You can produce music on cheap gear! But most bedroom producers don't have the ability to detach themselves from their brainchild to be able to objectively master their own work. Most often they also do not have the knowledge to perform advanced EQ, compression and level adjustments on stems to make their music consistent and compatible for the platform they want to release their music on.

That is why mastering studios exist! These people have the talent and the skills to know exactly where to make what changes to a product so it will fit their market. And yes they sometimes use extremely expensive exotic gear. Why? I mainly think not out of necessity but because they are forced by the market? As you make more money and you get more famous clients you need to partake in the rat race of having the most exclusive and exotic gear that the market has to offer to be taken seriously. But do they really need $500.000 speaker systems on $10.000 stands and $5000 platinum titanium topped spikes to make their sound decisions? I highly doubt that sound wise this gear is really the most important? I think that most of them could make the same decisions on a lot less expensive systems. But the market dictates that the bigger and more expensive, the better you seem to be!

The consumer gear today has become so good that I really believe that nowadays anyone with average gear and the right knowledge how to record, mix and master should be able to make a product that is close or equal to these mega studios.

You just need to be a great musician, an excellent recording engineer and a great mastering engineer. And these are three completely different levels of excellence are not likely to be found in one person or even in a group surrounding these artists?

That's mostly why most independent productions do not come close to the standard of the big studios. Not because they can't afford the exotic and highly expensive gear, but they lack the knowledge and experience to get the most out of what they have available.

 

Last edited: Nov 13, 2022

yes i guess THD stands for TOTALHARMONICDNOISEFLOOR then lol.... open your eyes before posting bs



that would totally not be the brown line that i didn't include in the previous picture that is titled NOISE FLOOR



further shifting the phase is essentially the same as delaying the signal for the given frequency....

 

Last edited: Nov 13, 2022

Well said/broken down. Thanks!

 

I can drive my DT770 250ohm with my iPhone 7 loud enough ... take it or leave it.
And on my Scarlett 2i2, with its average output level, never go past half.

How many ppl complaining about "not loud enough" are ALREADY deaf ?
And wanting to be even more, by driving their headphones louder ?

Take that point into consideration too.

 

Last edited: Nov 13, 2022

Some anecdotal evidence. I changed my audio interface from a cheap Focusrite to RME, and I got some HD600 from a buddy to use in place of my ATH-M50. I noticed this setup was more revealing and my mixing decisions have improved. I am tempted to continue this experiment by upgrading the DAC and getting some studio headphones that don't require any EQ. I will report back later.

 

Last edited: Nov 14, 2022

Yes. This is why I replaced my Scarlett 2i2 and 2i4 with a JDS Atom. The amount of distortion coming from the focusrites was horrible. With the Atom it's clean all the way.