http://www.f9-audio.com/blogs/tutorials/30598785-hardware-can-you-hear-the-difference

 

Last edited: Jan 6, 2016

It's not a blind test so results wouldn't be very use-full.

I'm not really on the 'hardware will never be emulated' bandwagon
but for me best way to test a pre-amp emulation or hardware is when summing tracks.
so that one can tell how it behaves in the mix

 

Yes, I can. Especially with compressors. Honestly, no emulation can beat hardware buss compression. And nothing beats a smokin' mic and mic preamp capturing or reamping a source in a good space. Virtual EQs sound pretty good, but again, a kick ass tube EQ can do wonders for mixing material with a lot of low or high end. Just my opinion, though.

You should try renting a Thermionic Phoenix, or similar high end mix bus compressor and trying slapping it on a couple of your tracks to see how you like it. And, better yet, mix into it from the beginning.

 

another one of these...

if you want a collection of arguments about this on multiple audio forums, internet archive is always there as an archive... and it goes waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back...

there is no need to bring this dead topic back again, just leads to the same results and comments over and over again...

didnt I make a troll topic about this 3 years ago that everyone fed, despite the fact that I CLEARLY said I was trolling them?

 

Unless properly blind-tested, no proven conclusions are to be made from it.
Same for analog (vinyl) vs digital (CD), although in that comparison it has been proven many times.

 

Sorry i didn't know it was a dead topic or went way back as you say.. I posted this because i found it interesting, not knowing much about hardware and im sure many people don't while looking for that hardware emulation that many people including myself seem to have chased. i just wanted to see if people could tell the difference but as others have said, pretty pointless when its not a blind test!

 

Exactly those test just bring up the placebo effects in people

 

I can send you 2 master-tracks, one is analog mastering (top quality expensive classic gear made in grammy-awarded engineer's pro mastering house) and another is digital (guy who mixed/produced etc. mastered on plugins at home). Both sound exactly "almost same".

 

May we hear it? I'm really curious.

The thing that doesn't resonate well in your sentence is the "..on plugins at home". You will never get an objectively great mix/master at home if you lack the right acoustic treatment and more IMPORTANTLY, some Top-end Studio Monitors which are crucial.

The real truth is that as long as you have great acoustic treatment and top-end monitors, then of course you'll be able to get great mix/masters at home as well with most of the plugins. But without great monitors you just can't fix what you can't hear.

 

Last edited: Jan 6, 2016

"Girls think giving birth is hard? Try producing with high CPU"

#classic

 

Evorax, sometimes with super great monitors and cool gear a lot of tracks are done "very shitty", because it depends on artists,producers,performer. They want to hear master as they would like to hear. Mastering engineers often are "persons who process mixed track(s) thru their pro gear to get shitty results which producers/performers want". Shitty results: overcompressed, overlimited, clipped, loud and dead, a lot of mid-highs, anti-equalization...Even mastering engineers don't edit "bad edits" like clicks, don't restore...Just "overprocessing over mixed track". It is very often.
Acoustic Treatment and monitoring....I just moved to another town/city, and now I live in house, not flat. There is another acoustics, there is very cool sound than before in flat. As I notice, my monitors sounded perfect, or ... in another way. I wonder. So, first of all, it depends on acoustic treatment FIRST, because any monitors/speakers may sound very different in different rooms. Expensive top pro monitors may sound very bad in bad rooms; and vice versa, semi-pro and not pro very cheap speakers sound very good in rooms with best acoustreatment.
And all the extra "detaility" can be heard as well as with good "mixtering" headphones if they are connected thru good DACs/amps/wires etc.
AND, first of all, it depends on your ears, skills, experience, knowledge. [+ meters/analysers as extra tools to see the sound]

 

https://www.gearslutz.com/board/11528321-post39.html
a - analog
b - digital
here are your tracks. the question is, are gear worth of being bought? must we spent thousands of dollars to buy gear, if plugins can make almost the same. Subtle difference for a lot of money? or experience/skills/knowledge + plugins + "now it is the time when plugins are getting better and better, it is 21th century, digital is closer to analog, can be clean and transparent, can be analog-modelled, can be sampled from gear to Nebula to achieve the same vibe". Imagine 2020. Quality of digital stuff grows.

 

In-The-Box Mixer Ken Andrews Wins Blind Shootout Over Analog Console Mixes:
http://therecordingrevolution.com/2...ins-blind-shootout-over-analog-console-mixes/
So...I guess it's still mostly about talent and skills, not gear.

 

Then why lots of new electronic artists (and not only) are rejected by labels with "sonic quality-related" reasons?

Also, how you're supposed to fix something you can't hear? Cheap gear means also Limitation. For example a higher-quality studio monitoring pair will reproduce a lot more details to the user because they're critical in "expressing" what's wrong with that mix in the most objective way (translation related).

I don't know if you ever came across working on more monitoring speakers over time but i did. I've worked on Adam A7X, Dynaudio BM5A MK2, M-Audio BX8A, Esi Aktiv 08, Yamaha HS80M and lately Yamaha HS8.

There's a story i wanna share about when i used to work in a studio some years ago which had The BX8As, Yamaha HS80m and Adam A7x. When i first joined that team and started working on the first song, while producing (the BX8As were turned on only) i also made some brief compression and EQing and all my tweaks made me say "Damn, i got it, it already sounds like a record" but one of the dudes told me "Don't get excited so fast, wait until we switch on the Adams and Yamahs, you might be surprised!".
Once we finished the production, the dude switched the monitors and guess what? It didn't sounded so great anymore, i was hearing SO MANY EXTRA improving posibilities and "wrong things" that had to be fixed. Once we tweaked the extra details that i couldn't hear on the BX8A the mix finally sounded a lot better and polished.

That's why i'm mentioning monitors so crucially. Because they're like a pair of glasses you wear trying to draw something. You'll never get it right if you can't properly see what you're doing.

If your theory would be correct, then wouldn't all the engineers work from home in order to be able to spend more time with their families? Also, wouldn't they save up the huge amounts of money they spend on gear if the quality of the top-end products would be so ultra-subtle compared to the cheapest ones?
Also, take microphones for example as well. The cheap ones sounds so nasal with artificial highs! put a Neumann u87 chained with a Neve preamp against a Rode Nt2A chained with a Mbox cheap interface and see for yourself how much harsh and thin the Rode nt2a combo would sound.

P.S. the GS link shows up blank and loads endlessly. I will get back once i'm able to access it. Cheers!

 

it's the finished product that matters. Not how you got there. If what you have at the end of the process = ---- "If it sounds good, then it is good!"-Duke Ellington. If you record much with any mics, a real pre-amp will make more difference you can hear than any other hardware, and it's the second thing in the chain after the mic. Other than that, use what you can get your hands on. VST or real hardware, and get on with it.

 

You should know that people don't care about nuances, subtleties and quantity of harmonics, they just care about "more bass", "groovy track", "pumping sound", not the difference between compressor 1 or compressor 2, if it is drivey, that it is drivey! Most of people listen to music on PC with built-in bad soundcards, mp3, sometimes "downloaded original HQ-track, but overprocessed(overbassed,overclipped) thru waveeditor-plugins, remade by home amateurs and uploaded back to sites", use notebook speakers/$10 shitty earbuds thru mp3-players etc.
But yes, I agree, monitors, headphones and room treatment, but skills/knowledge/experience.

 

Yeah, they will not sound "exactly" the same, of course, but they will sound similar enough to never justify the huge cost difference.

Best recent proof was the last Daft Punk album: made with top instruments, top performers, top studios, top gear...
Result after mastering => top shit.

 

Last edited: Jan 6, 2016

Yes, I wrote that exactly almost the same. I compared both track one glued to another in different tracks' places, looped them and moved cutting line between them, first analog, then digital to hear it fast in one looped place of track. The difference first of all in equalization, analog is bigger in low end, mids are cut a bit, but digital has more mids and a more highs, with good digital equalizer you can both balanced them to hear both versions same. Also analog one has more noise (which can be added with any noise-making plugin, or add any sample of hiss) as well as in some places analog master is clipped/saturated in loud places with a lot of lows...I just want to say that analog processing here didn't show you something very unique from analog stuff or some mojo that audience/listeners need.

 

Do you mean about the production actually? (the robotic vocals which i also don't like at all)
But the mixing/mastering quality was top-notch. It even got a Grammy Award for the best mastered album. There's even old hi-fi heads and engineers that admited it. These awards also don't just fall out of the sky for everyone.

 

Analogue gain staging multiple times through analogue gear due to multiple op amp stages imparts harmonics that are brains love to hear. There is a depth of field and wideness that it can impart. Dark Side of the Moon would have been a different beast if it was all emulations. Listen to Pet Sounds. A great mic, preamp, eq and compressor in a good room will trump the emulations with a shitty mic every single time. Anything else is wishful thinking.