Kerry Stansbury wrote on Fri, 02 June 2006 16:29 |
I have a friend that lives 600 miles from me that is really into all the new digital equipment. He owns a yamaha OV196 mixer and a dbx 260 DSP. He is always telling me how great they are, especially all the features. My question is, How do they sound?
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They sound fine. Of course, his speakers are the biggest part of how his rig sounds, so everything will be colored by them. Go visit your friend and take your favorite crossover, amp and speakers with you so that the O1V96 can be listened to under conditions familiar to you. Better yet, put it all to an
ABX test.Kerry Stansbury wrote on Fri, 02 June 2006 16:29 |
...When I hear all the new CD's that come out recorded on all digital equipment, thay sound like shit!
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They sound like shit because you are buying pop CDs that have been overproduced to be TOO LOUD. Stop buying pop CDs for your personal pleasure! Of course, you'll have to have them at your DJ businesses... Check out this article by Rip Rowan about the evolution of loudness on Rush recordings. And Rush isn't the worst offender! Multiply what he says by a factor of ten for the most popular songs by the most popular artists. Basically, the true sound of the original instruments has been deemed unimportant on these songs. Click on the image to get the article:
Kerry Stansbury wrote on Fri, 02 June 2006 16:29 |
...I can see the digital advantage if your speakers are not designed very well and need a lot of help, but what if the speaker are well designed? Please give me your 2 cents worth.
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Speakers, microphones and turntable magnetic cartridges all have waaay more distortion than other parts of the signal chain. They are all converting movement to electricity and vice versa... they are transducers. Once you're past transducers and into the rest of the chain, audio differences are quite small between well-designed pieces of gear no matter whether they are digital or analog. So small that most people can't hear the difference--and we're back to
ABX tests. Typically, digital options have a compelling feature set that answer one or more long-standing problems you were unable to deal with previously on your analog gear. Very sexy stuff that
sounds good in the right hands and sounds TOO LOUD in the wrong ones.
-Bink (four cents worth where two is too much...)