check this guy out! :) Drew Daniels*

hehe, I love people like Drew Daniels...

http://www.drewdaniels.com/badreligion.html

I just challenged him to a public debate on the merits of high quality music recording and playback.

enjoy his site... I certainley did!

 

I remember a Drew Daniels from JBL in the 70's. I wonder if this is the same guy. I had lots of talks with him back then.

 

What a wanker - it's not his money.

 

Very informative site!

 

Hurry! Hurry!! Forum members get 10% off on orders over $ 1000.

 

I wish I could find customers like these.

 

Sell him a Lirpa Steamtable!!! Or maybe a Rockport . . .

 

Check out the home page With an attutude like that I'm not certain I would want to do business with a firm like this.

 

Well, he's not so far off base.

Does a 26,000$$$ turntable really sound better than a 5,000$ turntable?

 

I think some of the over priced tweeks and products deserve ridicule. However, free with a cd player? I only wish.

 

The only $26k turntable I can think of is Lloyd Walker's rig. I've heard this a few times and it's just silly good. It's way up there and deserves the praise it's been awarded. A truly magnificent sound. But a nice Teres, Origin Live Silver, Denon 103 would make me a happy man, and that would be under $5k.

 

It all depends on how much you are willing to support your hobby and to what level of playback you are willing to go. Does a $5000 microphone capture sound better than one for $29 @ Radio Shack? Thats something the person needs to decide for themselves. These types of "comparisons" are absolutley useless and futile.

 

Do you mean a mental "comparison" (such as mikey's question) or a real listening comparison? I think you meant the former.

Certainly one can go too far comparing something expensive with something cheap so that it's not just personal opinion - there would be a number of valid scientific measurements that could show the weaknesses of the $29 mike.

But when one is comparing expensive hifi with REALLY expensive hifi, then one does have to trust one's opinion - as that's who has to be satisfied. But I value the opinion of all enthusiasts in some way, as we are all on the same wavelength. My ranking may not be your ranking, but if I hear of a piece of gear that's getting lots of raves, I want to hear for myself.

 

"The Cutting Edge" TAS Roundtable in the most recent (February/March) issue of Absolute Sound has a very interesting remark by Peter McGrath, a remark that corresponds to my personal experiences in recording:

"I Made essentially three separate recordings and was playing back the recordings made with the Neumann mikes for the assembled musicians and other serious listeners in my store on some very high-end speakers. Everyone was agonizing over the relative quality of the sound of the PCM-F1 and the 30 IPS analog. And in general, everyone seemed to feel that the analog tape was better, which is fairly predictable given the state of digital-recording technology at the time.
I then shocked everybody by playing back the third recording made with a second pair of mikes, in this case a pair of B & K 4133's which were more properly positioned (but not more than a foot away from the others). Everyone agreed that this sound was far better than the PCM-F1 or the analog tape. I then revealed the storage medium for this recording---a Sony Walkman with Dolby C noise reduction. Even recorded to a Walkman, the better microphones, in their better position, just obliterated the other two recordings.
However long we've agonized over analog versus digital, this experience drives home the point that what matters most is the transducer and where it's positioned. Of course, the medium on which you store the information and the processes involved affect the quality. But what are the priorities? It's the hall. It's the musicians. It's the performance. And then, it's the microphones and where we put them".

Drew Daniels seems to be saying pretty much the same thing.

 

Based on the spread he has on his website about James B. Lansing I think it probably is the same guy.

 

I liked his attitude. It seems to me he feels he's going against lots of preconceived notions about audio. And I agree with him in one point... I can't imagine why an interconnect / cable should cost more than $1K. Or $100, for that matter.

I also laughed at his power cord opinions. I still can't imagine why a $3,000 power cable could make a difference on any system when all homes are wired with solid core imperfect copper. Then again, I have never tried a $3K power cable, so I can't say for sure this won't make a difference.

 

On one hand, it's great that he hates clipped mastering and "modern" mastering techniques. On the other hand, wasting time complaining about $26,000 turntables or whatever is pointless because if someone has that much cash to throw around on audio equipment in the first place...

 

For a supposedly peace loving guy (see flag on homepage) he seems to have a lot of anger. Even his philosophy on recording, written presumably for the prospective customer, is full of bile.

Mark Kelley

P.S. The turntable should really be considered industrial (?post-industrial) art. Very beautifull in its own way.

 

Did you notice that this quote applies equally well to speakers? (Speakers are transducers too.) Your speakers and where you place them matters much more than, for example, cables or amplifiers.

 

It’s not the quality of the wire from the power station to your outlet but rather the last few feet and the impendence change it introduces to the units transformer. Each and every piece of wire you listen to will sound different. It’s a matter of synergy between the unit’s transformer and the cord affecting it. Some transformers are way more sensitive then others. And the same power cable will not sound the same on different components. It took me months to choose the cables I have now.

Try it!

 

Originally Posted by Robin L
However long we've agonized over analog versus digital, this experience drives home the point that what matters most is the transducer and where it's positioned.

I think it's important to note the original context of the statement. I didn't say it. I was quoting recording engineer Peter McGrath, who has done work for Harmonia Mundi USA (among a host of record labels), and what he said that follows is even more important, as far as I'm concerned:

"Of course, the medium on which you store the information and the processes involved affect the quality. But what are the priorities? It's the hall. It's the musicians. It's the performance. And then, it's the microphones and where we put them". (My emphasis).

My theory is that it's not really about the mastering, it's really not even really about the gear. It's about energy and entropy, the fact that the most important part of the recording is the energy you start with, that once that energy from the performance hits the microphone diaphragm it's all downhill from there. The closer to the original event (literally), the more important the link in the chain.

Having said that, it really is true about the quality of the speakers and the quality of the acoustic playback environment for the speaker---how appropriate the playback venue is for the speaker. I'm lucky enough to have a superior playback venue for my main pair of speakers---an unusually large and reverberant living room that successfully mimics the acoustics of a concert hall. Note that, among those parameters that the recording engineer has control over, Peter McGrath ranks the acoustic qualities of the recording venue first.

My personal experience is that a great amp driving a good speaker sounds better than a good amp driving a great speaker. It really is all about entropy. And I'd much rather listen to a Dean Benidetti wire recording of Charlie Parker than an audiophile recreation of Charlie Parker's music.

 

Ditto your sentiments about Charlie Parker! I didn't mean to reignite the perennial argument over which is more important: source, amp, or speakers. I meant to point out that just as microphone placement is critical to capturing the live event, so speaker placement is critical to reproducing the live event. After all, if one's speakers are set up wrong, nothing one does to the rest of the system can compensate for that. That's all I meant. Assuming your speakers are set up right, you can then change other things and hear the greater or lesser difference the changes make.

 

As for Drew, I did appreciate his puncturing some of the "faith-based initiatives" of audiophilia. But I would disagree with him about some things that have been shown to make a measurable difference. For example, the differing amounts of jitter induced by different digital interfaces (i.e., cables) has been measured. Likewise the effect of vibration control and different interfaces between speakers, stand, and floor.

 

But not as much as the quality of your source.

 

This is very true and why many audiophile labels like Chesky Records spend a lot of energy trying mic positions and different gear.

I do not agree that the rest of the chain does not matter and neither would Peter McGrath. You need to look at everything - the ADCs, the DACs, the mic preamp, the playback gear, the cables, the power supplies, EMI, RFI, etc.

Mastering also matters - look at how bad compression sounds. My high end system is very resolving so these recordings sound worse on my stereo. Also, we know from Steve Hoffman's work how important tape research is - do you have the first generation original tape? Also, is the engineer trying to correct for something he did not like about the performance but without real justification?

With respect to playback gear, I may go farther...for instance there are examples where the amp-speaker combination would be more important than a minor tweak in speaker position, particularly with a box speaker.