Audiophile sound quality not really difficult to make? - Page 2

leeperry, a lot of the vintage preamp schematics are out in the wild now. The originals probably have collector value, but you can clone just about anything. The tubes are still around and you can have custom iron wound to the old specs. I haven't looked too much at preamps, but if there's one you like, ask around the DIY Forum for help on cloning it.

There were more than 2 mics used for that recording.

Old tracks in mono are pretty cool. James Brown had a sound man by his side in case he liked a performance so it could be recorded straight away. Some really good music was saved that way...

 

I still love the sound of the JB musicians, their early work is great... Blues too and recently I found the digital remastered début album by Chicago, very good album. Old Jazz and Ragtime are also pretty interesting. 

ok, thanks for the heads up Uncle Erik, but so far TLAudio make pretty convincing new valve preamps...and there's a Trident VST plugin that gives exactly the sound of the A-Range consoles, this is a match made in heaven!

 

If you guys wanna see JB work in studio, there's a very interesting documentary on DIME. He had a bad case of inflated head, but well...he was the Godfather after all.

Edited by leeperry - 8/10/10 at 1:34pm

Higher quality mic and higher quality, not more powerful, preamp will help your sound. As with head-fi, as you go up the gear  food chain, things sound better.

 

A great recording needs a great sounding room, a talented performer, proper mic placement, and high resolution gear. Simple, right?

So simple that too many people screw it up!

 

Seriously though....it is simple.

Heck you could simply use something as cheap as the EMU0202 and a Shure PG series microphone and have recordings that sound better than some commercial releases. Yes its not gonna be as loud, yes its going to be more dynamic, and yes itll probably not "do well" on the radio according to our great mastering engineers who compress the life out of it, but itll sound pretty darn good and you'll be impressed. Heck if you have some ambient noise cos u dont have a sound proof room, big deal, the overall sound is still gonna be pretty good.

 

I recommend giving such budget equipment a shot to everyone who plays an instrument cos once you hear yourself and it sounds good, you get motivated to learn more and try different things.

While there is no micfi.org, I recently discovered gearslutz.com, which I think is head-fi's recording equivalent.  

The truth is, the companies that sell all the recording gear (sweetwater and the like) have tried on more than one occasion to pressure me into buying way more stuff than I needed, at way higher prices, and then made quasi-snide comments along the lines of "well, if you were a human I would have suggested X product, whose every fart smells like roses.  But since you're a raccoon, you probably want product Y, it being a load of trash."

 

Whoa that was cathartic.

For anyone interested in making and/or recording music, I recommend tweakheadz! Very good read.