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Date:	Sat, 5 Apr 2003 19:14:18 PST8
From:	Peter Skye <pskye@peterskye.com >
Reply-To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
Subject:	SCOUG-Help: Re: Vinyl to CD | other-than-mainstream gear

Content Type: text/plain

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J. R. Fox wrote:
>
> > How do you monitor what you are doing?
> > How do you know if there's a skip?
>
> Headphones !

A good pair of headphones is an excellent way to monitor. You can't mix
with them (I and many others have tried) but with a high-end pair the
sound is very clean. My personal favorites are from Beyer -- they sound
great, plenty of isolation and they're quite comfy even if you wear them
for hours.

> > Good. You have isolation.
>
> I can only imagine what it would be if I resided in S.D.

My Duck will personally visit you tomorrow and bite you on the ankle.

> . . . you might only find out about in the
> pages of (for example) The Absolute Sound.

Dedicated audiophile equipment manufacturers _do_ create quality
products.

I had a handful of tests I used to run on any equipment or in any studio
to quickly find out if the "sound" was clean, and you might want to use
some or all of them on your OS/2 audio system:

1. Sine wave sweep for frequency response and for aliasing artifacts.
2. Square wave sweep to look for ringing with an oscilloscope (ask me
if you want to do this, it isn't what most techs think it is).
3. Pink noise with spectral analysis for room acoustic analysis (sine
waves are delusional for this test).
4. Channel phase check with an oscilloscope (x-y).

You can run various noise and distortion tests if you want but since
they are both so easy to hear it doesn't make much sense to measure for
them. I don't bother, I just use my ears.

Finally, for room acoustics I just walk around and clap my hands. If
you do this in enough rooms (from tiny to auditorium) you learn what
your hand claps are _supposed_ to sound like. Low-tech but quite
accurate. For studio mix rooms I always brought along a 15" tape dub of
Nicolette Larsen's "Lotta Love", which I would play through the room's
monitors to get a "feel" for the sound.

Funny story: Years ago I was at a home in Bel Air whose owner had been
a well-known performer. As I walked across his living room I noticed
that the low-end from his sound system went away. I pulled out his
amplifier and found that, for years, he had been playing his tapes and
records with his speakers out of phase.

- Peter

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