saitoh
Head-Fier
- Joined
- Mar 23, 2004
- Posts
- 60
- Likes
- 11
Quote:
A very pertinent question and one without specific answers I'm afraid. There are no standards of music recording, production, mastering or of recording studios. A recording studio can be anything from a converted garage with a few thousand dollars of recording equipment all the way up to multi-million dollar facilities. The top facilities spend more on just their Analogue to Digital Converters (ADCs) than a lesser studio might spend on the entirety of their studio!
Correct, mics, preamps, and ADCs are where the money is blown most of the time, plus a good DAC and near-fields. Headphones are an afterthought most of the time.
For DACs, I've seen a bunch of shops like the Lavry DA series, the Myteks, the Grace Design products, and the Benchmark DAC1 line. The question is ultimately what will give 1) a representative view that enables you to make decisions that will produce as flawless a product as possible and 2) enable you to make decisions that will allow your sound to translate correctly across a vast array of audio systems without sound atrocious on a bunch of them.
Quote:
Here's a documentary about the making of Watch the Throne by Kanye West and Jay Z. Interestingly they use the Beyerdynamics DT770 Pro's during mixing and recording. They're actually not even that expensive or detailed as some of the higher end models. So apparently even Kanye and crew aren't hearing all those details or sound signature some of you guys do with your fancy higher end gear.
Want to hear Watch the Throne the way they producers intended it? Buy some DT770 Pro's and whatever system they are using to power them lol.
http://www.multiupload.com/BFK50FWLF1
I would suggest if you wanted to hear how a producer intended it, to buy not headphones, but near-field monitors that their mastering engineer used. Mixing folks are likely to use two types of speakers; something along the Genelec lines which would have a similar tonal signature to the LCD2 or Denon7000 or maybe one of the Ultrasones. The second type would be a clone of the old Yamaha NS-10 speakers which sound like absolute trash but like everything else in a studio are a tool (which in that case expose flaws in the midrange), similar might be cheap computer speakers or maybe AKG701s or cheap Grados, something that has a lot of 1k-3khz content and some stuff above 5khz but almost nothing under 130hz.
Most studios that I know of use the older Sony 7xxx line or the HD600/650s for tracking or odd jobs (each dependant upon purpose of course), but most decisions are made on near fields during mixing. Not many (but some) folks are doing the majority of their decisions on headphones and typically use something like a phonitor or VST plugin to replicate the HRTF and Haas effects. Maybe they are working after hours or on the road. Checking on headphones is typically resigned to seeing if you're stereo field is too extreme or just another view of whether or not something falls out in the mix. Just my observation, best of luck.