everyone is doing backflips over the Throbak paf clone - what do you guys make of ...

[David Schwab]

I have a question... Do you think the average person in a bar can really hear the difference from the Throbak PAF pups to a regular generic PAF say by GFS???

I doubt it. Been there with gear when playing out and only a hand full of musicians can tell the difference. You would be suprised how tone deaf most folks are...especially drunks in a bar...and vintage tone is soooo subjective too.

SLO

Can you hear the difference? That's all that matters. The audience doesn't know anything about gear, unless they are musicians. But if you are getting a tone that you love, you will probably play better, and they will hear that!

I was always concerned with the tone of my bass, but only for me. It was a tone that I liked. I played a regular church gig a few years back and I would have people comment on how good my bass sounded, and these people weren't musicians. Some even commented on how nice the bass looked. If I played like crap, I'd bet no one would have noticed how the bass sounded, so it goes hand-in-hand.

I just put a pickup that was less than $20 in my hand made Tele type guitar, and I had a customer here today that loved the way the guitar sounded. It's a good sounding guitar, and the pickup works well in it. I got it because it was cheap and I was curious, and I figured if I didn't like it I could rework it. It was worth it for the parts, since I can't find dual rail parts.

So if it works for you, and it sounds good to you, that's what counts. The drunks in the bar don't count.

[soundmasterg]

Ahh I see, cool. I wasn't aware that he'd goten another one.
Haven't been MLP'ing in quite a while. I suppose it's due to the divorce I'm going through currently.

Hey Wolfe,

Sad to hear that news! I hope you're not getting taken too badly? I'll give you a ring one of these days and we can catch up......

Greg

[SteikBacon]

So if it works for you, and it sounds good to you, that's what counts. The drunks in the bar don't count.

The drunks in the bar probably dont even know there is a band...

[Mark Hammer]

I'm pretty confident that there are plenty of times when some very iconic instruments that we think of as having a signature sound (think Brian May's guitar) might sound indistinguishable from cheaper and less planful axes in certain contexts. Would they sound that way when that player takes that instrument into a recording situation? Perhaps not. A fabulous recording sounds awful through my CD player in my car while I'm in the midst of noisy traffic. Doesn't mean it can't sound absolutely amazing through a decent system under optimal listening conditions.

[Possum]

....

Mark: when I did all Shrapnel's album design work, I had to go to Prarie Sunn Studios to show them artwork while they were working on a Pat Travers album. This was in the late 80's. It was cool to see the studio and even saw one guy with a Mac Plus doing midi stuff, way ahead of its time etc. But the thing I thought was the most amusing was they mixed a song and thought it sounded good etc. well the FINAL thing they did was burn it to an 8 track tape and took it out to a guy's truck stereo system and listened to it there :-) THAT was the "acid test." Wonder if they do anything similar these, an iPod maybe?

[soundmasterg]

Mark: when I did all Shrapnel's album design work, I had to go to Prarie Sunn Studios to show them artwork while they were working on a Pat Travers album. This was in the late 80's. It was cool to see the studio and even saw one guy with a Mac Plus doing midi stuff, way ahead of its time etc. But the thing I thought was the most amusing was they mixed a song and thought it sounded good etc. well the FINAL thing they did was burn it to an 8 track tape and took it out to a guy's truck stereo system and listened to it there :-) THAT was the "acid test." Wonder if they do anything similar these, an iPod maybe?

Its actually very beneficial to listen to a recording on as many different systems as possible, because they all sound different, adn will make your recording sound different. If it sonly sounds good in the studio that doesn't help you. I try to listen to my recordings in the car, my friend's stereo, a boom box, etc. That way I can tell if things are mixed right.

MP3's and Ipods though don't give very good audio quality so if someone is listening to those to try to get a handle on their recordings, they've got issues!

Greg

[David Schwab]

MP3's and Ipods though don't give very good audio quality so if someone is listening to those to try to get a handle on their recordings, they've got issues!

That's really not true. iPods have very good audio specs. Many MP3's sound lousy because of the system they were encoded on. I routinely use my iPod and MP3 files to do tests of music I'm working on as well as the pickups. I actually prefer AAC files, as they have a cleaner top end, but in either case if you encode at a high bit rate, it's very difficult to hear the difference.

I record everything at 44.1 and 24 bit. I can listen to the original AIFF files and the MP3's and I don't hear any difference. The software I use to rip the files takes a long time, but even iTunes does a really good job.

But I have heard some dreadful MP3's out there.

If I'm being really critical, I put the uncompressed files on my iPod. Then I listen on my boombox, in the car, using various headphones, etc. I used to burn CDs to do tests, but iPods are much more convenient.

In the end you have to think about what systems are going to be playing the clips. Most of the time you wont hear the difference between higher resolution files and MP3's.

[salvarsan]

This was in the late 80's. ... well the FINAL thing they did was burn it to an 8 track tape and took it out to a guy's truck stereo system and listened to it there :-) THAT was the "acid test."

Those guys were retro audio buffs, for sure.
The 8-track was dying out in the late 70's and
only collectors and die-hards had 'em by the 80's.


That said, one of my fonder memories of the 70's is listening to
the Stones' (not Fred and Barny) Sticky Fingers in a '67 Mustang,
and musing over those evil-sounding slide guitar tracks from Keith Richards.

-drh

[David Schwab]

Those guys were retro audio buffs, for sure.
The 8-track was dying out in the late 70's and
only collectors and die-hards had 'em by the 80's.


That said, one of my fonder memories of the 70's is listening to
the Stones' (not Fred and Barny) Sticky Fingers in a '67 Mustang,
and musing over those evil-sounding slide guitar tracks from Keith Richards.

I always remember the store bought tapes would fade out in the middle of a song, switch tracks, and fade back in. Annoying! The home made tape would just go "CLICK!" and keep playing.

Now all the music we listen to in the car and at home is via iPods and iTunes (through my Monsoon planar speakers). We have about 4 or 5 iPods floating around the house.

An interesting side note is the 8-track tape format was invented by Bill Lear, of Learjet fame. It was originally called the "Lear Jet Stereo 8 cartridge".

Lear also invented the first practical car radio, calling it "Motorola". He sold the patents to Galvin Manufacturing Corporation which later became Motorola, and used the money to develop aerospace instruments and electronics.

Real interesting guy. A great quote of his was: "There's only one thing worse than an intermittent, that's an intermittent intermittent."

Jeeze, I HATE those.

[Mark Hammer]

Hey, I've got hundreds of 8-track tapes, by people you'd never suspect or associate with 8-tracks (Bill Evans, Frank Zappa, Stefan Grappeli, Steve Hillage, etc. etc.), and several recorders and players.

Certainly the initial quality of the tapes was pretty decent. The trouble with them was: a) the extensive physical wear on the tapes from simple normal playing, and b) the heightened risk of bleedthrough from concentric tape winds.

As for "consumer-grade monitoring", one of the most commonly found speakers in a great many studios throughout the 70's was the Auratone; a little cube with a single full-range (if 60-15khz counts as that) 5-1/4" driver similar to what is found on the Bose 901.

[soundmasterg]

That's really not true. iPods have very good audio specs. Many MP3's sound lousy because of the system they were encoded on. I routinely use my iPod and MP3 files to do tests of music I'm working on as well as the pickups. I actually prefer AAC files, as they have a cleaner top end, but in either case if you encode at a high bit rate, it's very difficult to hear the difference.

I record everything at 44.1 and 24 bit. I can listen to the original AIFF files and the MP3's and I don't hear any difference. The software I use to rip the files takes a long time, but even iTunes does a really good job.

But I have heard some dreadful MP3's out there.

If I'm being really critical, I put the uncompressed files on my iPod. Then I listen on my boombox, in the car, using various headphones, etc. I used to burn CDs to do tests, but iPods are much more convenient.

In the end you have to think about what systems are going to be playing the clips. Most of the time you wont hear the difference between higher resolution files and MP3's.

I'll agree that the standard file format that Ipods use is better than mp3's, but they both pale in comparison to the original audio file, especially if you listen in a studio environment. Even with mp3's that are encoded with the better software, there are some horrendously obvious artifacts and a whoosing sound in the higher frequencies in a studio environment. If you're listening on your computer or a boombox, you won't hear it though unless you know what to listen for and have good ears.

Greg

[David Schwab]

I'll agree that the standard file format that Ipods use is better than mp3's, but they both pale in comparison to the original audio file, especially if you listen in a studio environment. Even with mp3's that are encoded with the better software, there are some horrendously obvious artifacts and a whoosing sound in the higher frequencies in a studio environment. If you're listening on your computer or a boombox, you won't hear it though unless you know what to listen for and have good ears.

Yeah, I've heard the whooshing/water sound on bad MP3's, but I don't hear that on the stuff I encode. I'm monitoring with good speakers and also good studio headphones. I've also put the AIFF files along with the compressed version on the iPod and switched back and forth.

Different music compresses differently of course. Very quiet stuff doesn't fair as well.

But for guitar or bass samples, I can play the compressed file on the same system as the live instrument, and you can't tell. A single instrument is not as complex as a whole band, so it's easier to compress.

Take a listen. No whooshing here. I don't know why, but all the really bad MP3s always seem to come from Windows PC's.

BTW, a funny fact is the song used for testing the MP3 algorithm was Tom's Diner by Suzanne Vega. So in a weird twisted way, the MP3 format has something in common with the show Seinfeld!

(Tom's Restaurant in NYC. I guess "diner" sounded better for the song)

[SteikBacon]

You should try the files on a Cowon mp3-player or other with a stronger amp when listening with headphones. Did you use the ipod as source connected to the boombox, car .....?

[David Schwab]

You should try the files on a Cowon mp3-player or other with a stronger amp when listening with headphones. Did you use the ipod as source connected to the boombox, car .....?

I have a Mac based home recording setup. I have an M-Audio 2496 sound card installed in my G4. I record using a Roland VM-3100Pro digital mixer. I connect to the 2496 via S/PDIF coax.

For monitoring the output of the card goes to a Behringer Eurorack MX 1604A mixer. I use the headphone amp on the Behringer. For speakers I have a set of Monsoon MM-702's. They have two flat planar satellites and a sub woofer box. They are very natural sounding speakers with very nice detail in the mids. They aren't hyped sounding like some of the speakers I tried when I bought them. I've had them about 9 years now and the company is defunct (General Motors bought them). I have an ADC 10 band EQ between the mixer and the speakers.

So I listen to the original files directly from what ever I recorded them in, which is usually TC Works Spark XL, or Pro Tools 7.

When I do use the headphones with the iPod I either use a pair of Sennheiser HD 433 headphones, or some Sennheiser noise canceling headphones. The noise canceling 'phones sound amazing! You can hear a lot of detail. The output on the iPod is loud enough to blow out the Apple earbuds. Don't ask how I know! I also have a pair of AKG and Sony headphones. It gets quite loud with the full size phones. I can't listen to it all the way up. It's a fairly new iPod Classic, but we have some Nanos and an old shuffle in the house. The Shuffle sounds like crap. Very gritty sounding.

Once I have the tracks on the iPod I can use the line out (on the dock connector) to plug it into various things, like a big Sony boombox and the Rockford-Fosgate system in our Nissan, which has a line in jack. It's a nice sounding audio system, but a tad bass heavy.

Since I listen to commercial CDs on these systems I'm very familiar with the way they sound.

[salvarsan]

It's all subjective. Just as important as tone is how do the pickups feel to the player. If the guitar feels different, responds differently when you pick a note it can change your playing for the better.

Would you be quiet?

Stop trying to inject reasoned on-topic discourse while we're busy hijacking a thread on your pickups.


-drh