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Audiophiles v sound engineers

The point has been well made that as far as speakers are concerned there is (and historically has been) quite a bit of crossover between pro and domestic.

What about sources, amps and so on? There’s a small (historical) crossover of reel-to-reel and some turntables (thinking mainly of DJ and broadcasting TTs such as the good Japanese direct drives and e.g. EMT). And I guess there’s also some crossover with the odd DAC (Benchmark, RME and a couple of others). But beyond that?

Naim started off selling their amps into professional environments, including Capital Radio. I'm not sure how much their products ever got into recording studios, or how long before it morphed into basically a domestic hi-fi company, as we know it today.
 
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Here’s Abbey Road in the early ‘70s. Tannoy Lancasters powered by either a Quad 303 or a pair of 50Es (can’t tell as only one visible under the left Tannoy). If you want to hear DSOTM etc as the band heard it when it was recorded that’s what you need!
 
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Here’s Abbey Road in the early ‘70s. Tannoy Lancasters powered by either a Quad 303 or a pair of 50Es (can’t tell as only one visible under the left Tannoy). If you want to hear DSOTM etc as the band heard it when it was recorded that’s what you need!

Solidly supported on "hi fi approved" spiked girder stands there then... (and not bunged right in the corners!)
 
Keith, its similarly flat down to 140hz where room effects kick in on the way down to 35hz
 
My only visit to a studio was back in the late 70’s. The desk had a pair of Auriotones (I’m guessing here), Yamaha ns10 and I think there were some large JBL as the main monitors (another guess it was a long time ago!).

I must admit a pair of active ATC loudspeakers (40’s or 50’s)are on my wish list to hear but I must be careful what I wish for.

I picked up some NS1000m years ago after lusting after them in the 70’s. I heard them on a number of occasions back then and really liked them. Forty years later and I was totally underwhelmed.
Maybe they were a bit tired or maybe these days I prefer something a little less analytical!
 
Many of the large monitors are only ever used when clients are around or if a mix is causing real problems. As for volume levels, some of the old school producers listen at insane levels, but most current producers and engineers would walk out if the volume gets much over 85db (H & S and remember that our ears are our tools).

The other question I can comment on, is the choice of music does have a bearing on the monitor selection, but a mix should sound good on a wide range of speakers
Thanks. So one difference between pro kit and domestic kit is that domestic kit might be expected to cope with a wider range of programme material?
 
Perhaps not source material, but main monitors are much more demanding in step up than the average home hifi. They will be expected to have a wide bandwidth at high volumes with minimal distortion.
They tend to be quite a bit bigger than would normally suitable in a domestic environment and many of the design parameters will assume the use of a treated room.
 
Balanced cables get rid of earth loops.

I have not found this to be the case at all. In assembling a large sound reinforcement system, careful attention must be paid to grounding. One cannot always just connect everything together with factory-made cables as supplied without chasing around looking for sources of hum. Often shields must be "telescoped" (connected at only one end).
 
I have not found this to be the case at all. In assembling a large sound reinforcement system, careful attention must be paid to grounding. One cannot always just connect everything together with factory-made cables as supplied without chasing around looking for sources of hum. Often shields must be "telescoped" (connected at only one end).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_loop_(electricity)#Balanced_lines

There may be special cases in which the use of balanced cables is not sufficient to get rid of earth loops. However, to say that you have 'not found this to be the case at all' is strange.
 
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Here’s Abbey Road in the early ‘70s. Tannoy Lancasters powered by either a Quad 303 or a pair of 50Es (can’t tell as only one visible under the left Tannoy). If you want to hear DSOTM etc as the band heard it when it was recorded that’s what you need!

100% true ! Back in those days, everything was analog including the phones and the cigarettes (no electronic cigarette according to the ashtray) and people were enjoying music that stayed in their memory for ever !
 
100% true ! Back in those days, everything was analog including the phones and the cigarettes (no electronic cigarette according to the ashtray) and people were enjoying music that stayed in their memory for ever !

Analogue is still preferred IMHO as complex modern digital monitors just have too much latency to be used for live tracking in the control room, punch-ins, live dub mixing etc. The digital processing only takes a handful of milliseconds, but that’s still enough delay to knock your game out. I know the Kiis actually have a control to turn all the digital shenanigans off for just this purpose, and I’m sure the competition is the same. It kind of renders the whole thing pointless for me as I’d end up with it off almost all the time in a studio context so would be better served with good sounding conventional monitors. The sort of music I was involved with back when I had a studio was electronic and largely loop based, i.e. we’d have recorded maybe an 8 or 16 bar loop of however many synth and drum parts were needed on the computer sequencer running endlessly and actually “write” the track live by paying the mixer channel mutes and faders, playing the FX sends etc, so very much a dub mix. You just can’t have any latency in that scenario. MIDI is slow enough without adding any other issues! This is certainly how much electronica etc is created, you basically play the mixing desk as an instrument.
 
Analogue is still preferred IMHO as complex modern digital monitors just have too much latency to be used for live tracking in the control room, punch-ins, live dub mixing etc. The digital processing only takes a handful of milliseconds, but that’s still enough delay to knock your game out.

My experience is that most newer studios are moving (or have moved) to digital audio-over-IP solutions. Standards such as Dante give latencies well below 1 ms.
 
Perhaps not source material, but main monitors are much more demanding in step up than the average home hifi. They will be expected to have a wide bandwidth at high volumes with minimal distortion.
They tend to be quite a bit bigger than would normally suitable in a domestic environment and many of the design parameters will assume the use of a treated room.

Main monitors yes, but near field and mid field are typically of similar dimensions to domestic speakers.

What design parameters assume the use of a treated room?
 
Main monitors yes, but near field and mid field are typically of similar dimensions to domestic speakers.

What design parameters assume the use of a treated room?
Designs vary so much, from ‘traditional’ actives such as ATC, with no real adjustment, to more contemporary designs that generally have some form of bass/treble cut lift , to really up to date, full-range, cardioid , boundary filters, perfect step, phase sophisticated tone and even built in EQ.
Keith
 


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