March 17, 2025 • 28 mins
This week's episode of The Pro Audio Suite dives headfirst into the world of budget audio gear, exploring whether cheaper equipment has actually improved or if it's still just average kit with fancy marketing. Here are some key highlights and insights from the discussion:
Budget Gear: Better or Still Rubbish?
- Robustness & Quality: The crew revisits the Rode NT1’s evolution—from early plastic models to today's sturdy iterations. They ponder its surprising collectability today.
- User-Friendliness: A cheeky chat unfolds about how budget gear manufacturers should assume nothing when it comes to user knowledge, advocating for painfully obvious product instructions, especially with mics like Rode’s NT1.
Headphones: Still the Achilles Heel?
- Consensus emerges around headphones as one area where low-budget options haven't improved as dramatically as microphones. The crew reckons that decent studio cans rarely dip below the $100 mark without significant compromises in sound and build quality.
- Austrian Audio gets a shout-out for their entry-level headphones offering decent quality, but it's noted that paying a little more generally delivers much better audio.
Interfaces and Converters:
- Robbo's downsized rig is highlighted, having moved from larger interfaces to compact solutions like the SSL2 and the Centrance PASport VO.
- An important insight shared is that cheap interfaces often share internal converter chips with much pricier gear, meaning the sonic differences can be surprisingly subtle.
Bargain Finds and Bargain Fails:
- Andrew points out the rise in cost of entry-level interfaces from brands like Focusrite, thanks to feature-creep.
- The group chats about bargain-basement gear flooding Amazon, discussing surprising finds like a $30 dual XLR-to-USB-C interface cable.
- Robbo humorously advises caution, noting that certain inexpensive gear—particularly cables and mic arms—can still be absolute rubbish.
Chinese Clones and Cheap Accessories:
- George brings up affordable Chinese-made hardware like camera mounts and mic arms, now significantly cheaper yet surprisingly robust compared to premium brands. The "magic arm" clamp is a notable budget win.
- However, the consensus firmly recommends against skimping on headphones and cables. Quality connectors from Neutrik and Mogami cables are touted as essentials worth investing in.
Plug-ins: Stock vs. Premium vs. AI
- Debate surrounds stock plug-ins vs premium offerings, questioning the necessity of higher-priced plug-ins from brands like FabFilter.
- Healthy skepticism about AI-enhanced plug-ins and noise reduction is expressed, particularly regarding Adobe Podcast's AI noise reduction.
Emulators & Mic Modeling:
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Y'all ready to be history?
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Welcome.
Hi.
Hi.
Hi.
Hello, everyone.
To the Pro Audio Suite.
These guys are professional, they're motivated.
With Tech the VO stars, George Witton, founder
of Source Elements, Robert Marshall, international audio engineer,
Darren Robbo-Robertson, and global voice, Andrew Peters.
Thanks to Tribooth, Austrian Audio, Making Passion Heard,
(00:20):
Source Elements, George the Tech Witton, and Robbo
and AP's international demos.
To find out more about us, check theproaudiosuite
.com.
Line up, man.
Here we go.
And welcome to another Pro Audio Suite, thanks
to Tribooth.
Don't forget the code, T-R-I-P
-A-P-200, to get $200 off your
(00:40):
Tribooth.
And Austrian Audio, Making Passion Heard.
We're talking about budget gear, because historically, budget
gear was always pretty average.
But has it improved?
I think so.
Let's discuss.
I'd say yes.
Yeah.
I would totally add.
You know, the original Rode NT1 was made
(01:01):
of plastic.
Oh, I didn't know that.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
I did not know that.
That's funny, because I always thought the Rodes
were, like, made very robust.
If I type in eBay, do I type
in plastic Rode NT1?
Will it come up?
It could.
It may.
It just may do that.
Yeah.
And, in fact, the weird thing is, they've
actually become collectible.
(01:22):
Well, that's what I was thinking, like, if
you had one of those, that sounds like
it's relatively not common.
That one sounds even more like a 460.
Look at me now.
There you go.
Look at that.
Yeah.
That's a fifth gen.
That's the fifth gen, exactly.
Oh, you have a fifth gen now?
Yeah.
Well, I've had it for a while, thank
you, Rode.
But do you know what's missing on that
(01:42):
box?
And I'm going to tell Rode right now,
if anybody's watching, you know what's missing on
the box?
A picture of a person standing in front
of the correct side of the microphone.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You're supposed to talk into the top of
it, right?
Yeah, I can kind of see that.
People get it wrong all the time, all
the time.
Definitely.
Because they talk to the logo.
(02:03):
We used to have a mic in the
voiceover booth for all the video editors, and
we had a picture next to the mic
with arrows showing where to speak into it,
and they would constantly talk into the top
of this side address mic.
No matter...
Yeah.
You can't even...
Just pictures, like, no words.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I know, it's off topic, but this is
a big problem.
It's like, when you sell a product, make
(02:24):
it painfully obvious.
If it's an entry-level price point product,
pretend in your mind's eye that there's actors
that are beginners or podcasters who are beginners
buying your beginner priced product and put a
picture on the box.
Don't assume.
Don't assume.
Because we're all engineers.
We get it.
But typical users, it's not so obvious.
(02:45):
Yeah.
It's interesting how, yeah, like we're saying, yeah,
technology has come a long way, but the
user side of things, their knowledge hasn't really
come a long way.
Like the amount of voiceover artists who you
see with poor mic technique and those sort
of things still sort of wows me.
It goes back to the same thing, where
you could give a good engineer just a
(03:07):
pile of SM57s, and you can give somebody
else all the gear they want, and that
engineer who knows where to put the mics
and how to set the gain and everything,
they're going to get a better drum sound
than someone who has whatever they want, because
it's not the gear, it's the voice talent.
Well, look at the Beatles, you know, four
(03:28):
tracks and a few microphones.
Yeah.
The only thing I can see that would
be an issue is entry-level stuff is
headphones.
That's the only thing you kind of go,
oh, no, because you're just not hearing properly.
Cheap headphones are still cheap headphones, I think
you're right.
Not that I use a lot of them.
Thank you.
It's funny how cheap mics have gotten better
than cheap headphones.
(03:49):
Yeah.
Yeah, I agree with that, yeah.
And there's an entry point on headphones that
you really almost never can drop below, and
that's around $100.
$100, yeah.
The $30 headphones sound like $30 headphones.
Yep.
Yeah, I mean, there's some exceptions.
I know people like the Cosporta Pro, which
are the, they look like 80s Walkman headphones,
(04:10):
you know, with the little foam, you know,
and they sound really good, you know.
But those are outliers and they're not studio
cans.
If you want proper studio cans that fully
encase your ear, enclose your ear, you know,
not on ear, but around the ear, circumoral,
you know, it's, the cheaper ones, they can
sound okay, but they're crackly, the plastic is
(04:32):
cheap, you move and they creak.
There's just so many issues with the build
quality.
So it's hard to get something better than,
or under that.
And I think even the response, like usually
in the high end and the clarity, the
low end, they're just not really as flat
and as wide response.
They tend to have a more peaky kind
of thing going on.
(04:53):
Yeah, well, case in point, the Austrian Audios.
I'm still rocking these, at least the 15s,
is that the entry level can from them?
Yeah.
And I think they're pretty great.
Well, the 20s came out, right?
And they're just a little more expensive.
But they have an extended top and an
extended bottom.
Not without sounding in any weird, weird colored,
(05:15):
not sounding exaggerated.
They just have a little bit more of
both ends of the spectrum, you know, and
that little extra price is going to give
you that.
So there are things you may miss out
on if you don't pay a little bit
more.
Yeah.
Well, then there's the interfaces too.
I mean, Andrew's, and you've downgraded in the
last couple of months, not, sorry, I shouldn't
(05:35):
say downgraded.
You've reduced the size of your interfaces.
I mean, the SSL2 is an amazing interface,
but half the size of what you used
to have and what, half the price probably?
Yeah, well, I've actually moved the SSL2 out
now.
Well, you're still using the Audient, right?
I've got the Audient for all the big
stuff.
Yeah.
And then for the laptop, I use the
(05:57):
Passport, which I used to have the SSL2.
And I think what people don't realize a
lot about this gear is like, let's take
for example, converters.
If the company is not making their own
converters, which very few companies are, then really
they're using converters that are built on a
chip, typically from like, there's a company called
(06:18):
AKM that makes most of the converters.
So your cheap Behringer gear has the same
converter as some of your really expensive gear.
And unless you really fuck up the analog
side or the power supply, you're going to
get the same sound, because it's the same
chip.
(06:39):
Like, give it five volts of electricity, give
it the audio from the input, and all
this gear is using the same little tiny
chips and the mic preamps, the same thing.
Whatever it is, like I'm going to get
these wrong, but like the 72, I forget
the chip numbers, but there's a few chips
(06:59):
that are mic preamps on a chip.
And again, you just implement it properly, which
half the time when you buy the chips,
the manufacturers give you an example of how
to make a mic preamp on it, and
half these things will use the same implementation
of, there's a mic preamp.
Yeah.
I mean, part of that's just because of
the way China flaunts intellectual property, right?
(07:22):
So the same exact circuitry is being replicated
and used over and over.
And usually what happens is the cream floats
to the top.
So they're going to use the circuits that
people like the most, you know, because they
can do it so cheaply.
And I think that's another reason.
But I'll argue to say too that the
low-end audio interfaces that people like are
(07:45):
not getting cheaper.
They're actually getting more expensive.
Let's take the Focusrite Scarlett Solo and the
2i2, for example.
They've gotten more expensive because they're feature creeping
them now.
They're adding more functionality.
They're adding auto input gain level control and,
you know, other functions that were never there
before.
(08:05):
So it's interesting to see there isn't that
$100 audio interface that you can really go
for anymore.
Now it's $160, $170.
Well, no, but there is that $100 audio
interface.
I mean, have you spent any time on
Amazon looking at some of the cheap gear
that's out there?
(08:25):
No, I know.
But I mean, these are offspin brands, not
the big leaders.
They're all offspin brands and they all make
their interfaces with red and they make them
look like a Scarlett and all that other
stuff.
But again, they're probably just same chips.
They do sometimes luck into a good product.
Let me get something.
(08:46):
OK.
Yeah, there's a microphone called the Stellar X2
and they just kind of lucked into getting
a decent sounding $200 mic and now that
microphone is extremely popular and people will go
buy that mic that have a better mic
because they heard that this mic is so
good, which is the weirdest thing.
(09:07):
People are buying cheaper mics to supplement their
better mics and I'm like, I don't get
it at all.
Because they want to travel with a cheap
mic or they don't want to worry about
it.
But well, that's some of it.
But it's also that they just heard it's
a good mic.
So they went and bought it with no
real thought about why they bought it.
Well, OK.
So I've been trying to figure out like
Sage is doing music composition and she's now
(09:29):
in the position where she's got a whole,
practically a whole orchestra working on an arrangement
that she did.
And I'm like, record that.
And she's like too bothered to record it.
So I'm trying to figure out how to
get it easy for her to record.
I'm on Amazon.
Yeah.
Notice here, USB-C cable, right?
Yeah.
Two XLRs.
No way.
30 bucks.
You make that now?
30 fucking dollars.
(09:51):
And this thing will sample at 384, 384
kilohertz.
Wow.
24 bit, 384 XLR cable for $30.
No phantom.
This is line input.
Yeah.
Most of those are.
Oh, it's a line input.
OK.
So it's a pair of balanced line ins
at super high sample rate into USB-C
(10:14):
for $30.
Just jam it into your phone.
Yeah.
Just jam it in there.
I would love to have that.
Yeah.
Even if it doesn't fit, jam it.
Even if you've got a lightning port, just
jam the USB-C in there and you'll
be right, mate.
Well, no, you get a little $10 USB
-C to lightning adapter and there you go.
(10:34):
It doesn't use enough juice, so it doesn't
even need a power adapter.
Yep.
Yep.
And I'm trying to still figure out exactly
what preamp I set her up with, but
yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, some of it is just that
there's just a race to supply these problem
solver things.
(10:55):
And that's cool.
If that cable you held up was made
by Sennheiser, there would be $100.
It'd be $200.
$200, right.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, $200, yeah.
But it doesn't need to be made by
Sennheiser because they're so good now at making
things like this in China.
Now does it have Neutrik connectors on it?
They're probably Neutrik ripoffs.
(11:16):
They're not quite Neutrik.
That's what I mean.
They're not Neutrik.
Because a Neutrik connector, each one's $10.
Yeah.
But check this out.
How can you do anything differently?
There's the business end of it.
The only thing that's in there is a
chip.
Like one fricking chip is about all you
have room for in there.
They just hooked up a chip to the
(11:37):
cables and- By the way, if you
go to Apple Store to get a Thunderbolt
cable, $70 US for a one meter Thunderbolt
cable.
Wow.
Yeah.
That's all of us.
I buy them used for $20.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But if you have to go to the
Best Buy because you forgot to tell your
client to go buy a Thunderbolt cable for
(11:57):
their Apollo, guess what you're running out to
Best Buy to buy?
A $70 Thunderbolt cable, right?
So yeah.
It's a...
And how about in terms of just accessories
too?
I can say that there's a lot of
mic booms that have come out because of
the podcasting revolution.
Yeah.
Dude, I got a good one for that.
And so many people have these $20 mic
(12:19):
booms and they are garbage.
They're rubbish.
Dude, hold on.
They're crap.
Look at this.
Yeah.
Okay.
First of all, you see these connectors everywhere
and they're 20 bucks.
They're blurred out.
But it's so good.
So you're holding up one of those clamps.
It has the two kinds of camera mounts,
like the quarter inch and the eighth inch.
What they're good at doing in China is
metal.
(12:39):
They're good at steel and aluminum in China.
They had the machining down.
That stuff has gotten really affordable.
Like I'm no longer buying Manfrotto this and
this and that.
I'm like buying SmallRig or a newer with
two Es.
You know, all these like Chinese brands.
It's the same thing.
You find these like mic arms that are
(13:01):
like, you know, $40 for an adapter, right?
And I had to buy a pair of
speaker mounts for our booth and I did
not want to spend a hundred bucks on
speaker mounts.
So I'm on Amazon.
Here's this thing.
It's a short leg and another short leg
with that clamp on it.
And the thing is great.
On one knob, when you tighten this one
(13:22):
knob here, it tightens all the knuckles, including
all the little- It's called a magic
arm.
Yeah, 15 bucks.
See, if you bought that at a grip
store in Hollywood, that would be a $150
magic arm.
No more, way more.
It's called a magic arm.
But now they've figured out how to duplicate
these in China, like really inexpensively.
(13:44):
And those are the things I'm not worried
about buying from China is the hardware made
of steel and aluminum.
They can't mess those up too badly.
And so I don't mind that stuff.
But mic cables, that's kind of where I
tend to draw the line.
I would much rather have a mic cable
that's made with Mogami or some kind of
(14:04):
a reputable conductor and a Neutrik or something
on the end.
Until you get a RJ45 Bloom and send
it down a freaking wire that's as big
as a molecule.
Sorry.
Say that again.
Right?
What do you guys use?
Yeah, explain that again.
You've lost all of us on that one.
Okay.
Okay.
We did a whole episode about basically converting
(14:25):
RJ45, like you have the RJ45 breakouts at
one RJ11.
Oh, yes, yes.
I'm sorry, RJ45 cables.
The Cat Box, the Balans that go from
RJ45 to Balanced.
Yeah.
And, okay, quite frankly, that cable is running
at megahertz, sending shitloads of data.
There's not a lot of tolerance there for
(14:45):
how space, eh, like, what is it doing?
Does the copper, oxygen-free, blah, blah, blah
matter that much?
That's the question, right?
And it probably doesn't.
Cables are not about the wire.
Cables are about the connectors.
What are the big brands for cables in
Australia that people commonly use?
(15:06):
Probably the same as yours.
I mean, um, I use Kanair, Starquart.
Oh, Kanari, you mean?
Oh, yeah, Kanari.
Kanari, Kanari.
Kanari's very good.
Yeah, that's what I use, but I make
my own cables and then Neutrik connectors.
Oh, do you, are you handy with a
soldering iron, Andrew?
(15:27):
He's very good with a soldering iron, unlike
me.
He's got a steady hand.
Steady hand.
I've just never had the patience for it.
No, no, we, like, we have cheap stuff
like Rapco and Horizon.
Horizon's really junk.
The cables you gotta watch out for, the
ones with the molded ends that you can't
do anything with after they go bad.
Yeah, that's right, that's right.
Those are the super cheap ones.
(15:48):
Yeah.
But, yeah, so with cables, you know.
But the wires, where's the wire?
I buy mine from Cable Chick.
Cable Chick?
Cable Chick.
There you go.
There's a plug.
Oh, really?
Is that an Aussie distributor?
Yeah.
She's the best.
Oh, dear, that doesn't sound very...
Get your mind out of your gutter, AP,
seriously.
Won't be taking her out again.
(16:09):
No, exactly.
But, yeah, the things I would not cheap
out on is headphones and cables.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You can get away with a microphone, you
can get away with an interface.
I have to agree with that.
Yeah.
There is one brand of cable that's been
distributing on Amazon called WBC, or World Best
Cable, and they are doing like their equivalent
(16:31):
of a Mogami Gold, you know, which is
like a $780 US dollar, my cable, and
it's $30 US maybe.
And they sell the quad cable, so they're
the plus and the minus, or the pin,
what do you call it, pin two and
pin three.
They're each a twisted pair.
You're talking about quad star cable?
Yeah.
Yeah.
(16:52):
And they're each a twisted pair, you know,
and they're better shielded, and they're only slightly
more expensive than the standard cable.
So, I tell everybody, just get the star
quad, you know, cables, and, you know, you'll
be a happy camper.
And those are still not that more expensive.
There you go.
Oh, we're seeing cable chick now.
So, we now know it's a real thing.
We don't all think Robbo's crazy.
(17:13):
She's cute.
I think she's cute.
That's why she gets my business.
She's a cute cartoon girl.
If you're plugging the stuff in, it goes
behind your desk, it's never going to get
moved, you can get away with less expensive
cables.
But if you're going to be plugging in
and out, traveling, you have no room for
them to mess up, then you want to
get something better, because it's, I think it's
(17:34):
a lot to do with the build and
the connectors.
If you're working on the road, if you're
on the travel kit, or you're doing a
stage travel show, you got to have the
best gear, best cables, bar none, because that
stuff does take a lot more abuse that
way.
Yeah, that's absolutely true.
And also, the other thing is with cables.
If something goes wrong, it's just eliminating possibilities
(17:57):
of failure.
The one thing that I do have, on
Andrew's point, is I do have a cable
tester that sits in my bottom drawer, and
if something's not working, that's the first thing
I drag out, is, okay, well, let's just
make sure the cable's right, you know?
Yeah, I've got one of those multi-testers
that has a nine-volt battery, and it's
got two XLRs, two quarter-inch, two RCA,
(18:19):
and yeah.
Yes, indeed, because then that takes the guesswork
out of it.
It's like, okay, the cable's fucked, time for
a new one, or the cable's working.
And a good one will tell you if
your cable's in phase or out of phase.
Yes, mine does that.
Yeah.
If you've got a home studio, that's one
thing that's definitely worth investing in, is a
really good cable tester, because it will just
save you so much grief.
(18:40):
That is very true, that is very true.
But the other category we didn't touch on
yet, before we wrap it up, is plug
-ins.
Yeah, yeah, well, I don't know.
I think some of the stock plug-ins
are doing really, really, really well.
EQ7, Pro Tools, what's wrong with it?
Oh, look, well, nothing.
Nothing's wrong with it.
(19:01):
I mean, I've been using the Waves...
Who makes a whole album with EQ7 and
D-Verb?
Yeah, well, I've been using the Waves F6
for years now, almost as long as it's
been out.
It's my go-to for voiceover and vocals
and stuff.
You know, I don't know.
I mean, AI's slowly creeping in there.
Is that a good thing?
(19:21):
In noise reduction, I feel like it is,
but I mean, you know, the Waves, Horizon,
you know, AI, EQ, shit, is that necessary?
Is it good?
Maybe.
Maybe?
I'm not so...
I'm gonna be extremely skeptical about AI.
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm really skeptical, because I'm gonna throw
(19:44):
Adobe under the bus, because I was at
a podcast conference and I listened to one
of the Adobe higher-ups, you know, showing
how amazing their...
I think they just call it Adobe Podcast
is the name of the tool now, and
it has this insane AI noise reduction thing,
right?
And the thing is, is like they're leaning
(20:05):
on that and saying, this is the penultimate
of technology, right?
And I listened to the results and I
go, that does not sound as good as
doing it correctly the first time, or using
a proper mic the first time, or me
as an engineer tweaking the sound myself.
None of what you're doing sounds that good,
(20:27):
but you're deciding for us, the users, that
that is good enough.
We're good.
It's like, this AI thing is good enough.
You're changing expectations as opposed to making your
products better.
Yeah, absolutely.
It's sort of a cheat's way out of
it, really, isn't it?
But here's what happens.
You know, people used to have lower latency
phones and cell phones, but now no one
thinks that a cell phone has high latency,
(20:50):
because they're just used to cell phones.
They don't know anything different.
And it's gonna get that way with all
this stuff.
Yeah.
Where no one's gonna know what a song
sounds like directly off of a CD, because
they only hear MP3s through Spotify.
Yeah.
And they'll just be lost.
Well, let me ask you this then, since
we're sort of semi on the subject.
Like, a crappy microphone, right?
(21:13):
But a good mic emulator.
Is that just making a bad thing worse?
Or is it making a bad thing better,
do you reckon?
I think it makes you feel good about
your cheap purchase.
I mean, well, that's kind of essentially what
the Sphere mic is.
The Townsend is, yeah.
You know, there's nobody saying that that's an
exceptionally good microphone.
I mean, I think it is a good
(21:34):
microphone, but it's not categorically amazing for the
price.
It's still...
I think possibly the Antelope microphone is technically
a better mic than the Townsend, as far
as mic build and...
I don't know.
I mean, the Sphere mic's amazing.
The Antelope looks pretty damn nice, actually.
Yeah.
Just on its own as a mic.
But it's true.
(21:55):
It's like, you know, you buy this cheap
thing, and then you want software to make
you feel good about it.
Well, yeah, like recent...
Like, during the pandemic, I had a client.
We got a Townsend Sphere L22, an Apollo,
and we emulated a U87.
The client was happy.
And so it was what we could do
at the time, and what we needed to
(22:16):
do to get away with getting the project
done, and it worked.
Is it as good as a U87?
I don't really know.
Is it truly as good?
I don't know.
Is it just another flavor, or is it
even anything like a U87, necessarily?
Is it just, you know?
I mean, here's the thing, though, too, right?
It's like, maybe some of this stuff has
(22:37):
got better, like maybe cheap microphones have got
better and all the rest of it, but
you still come back to the basic principle
that if you put even, you know, a
pretty good mic in a shit room, it's
going to sound like crap.
If you put a great mic in a
shit room, it's going to sound like crap.
You've still got to start with the basics
no matter what happens.
But here's what you can say about the
(22:58):
gear.
It is cleaner.
All the cheap gear, the noise floors have
dropped.
Absolutely.
So why do I keep hearing SM7Bs through
Cloudlifters and everything else that just have a
lot of hiss?
I hear so many people sending me audio
files of a SM7B through a Cloudlifter or
(23:18):
fill-in-the-blank booster because everybody's making
one of these boosters now, and it's still
noisy.
It's still a noisy soup.
Why is that still a thing?
I don't know, because the SM7 needs especially
a lot of gain.
Even the SM7DB, somebody sent me a recording
with that through a Scarlett, of course, noise
(23:38):
soup.
Filled with hiss.
Like hiss.
I'm like, why are people buying a $500
mic that's noisy?
The marketing is so good on that microphone
that people are still buying a noisy mic
when they could buy a $100 mic that
sounds better.
Yeah.
It has a lower noise floor because the
$100 mic has got a chip in it
(23:59):
and it's not so weighted down by the
dynamic.
I mean, that's just like nature of the
beast, right?
The SM7 is a dynamic mic that has
a certain physical need for a preamp that
pushes that preamp to the point where it's
making noise.
But I guess my point is that 30
years ago, you go to Radio Shack and
(24:20):
you buy a mixer and it's noisy.
Now, you go to Amazon and you buy
some unknown...
Amazon Radio Shack.
Well, there's no Radio Shack, but you go
to Amazon and you buy some unknown Chinese
brand mixer and it might be made out
of plastic and it's wholly just junk as
far as how it's built.
(24:41):
But it's not noisy like that Radio Shack.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, that actually is true.
That is true.
There's been definitely an optimization of circuit design
that's happened.
There's an intellectual sort of...
What's the institutional knowledge around the design of
these circuits now?
And it's been passed around.
And these chips have been commodified?
(25:01):
Yeah, they're commodified and they're not closely guarded
anymore.
So that's all changed.
But I'll use TDR Nova free over FabFilter
Pro-Q 3 any day of the week.
I know there's certain things FabFilter probably can
do that TDR can't, but I haven't found
one that I need for...
I'm not on the Pro-Q bandwagon, I'll
(25:22):
be honest.
I don't even own any of that stuff.
I see people jumping up and down and
making noise about how good it is, but
I don't know.
I don't see it.
I've played with the demo.
I am perfectly happy with Waves and Plugin
Alliance.
That's the thing.
People seek out a new EQ because they
have not learned how to use an EQ.
(25:43):
Fix your head, not your EQ.
They're like, well, that one doesn't sound very
good.
Yeah, it's like, well, it's doing the same
thing as the other one.
He's like, seriously.
I don't get it.
I think the hype's just around because it
looks cool or it is cool or it's
trendy or whatever.
I think it's become like a fashion brand.
Pro Tools Expert did a really good article
(26:05):
recently about EQs, digital plug-in EQs and
what the difference is with how some of
the math happens.
And the really good ones will oversample because
if not, you get some reflections and some
things that happen.
But I think that even that, again, just
like with the chips, and oh, you can
just buy buckets of these good chips now,
(26:26):
same thing.
You go up on the web and there's
just all this open source code.
You want to make a good EQ?
There's open source code that will give you
a good starting point for building your own
EQ.
And a lot of this knowledge has gotten
commonplace.
And I think what happens because of that
also is that it makes everything more disposable.
(26:48):
So these mics are so much better now
that now it's like, oh, I bought a
mic.
Oh, I bought another mic.
I didn't like that mic anymore.
And you end up with like 80 microphones
in your closet.
Whereas back in the day, you'd buy a
414, and that was your mic for life.
And some people still do that.
But now you can buy 20 mics for
(27:11):
the same price as your one 414, and
each one has a slightly different character and
a different form factor and works in the
bag here and works for traveling there.
And they're all almost that really kick-ass
414.
Not really, but they're so close that you're
willing to spend the money on multiple items
and flexibility, and it's become disposable, unfortunately, I
(27:34):
think.
There's also drum mic kits.
You can see drum mic kits that are
entire kit.
Everything's mic for $300.
200 bucks.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Those are very common.
Yeah, I think it all comes down to
your skills.
Your skills as an engineer and the basic
skills.
A good engineer can take the junkiest gear
(27:57):
and get a really good sound out of
it, unless there's something that's technically wrong with
that piece of gear.
I manage to save Robert every week, so,
you know, there's a start.
And that's starting, that's not even the gear,
that's just, like, the talent and the voice.
That's right.
There's a lot to fix.
(28:17):
Just mute his track, it's pretty easy to
fix, Robert.
Just mute that track.
Yeah.
That's all right.
Well, that was fun.
Is it over?
(28:52):
All right.
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Y'all ready to be history?
Get started.
Welcome.
Hi.
Hi.
Hi.
Hello, everyone.
To the Pro Audio Suite.
These guys are professional, they're motivated.
With Tech the VO stars, George Witton, founder
of Source Elements, Robert Marshall, international audio engineer,
Darren Robbo-Robertson, and global voice, Andrew Peters.
Thanks to Tribooth, Austrian Audio, Making Passion Heard,
(00:20):
Source Elements, George the Tech Witton, and Robbo
and AP's international demos.
To find out more about us, check theproaudiosuite
.com.
Line up, man.
Here we go.
And welcome to another Pro Audio Suite, thanks
to Tribooth.
Don't forget the code, T-R-I-P
-A-P-200, to get $200 off your
(00:40):
Tribooth.
And Austrian Audio, Making Passion Heard.
We're talking about budget gear, because historically, budget
gear was always pretty average.
But has it improved?
I think so.
Let's discuss.
I'd say yes.
Yeah.
I would totally add.
You know, the original Rode NT1 was made
(01:01):
of plastic.
Oh, I didn't know that.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
I did not know that.
That's funny, because I always thought the Rodes
were, like, made very robust.
If I type in eBay, do I type
in plastic Rode NT1?
Will it come up?
It could.
It may.
It just may do that.
Yeah.
And, in fact, the weird thing is, they've
actually become collectible.
(01:22):
Well, that's what I was thinking, like, if
you had one of those, that sounds like
it's relatively not common.
That one sounds even more like a 460.
Look at me now.
There you go.
Look at that.
Yeah.
That's a fifth gen.
That's the fifth gen, exactly.
Oh, you have a fifth gen now?
Yeah.
Well, I've had it for a while, thank
you, Rode.
But do you know what's missing on that
(01:42):
box?
And I'm going to tell Rode right now,
if anybody's watching, you know what's missing on
the box?
A picture of a person standing in front
of the correct side of the microphone.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You're supposed to talk into the top of
it, right?
Yeah, I can kind of see that.
People get it wrong all the time, all
the time.
Definitely.
Because they talk to the logo.
(02:03):
We used to have a mic in the
voiceover booth for all the video editors, and
we had a picture next to the mic
with arrows showing where to speak into it,
and they would constantly talk into the top
of this side address mic.
No matter...
Yeah.
You can't even...
Just pictures, like, no words.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I know, it's off topic, but this is
a big problem.
It's like, when you sell a product, make
(02:24):
it painfully obvious.
If it's an entry-level price point product,
pretend in your mind's eye that there's actors
that are beginners or podcasters who are beginners
buying your beginner priced product and put a
picture on the box.
Don't assume.
Don't assume.
Because we're all engineers.
We get it.
But typical users, it's not so obvious.
(02:45):
Yeah.
It's interesting how, yeah, like we're saying, yeah,
technology has come a long way, but the
user side of things, their knowledge hasn't really
come a long way.
Like the amount of voiceover artists who you
see with poor mic technique and those sort
of things still sort of wows me.
It goes back to the same thing, where
you could give a good engineer just a
(03:07):
pile of SM57s, and you can give somebody
else all the gear they want, and that
engineer who knows where to put the mics
and how to set the gain and everything,
they're going to get a better drum sound
than someone who has whatever they want, because
it's not the gear, it's the voice talent.
Well, look at the Beatles, you know, four
(03:28):
tracks and a few microphones.
Yeah.
The only thing I can see that would
be an issue is entry-level stuff is
headphones.
That's the only thing you kind of go,
oh, no, because you're just not hearing properly.
Cheap headphones are still cheap headphones, I think
you're right.
Not that I use a lot of them.
Thank you.
It's funny how cheap mics have gotten better
than cheap headphones.
(03:49):
Yeah.
Yeah, I agree with that, yeah.
And there's an entry point on headphones that
you really almost never can drop below, and
that's around $100.
$100, yeah.
The $30 headphones sound like $30 headphones.
Yep.
Yeah, I mean, there's some exceptions.
I know people like the Cosporta Pro, which
are the, they look like 80s Walkman headphones,
(04:10):
you know, with the little foam, you know,
and they sound really good, you know.
But those are outliers and they're not studio
cans.
If you want proper studio cans that fully
encase your ear, enclose your ear, you know,
not on ear, but around the ear, circumoral,
you know, it's, the cheaper ones, they can
sound okay, but they're crackly, the plastic is
(04:32):
cheap, you move and they creak.
There's just so many issues with the build
quality.
So it's hard to get something better than,
or under that.
And I think even the response, like usually
in the high end and the clarity, the
low end, they're just not really as flat
and as wide response.
They tend to have a more peaky kind
of thing going on.
(04:53):
Yeah, well, case in point, the Austrian Audios.
I'm still rocking these, at least the 15s,
is that the entry level can from them?
Yeah.
And I think they're pretty great.
Well, the 20s came out, right?
And they're just a little more expensive.
But they have an extended top and an
extended bottom.
Not without sounding in any weird, weird colored,
(05:15):
not sounding exaggerated.
They just have a little bit more of
both ends of the spectrum, you know, and
that little extra price is going to give
you that.
So there are things you may miss out
on if you don't pay a little bit
more.
Yeah.
Well, then there's the interfaces too.
I mean, Andrew's, and you've downgraded in the
last couple of months, not, sorry, I shouldn't
(05:35):
say downgraded.
You've reduced the size of your interfaces.
I mean, the SSL2 is an amazing interface,
but half the size of what you used
to have and what, half the price probably?
Yeah, well, I've actually moved the SSL2 out
now.
Well, you're still using the Audient, right?
I've got the Audient for all the big
stuff.
Yeah.
And then for the laptop, I use the
(05:57):
Passport, which I used to have the SSL2.
And I think what people don't realize a
lot about this gear is like, let's take
for example, converters.
If the company is not making their own
converters, which very few companies are, then really
they're using converters that are built on a
chip, typically from like, there's a company called
(06:18):
AKM that makes most of the converters.
So your cheap Behringer gear has the same
converter as some of your really expensive gear.
And unless you really fuck up the analog
side or the power supply, you're going to
get the same sound, because it's the same
chip.
(06:39):
Like, give it five volts of electricity, give
it the audio from the input, and all
this gear is using the same little tiny
chips and the mic preamps, the same thing.
Whatever it is, like I'm going to get
these wrong, but like the 72, I forget
the chip numbers, but there's a few chips
(06:59):
that are mic preamps on a chip.
And again, you just implement it properly, which
half the time when you buy the chips,
the manufacturers give you an example of how
to make a mic preamp on it, and
half these things will use the same implementation
of, there's a mic preamp.
Yeah.
I mean, part of that's just because of
the way China flaunts intellectual property, right?
(07:22):
So the same exact circuitry is being replicated
and used over and over.
And usually what happens is the cream floats
to the top.
So they're going to use the circuits that
people like the most, you know, because they
can do it so cheaply.
And I think that's another reason.
But I'll argue to say too that the
low-end audio interfaces that people like are
(07:45):
not getting cheaper.
They're actually getting more expensive.
Let's take the Focusrite Scarlett Solo and the
2i2, for example.
They've gotten more expensive because they're feature creeping
them now.
They're adding more functionality.
They're adding auto input gain level control and,
you know, other functions that were never there
before.
(08:05):
So it's interesting to see there isn't that
$100 audio interface that you can really go
for anymore.
Now it's $160, $170.
Well, no, but there is that $100 audio
interface.
I mean, have you spent any time on
Amazon looking at some of the cheap gear
that's out there?
(08:25):
No, I know.
But I mean, these are offspin brands, not
the big leaders.
They're all offspin brands and they all make
their interfaces with red and they make them
look like a Scarlett and all that other
stuff.
But again, they're probably just same chips.
They do sometimes luck into a good product.
Let me get something.
(08:46):
OK.
Yeah, there's a microphone called the Stellar X2
and they just kind of lucked into getting
a decent sounding $200 mic and now that
microphone is extremely popular and people will go
buy that mic that have a better mic
because they heard that this mic is so
good, which is the weirdest thing.
(09:07):
People are buying cheaper mics to supplement their
better mics and I'm like, I don't get
it at all.
Because they want to travel with a cheap
mic or they don't want to worry about
it.
But well, that's some of it.
But it's also that they just heard it's
a good mic.
So they went and bought it with no
real thought about why they bought it.
Well, OK.
So I've been trying to figure out like
Sage is doing music composition and she's now
(09:29):
in the position where she's got a whole,
practically a whole orchestra working on an arrangement
that she did.
And I'm like, record that.
And she's like too bothered to record it.
So I'm trying to figure out how to
get it easy for her to record.
I'm on Amazon.
Yeah.
Notice here, USB-C cable, right?
Yeah.
Two XLRs.
No way.
30 bucks.
You make that now?
30 fucking dollars.
(09:51):
And this thing will sample at 384, 384
kilohertz.
Wow.
24 bit, 384 XLR cable for $30.
No phantom.
This is line input.
Yeah.
Most of those are.
Oh, it's a line input.
OK.
So it's a pair of balanced line ins
at super high sample rate into USB-C
(10:14):
for $30.
Just jam it into your phone.
Yeah.
Just jam it in there.
I would love to have that.
Yeah.
Even if it doesn't fit, jam it.
Even if you've got a lightning port, just
jam the USB-C in there and you'll
be right, mate.
Well, no, you get a little $10 USB
-C to lightning adapter and there you go.
(10:34):
It doesn't use enough juice, so it doesn't
even need a power adapter.
Yep.
Yep.
And I'm trying to still figure out exactly
what preamp I set her up with, but
yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, some of it is just that
there's just a race to supply these problem
solver things.
(10:55):
And that's cool.
If that cable you held up was made
by Sennheiser, there would be $100.
It'd be $200.
$200, right.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, $200, yeah.
But it doesn't need to be made by
Sennheiser because they're so good now at making
things like this in China.
Now does it have Neutrik connectors on it?
They're probably Neutrik ripoffs.
(11:16):
They're not quite Neutrik.
That's what I mean.
They're not Neutrik.
Because a Neutrik connector, each one's $10.
Yeah.
But check this out.
How can you do anything differently?
There's the business end of it.
The only thing that's in there is a
chip.
Like one fricking chip is about all you
have room for in there.
They just hooked up a chip to the
(11:37):
cables and- By the way, if you
go to Apple Store to get a Thunderbolt
cable, $70 US for a one meter Thunderbolt
cable.
Wow.
Yeah.
That's all of us.
I buy them used for $20.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But if you have to go to the
Best Buy because you forgot to tell your
client to go buy a Thunderbolt cable for
(11:57):
their Apollo, guess what you're running out to
Best Buy to buy?
A $70 Thunderbolt cable, right?
So yeah.
It's a...
And how about in terms of just accessories
too?
I can say that there's a lot of
mic booms that have come out because of
the podcasting revolution.
Yeah.
Dude, I got a good one for that.
And so many people have these $20 mic
(12:19):
booms and they are garbage.
They're rubbish.
Dude, hold on.
They're crap.
Look at this.
Yeah.
Okay.
First of all, you see these connectors everywhere
and they're 20 bucks.
They're blurred out.
But it's so good.
So you're holding up one of those clamps.
It has the two kinds of camera mounts,
like the quarter inch and the eighth inch.
What they're good at doing in China is
metal.
(12:39):
They're good at steel and aluminum in China.
They had the machining down.
That stuff has gotten really affordable.
Like I'm no longer buying Manfrotto this and
this and that.
I'm like buying SmallRig or a newer with
two Es.
You know, all these like Chinese brands.
It's the same thing.
You find these like mic arms that are
(13:01):
like, you know, $40 for an adapter, right?
And I had to buy a pair of
speaker mounts for our booth and I did
not want to spend a hundred bucks on
speaker mounts.
So I'm on Amazon.
Here's this thing.
It's a short leg and another short leg
with that clamp on it.
And the thing is great.
On one knob, when you tighten this one
(13:22):
knob here, it tightens all the knuckles, including
all the little- It's called a magic
arm.
Yeah, 15 bucks.
See, if you bought that at a grip
store in Hollywood, that would be a $150
magic arm.
No more, way more.
It's called a magic arm.
But now they've figured out how to duplicate
these in China, like really inexpensively.
(13:44):
And those are the things I'm not worried
about buying from China is the hardware made
of steel and aluminum.
They can't mess those up too badly.
And so I don't mind that stuff.
But mic cables, that's kind of where I
tend to draw the line.
I would much rather have a mic cable
that's made with Mogami or some kind of
(14:04):
a reputable conductor and a Neutrik or something
on the end.
Until you get a RJ45 Bloom and send
it down a freaking wire that's as big
as a molecule.
Sorry.
Say that again.
Right?
What do you guys use?
Yeah, explain that again.
You've lost all of us on that one.
Okay.
Okay.
We did a whole episode about basically converting
(14:25):
RJ45, like you have the RJ45 breakouts at
one RJ11.
Oh, yes, yes.
I'm sorry, RJ45 cables.
The Cat Box, the Balans that go from
RJ45 to Balanced.
Yeah.
And, okay, quite frankly, that cable is running
at megahertz, sending shitloads of data.
There's not a lot of tolerance there for
(14:45):
how space, eh, like, what is it doing?
Does the copper, oxygen-free, blah, blah, blah
matter that much?
That's the question, right?
And it probably doesn't.
Cables are not about the wire.
Cables are about the connectors.
What are the big brands for cables in
Australia that people commonly use?
(15:06):
Probably the same as yours.
I mean, um, I use Kanair, Starquart.
Oh, Kanari, you mean?
Oh, yeah, Kanari.
Kanari, Kanari.
Kanari's very good.
Yeah, that's what I use, but I make
my own cables and then Neutrik connectors.
Oh, do you, are you handy with a
soldering iron, Andrew?
(15:27):
He's very good with a soldering iron, unlike
me.
He's got a steady hand.
Steady hand.
I've just never had the patience for it.
No, no, we, like, we have cheap stuff
like Rapco and Horizon.
Horizon's really junk.
The cables you gotta watch out for, the
ones with the molded ends that you can't
do anything with after they go bad.
Yeah, that's right, that's right.
Those are the super cheap ones.
(15:48):
Yeah.
But, yeah, so with cables, you know.
But the wires, where's the wire?
I buy mine from Cable Chick.
Cable Chick?
Cable Chick.
There you go.
There's a plug.
Oh, really?
Is that an Aussie distributor?
Yeah.
She's the best.
Oh, dear, that doesn't sound very...
Get your mind out of your gutter, AP,
seriously.
Won't be taking her out again.
(16:09):
No, exactly.
But, yeah, the things I would not cheap
out on is headphones and cables.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You can get away with a microphone, you
can get away with an interface.
I have to agree with that.
Yeah.
There is one brand of cable that's been
distributing on Amazon called WBC, or World Best
Cable, and they are doing like their equivalent
(16:31):
of a Mogami Gold, you know, which is
like a $780 US dollar, my cable, and
it's $30 US maybe.
And they sell the quad cable, so they're
the plus and the minus, or the pin,
what do you call it, pin two and
pin three.
They're each a twisted pair.
You're talking about quad star cable?
Yeah.
Yeah.
(16:52):
And they're each a twisted pair, you know,
and they're better shielded, and they're only slightly
more expensive than the standard cable.
So, I tell everybody, just get the star
quad, you know, cables, and, you know, you'll
be a happy camper.
And those are still not that more expensive.
There you go.
Oh, we're seeing cable chick now.
So, we now know it's a real thing.
We don't all think Robbo's crazy.
(17:13):
She's cute.
I think she's cute.
That's why she gets my business.
She's a cute cartoon girl.
If you're plugging the stuff in, it goes
behind your desk, it's never going to get
moved, you can get away with less expensive
cables.
But if you're going to be plugging in
and out, traveling, you have no room for
them to mess up, then you want to
get something better, because it's, I think it's
(17:34):
a lot to do with the build and
the connectors.
If you're working on the road, if you're
on the travel kit, or you're doing a
stage travel show, you got to have the
best gear, best cables, bar none, because that
stuff does take a lot more abuse that
way.
Yeah, that's absolutely true.
And also, the other thing is with cables.
If something goes wrong, it's just eliminating possibilities
(17:57):
of failure.
The one thing that I do have, on
Andrew's point, is I do have a cable
tester that sits in my bottom drawer, and
if something's not working, that's the first thing
I drag out, is, okay, well, let's just
make sure the cable's right, you know?
Yeah, I've got one of those multi-testers
that has a nine-volt battery, and it's
got two XLRs, two quarter-inch, two RCA,
(18:19):
and yeah.
Yes, indeed, because then that takes the guesswork
out of it.
It's like, okay, the cable's fucked, time for
a new one, or the cable's working.
And a good one will tell you if
your cable's in phase or out of phase.
Yes, mine does that.
Yeah.
If you've got a home studio, that's one
thing that's definitely worth investing in, is a
really good cable tester, because it will just
save you so much grief.
(18:40):
That is very true, that is very true.
But the other category we didn't touch on
yet, before we wrap it up, is plug
-ins.
Yeah, yeah, well, I don't know.
I think some of the stock plug-ins
are doing really, really, really well.
EQ7, Pro Tools, what's wrong with it?
Oh, look, well, nothing.
Nothing's wrong with it.
(19:01):
I mean, I've been using the Waves...
Who makes a whole album with EQ7 and
D-Verb?
Yeah, well, I've been using the Waves F6
for years now, almost as long as it's
been out.
It's my go-to for voiceover and vocals
and stuff.
You know, I don't know.
I mean, AI's slowly creeping in there.
Is that a good thing?
(19:21):
In noise reduction, I feel like it is,
but I mean, you know, the Waves, Horizon,
you know, AI, EQ, shit, is that necessary?
Is it good?
Maybe.
Maybe?
I'm not so...
I'm gonna be extremely skeptical about AI.
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm really skeptical, because I'm gonna throw
(19:44):
Adobe under the bus, because I was at
a podcast conference and I listened to one
of the Adobe higher-ups, you know, showing
how amazing their...
I think they just call it Adobe Podcast
is the name of the tool now, and
it has this insane AI noise reduction thing,
right?
And the thing is, is like they're leaning
(20:05):
on that and saying, this is the penultimate
of technology, right?
And I listened to the results and I
go, that does not sound as good as
doing it correctly the first time, or using
a proper mic the first time, or me
as an engineer tweaking the sound myself.
None of what you're doing sounds that good,
(20:27):
but you're deciding for us, the users, that
that is good enough.
We're good.
It's like, this AI thing is good enough.
You're changing expectations as opposed to making your
products better.
Yeah, absolutely.
It's sort of a cheat's way out of
it, really, isn't it?
But here's what happens.
You know, people used to have lower latency
phones and cell phones, but now no one
thinks that a cell phone has high latency,
(20:50):
because they're just used to cell phones.
They don't know anything different.
And it's gonna get that way with all
this stuff.
Yeah.
Where no one's gonna know what a song
sounds like directly off of a CD, because
they only hear MP3s through Spotify.
Yeah.
And they'll just be lost.
Well, let me ask you this then, since
we're sort of semi on the subject.
Like, a crappy microphone, right?
(21:13):
But a good mic emulator.
Is that just making a bad thing worse?
Or is it making a bad thing better,
do you reckon?
I think it makes you feel good about
your cheap purchase.
I mean, well, that's kind of essentially what
the Sphere mic is.
The Townsend is, yeah.
You know, there's nobody saying that that's an
exceptionally good microphone.
I mean, I think it is a good
(21:34):
microphone, but it's not categorically amazing for the
price.
It's still...
I think possibly the Antelope microphone is technically
a better mic than the Townsend, as far
as mic build and...
I don't know.
I mean, the Sphere mic's amazing.
The Antelope looks pretty damn nice, actually.
Yeah.
Just on its own as a mic.
But it's true.
(21:55):
It's like, you know, you buy this cheap
thing, and then you want software to make
you feel good about it.
Well, yeah, like recent...
Like, during the pandemic, I had a client.
We got a Townsend Sphere L22, an Apollo,
and we emulated a U87.
The client was happy.
And so it was what we could do
at the time, and what we needed to
(22:16):
do to get away with getting the project
done, and it worked.
Is it as good as a U87?
I don't really know.
Is it truly as good?
I don't know.
Is it just another flavor, or is it
even anything like a U87, necessarily?
Is it just, you know?
I mean, here's the thing, though, too, right?
It's like, maybe some of this stuff has
(22:37):
got better, like maybe cheap microphones have got
better and all the rest of it, but
you still come back to the basic principle
that if you put even, you know, a
pretty good mic in a shit room, it's
going to sound like crap.
If you put a great mic in a
shit room, it's going to sound like crap.
You've still got to start with the basics
no matter what happens.
But here's what you can say about the
(22:58):
gear.
It is cleaner.
All the cheap gear, the noise floors have
dropped.
Absolutely.
So why do I keep hearing SM7Bs through
Cloudlifters and everything else that just have a
lot of hiss?
I hear so many people sending me audio
files of a SM7B through a Cloudlifter or
(23:18):
fill-in-the-blank booster because everybody's making
one of these boosters now, and it's still
noisy.
It's still a noisy soup.
Why is that still a thing?
I don't know, because the SM7 needs especially
a lot of gain.
Even the SM7DB, somebody sent me a recording
with that through a Scarlett, of course, noise
(23:38):
soup.
Filled with hiss.
Like hiss.
I'm like, why are people buying a $500
mic that's noisy?
The marketing is so good on that microphone
that people are still buying a noisy mic
when they could buy a $100 mic that
sounds better.
Yeah.
It has a lower noise floor because the
$100 mic has got a chip in it
(23:59):
and it's not so weighted down by the
dynamic.
I mean, that's just like nature of the
beast, right?
The SM7 is a dynamic mic that has
a certain physical need for a preamp that
pushes that preamp to the point where it's
making noise.
But I guess my point is that 30
years ago, you go to Radio Shack and
(24:20):
you buy a mixer and it's noisy.
Now, you go to Amazon and you buy
some unknown...
Amazon Radio Shack.
Well, there's no Radio Shack, but you go
to Amazon and you buy some unknown Chinese
brand mixer and it might be made out
of plastic and it's wholly just junk as
far as how it's built.
(24:41):
But it's not noisy like that Radio Shack.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, that actually is true.
That is true.
There's been definitely an optimization of circuit design
that's happened.
There's an intellectual sort of...
What's the institutional knowledge around the design of
these circuits now?
And it's been passed around.
And these chips have been commodified?
(25:01):
Yeah, they're commodified and they're not closely guarded
anymore.
So that's all changed.
But I'll use TDR Nova free over FabFilter
Pro-Q 3 any day of the week.
I know there's certain things FabFilter probably can
do that TDR can't, but I haven't found
one that I need for...
I'm not on the Pro-Q bandwagon, I'll
(25:22):
be honest.
I don't even own any of that stuff.
I see people jumping up and down and
making noise about how good it is, but
I don't know.
I don't see it.
I've played with the demo.
I am perfectly happy with Waves and Plugin
Alliance.
That's the thing.
People seek out a new EQ because they
have not learned how to use an EQ.
(25:43):
Fix your head, not your EQ.
They're like, well, that one doesn't sound very
good.
Yeah, it's like, well, it's doing the same
thing as the other one.
He's like, seriously.
I don't get it.
I think the hype's just around because it
looks cool or it is cool or it's
trendy or whatever.
I think it's become like a fashion brand.
Pro Tools Expert did a really good article
(26:05):
recently about EQs, digital plug-in EQs and
what the difference is with how some of
the math happens.
And the really good ones will oversample because
if not, you get some reflections and some
things that happen.
But I think that even that, again, just
like with the chips, and oh, you can
just buy buckets of these good chips now,
(26:26):
same thing.
You go up on the web and there's
just all this open source code.
You want to make a good EQ?
There's open source code that will give you
a good starting point for building your own
EQ.
And a lot of this knowledge has gotten
commonplace.
And I think what happens because of that
also is that it makes everything more disposable.
(26:48):
So these mics are so much better now
that now it's like, oh, I bought a
mic.
Oh, I bought another mic.
I didn't like that mic anymore.
And you end up with like 80 microphones
in your closet.
Whereas back in the day, you'd buy a
414, and that was your mic for life.
And some people still do that.
But now you can buy 20 mics for
(27:11):
the same price as your one 414, and
each one has a slightly different character and
a different form factor and works in the
bag here and works for traveling there.
And they're all almost that really kick-ass
414.
Not really, but they're so close that you're
willing to spend the money on multiple items
and flexibility, and it's become disposable, unfortunately, I
(27:34):
think.
There's also drum mic kits.
You can see drum mic kits that are
entire kit.
Everything's mic for $300.
200 bucks.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Those are very common.
Yeah, I think it all comes down to
your skills.
Your skills as an engineer and the basic
skills.
A good engineer can take the junkiest gear
(27:57):
and get a really good sound out of
it, unless there's something that's technically wrong with
that piece of gear.
I manage to save Robert every week, so,
you know, there's a start.
And that's starting, that's not even the gear,
that's just, like, the talent and the voice.
That's right.
There's a lot to fix.
(28:17):
Just mute his track, it's pretty easy to
fix, Robert.
Just mute that track.
Yeah.
That's all right.
Well, that was fun.
Is it over?
(28:52):
All right.
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