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If you don't have the best speakers you can get your hands on

then you don't really know what you are hearing in the recording studio!

That's the long and short of it.

Mark Waldrep has his opinions and is welcome to them, but his position is a good example of why not all mastering jobs are the best possible. This is a pity because this is not due to a lack of skill on the part of the mastering engineer. Its just that they really don't know what they are hearing.

I've seen many that master on cheaper speakers with the idea that the music is going to play on a cheap system (car stereo, boom box) and so the cheap speakers are used to try to simulate that. Its a flawed concept; the problem being that the cheap speakers you use to master with likely do not have the same flaws as the cheap systems others are using, so not only do you not know what your mastered work sounds like, its likely that it has synergistic flaws that will be seen as aberrations elsewhere. We've seen far too much of this in the industry in the last 25 years!!

Still others use 'pro audio speakers' without a good idea of what this really means. Quite often pro audio speakers are designed to handle high power/high volume levels while not necessarily being the most accurate or detailed. The simple fact is the best studio monitor is also going to be an excellent speaker by any measure and if you look at the better studios they have no fear of using 'high end' loudspeakers.

The bottom line is that you just get the best playback you can so that you don't screw up the recording you are making by making stupid mistakes that you can't hear.

While I am not saying to ignore Mr. Waldrep entirely, I am saying that he is off-base on this one and no mistake.

(FWIW I run an audio manufacturing operation of 40 years as well as a recording studio which includes an LP mastering operation)


This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:
  Atma-Sphere Music Systems, Inc.  


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