Homebrewed Music

This post will reveal the identity of the comparison clips in the post comparing the M-Audio Profire and the Lynx and John Hardy recording chain. But before providing the answers, I’d like to pose a question.

I (naively) expected that people would embrace an opportunity to do some controlled testing, using an easy but very effective comparison technique. I have found that careful ABX testing, using Foobar2000 and the ABX utility included in the program, has made me a better, more careful listener. I learned that the perceived differences between clips became much less when I no longer knew the source of the clip. As a result, I learned to search out subtle differences in tone color and texture. I also learned that I can’t hear any difference between systems that I have been told should show night and day differences.

I’d hoped that a number of other folks would try careful ABX testing of these clips with a statistically significant number of trials, so I could compare my results to theirs. At this point, I don’t know if my inability to hear the differences is normal or unusual.

The Question

If you visited here, listened to the clips, maybe even downloaded and installed Foobar2000, why did you not go the next step and run a test of 20 comparisons? Foobar2000 makes it easy to save your results and share them with the world, or not. Wouldn’t you like to have a personal evaluation of the difference between a high end preamp and a commodity unit, or between 44.1 and 192 sampling rates? Wouldn’t you like to contribute to the knowledge of the recording community?

After all, if the huge differences we read about in magazines and online are true, it will be easy to pick out the different samples, and we can get busy saving up for high end equipment. But if those differences are actually imaginary, driven by normal human traits like confirmation bias, we can save a bunch of money and time and trouble by ignoring gear lust and concentrating on mic placement and room acoustics.

So the question is, what do you have to lose by conducting a thorough series of ABX comparisons and reporting the results?

The Answers

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This is probably about as close to a political post as I am likely to write. I think that listening “tests” that are not conducted as double blind side-by-side comparisons are just wishful thinking. We wish that human hearing were not so totally dominated by the vagaries of our brain/mind, but it is. We wish that we could retain accurate mental images for more than a few seconds, but we can’t. We think we can discount the impact of small volume differences, but we can’t, and the smaller the difference the more likely we are to describe it as anything but a volume difference. We think we can trust our ears but all the evidence gathered from controlled experiments tells us plainly that we should not.

Since my interest in recording began only a few years ago, I’ve always had the internet as a resource for learning about the subject, I researched in every forum and magazine site I could find. And I now firmly believe that most of what I learned there was incorrect. (more…)

I record solo acoustic guitar almost exclusively, but a couple of months ago one of my buddies wanted to lay down a few tracks with vocal and `ukulele. And he wanted to sing and play at the same time. I remembered reading about an arrangement of figure 8 or bidirectional mics that gave maximum separation in a situation like this, so I pulled out the Rode NT2a and NT2000 and set them up. We were amazed by the separation between vocal and uke, even though the mics were only a foot apart. (more…)

I was surprised to find that a Mid-Side decoder function is included in the H4n, this is usually a feature of high end field recorders but it’s easy to do in the digital realm so the Zoom engineers could “throw it in” without much added cost. I love fooling with different mic arrangements so I had to set up a couple of figure 8 mics and do some recordings. (more…)

The H4n has made quite a splash, with its terrific feature set and dramatic appearance. Brad Linder has posted some clips at his blog comparing the H4n to the Sony PCM-D50. He seems to think the Zoom is disappointing, but I’m not sure I’m hearing the same problems he describes.

I got a long and interesting email from Mark McPherson of Portland, describing his evaluation of the H4n:

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The previews of the Zoom H4n have generated a lot of excitement so I added a few airline miles to the family account and ordered one of these new hand held recorders.

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When I talk about room treatment I only discuss the simple broadband absorber. I’ve read discussions of tuned membrane bass traps, tube traps, and diffusors, but my approach so far has been guided by the slogan, “You can never have too many broadband absorbers in a small room.”

As I mentioned in a previous post, my construction method for broadband absorber panels is cheap and simple. I use no frame or other hardware, but simply wrap two sheets of OC703 in burlap, like wrapping a package, and fasten the fabric with glue. (more…)

I built a batch of broadband absorber panels before I recorded my Kaleponi CD. I have 13 panels constructed of 4 inches of OC703 wrapped in burlap. It’s been a while since I built these and I’ve lost track of the cost, but I’ll do better with the next batch, I promise. Here’s a look at what they’ve done for my recording space. (more…)