Valve amps, great with Jazz, shit with everything else.

[Haselsh1]

So true Mike. It makes me wonder what sort of system was used for production.

[Idlewithnodrive]

I'm jumping in really late to this thread (and haven't trawled through 40+ pages, so hope this is relevant ) and am also a recent returner to valve amplification.

Valve amps most certainly can do Rock / Punk / Psych / EDM / Dub etc well; it's pretty much all I listen to. As with all things though, it has to be the right valve amp; certain brands, topologies, speakers etc are more suited to certain genres and, having owned AN, it is not a brand I would associate with Rock music.

I now have a 35W EL-34 based Amp (had never got on with EL-34's before this Amp) and a pair of fairly insensitive (87dB, 6 Ohm) speakers and am in Rock Nirvana. I also listen to left-field Jazz and some Girl and Gittar stuff, which also sounds good.

I guess it all just boils down to component selection and matching.

[fatmarley]

what rubs my rhubarb with a poor sounding album is that someone has listened to it when being mastered and thought it was ok

Perhaps the speakers used for mastering had rolled-off highs?

[walpurgis]

Perhaps the speakers used for mastering had rolled-off highs?

More likely the engineer had rolled off hearing after years of abuse.

[KnuckleDragger]

Mike, if you have a laptop, then you could download REW onto it, https://www.roomeqwizard.com, it is free, then all you need is a simple microphone(possibly) to plug into your laptop.

I wish it was that simple. Unfortunately the instrument of measurement needs to be as "perfect" as possible. A laptop with a mic will not do unfortunately.
The reason is that the mic needs to be high end so that is does not "colour" the input signal. Also the receiving equipment needs to be of studio quality so that it does not "colour" the sound.
I am sure you are aware there are many AtD converters on the market. To get an accurate one costs lots of money.
Indeed to set oneself up with such accurate equipment would probably cost more than his hifi.
I wish I had better news on this front.

[Pharos]

I've been very much of that view also Stephen, and on some forums there is an abundance of wonderful coloured graphs, but I'm suspicious that they are not accurate, and that members have bought not a non specialist 'everyone can do it' culture.

However Alan Shaw did a couple of years ago show measurements with really expensive kit, and also with cheap stuff and the correlation was really good, and he recommended a particular mic. Arthur Khoubessarian gave me a cheap mic but I'm not happy doing it into a PC, knowing just how poorly built they are in comparison with professional measuring equipment, and how flakey Windows is.

[KnuckleDragger]

I've been very much of that view also Stephen, and on some forums there is an abundance of wonderful coloured graphs, but I'm suspicious that they are not accurate, and that members have bought not a non specialist 'everyone can do it' culture.

However Alan Shaw did a couple of years ago show measurements with really expensive kit, and also with cheap stuff and the correlation was really good, and he recommended a particular mic. Arthur Khoubessarian gave me a cheap mic but I'm not happy doing it into a PC, knowing just how poorly built they are in comparison with professional measuring equipment, and how flakey Windows is.

I very much agree. If you cannot fully trust the equipment you have for testing, then don't bother.
I trust my ears, as I feel do most others. It has to sound right to me. I don't really care if it is 100% accurate. For example I'm in my 50s. I am fully aware that my high frequency sensitivity has declined. So if I push up the highs a bit, then that sounds right to me as when I first heard that music in my 20s. As long as you are not introducing a lot of distortion, then music purity is subjective not objective.

[AJSki2fly]

I wish it was that simple. Unfortunately the instrument of measurement needs to be as "perfect" as possible. A laptop with a mic will not do unfortunately.
The reason is that the mic needs to be high end so that is does not "colour" the input signal. Also the receiving equipment needs to be of studio quality so that it does not "colour" the sound.
I am sure you are aware there are many AtD converters on the market. To get an accurate one costs lots of money.
Indeed to set oneself up with such accurate equipment would probably cost more than his hifi.
I wish I had better news on this front.

Actually I was not coming at it purely from an accuracy perspective, more from a reasonably good indicator point of view. You can buy a pretty good and accurate usb microphone for just this purpose for about £50, which will be more than adequate. As for rubbishing PC, Laptops etc being incapable of doing a good job, where on earth do you get this view, one modern computer has enough power to run several Apollo mission simultaneously, in fact programmed correctly you could do it on a mobile phone.

I think if you go into most modern recording studios you will find Laptops/desktops used with recording software to record all types of music and edit it.

I actually used to work at the Wolfson Sound and Vibration laboratory in Southampton university and have setup sound and vibration measurement tests using Bruel and Kjaer equipment, all very expensive and highly accurate, but not absolutely necessary to achieve simple frequency sweeps in a home situation.

I think if you look into it properly a laptop with a reasonable microphone running REW will be at least within 0.5dB of the aforementioned across 20hz- 20khz.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Macca]

So true Mike. It makes me wonder what sort of system was used for production.

A very good one. Blaming the recording (unless it is an amateur effort) is going down a dead-end. The problems described are not flaws in the recordings. The room might be playing a part but this is a problem with the replay electronics. Once you introduce distortion there it is going to result in some recordings sounding rough (but probably not on super-polished audiophile recordings which will sound enhanced and 'more real'). It's a common problem which is why you see so many people complaining about recording quality despite the recordings they complain about being made by experienced professionals on hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of equipment.

[Pharos]

I have recently had several examples of my PC producing errors, I don't doubt its capacity, but have more doubt about the resolution of software, it being not thoroughly developed, and soon becoming obsolete.