Definitely monitors and room treatment. Until you can truly hear what you're doing, you can do nothing.

Well, a good and decent mic deserves a very good mic pre. And if you get something in the channel strip catagory you can have the mic pre and eq, mic pre and comp or all three and that would make the biggest difference in sound quality. However, what you have seems to be enough to work with and you yet you are not very likely to be able to hear the major differences in quality or judge what your doing now fairly by using computer monitors, so upgrading to at least good to very good monitors would very likely be the wiser choice to focus on now.

a third for monitors, and room treatment to go with them.

Mike, I love your signature! I can relate! :c:

hi,
when i read your post i first went for the mic pre.
I bought a very good one a few years ago and it really took the sound of my recordings to another
level, BUT, a good sounding room with good monitors are second to none...you may have the perfect gear and the best performers, a bad accoustic will just give you perfectly-well-detailed crap...
fortunately one wouldn't tell on bad monitors...
I hope this will help a bit (tell you what, this quest never ends ;)

rufuss
producer/mix engineer

I vote for monitors also.. although in a scenario where you record the mic flat with no eq or other modifications prior to the recorder, a great mic pre would do the most to improve your sound. Unfortunatly you would then have to take your recording to a playback system that was accurate to hear the difference. This is a "which comes first, chicken or the egg" type question. You really need, good monitors and a great pre.. converters should be last on the list. If you can't generate a good signal in the first place and then be able to hear what you are doing to it, converters will not help one bit. With conversion it's a real case of garbage in, "garbage out".

A click!

:D

I've been spending time doing go-fer work at a friend's studio. All his Neumann and Beyers, Davisound, and Presonus cannot make these bands keep time.

[ now running for the door ]

Bad timing is not the issue here.

Sorry about the levity.

Resume ultra-serious mode now.

Originally posted by bgavin:
Sorry about the levity.

Resume ultra-serious mode now.

:p That's funny!

Kurt, I like your chicken/egg analysis. It sums up the circular thinking pretty good. :roll:

Well, I haven't researched any monitor yet...here I go again :roll: The fiancee is going to go crazy!

i faced a similar dilemma recently and ended up getting a pair of yamaha msp5's (thanx for the review!) and it's made a huge difference in my mixes and i agree that w/o good monitors you can't really even hear how good or bad your gear sounds. my question was, and i hope this doesn't sound extremely ignorant but im still new to recording, how much of a difference will a good mic pre make in recording quality? would it be better to invest in a better microphone (im using a blue baby bottle)? i've saved up enough to purchase a sebatron vmp-2000 but wanted to ask first, thx.

David,

> which piece of gear should I purchase first, that will improve the quality of my recordings the most? <

I'm with David and Mike. All the gear in the world is useless if you can't hear what you're doing while getting sounds and mixing.

--Ethan

I've been there. What to purchase first for the largest improvement to my recordings. A preamp is not on the top of the list. You have to put time into getting your acoustics in your room correct. This has been the greatest improvement for me. The acoustics forum is a life saver. Second I would say your monitors. Once you have this you can appreciate what a good preamp can sound like. I would also say your AD/DA conversion. I upgraded my converters and thats when it felt like a blanket was lifted. But you won't notice unless you get your listening environment up to speed. Hope this helps.

If the question was, "How do I get better overall sound out of my studio?" then the advice to add new monitors makes sense.

But,if the question is "What piece of gear do I buy to make better recordings?" then the best monitor in the world will not make a poor recording a better recording, it will only better reveal the performance limitations of upstream components in the audio chain.

If you already have a great mic, then spend your money on the the A-to-D and then maybe your mic pre. Only they can actually improve the quality of a recording, a set of monitors can only reveal what the playback system can do, it can't actually improve it.

With a new ADC/DAC you get improvements at both ends of the signal chain (recording and playback).

This is an audiophile perspective. It says spend a large percentage of your budget on the source, which you have already done with a quality microphone. Downstream components from the microphone cannot improve the signal that is already there, they can only distort it. The degree of that distortion depends on the quality of the component thru which the analog signal is passing.

Some of the posters here did not answer the question that was asked.

No doubt there will be some dissenters to this opinion, but it's the same in the audio world where many well-meaning people believe speakers to be the most important component in the audio chain. It is true that speakers have the potential to colour the sound more than any other component, but the truth is, the source component is always the most important.

Improve the source and you improve the whole system. When you have the dough to get better monitors then you will have better recordings to listen to.

Originally posted by Hawkeye:
If the question was, "How do I get better overall sound out of my studio?" then the advice to add new monitors makes sense.

But,if the question is "What piece of gear do I buy to make better recordings?" then the best monitor in the world will not make a poor recording a better recording,

I beg to differ. Good monitors will indeed make a recording better. I'm not even thinking on the mixing end. I'm thinking on the tracking end.

When you mix, you can take the mix to several different cars and hi-fi systems and boom boxes to see what you really did and then go back and make changes.

When you are tracking and a 30 degree tilt and two inch movement of a microphone can make all of the differnce between a workable sound and crap, you really don't have the time to burn a CD and check on 10 different systems. You have to hear that mic as you're placing it with the rest of the mix playing.

So yeah, good monitors will make a recording better.

Monitors for a recording engineer are like contact lenses for a painter: Say a painter has mediocre paints, brushes, and canvases as well as a horribly incorrect prescription for his contact lenses. Even though the lenses themselves have nothing to do with the process of putting paint on a canvas (just like monitors do nothing to transport or alter the sound) a better lens perscription will certainly make a better painting.

From the perspective of the original post, the monitors will be the point of initial great improvement.
If the discussion is about what can create the largest amount of difference for someone with decent gear and a trained ear then the answer will always be the room.

The lava lamp.

No seriously, it's the performers.

Topic: What makes the most improvement in sound quality?

Cleaning out your ears.

knowing the ins and out of your mics and pre's, which you won't be able to hear without good monitors, you can get a decent sound with decent equipment giving you can hear whats going on.

I'd vote the monitor/room treatment.

I'm amazed at what passes for monitors, considering the mega-bux spent on preamps and mics.

Why are time-aligned drivers out of vogue? The right circumstances of crossover frequency and physical spacing with non-time aligned drivers will cause a suck-out at the crossover frequency.

I also don't understand the popularity of wimpy two-way monitors that cannot hope to produce the full audio spectrum. Why is bi-amping ignored, or subwoofers? As a bassist, I know how popular the low B 5-bangers are today. How can you mix what you cannot hear?

Wandering my ears around my friend's studio during kick drum setup reveals how much Ethan Winer's bass traps are needed in every control room.

No question, monitors.

How does a half-deaf person improve the quality of his speaking voice? Improve his hearing.

No here has pointed this out yet, so I will. No matter what monitors you have, you also have to know what kind of approach to mixing is going to give you the results you want. I have been in many "world-class" studios with Big Reds, Urei time aligns, and every other concoction of expensive monitoring system out there, and you STILL have to know the control room acoustics to mix on them. Placement of monitors is just as important as the model number, for example.

STILL... it all boils down to knowing what balance of lows, mids and highs to use on that system to achieve what you want to hear. Many producers always mix in the same room because what they want to hear naturally in that room translates well to the mass market. But someone else in the same room might not get the results they want at all.

There is a LONG story about mixing Fleetwood Mac's Rumors, how they went to 5 studios like the Record Plant in Hollywood, and did things to the control rooms like hang blankets, etc, and they still couldn't get the mix they wanted. They then came to Producer's Workshop in Hollywood to studio B where they had a pair of Big Reds hung vertically, 8 feet apart, with no EQ. They mixed the album in there. I was on staff there (2 years later) and I mixed in that room, but I didn't love the way my mixes sounded. Not many other artists mixed in there either.

The point is that if one knows HOW to make their mixes sound, frequency-wise, etc, on any set of speakers, they can theoretically mix anywhere. If you have been listening to your living room JBL's for 20 years and you know how records sound in there, you could use that environment for mixing, assuming you approach it by saying "I am going to mix my songs so they fit in with what I hear when I'm playing commercial music in there."

Now granted, the better your monitors are the more you can hear. Therefore great monitors are a huge plus. BUT... just because you buy great monitors it does NOT automatically guarantee great mixes. I know, I have been there a million times. You still have to understand HOW to mix in any room (how tight to make the bass, how bright for mids and highs). You should listen to commercial music in every room to see how it sounds, and you must take your mixes away and listen on all kinds of systems.

I have sometimes taken a mix I am working on, brought in some music that I want to match, and A/B'ed between them until I got the basic frequency response. It works pretty well, as long as the content is basically the same. But once again, not a perfect solution.

Bottom line - mixing is HARD. getting something to sound great in the room you are sitting in is a piece of cake, getting a competitive sound for the real world is extremely difficult and takes years of practice. The solution is having a room where you have figured out a way to do it, and always doing it the same way.

Originally posted by cruisemates:
...The solution is having a room where you have figured out a way to do it, and always doing it the same way.

:) I like this one; it is like KNOW THY ROOM! You have to know the forces working against you. Reference quality speakers will help because you have something to base analysis of all the other potential problems.

Ya, speakers and amps.

--Rick

That's some good insight!

Boy, I bet you didn't know how big of a can of worms you were going to open.

Tons of records have been produced using the Mackie Preamp and less then "great" mics. However, I have never heard of a great or even good record that has been produced on a pair of crappy monitors. The great news is that there are several "excellent" (not good, not great, excellent) monitors available for not a lot of dough. KRK ST6s and ST8s, Tannoy Reveals, and Event are all great examples of excellent speakers for not a lot of money. True these are nowhere near the caliber of PMC's, Haflers, ADAM's, or ATC's, but they will give you significant "bang for the buck" and will elevate you well beyond standard "home speakers" or computer speakers.

With all that being said, there have been plenty of good/great records made in "less than perfect" acoustic environments. NOTE: I'm in no way suggesting that acoustical treatments are not important; they are crucial. However, if you truly know how your room works and are capable of compensating for this, you can still do okay. (Your room has to at least be decent to begin with. If you're mixing in an 8x8x8 room with hardwood floors and ambient levels of 50dB, you need a lot of help.) However, a little dough, well planned can go a long way as far as acoustically treating a room.

If you are on a shoe-string budget, as most of us are, plan your money out well. There is no reason to blow 10K on monitors and 15k on acoustical treatment unless you are truly already in the mode of producing mega-hits for the radio and Best Buy.

Start modest - the worst thing that can happen from this is that when you do make it big, you at least already have most of the gear for "Studio B."

Enjoy!

J...

:c: