brandondrury

From day one RecordingReview has been about EVERYONE making better recordings. The big reason for starting RR was due to the fact that I saw a clear and ENORMOUS division in how new guys with $400 were told they COULDN'T make butt kicking recordings.

That's all a big damn lie. Hearing a few recordings done on a Soundblaster toy that sounded better than some records done on Neve consoles screws you up! The gear just isn't THAT important.

So I've always been a fan of pushing EVERYONE to make robo music to the best of their abilities even if they are using less expensive tools. It's the humans that make the difference and that's why I think Killer Home Recording is so important for the new guys who don't have the skills and knowledge just yet. That's why I think mics like the AT4040 and Rode NT1a are fantastic tools for recording music even if I'd prefer my entire mic locker with numerous mics in the $1,000-3,000 ballpark (with most likely a $10,000 mic or two coming this year ).

As I've been successful in the studio biz and with RecordingReview, I've begun to make investments in my toys. In short, it's a little tough for me to tell everyone on Earth to save their money and high end gear is stupid when my rack(s) look like this.




I struggled with this for a while and came up with the solution.

The Boneheads
If you blow ridiculous cash on recording gear knowing full-well that spending $1,000 here, $3000 there, and $2,600 here results in improvements of 1%, 0.8%, and 2.1% and are cool with this, you are a Bonehead.

In short, Boneheads aren't worried about price/performance ratio. They are concerned solely with getting every little hint of performance they possibly can. (Imagine the way NASA spent money during Apollo or how the miltary has ALWAYS spend money.) For me, my API 3124 is kinda like the sleeping on a nice bed. I seem to get better results at work with both. No soundclip will ever illustrate the positive effects of a bed, but I don't know anyone who's more effective when going on an hour of sleep. That's the kinda sorta benefit I hear/feel when using the API or some of my other high end toys. Note: My girlfriend can not hear a difference.

When Empericism Goes Out The Window
The crappy part of the high end gear is it rests on the fringe of empiricism. Recording in the same, tiny room with the same mics through my higher end pres and through my Toft console did SOMETHING that made the drums FEEL better. Mixing them through UAD plugins and summing through the console made mixes FEEL better, too.

In A/B tests, the difference between a $300 vocal mic and a $3,000 vocal mic aren't really that impressive. In some cases, the results are down right disappointing if you happen to treasure $2,700. It does SEEM that $3,000 mics through high end pres, high end EQ, a good console, a high end compressor, and high end converters gets me a little closer. I still have to work. I still have problems that need solving. I still have to mix to get the sounds I ultimately want. I still come out with bad mixes that need to be redone. But.....the results do seem to be better in ways that are hard to explain and impossible to quantify.

This “seem” bullshit puts us on the fringe. There's no way to prove that we Boneheads aren't whackjobs drinking the kool aid. There's no way to perform a global cost/benefit for mankind because everyone is different.

Only you can decide if you need new converters or not. It requires a leap of faith and it doesn't take long for the budget-minded skeptic to say “no way”. That's fair and all that means is you aren't stupid enough to blow $20k on a signal path for marginal results. That's a very desirable attribute and you should never second guess it unless ridiculous-priced gear starts to tempt you. If it doesn't, move on.

Note: One thing about not thinking about $$$ as a factor for a gadget is you aren't disappointed when the $300 mic works better than the $3,000 mic on a particular source. The SM7b sounds better? Great! We'll use it. That's part of the Bonehead gig. No REAL engineer bases their engineering decisions on catalogs.

Continued on..... Who Are The Boneheads? Part 2