Do you think recording studios have bad days?

Good point re U2 aiming for the rough sound in the early days. They stemmed from the punk revolution so their records in a way aimed at sounding like that. The point is - their music was anything but punk (at least to me).

Anyhow - the recent re-masters, overseen by The Edge, addressed some of the 'shortcomings'. But one would have re-mix the entire catalogue, which of course is not feasible.

I want to throw this in the mix too, and I hope the wise forum comments!

Compare the speaker used in a recording studio to what the consumer can buy. I know Abbey Road uses B&Ws  speaker, not its top model, the Nautilus, but a high model. That in itself shows the studio is not the pinnacle. Moreover, there are speakers going over £100,000 and taking aesthetics into account, that’s still leagues ahead Abbey Road as example.

So is the recording studio therefore NOT the highest fidelity?

Most of the studios use active monitors during the recording, mixing and mastering.

Speakers are in a way insignificant here - they will not make a bad recording / mixing sound good or good mixing / recording sound bad.

That’s curious, Adam, so can I infer that even though they have better electronics recording and mixing, the best sound comes from an optimal well set up home system - and many forum members may think of DB as to my reading DB has an active Naim highest tier???

The corollary of that is that the home listener hears it better than the musician!!!!

FME, albeit not universal I admit, professional musicians tend not to be overly obsessed with the quality of their domestic playback kit.  From another point of view there is little point in having high end hifi speakers to monitor studio playback because an insignificant number of consumers own such equipment.  When I worked in the record business - as it used to be known - the final test of a recording was to play it back through a standard portable FM radio that had had an input socket and suitable circuitry added. The acid test by the 1980's - was how it would be heard on FM by prospective purchasers.

Consciousmess posted:

That’s curious, Adam, so can I infer that even though they have better electronics recording and mixing, the best sound comes from an optimal well set up home system - and many forum members may think of DB as to my reading DB has an active Naim highest tier???

The corollary of that is that the home listener hears it better than the musician!!!!

Actually -  on the contrary.

A good studio (say a mixing one) will have equipment with price tags that will make even a Statement seem like a bargain. To illustrate a point - a good mixing console (say 48 channels) from either SSL or Neve can go up to a cool EUR 1 million. Plus all the off-board equipment.... and active speakers... and some more...

To use a car analogy - if your day-to-day car is a Formula 1-spec, nothing else available for domestic use, will come close to it. 

bluedog posted:

FME, albeit not universal I admit, professional musicians tend not to be overly obsessed with the quality of their domestic playback kit.  From another point of view there is little point in having high end hifi speakers to monitor studio playback because an insignificant number of consumers own such equipment.  When I worked in the record business - as it used to be known - the final test of a recording was to play it back through a standard portable FM radio that had had an input socket and suitable circuitry added. The acid test by the 1980's - was how it would be heard on FM by prospective purchasers.

Good point - the final acid test is: how will it sound on an average stereo, in a car, from an iPod, etc, etc...|

But... first it has to sound good to my ears, running a 96kHz / 24 bit file via my NDS / 252 / 300 and Ovators