in their FR.
It all seems like a solution in desperate need of a problem.
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