Tug of war
Pass Labs X150.8 Stereo Power Amplifier Speaking with my audio buddy about speaker driver linearity last night, I found myself asking a basic question that sprung to mind. We’re making speakers lately, and the new design is more right and honest, he says. A hi-hat strike sounds like you’re next to the kit. Which prompted me to pose the query: how is it that we chase our tails so much to hear that hi-hat as sounding actually realistic, when the recording / mastering side of things likely had the signal running through hundreds of feet of stepped-on, budget cabling? The mic used is likely colored by heavy use in the 10 years the studio owned it, including (for the sake of argument) a good 10 drops, plenty of plosives and lots of spit. The mixing engineer maybe had a small room with a subwoofer that was just good enough to get the job done. But did he ever hear all of the detail and harmonics on the recording? When we can hear what we hear only with world class electronics...