Decent Sound Systems
- Started
- Last post
- 11 Responses
- vaxorcist0
I know a sound engineer whose mantra is that the room is more important than the gear.... some rooms sound great with minimal gear, some require lots of placement and careful testing with metering equipment and some EQ, and some sound like shit no matter what you do unless you cover the walls in sound insulation....
He laughs at audiophiles who endlessly talk gear... yes, he uses great stuff, often makes his own speakers out of parts from madisound.com but then again, he's an engineer(!)
- I've heard similar from a friend who is an audio engineerd_rek
- mikotondria30
I loved the underfloor rig at Fabric when I first heard it back in 2000 - dancefloor rammed with muscley gay man - jammed together like big gay sardines, and the sound just cut through it all, none of the muffled 'club sound' (which I actually like), just like the sound was coming from the air itself, not any speakers.
The one they all rave about now of course is the Funktion One - some old-school thinking gone into it - keep the amps low, keep everything at that point at which it distorts the signal the least, don't jam fucking MP3s into people's ears at 110db - that's fucking rude. Doesn't entirely have to be analog imho, but anything less that 24/320 is nasty, don't pay money to have people play that at you.
More eloquent than I can be:
- mikotondria30
I think the best non-club/PA sound I ever heard was in the cutting room when we got some masters/plates made - can't for the life of me remember where - might have been Abbey road, might have been The Exchange - giving him a DAT of the material, the engineer took us back into the cutting/mastering suite, and just ran through it on little boxes, like NS-10m's or some shit, then after he was satisfied there wasn't anything dangerous, opened up the massive monitors which were literally about 5 feet by 3 by 3, 10's of thousands of dollars' worth - massive, limitless power, every tiny piece of sound perfectly held in space, bass just warping time itself, like stepping into a cathedral - the walls of the studio just seemed like an optical illusion, it was like instantly being at 10000 feet, the soundstage went back forever, over hills and plains and into a distance I'd never heard before, truly a magical thing to behold those meager few hundred (dozen, probably) watts of breathless, unwavering clear power passing into the air like an ancient god summoned from the depths. It's quite stayed with me, that experience.
- :D
I got chills reading this.monospaced - It was monstrous, dark, unstoppable power that the sound had moulded like throbbing clear mute clay.mikotondria3
- :D
- pressplay0
Berghain in Berlin has an amazing soundsystem. It’s so well defined and clear and crisp that you don’t even notice that it’s also loud.
- So it's said, yes - never made it there. Was stateside when it started. Still good there ?mikotondria3
- monospaced0
You know what kind of sound system was installed in a club where Orbit played in 1994... ummm...
I once had the pleasure of watching movies and listening to music at a movie studio and THX room the size of a warehouse, very industrial looking but mind-blowing. I believe they mixed audio film audio in that room. I've been a wannabe audiophile ever since.
- Morning_star0
Drugs. They make everything sound ace without the expense, need for electricity and dull-as-fuck sound technicians.
- epic_rim0
twilo in ny had a good one there for a while.
- Yes it did. That 'stage' that was just bass bins. Tore me a new one, that did. Phenomenal output. Not entirely accurate :)mikotondria3
- vaxorcist0
The Grateful Dead's Wall of Sound.... put together by the acid man Owsley himself....
- 23kon0
I've got a small sony MD/Tape/CD/Radio system at home that's about 10 years old that is still going and still producing amazingly beautiful sound.
I use it as monitors for making music as well as listening to music on. I know it's sound inside out and can create music using them that sounds good on all other instances without much tweaking.
It wasn't an expensive system new either! It always surprises me how well it handles music.
Just last night I was listening to the Neil Tennant CD from the Pet Shop Boys "Back to Mine" album whilst chilling with the lady.
A great compilation CD full of chilled piano, classical and minimal electro music. I kept turning it right up and getting high off the music.