EMRR

Dragging this one over from the other thread. Compression has been used as a purposeful effect in recording back into the '60's. With analog tape machines lacking noise reduction (common), you have roughly 55dB S/N to work with and compression was used during recording to maximize that S/N. Digital recording was not common until well into the '90's, long after the volume wars heated up, so there was no easy way for most to exploit the higher dynamic range. Processes in any industry become informal standards and are carried forward. Car radio is still the principal audio marketplace driver. There was a short while that it looked like car audio might be the savior of surround sound for music, yet not enough players adopted it. You have the rare cases like Steve Albini who work in rock music and refuse to compress anything, while making some great sounding recordings. His thoughts have been well publicized for decades now, lauded, yet not made much impact. If anything, heavy compression has become more common as more and more affordable compressors have hit the market. A 1979 studio would not have a lot of outboard processing, a few select channels. A lot of artists and engineers now expect to have a compressor available for every channel, and may compress the same sound multiple times before the mix occurs; the computer makes this easy to do. In some cases it's the hallmark of a hack, in others some new creative breakthroughs are achieved. It fatigues my mind and ears to think about or listen to much of such, but it is a reality I wouldn't begin know how to suggest countering in a broad cultural manner. As someone who occasionally designs my own custom equipment and repairs/modifies pro audio for other engineers, I've noticed a new trend that every new engineer thinks any microphone preamp must be able to 'saturate' (distort), and thus needs both a gain control AND an output attenuator so you can turn back down that which you've turned up too much. Many can't possibly believe anyone ever worked without this 'flexibility'. It looks more like it's only going to get worse.

This one is interesting. I can state that no one does this amount of equalization in a recording session, and definitely not in a mastering session. It'd still be a real stretch to suggest half was done in the mix and the other half in the mastering, or 2/3 1/3. At the time that record was made, there were hardly any EQ's available to studios that would make shapes like this, on average they made family broad curves. Later remastering, for sure would be possible, but mastering does not make drastic moves like this suggests. So I'm curious what the correction sounds like. This honestly looks more like a room correction EQ setting in terms of extremity and narrowness of some of the processing points, possibly somewhat correction for the room it was recorded in. Have you compared every iteration of the release to determine how the EQ has varied over time? Some case studies like that would be interesting, and give us something more concrete to assess. Maybe there are some in one of the other long threads?

I have a volume control that's starting to go in a reciever, does this in certain ranges. I also had a squawker go bad in a La Scala, never outright crackled but was obviously distorted on clean acoustic guitar and piano recordings. You couldn't tell listening to a rock record.

Yes, thanks.

Addressing the last few recent comments, there's a lot of variance in the analog output drive section after the DA conversion which makes a huge difference in sound. The same basic converter block can sound anything from great to terrible depending on the design surrounding it.

Ha! I wrote a huge response then wi-fi died as I hit submit....it's gone..... Out of time today, I'll try again later as I can. Anyway, I'm mainly trying to pull back the curtain a bit, neither defend nor advocate for the many things that happen in the music industry. I think a lot of the causes vary considerably from what they may seem in broad strokes on the other side of the curtain. Here's a couple recent self-financed indy releases I worked on in my terrible terrible room, curious what people think of the dynamic range and response of the mastered product. With the second one, kickstarter funding partners were provided with an 88.2kHz/32 floating bit file lacking final limiting, but including mastering equalization, specific dynamics (some things compressed in a frequency selective manner, some things actually expanded), and relative song volume balancing. https://abigaildowd.bandcamp.com https://davidverga.bandcamp.com/releases

Without digesting ALL of those threads, just a bit, I'd say there are many many many more factors in play than I see addressed at a glance, at least in the first few pages of each. A few, maybe covered and I missed them. Pardon any run-on sentences! We are a small minority in an overall market which isn't terribly concerned with great sound, but primarily concerned with audible and intelligible sound under any circumstance. Not to suggest mastering engineers aren't concerned with good sound, but it is one of a group of decision points based on the position of being a service provider and on client demand. Many recordings were indeed made with a lack of bass because car stereo over radio was always the primary delivery market. Bass was not necessarily removed, it was never captured in the first place; equalizers cost money and weren't always plentiful so it made sense to cut out the middle man, so to speak. Many of the popular kick drum and bass microphones way back when deliver a very muted if not inaudible bottom octave. Voice communications grade mics were popular for acoustic bass capture in pop music at one time particularly because they emphasized upper mid articulation. They were chosen for precisely this reason; to emphasize 2nd-3rd octave which would excite speakers with higher resonance points while reducing the power required to drive speakers in the average low powered system. It can be equalized back in as you've found, but consider it may not have been purposefully captured in the first place. With pop and rock at least, the further back in time you go, the less bottom end there is to be found. I've had many experiences where an artist said they wanted the bottom end turned up, only to discover they really wanted the low end turned down and the lower mids turned up. A lot of this has to do with the crappy sound they are used to on the average home system (boom box/Bose wave/etc). A lot of the bigger picture is based on the leveled sound of radio and TV which people are used to, and acclimate to as good sound without knowing better. I had one rock/pop client insist I mix through a high pass filter set at 100Hz, the bottom on that record sounded great and they wanted none of it, you can't make that up! Mastering is the opportunity for a set of unbiased ears to correct any deficiencies in overall response or dynamic range. When engineering and mixing, you get used to things you hear which may not translate across all platforms. Mastering is generally the first time a mix is heard on a high quality system in a decent room outside the originating studio. Contrast that with the fact that many clients no longer attend mix sessions, and approve final mixes based on emailed mp3's.....on their laptop speakers or iPhone earbuds. I'll step aside for a sec and say I prefer listening to master tapes, but I think it's mainly because I listen to a lot of my own and am always a little less excited by the mastered version's lesser dynamic range on my studio system. When I play those mastered versions on mid or low level consumer speakers though, they always translate better, assuming the mastering work was well done. Well done mastering makes a recording translate better on all possible platforms without negatively impacting higher end systems too much. It obviously helps lesser systems the most, both from frequency correction and maximizing power output of low powered systems. That power maximization can be well done, or poorly done, or outright overdone. Many times the shirts at the label dictate an overdone final. The average well done maximization barely limits the occasional transient peak without leaning into limiting as a constant, while leaving overall crest factor mostly unchanged AND leaves the last fraction of converter headroom untouched so as to pass on headroom to analog circuitry after then converter, which is an area in which many systems have absolutely no headroom beyond 0dBFS. That maximization is not necessary on highly dynamic high power systems; most people don't have such at their disposal. It's also the last chance to fix glaring errors, far more common than you might think, and it's frequently done. There are back catalog reissues that take the approach of 'modern slam' and those which never touch 0dBFS and display no trace of additional limiting. My studio speakers are powered JBL LSR28P's. They reproduce whatever you put into them too well. You can have wild dynamics from a single element and the rest of the picture doesn't change, therefore giving the ear none of the standard distortion clues that a typical consumer amp/speaker will give. They sound very consistent at all volumes, unlike most systems. You have to listen on other systems to see what it's really like in the wild. For contrast, I have a rackmount broadcast monitor with 1/5" oval speakers and a summed subwoofer in a single 1/75" tall package. I can make the majority of mix decisions within that highly limited bandwidth environment before checking full range balance on the JBL's. If it's a stringed instrument ensemble trading solo phrases amongst 4 people, it's absolutely the best way to match relative levels consistently. It has phase coherency metering as well, and I look at a set of Dorrough loudness meters occasionally for overall dynamic range. My mix room acts overall like a 6dB/oct lowpass filter, so there tends to be a lot more low end than is actually there. Occasionally I use room correction software to flatten the room, but it sounds incredibly weird and absolutely cannot be toggled on and off, you have to drive natural or flattened exclusively within a session as the disorientation of switching is too great. These perceptual battles are fought in most rooms, and you shouldn't kid yourself that even the majority of high $ mix rooms don't have them on some level. The realities around having a room holding a large reflective equipment collection and a randomly changing number of human bodies dictates it at very least. My control room is nothing to write home about, and I've been in 'high end' studios that were worse. Vinyl: you can't limit material pressed to vinyl as much as you can to CD, because the physical process of cutting a metal mother won't allow it. You can look at that in several ways, from historical to modern. There's a lot of bad sounding modern vinyl out there that was cut from a CD master rather than a separate vinyl pre-master. The volume wars can as well be blamed on CD-changers and shuffled playlists. A lot of people really don't know to use auto-leveling options like Sound Check in iTunes, and don't want to ever touch their volume control, as if it's radio, leveled by AGC's and limiters. Within pop and rock engineering today you find an increasing use of compression, and lots of it, on everything. Compressors are being run to extremes that make them act as much like equalizers as anything. Many masters are already hopelessly flattened before the mastering engineer ever hears them. Compression on the capture side, compression in the mix, overall compression on the mix. Here mastering guy, make it LOUDER. Back to mastering in the modern age, I find there are a large number of people claiming to be mastering engineers who have neither speakers nor room at a minimum entry point. It's frequently a battle to be sure mastering is handled properly by the client, and I occasionally master records I've done (you should never do this, you're already too familiar with it) so the drummer won't do it on his laptop with earbuds in the back of the van on the way to the next gig. Really. There are plenty of great mastering providers who will deliver as dynamic and hi-fi product as possible if it's asked of them; it generally is not asked of them, and their revenue stream is dependent on delivering that which is asked for. I think I'm relatively rare among engineers I know in that I can go home and check things on La Scala's. Highly limited recordings certainly sound poor on highly dynamic speakers. If you haven't heard it, check out King's X - Dogman from 1994. In my mind, that's one of the first rock records with full blossoming bottom end and a decent amount of dynamic range; it's right at the beginning of the runaway CD volume wars. It's a great reference for unknown audio systems in my work. The John Paul Jones solo record Zooma and his collaboration with Diamond Gallas both have deep dynamic bass too. In general after that point you start to see a lot more low frequency content with a lot more overall volume limiting starting to counteract the gains. Rage Against the Machine 2nd and 3rd records are good examples. OK, out of breath for now.

What is this 'unmastering' you speak of? I work as a recording engineer, and sit in on most mastering sessions.

The danger side would be that many Variacs go to 130VAC, so you can over-voltage a device accidentally. Likewise if you left something sitting at 60VAC for a long time accidentally you might cause tube problems from inappropriate operating points. If you need permanent or regular voltage adjustment, I kinda like the idea of the stepped devices that switch in 5V increments, much harder for the dog kid or monkey to run by and change. And no, no reason for daily variac use.

I've a number of old pro broadcast PP 7-10W cathode biased amps, any if which can deafen you when connected to a La Scala. Very nice sound in all cases.

If it's just perfect as a power transformer and chassis, then get it. Otherwise no. The 6F6 and 6V6 are the most 'valuable', but not enough to warrant by themselves.

Good idea on the doors. Hadn't seen that Volti page, thanks.

I would also think mdf to be of good use here. On false corners, I've thought loosely about applying them to La Scala bottoms with the tops turned around the other way. Maybe that's crazy, but seems it would apply.

I've had the 125's a few years, to me they clearly beat the various K77's I had available. Much clearer/cleaner, the K77's had a fizzy grainy quality with less extended top. I am curious about the 120's, but probably not enough to pay out again.

Yes, it is. You can imagine I turn on a LOT of tubes on a regular basis.

Even better than a variac might be one of those AC voltage stepping transformers which has 5 volt steps anywhere from 75 volts to 130, then you have a clear idea of the effect, versus a continuous control that's easily moved to the wrong place (how'd that get turned up to 130?!?!). Given that tubes have a filament range spec rather than a hard requirement (6.3's spec is 6.0-6.6), I have to wonder if definitive studies have been done about the life difference of 6.1 versus 6.5, etc. I can't recall ever seeing mention in any literature. Stability is critical with burn-in jigs when any sort of tube matching is to be done.

The average audio amp does not require a standby switch, it is a myth. Cathode stripping only occurs at much higher voltages, such as those found in broadcast transmitters. OTOH, a tube amp left on standby for long periods of time will damage tubes, as the filament heat releases electrons from the cathode yet there's no B+ on the plate to attract them, so the vacuum gets filled with strays.

Isn't it also amazing that the first production version of any tube is virtually always sold as 'the best', commanding the highest price with claims of the best sound? How can it be? It can't. Audio mind memory is one of the most easily fooled human aspects, and when combined with any differences at all, makes an untangle able voodoo stew. One can easily trace many vintage tube prices today back to particular print article cork-sniffings in the 1990's, and with quite of few I've seen I can recall the tubes they liked best also happened to be the same brands that would show up on your door step that same month if you ordered from Antique Electronic Supply. Order next month and write the article then, the product and article results would be different. None of this is canonical, it's just not possible. Any one tube from a manufacturing batch will display differences from others in the same batch, which you can possibly hear and measure. Ever put 100 new same batch tubes on a burn-in jig, and then take the current readings for matching? I have, many times. Like many production items, there's a region in which most will fall, but the extremities of that common region may vary by a large margin. Then there will be 10-20% that fall outside of that common grouping, and appear to be totally different beasts at birth. It's fun to theorize about, but there are no definitive statements. It comes down to the individual tube, and whether YOU like the job it does in the PARTICULAR amplifier.

Thanks, I hadn't seen that official 'false corner' document. Stand to reason one might come up with something like that, interesting to know it was officially addressed.

Yeah, that's an interesting choke section of a SE transformer, and the size looks sufficient to suggest good bass will be possible. You have lots of power tube choices with 8K:8, so long as current aspect is observed with care.

Interesting room 'corners' built behind each in that pic. RIP.

Still no mention of the ebay selling ID? Or did I miss it?

My LSI beaters got power sander treatment, no real problems and the dings were so bad anyway there are still many deeper than what the sander took off. You can see some pics if you search my posts. Definitely a 'rustic' end result.

Thanks guys, they are a pleasure to drive, as you know. Let's keep these old beaters in circulation.

Thanks! The wheels aren't permanent, I just don't like carrying around 150 lb items by myself. Actually, I get a good laugh out of that idea. They sound great. All my little speakers sound, well, little. It's a little apples to oranges, but I gotta say I really like what I perceive to be the improvements with the Crites woofer, tweeter, and crossover, as compared to the first LSI set I had that was all original parts. I have very small rooms too, and having the horns on the face for better off-axis sound helps a lot.