What car is better? An Aston Martin, V12 Vanquish, or a Land Rover 110 300Tdi? I assume we all agree the Aston? Well, you’re all wrong. Because what I didn’t tell you, is that they’re being compared in a race through the Amazon rainforest. And the Land Rover is being driven by a world rally champion. And the Aston is being driven by my non-driver Grandma…
This post comes after quite a long talk with Richard Lightman, the director of the Music Producers Guild, at the Audio Engineering Society expo at Novotel Hammersmith, yesterday afternoon.
For a long time, there has been great discussion on just how much of a great recorded sound consists of the engineer’s input, and how much of it consists of the sound of their equipment. Thus, for a long time, it has been considered by many that the sound of a great record can only be achieved in a major studio, utilising top of the range equipment only available to top-end studio budgets. In some ways, the plight of the engineer has almost demised, as the critics often seek to find as to where a record was made, and what desk it was, what mics did they use, pro tools or logic, prism or apogee, tape or digital, sampled or real drums, amps or sims, the list goes on. Often, I feel that the engineer who chose the mics, chose the software, chose the console; and indeed operated those things, is drowned out in the written noise of the technical specification.
The question is raised many times “can I actually use the plugins included with Logic to get the same sound that I can achieve with Waves plug-ins”. And the answer, is probably no. But what do Waves plugins sound like? There is no set sound. Waves plugins sound like the engineer setting them. So do Logic ones. For this example we’re going to talk about EQs. And I’m pretty sure a Logic Channel EQ set by Chris Lord-Alge could blow the pants of a Waves R-EQ set by a bedroom hobbyist. So, I did raise the point with Richard: “since the class divide between those who can and can’t afford expensive plugins, has ‘I can only afford Logic bundled plug-ins’ been used merely as an excuse?” – and I wouldn’t maintain that, yes, it probably has, by many people. Everything in the world of audio sounds different, and once you’ve reached the basic standard of audio processing (that Logic plugins exceed), it’s about getting it to sound right. Who cares if it sounds as good as a £1000 Waves EQ? If the £1000 Waves EQ doesn’t fit the track, it’s useless. I won’t argue, since I’ve bought Waves Mercury and begun to use the API emulations, SSL emulations, and R-EQ plug-ins, I have noticed an improvement in the musicality of the EQs. But, that’s an improvement when it’s set properly. If set badly, they still sound as bad as a badly set anything else. Conclusion: It’s the engineer using the EQ that makes the EQ sound good. And the same for compressors, reverbs and anything else for that matter. A great engineer on an average EQ will produce a better sound than an average engineer on a great EQ. Of course, a great engineer on a great EQ is where great records come from. The tricks are – learning how to use plug-ins to get them sounding their best, and learning which members of your plugin collection to use at which times. And both those things are things that ONLY engineers can do, and your kit can’t decide for you.
Then of course, there’s the way in. The old phrase ‘you can’t polish a turd’ still sounds. A 20-plugin chain of Waves, McDSP, Sonnox and URS can’t fix a badly recorded instrument. And, even if it gets close, just imagine what that level of processing would have done to a well recorded instrument! Once again, these been no end of claims that you can only record well with good gear. But what does good gear sound like? Again, there’s no set sound. Yes, our Golden Age Pre-73 has a distinct sound that a £100 Behringer mic pre won’t fulfil – but it’s not supposed to. Use the Behringer as it’s supposed to be used, learn the sound that it makes. Then set it properly. And guess what? Get it right, and you’ll exceed the sound of a badly set Pre-73. And again, people will tell you, you need a ‘good’ pre-amp. What’s a good pre-amp? If it fits the track, it’s a good pre-amp. If it doesn’t fit the track, it’s not a good pre-amp. End of. The same for microphones. I’ve had countless people tell me ‘The Neumann U87 is a better vocal mic than the Shure SM58. Can we use that one please” in the studio. Now, tell me, young vocalist, why is the Neumann a better vocal mic than the Shure? Because, I think we can both agree, that your vocal take will not match the power, emotion or strength of a Bono vocal take. Does Bono use a U87? no. Does he use an SM58? Yes. Oh dear, this doesn’t bode well for you, does it? Of course, there’s an equal number of times when I would use the 87. No, wrong. There’s far more situations when I’d use the 87. But, it’s not a failsafe solution. Once again, the secrets are – knowing HOW to use the kit – where to place the mic, where to place the vocalist, how to treat the room; and knowing WHICH kit to use. And, like we said – that’s an engineers job.
We could go on. And say the same about live room acoustics. About the performers themselves. About their instruments. About their amps. About what they drink before singing. About everything. But we won’t, because if you haven’t got the message by now, there’s not much point going on.
But! You all ask, But! Where is this going? What’s changing?
Well, back to the conversation with Richard, everyone is getting really rather upset at the evolution of studio equipment. Mainly people who can afford it. Tape is just too expensive to use. SSL G+ consoles are unmarketable as they cost as much to service annually as Audient consoles cost to buy. GML EQs cost thousands, when you can buy an infinitely more useful GML plug-in for the Sonnox EQ, which remembers it’s settings, and can be applied to every channel in the project. And 10 years after being used in the mix, you can come back to it and it’ll be exactly as you left it. So everyone’s had to go digital. A quick thing we questioned too – MIDI-controllers in the shape of mixing consoles. Digi C24, ICON, Euphonix, etc. They’re all much the same – you get faders on the table, and you can control them in Logic / Pro Tools / Nuendo as you see fit. But… you can do that with a mouse. So, with limited exceptions (riding vocals, aux sends etc – and writing the automation; or using the control features on a soft-synth), are people using these controller desks as anything but a nostalgic trip down memory lane? Are they actually serving a practical purpose? Or do we just not recognise a control room that doesn’t have a big black object with knobs and faders plonked in the middle of it? Anyway, we’ll leave that for another day… So. Everyone’s gone digital. Really. Yes, Audiophiles / GearSlutz / etc hate the prospect of ‘In The Box’ mixing. But it’s a hell of a lot cheaper, a hell of a lot more practical, and can our end user (who actually pays for the record), little Jimmy and his iPod cranked up to 11 with cheap tinny earphones, only once the record’s been cranked to within 6dB of itself by a mastering engineer, actually hear the difference? We’re not going to go into ITB/OTB mixing too much here either, but just trust us when we say that, short of bands who really do have the finance to be in a top studio for a long period of time, in the box, digital mixing is really on the way up and analogue, OTB mixing is on a fall. And the plug-ins really are starting to take over. In Propagation House, we can mix on 48 channels of well-emulated SSL E-series channel strips, then put it all away in a 6″ x 4″ x 2″ box, then mix on 48 channels of API 550-Bs and 2500s, then stick that in the 6x4x2 cupboard (known more formally as an HDD) and get the SSLs back out again. To do that with consoles would cost no less than £100,000 and would require permanent employment of a couple of highly skilled console techs. To do it in Pro Tools cost us a few grand of plug-ins and only one of us need be in the studio. And fact of the matter is – with only 2% of commercial records actually making their production costs back – the guys running the show at the record label are not interested in the extra cost for the sake of ‘a bit of analogue warmth’.
So, what’s the catch with digital. Well, in the last few months, it’s ALL gone pirate, really. Our Waves bundle and Pro Tools HD system cost us a significant amount of money, and it still does as we keep it constantly updated and fully operational. And we’re proud of being legit, it means we can offer our customers a stable system, with customer support available from the manufacturers if required – and thus cause minimal disruption to our sessions. However, if you wanted to break the law, you could pickup Waves Mercury, and Pro Tools HD, off the web, free-of-charge, and get making music.
There is some hardware you still have to buy. You can’t download a cracked copy of a microphone or audio interface. But they ARE getting very cheap. At Propagation House we pride ourselves around our top mic collection – including classics such as the Neumann U87, Sennheiser MD421, Audio Technica 4033s; and less-known choices such as the Heil PR20 and PR40 dynamic mics. We also pride ourselves on pre-amps from Sennheiser, Golden Age, Neve, Focusrite and Amek; and audio interfacing with an Avid Pro Tools HD2 system – comprising of 192 converters and 2 Accel cards. But, especially in an age of iPod or laptop-speaker listeners, the primary audience (in the eyes of the record labels’ finance departments, at least) really probably won’t notice the difference. I picked up a high quality MOTU 828mkII 2 years ago for £500 – that gets you 2 reasonable pre-amps, 8 line ins and 8 ADAT ins. Now, the £500 will get you a Focusrite 56 – with 8 decent pre-amps, including 2 professional-grade Liquid pre-amps; as well as the same 8 ADAT inputs, and a whole variety of other interfacing options. It’s a well-rated and reliable cross between pre-amps and interfacing. Of course – the price difference also reflects build quality, converter quality and connector quality. But, like everything else – with records, as far as the labels are concerned, being predominantly played on iPods with rubbish headphones or tinny laptop speakers, in the band’s eyes it needs to be the feature set, not the audiophile qualities, that select their equipment. Another one – for mics, a reputable music technology magazine recently tested a £90 consumer-level condenser mic against a variety of top-top-end professional condensers, and preferred the £90 mic to the lot of them. Seriously. But – of course – this was engineered by a team of some of the UK’s top recording engineers – not the amateurs that are most associated with buying the mic. And, of course, it was tested in a suitably high performance console ,and recorded in an acoustically-superb room. But still, as a result of the moving technology and ever reducing prices, you can pick up a good sounding studio set up for less than many studios will charge you for a day’s recording – which will plugin to the firewire port of your macbook.
So, what’s the result? Well, it means that, for a small budget, you really can get yourself a small, home / portable studio that will compare with the big studios. What you can’t do however, is download your engineer off the web. Which means, in my eyes, that the future is bright for the recording engineer. With the playing fields levelling, and consumer gear opportunities rising to meet the standards of professional equipment; the engineers will become the key separation between recordings. Not the gear. Which in our eyes, is only positive – it’s about time that highly trained, professional engineers are able to publicly separate themselves from poorly skilled engineers who are unable to provide the skills for which they charge. And you, the musicians, might actually start to get a much fairer opportunity to book studios and engineers where your music will come to life.
Of course, you might ask, why a professional recording studio – which is after all, a big brick box containing all the equipment that we may have seemingly suggested you don’t actually need – would come on their own blogging telling you this. Surely, we should be telling you that pirate plug-ins don’t work properly, and cheap gear will make your music sound shit, right? There’s just no point – most of you probably know it already, and there’s just no point lying – too many big studios do it, and evidently they’re not all doing too well at the moment.
Well, we’ll tell you. Whilst it can be possible to get results that are more friendly with the pockets of our record labels, using cheaper, simpler equipment available for inside a grand from your local Digital Village store, we, the musicians, should want to record our art as best we can. If the Beatles had used the minimum possible technology to record their albums 50 years ago, could we still listen to them today and think they sound great? Of course we couldn’t. As musicians, we need to show pride in our art, and refuse to settle for less. If we do settle for less – the men in suits will only ask us to settle for EVEN less. We need to future-proof our art, and take pride in the way it sounds throughout the production process – not simply worry about how it sounds when it reaches little Jimmy’s iPod. If we reduce our standards, everyone will reduce their standards, and the audience will have to reduce their expectation – which should never have to happen.
The effects of a great room, great instruments, great microphones, great pre-amps, great converters and great processors are still as important as ever. But it’s vital that as these great factors become more and more available, the standard of engineers is kept in line with it’s development. After all, only a GREAT engineer can make the great rooms, instruments, mics, and all other great members of the signal chain come to life in the manner that makes for a great record. And for you, the artists, this just isn’t practical. Your forte is performing, and THAT is what you need to concentrate on, whilst we, the audio engineering community, concentrate on the engineering and production.
So, my conclusion is that whilst the ever-developing technology, reduction of costs, and increasing abuse of copyright theft all bring the capabilities of consumer and ‘prosumer’ recording closer to the level of professionals, it’s still the Mk1 original recording engineer that makes it all come to life. And, it’s when you use the great engineers, that you will realise, and appreciate, the true value of the highest quality, professional equipment, and see what difference it does make. In other words – if your engineer isn’t good enough, it really doesn’t matter whether you use professional or consumer equipment – technology has brought them so close to each other that technology alone is not sufficient to separate them. What does separate the technology, is the engineer using them.
At Propagation House, our mix of great engineers, great equipment and facilities, and additionally the great surroundings in which you record, the true value of our professional and legitimate range of equipment really comes to life, and you can leave with a truly great surrounding record.
Dave
