Sunday, January 31, 2016

All this machinery making modern music...

By Tim Dolbear
www.timdolbear.com

Can it still be open hearted?

I am just back from the NAMM 2016 show is So California, a 4 day event filled with every Musical Instrument and Pro Audio manufacturer, all showing their newest gear for recording, performing and making music to the million or so visitors that attend.

I came back with a few thoughts to ponder, things that I have had on my mind for a while but seem to be brought to the forefront once again while at this show. I have no real answers, and I too fall into most of the traps I will bring up. Feel free to comment or reply...



Since when is it more desired to be the guy in the studio (engineer) or a "producer", than a actual musician with talent?

People collect recording gear and build home studios like car fans did back in the 60/70s; They build these awesome hot rods and mussel cars or huge 4x4 trucks, and never even drive them over 55mph or off road...

Nowadays, People collect audio plugins like Pokemon cards, and 500 series units like Tupperware. It seems to be a trap people are falling into... "If I just own this piece of gear with its magic button, I will succeed and be admired".

"Just because you have a nice kitchen, don't mean you know how to cook"- Tim Dolbear

It seems like the only people profiting from all this is Manufactures. Sure good gear is needed, but things have gotten out of hand.

Over the last 20+ years, struggling musicians that could not afford to record their music in a real studio, bought gear to record themselves. As these people realized they could not "Make it" as an musician and become a Rock Star, they decided to offer recording services with the gear they had and then bought more gear to bulk up the equipment list.

Then while learning about working in the studio, either from the forums, magazines and youtube, they learn about audio engineers who have worked on high profile albums. Some of these guys have even moved into Rock Star status.

Now...over the years, with so many people doing just this, suddenly we find everyone wanting to be a audio engineers and/or producers and be that next "Rock Star". Audio Manufactures come in and speak into our minds that if we just have this piece of gear or that plugin, we can "make it" and be the Rock Star we have always strived to be, feeding the dream, or disease.

A side affect is that with less and less people striving to be good songwriters, or good musicians, there is less and less work for these struggling studio engineers.




Paul McCartney recorded his McCartney II Album by plugging his tube mic directly into the Studer 16 track tape machine, no preamp even...  Ponder that for a minute. 





Does anyone else get the sense that making music nowadays is simply a form of  "playing a video game"? Search back to what made you want to become a musician, what gave you a desire to make music. No one cares what frame the Mona Lisa has around it, or what font a poem uses. Its about the song, not the gear. Everyone Agrees that a great song recorded badly is so much better than a bad song recorded beautifully.







Thursday, January 14, 2016

Crimson Audio's new HPA100 Headphone amp - Tim's Review

By Tim Dolbear
www.timdolbear.com

As I have written about before ( "What are you listening on?"), I like to check my mixes on headphones and earbuds. Of course I monitor while mixing through a Neumann K&H series monitoring setup but then switch over to check the over all EQ and how the mix translates using devices other than speakers in a room. I usually plug my headphones and earbuds into my Mytek Stereo192-DSD D/A converter, which of course has a very nice headphone amp built in.

Last year, Dan Hembree, who just happens to be my brother-in-law, left Rupert Neve Designs where he had worked designing many of their well know product to strike out on his own. His new company Crimson Audio LLC was soon established.

Dan quickly got busy designing up a soon to be released studio monitoring controller and other products, He also does design and engineering work for many other high end recording studio equipment manufacturers such as BAE, Nashville based Sphere Recording Consoles and Teagarden Audio.

The first product Dan has released under Crimson Audio is the headphone amp section from his monitor controller design; The HPA100. Last summer Dan asked me to beta test it so lets dive in...


I received the HPA100 and connected it to the outputs on the back of my Mytek Stereo192DSD and ran a wonderfully recorded classical recording out from my Sequoia workstation. I set up the volumes to match on both the Mytek's headphone output and the HPA100's output. This first test I simply came out the -10 outs on the back of the Mytek to feed the HPA100 thus leaving my studio monitoring unchanged. The HPA100 can accept a -10 or +4 input and you can select the RCA unbalanced inputs or the Balanced XLR-1/4" combination jacks by way of a selector on the front of the unit.

The HPA100 is a single headphone stereo channel amp and is meant for high quality listening, My live room headphone amps are made by Fostex (PH-5) and CAD, a 4 headphone channel unit. I also compared with these, though they are fed from my RME setups D/A converters and which are good, but are no Mytek D/A, ya know?

The difference between the Mytek Headphone out and the HPA100's output was not at first a huge difference. It seemed like the HPA100 had a slightly more open sound but at the end of the track, the music became more dynamic and the performance came to the big ending and there it was! I could hear a distortion in the recording, either a mic preamp or something in the recording signal chain clipping. Not digital distortion and not an overload feeding the HPA100, this was clip distortion from an analog piece of gear during tracking. I could hear it through the HPA100 and not through the Mytek.

I could also hear it through my Neumann monitoring system but not as apparent as the HPA100 revealed it. Amazing!  I was sold then and there.

Compared to the Fostex and the CAD, the HPA100 is in a different league. In comparison to the Mytek, it's a nice upgrade and worth it as it reveals noises and issues that were not reviled on other listening systems. If it can reveal such things and save me from missing something as important as this was to the classical recording, it's worth it!

Lastly, I asked Dan to send a unit over to Steven Epstein, a friend and decorated Classical Producer and he simply fell in love with it. Steve said about the HPA100 “The Crimson Audio Headphone Amplifier produces a transparent and natural sound which can be experienced in a variety of listening environments from the exacting demands of a recording studio to enjoying audiophile­-type quality at home”

Many Pro Audio shops will be carrying the HPA100 soon, but you can contact him directly if you want to test it out or buy one. It retails for $349 which is a fantastic deal for such design quality.

https://crimsonaudio.com/