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Always wondered about audiophiles. Seems like a simple truism: The best quality reproduction of a recording will come from whatever the final mix engineer was

Always wondered about audiophiles. Seems like a simple truism: The best quality reproduction of a recording will come from whatever the final mix engineer was using. If he was using a 400 dollar pair of Sennheisers and similar equipment, I'm not sure how you could possibly do better. Maybe you could do better if you had the masters and could remix it with more expensive crap, but that's unrealistic. And if the engineer really screwed up, no pricey amp is going to fix it.

gregsq 13y ago
Not exactly. Sound production and sound reproduction are separate pursuits. Sound reproduction should ideally be input transformed with transducers to a listening environment. In the absence of perfect transducers there's a lot of play area for enthusiasts to modify the transformation stage to interplay with what is by far the weakest part of the chain, the transducers. Massy complex mechanical circuits with all the imperfections that entails. Despite this, it's very possible to improve the state of the art. Sound production on the other hand is whatever the producer wants it to be. And the best transducers are often purposefully avoided for monitoring, because it won't necessarily sound too good on the radio when driving to work, or an MP3 through Dr Beats on a noisy tube or metro.
gnaffle 13y ago
The recording might capture a lot more detail than what the sound engineer was hearing. For instance, the recording could have been made in the 60s or 70s, and the state of the art in sound reproduction can have improved since then. So unless you want to argue that hearing that extra detail that the mix engineer didn't hear is "wrong", I don't see how you can make your point. If someone records a live concert using a pair of high quality mics and a pair of crap headphones, is the "truest" reproduction of that recording made with the crap headphones, or is the "truest" reproduction what sounds closest to being present at the concert?

gregsq 13y ago

Not exactly. Sound production and sound reproduction are separate pursuits. Sound reproduction should ideally be input transformed with transducers to a listening environment. In the absence of perfect transducers there's a lot of play area for enthusiasts to modify the transformation stage to interplay with what is by far the weakest part of the chain, the transducers. Massy complex mechanical circuits with all the imperfections that entails. Despite this, it's very possible to improve the state of the art. Sound production on the other hand is whatever the producer wants it to be. And the best transducers are often purposefully avoided for monitoring, because it won't necessarily sound too good on the radio when driving to work, or an MP3 through Dr Beats on a noisy tube or metro.

gnaffle 13y ago

The recording might capture a lot more detail than what the sound engineer was hearing. For instance, the recording could have been made in the 60s or 70s, and the state of the art in sound reproduction can have improved since then. So unless you want to argue that hearing that extra detail that the mix engineer didn't hear is "wrong", I don't see how you can make your point. If someone records a live concert using a pair of high quality mics and a pair of crap headphones, is the "truest" reproduction of that recording made with the crap headphones, or is the "truest" reproduction what sounds closest to being present at the concert?