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Being a musician doesn't help in the slightest - I can play bass, guitar and keyboards (to quite profound levels of incompetence). I can even produce records out of my record collection that I have played on and been involved in absolutely every aspect of production right through to the final product, plus a good few by others where I was in the control room when they were being recorded. It doesn't help at all, it just makes me even more confused. I don't even understand the question, but I at least have sufficient experience to realise this fact!

One thing you quickly learn about musos is that they tend not to want accuracy at all, lets take vocalists, who are often the worst offenders. The voice is the simplest of things in theory, but you would not believe the many things are done to disguise and change that raw material! Nice expensive valve mics and valve mic preamps put warmth and body into even quite feeble voices. Next add a bit of compression and limiting to fatten it up a bit more and ensure the muppet keeps within acceptable volume parameters (most are too stupid to move away from the mic when they yell, and even if they do they usually get it wrong). If the vocalist really can't hit a given note then you whack the vocal line through a harmoniser and bend the dud notes back on course digitally, either that or take 17 more takes / slow the tape down in the hope they will finally get it right. Now stick some nice reverb and / or delay on to finish the job. Accurate? Certainly not accurate to the raw material.

So the big question is: Accurate to what exactly? The sound coming out of the vocalist? The sound going into the mixer? The sound coming out of the Tannoy SRMs in the control room? The sound coming out of the NS10s? The sound I hear at home on my own stereo? So, it looks like I've finally got round to speakersÃ¢â'¬Â¦

The best performing speakers can manage to get somewhere near to +-3db from flat in a anechoic chamber over most of the audible frequency range. That means that two different high quality speakers can be as much as 6db away from each other at any given frequency, and this is before getting to phase errors, driver integration and other things that don't really show up well on measurements, and we wonder why they all sound different. Then we put the speaker on whatever stand we like (often not the one that the speaker manufacturer originally designed and measured them on) and then listen to them in a non-acoustically treated domestic living room with peaks and troughs all over the placeÃ¢â'¬Â¦ Great sounding maybe, but accurate my arse!

Tony.

<blockquote data-quote="TonyL" data-source="post: 555767" data-attributes="member: 1024">Being a musician doesn't help in the slightest - I can play bass, guitar and keyboards (to quite profound levels of incompetence). I can even produce records out of my record collection that I have played on and been involved in absolutely every aspect of production right through to the final product, plus a good few by others where I was in the control room when they were being recorded. It doesn't help at all, it just makes me even more confused. I don't even understand the question, but I at least have sufficient experience to realise this fact!One thing you quickly learn about musos is that they tend not to want accuracy at all, lets take vocalists, who are often the worst offenders. The voice is the simplest of things in theory, but you would not believe the many things are done to disguise and change that raw material! Nice expensive valve mics and valve mic preamps put warmth and body into even quite feeble voices. Next add a bit of compression and limiting to fatten it up a bit more and ensure the muppet keeps within acceptable volume parameters (most are too stupid to move away from the mic when they yell, and even if they do they usually get it wrong). If the vocalist really can't hit a given note then you whack the vocal line through a harmoniser and bend the dud notes back on course digitally, either that or take 17 more takes / slow the tape down in the hope they will finally get it right. Now stick some nice reverb and / or delay on to finish the job. Accurate? Certainly not accurate to the raw material.So the big question is: Accurate to what exactly? The sound coming out of the vocalist? The sound going into the mixer? The sound coming out of the Tannoy SRMs in the control room? The sound coming out of the NS10s? The sound I hear at home on my own stereo? So, it looks like I've finally got round to speakersÃ¢â'¬Â¦&nbsp;&nbsp; The best performing speakers can manage to get somewhere near to +-3db from flat in a anechoic chamber over most of the audible frequency range. That means that two different high quality speakers can be as much as 6db away from each other at any given frequency, and this is before getting to phase errors, driver integration and other things that don't really show up well on measurements, and we wonder why they all sound different. Then we put the speaker on whatever stand we like (often not the one that the speaker manufacturer originally designed and measured them on) and then listen to them in a non-acoustically treated domestic living room with peaks and troughs all over the placeÃ¢â'¬Â¦ Great sounding maybe, but accurate my arse!&nbsp; Tony.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="TonyL, post: 555767, member: 1024"] Being a musician doesn't help in the slightest - I can play bass, guitar and keyboards (to quite profound levels of incompetence). I can even produce records out of my record collection that I have played on and been involved in absolutely every aspect of production right through to the final product, plus a good few by others where I was in the control room when they were being recorded. It doesn't help at all, it just makes me even more confused. I don't even understand the question, but I at least have sufficient experience to realise this fact! One thing you quickly learn about musos is that they tend not to want accuracy at all, lets take vocalists, who are often the worst offenders. The voice is the simplest of things in theory, but you would not believe the many things are done to disguise and change that raw material! Nice expensive valve mics and valve mic preamps put warmth and body into even quite feeble voices. Next add a bit of compression and limiting to fatten it up a bit more and ensure the muppet keeps within acceptable volume parameters (most are too stupid to move away from the mic when they yell, and even if they do they usually get it wrong). If the vocalist really can't hit a given note then you whack the vocal line through a harmoniser and bend the dud notes back on course digitally, either that or take 17 more takes / slow the tape down in the hope they will finally get it right. Now stick some nice reverb and / or delay on to finish the job. Accurate? Certainly not accurate to the raw material. So the big question is: Accurate to what exactly? The sound coming out of the vocalist? The sound going into the mixer? The sound coming out of the Tannoy SRMs in the control room? The sound coming out of the NS10s? The sound I hear at home on my own stereo? So, it looks like I've finally got round to speakersÃ¢â‚¬Â¦ The best performing speakers can manage to get somewhere near to +-3db from flat in a anechoic chamber over most of the audible frequency range. That means that two different high quality speakers can be as much as 6db away from each other at any given frequency, and this is before getting to phase errors, driver integration and other things that don't really show up well on measurements, and we wonder why they all sound different. Then we put the speaker on whatever stand we like (often not the one that the speaker manufacturer originally designed and measured them on) and then listen to them in a non-acoustically treated domestic living room with peaks and troughs all over the placeÃ¢â‚¬Â¦ Great sounding maybe, but accurate my arse! Tony. [/QUOTE]

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