... remember ...
the sampling rate of Analog equipment is infinity.... :d:

:w:

It makes me sad to see a company like Focusrite stoop to products like this and the cheeze platinum series stuff, aiming at the low end of the market (I call it bottomfeeding). I realize that there are a lot of people who simply don't know any better or who just want a rack full of blinking lights and knobs, or most likely can't hear very well who think this stuff is a good thing but I personally wouldn't mind if all the cheap sh*t gear on the planet disappeared in a puff of smoke. Now that would be cool ... hee hee hee, all at the same moment, all the prosumer gear on the planet spontaniously combusts. Ohh, one can only dream. The sound of a million PODs hitting the dumpster all at once would be a beautiful thing.

Kurt, we think a lot a like! It is indeed a real shame that there is a much bigger market to make profit from crap then there is in real pro audio. And it's only likley to get worse. I thought Focusrite might be on to something until I read the description and saw what color the faceplate was. It then instantly reminded me of all those other boxes they make with the same color. It is possible that it ends up being not what they claim, but a different yet helpful useable tool like I have found the Mic modeler to sometimes be.

AudioGaff,
At the risk of turning this into a “mutual admiration society”, I have to say I am happy to see you here posting. It’s nice to see someone that is interested more in the pro side of things and is not obsessed with the “free lunch” concept. Some people just don’t understand that quality is expensive. Many tell me the music and the performances are the most important aspects and I agree with this but doesn’t the best songwriting and musicianship also deserve the best reproduction possible? Yes, I would much rather hear a good song performed brilliantly but badly recorded than a great recording of a crappy musician singing a lousy song but in the best of situations, a wonderfully recorded performance of a singer like Nat “King” Cole, as in what Bill Putnam did, is IMO the “best”. Better than Viagra..

hey Kurt... Are you receiving lots of Viagra Spam also, bud?
lol

Thanks!. Once again I concur and agree. Oh, And that also goes for all the other stuff you said not directly aimed at me. :c:

I guess if I knew more about the cheap and/or budget boxes I could offer more help but I am severely limited and challaged in those areas...

Originally posted by AudioGaff:

I guess if I knew more about the cheap and/or budget boxes I could offer more help but I am severely limited and challaged in those areas...

I get requests to review a lot of that stuff. I tried some of it a couple of times but I hate being in a position of having to tell a manufacturer that I don't have anythig good to say regarding a piece they have sent out to me. It's a waste of their time and money and a waste of my time. So I now only request "pro" gear. Sobbish of me? No, considerate.

Howdy

Divorced from its emulations, it might make an interesting box. Why oh why must it sound "just like" Vintage box X to be useful? Who cares? I just want something that makes getting good sounds easy.

I think a lot of these emulation boxes are useful for musos who want quick variety. But the worst thing they do is call it "Marshall" or "Neve" and say its "indistinguishable" from the original. Please. The same technology without emulative names would be less unacceptable.

I'm still keen to hear it. I hope I can hear it without having some insipid salesdude say "whoa, they nailed the V72!"

Like, dude...

Hey, This makes sense that Focusrite is now making a box that sounds like everything else... they no longer seem to be able to make stuff that sounds like Focusrite!!! :D :D ;) :p David

Maybe another company will make something that emulates Focusrite gear, and a few other companies will also hop on the bandwagon and we'll have a whole bunch of stuff that emulates Focusrite.

Then Focusrite will come up with a box which emulates the equipment which emulates Focusrite gear.

One Second, doesn't it use convolution though?
Convolution is some pretty nifty stuff, If it is at all as good as Altiverb or SIR then I expect it to do well.

I have messed with SIR and some very nice impulses and been impressed with it's ability to sound very close to the real thing. I mean the fact that they are using impluse response technology in and of itself is pretty cool imo, too bad it is bound to have crummy conversion and a substandard pre. If i had the money and reason for something of this nature however, I would take a Sintefex or that new tascam convolution plug over the focusrite any day.

Well, I finally took a look at their web site and I'm glad I did. It does use convolution but I'm curious how that would work to sample various mic pres. Convolution only works on linear stuff as far as my understanding of it goes. I'm more curious then the other curmudgeons on this board. If I were to try to develop such a product then I would most certainly start with Convolution. Since a pre is not linear but reacts differently at different input levels and content I think it would be quite a task to capture all of it's nuances accurately. I would like to hear it and see what they've done.

Originally posted by John Grimm (Vintage Studios):
Convolution only works on linear stuff as far as my understanding of it goes.

Actually if it is done well, it will respond just like the real thing, just in a digital realm, meaning all the characters of the sound will affect it's reaction, dynamics, timbre etc. I know that the Sintefex does this, this is how it is able to offer things which rely on amplitude such as compression.

Peace, :p:

How would it model things like attack/release times, etc? Those things are time dependant and the generally accepted way to create impulse response is a short burst of broadband.

I can see it working on "preset values" on compressors to a certain extent, but I don't think it would be able to realistically pull off variable attack/release settings.

A little off-topic, but personally, I really wish that digital signal processing/emulation would just focus on getting new good sounds, rather than trying to emulate analog gear and coming up to 90% of the way. There's just so many things analog gear gives that would take an infinite attention to detail in digital algorithms to emulate, and on the flip side there are so many things that can only be done in the digital realm, like phase-free EQ for example. Why make one try to sound like the other?

I know I use a combination of my PODxt and a couple of pre and post EQs to get MY own guitar tone rather tearing my hair out trying to make it sound exactly like vintage amps. Gotten used to it.

Many many years ago I found this Link removed

I'm not sure how good this is compared to what they're doing today, and at least this author says it's not %100 accurate, but I'd have to say it can be useful to some degree.. for making new sounds..

I don't think at $3,500 (I think that is the asking price) it is aimed at the lower end of the market!?

I think if this unit gets close to the sound of the boxes it is copying then it could be a great invention for those who want a variety of tones and can't afford the 80 boxes it is attempting to emulate. Even if it doesn't sound like the real toys, it will surely offer a wide variety of additional colours to the engineer/producer to play with etc? If it does do what it says, to within 90% accuracy, it could be used to find which piece of classic analog kit works with a certain source and then the purist could take out or hire in the original box!!

Lots of good points on this thread. I agree that the liquid would be much less controversial if it were advertized just as a pre/comp with a number of different (generic) flavors. But it would also lose marketing edge in this era of 'if you can't beat 'em, model 'em, or better yet, convolve 'em.'

Convolution is for linear time invariant systems only. Unfortunately, that's a bit of a paradox. Linear time invariant systems are rare in nature, although more common in man-made systems, specifically those in the digital realm.

Think about it: A room, hot and humid today, dry and cold tomorrow, will produce two distinct reverbs. And a pre in the room will have two different sounds. Simply because the air affects the travelling sound waves and device components. Step to the left a foot, and the reverb changes. Step to the right a foot.... Stretch the time period far enough, and basically any system varies.

An analogy would be the study of gravity in the earth's atmosphere. Take out air friction (which they do until sophomore level undergrad physics) and it becomes a LTI system. Add it in, and there is no way to calculate any velocity, acceleration, or position of any object in the earth's atmosphere precisely, on a piece of paper, let alone a stack of college ruled binders full of paper. You can get accurate, on a supercomputer cluster, but not precise.

Another drawback in Altiverb is that it models reverb characteristics from a point source, a speaker. In a chamber, the cello on that side will experience a different reverb than the viola on the other side. The audio does not originate at a point source.

Having said that, Altiverb sounds superb.

I think the technique used in the liquid pre is something akin to sampling the response of the pre at all possible input levels, with all possible knob settings. Which attempts to account for the variance in the response to input level for a given set of parameter values. And including harmonic distortion as a separate variable, which attempts to account for model variance.

They may get close, They may get astonishingly close. But never will they produce a 100% clone of any piece of gear. No one will ever do that. The staggering amount of variables are entirely too much to overcome, especially at this stage in technological evolution. As technology progresses, its kind of like the logarithmic curve. It will forever approach 0, but never reach it.

However, close is good for me, mr. no budget. Hell I'm still using and AT-3050 going into OMNI Studio Pres. (liquid's gotta be better than that) And its good for a lot of people. And its good for Audioease's, Focusrite's, Bomb Factory's, and Universal Audio's marketing staffs.

Times are a changin, for better or worse. I, for one, applaud the efforts of the emulator manufacturers in allowing me to approach a higher quality of sound on a demo budget. There are those who abuse the technology (so did the manhattan project), but as a beginner, I have learned that technique is supreme to tool. I have approximations of the tools, and I am learning the technique. If and/or when the technique I've learned allows me to do this for a living, then I'll buy the proper tools. Until then, I am happy to know that I can have $50,000 in compressors and EQs for $599, and $100,000 in pres for $3500.

mitz

I think about the same way as I think of movie effects: If you can't create something realistically, don't even bother showing it, cause it just pisses me off.

Actually, I could care less about it. But no one asked me so I'll just go jump in a lake. Hey if it's really liquid it won't mind joining me. Put it in it's place. RWAHAHAHA
:h:

Originally posted by mitzelplik:

Times are a changin, for better or worse. I, for one, applaud the efforts of the emulator manufacturers in allowing me to approach a higher quality of sound on a demo budget.

mitz

Well, therein kinda lies the rub don't it. But there's something else. What, exactly, defines "cheap shit gear" in the first place? I've never been a big fan of modelers or emulators personally, but lemme do the devil's advocate thing here for a minute.

Let's assume that the Liquid thingy lists at 3500 clams. Alrightee then, that puts it in the same ballpark (price-wise) as:

- a DW Fearn VT-2 dual tube mic pre (~$3600.00)
- an Avalon AD2055 (~$3450.00)
- a Chandler TG1 limiter (~$3600.00)
- almost anything from EAR, Manley or GML

Don't hear too many of the pro audio high priesthood pronouncing that lot to be "cheap shit gear," so it must not be the price of the box that defines it as "cheap" (and with a price tag of 3500 bucks, I don't see how anyone could possibly consider it "cheap"). Perhaps it's the "all-in-one" aspect. Well, that puts the Liquid in the same boat as stuff like a Manley SLAM and VoxBox, ISA 430 and the like. Again, not exactly the kind of gear one expects to find in the hands of bottom feeders. So perhaps it's not really the combo plate aspect either.

So what is it? Kurt says quality is expensive and I generally agree with that. But what does a piece of gear have to cost before it's considered "quality?" Why are some multifunction units "quality" and others "cheap shit gear?" Again, where's the dividing line between cool and crap? And if all the cheap gear did indeed disappear in a puff of smoke - never to be sold again - how long do you think the venerable gear companies who've added it to their product lists would last selling only to the "pros?"

It could very well be that many, perhaps even most, of the bottom feeders either can't tell the difference in quality or are just after the blinking light factor. But there's one other crucial aspect to that for some of us on the lower rungs of the audio ladder. It's not necessarily that we can't hear very well or just want a bunch of knobs and blinking lights - it's that we simply can't afford the high dollar items. So what are we to do? Give it up altogether because we can't afford the stuff that gets the high priesthood's stamp of approval? Hell, even many of today's pro's didn't start out buying their own LA's and SLAM's. They had the privelege of interning in someone else's room and gradually working their way up the ladder. Well, from what I've been reading here and elsewhere, that path to audio enlightment is rapidly disappearing. So that doesn't leave us "bottom feeders" who want to improve our chops much choice but to be tarred as the audio equivalent of AOL'ers because we can usually only afford to buy the cheap stuff.

I'm not saying the proliferation of cheap stuff is good or bad, it just is. It's a response to to market forces that are driving everyone to scramble to make the bottom line. Does it suck? Sure. Reality bites. So does a limited gear budget.

But what does a piece of gear have to cost before it's considered "quality?" Why are some multifunction units "quality" and others "cheap shit gear?" Again, where's the dividing line between cool and crap?

Great quality gear costs more for several reasons. The two most important reasons is that high quality parts are required for great quality audio gear and thus cost much more to produce and to manufacture into a product. Second, great quality audio products are not mass produced, so the basic overhead cost, components, assembly and distribution is much higher than that of a big company that has the resources to mass produce and bring production costs down.

The biggest difference bewteen those that make crap and those that don't is those who manfacture products with the highest quality, standards, and value as priority, and those that exploit quality, technology and standards for the sake of profit as priority. I can make a preamp with as little as a couple of IC's and an eq with a few more, and A2D with even a few more. And if I even want to custom design it all into one DSP/ASIC, I can do that too. But just because I or some company can make a product, or make a product cheap, that doesn't mean it is a product anybody wants, needs or has any real value. In fact it is this kind of mentality of companies that keep making products, audio or otherwise just for the sake of the quick and easy dollar and to take that dollar away from some other company instead of offering a product of real value or a product that provides a real needed service that plauges the consumer marketplace in general.

Crap is fairly easy to identify. When a company that has a history and expertise in making one product all of the sudden starts making other non related products, the same kind of products already being made by other companies, with all of the same kind of features as other products and are in the same price range as most of the other same products, you should be very skeptical and cautious. These are also the kind of products that are not likely to be around in three years because once they have taken your money and word gets out that they are crap, they copy from someone else, repackage what they have, or come up with something slightly different and do it all over again.

Originally posted by Skeetch:
Hell, even many of today's pro's didn't start out buying their own LA's and SLAM's. They had the privelege of interning in someone else's room and gradually working their way up the ladder. Well, from what I've been reading here and elsewhere, that path to audio enlightment is rapidly disappearing. So that doesn't leave us "bottom feeders" who want to improve our chops much choice but to be tarred as the audio equivalent of AOL'ers because we can usually only afford to buy the cheap stuff.

I'm not saying the proliferation of cheap stuff is good or bad, it just is. It's a response to to market forces that are driving everyone to scramble to make the bottom line. Does it suck? Sure. Reality bites. So does a limited gear budget.

Well let's for moment pretend that there isn't any "budget gear" available. This takes us back to the same condition as in pre TEAC / TASCAM days .. If you wanted to build a "home studio" (and they were around in those days, a lot of the early Motown cuts that were out of LA were done in Armin Steiner’s studio he built above his mother garage) you went out a purchased a used tape machine, like an Ampex, 3M or Scully and as most recordists did in those days, you built your own outboard equipment. All these old time cats did this. Guys like Steiner, Joe Meek, Les Paul, Bill Putnam, Tom Dowd, the list is endless. That is why they called them “recording engineers”. They had electronics engineering backgrounds. This was the golden age of recording when some of the best recordings ever, were produced and many of the chops we now take for granted, like close micing were developed. The mentor system was a large part of this. People handed down the skills and knowledge. This was also a "golden age" for American Labor. 60% of all jobs in the US were union. People could afford to purchase homes, new cars, musical instruments, etc. Then came the 70's, Nixon kissed the Chinese' asses so manufacturers could take advantage of cheap Chinese labor due to a lack of labor organization and enviornmental control. State side, there was union busting, gas shortages, Watergate and finally Reganomics. The rich got richer and the poor got poorer. At the same time, the "semi pro studio" market was born. It was all downhill after that kiddies!

FLASH!! Back to modern times, the real world! Now we have modelers that will auto master your song, supposedly emulate mic and pre combinations, there is auto tune and time stretch adifinitem. Is the state of the business any better? I don't think so.

The record companies are complaining of a 33% loss of revenues in the past few years. Now, aspiring recordists have nowhere to go to get a start, even cleaning toilets in a studio because all the smaller demos studios that used to exist just 10 years ago have closed down, because for what it costs to do a song in said studio, a kid can go buy a Chinese mic and a 16 track potty studio and record forever. This is the thinking. Never mind that it sounds like hell, the marketing says the mic is as good as a "German" counterpart, and the potty studio has compression, efx, eq and promises "pristine" 24 bit performance. The kid who has never been exposed to quality, simply doesn't know any better. So the state of the music is worse, the state of the art is worse, young people who really want to get into this business have nowhere to go to get a start and the only people who are benefiting are those who are taking the jobs from the workers who lived in industrialized western countries, made a decent living wage and contributed back in the form of taxes and money into their economies. These manufacturers pay a small fraction of that cash flow to people in China who are working under near slave labor conditions with no regard for environmental concerns, keeping a portion of the balance for themselves and the rest is discounted as the manufacturer shoots for a niche in the market at a lower price point. So as in all things, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

Let me add that one of the reasons so many of now are crying poor, "I can't afford the good stuff", is because all these good paying manufacting jobs have been shipped of to China and other 3rd World countries. If we could get a job somewhere, besides flipping burgers at McDonalds, perhaps more of us could afford a Neumann U87?

To add insult to injury, much of the gear that proliferates out of these conditions, is substandard. People have forgotten what a really good record sounds like. The whole industry has been “dumbed down” in this quest for "affordability".

Not much of this has anything to do with the Focusrite question here but it is an answer to the previous question.

[ October 16, 2003, 02:06 PM: Message edited by: Kurt Foster ]

Think about it: A room, hot and humid today, dry and cold tomorrow, will produce two distinct reverbs. And a pre in the room will have two different sounds. Simply because the air affects the travelling sound waves and device components. Step to the left a foot, and the reverb changes. Step to the right a foot.... Stretch the time period far enough, and basically any system varies.

An analogy would be the study of gravity in the earth's atmosphere. Take out air friction (which they do until sophomore level undergrad physics) and it becomes a LTI system.

mitz [/QB]

I am very interested in learning more about this fascinating area, but I will honestly admit that much of your answer went over my head.

So, if it wouldn't be too much of a drag, would you mind elaborating on a couple of things you said?

1st: I accept your premise that humidity and temperature affect the way a room sounds (and certainly an instrument as well!). But could you, in layman's terms, be more descriptive? In a qualitative way, how does increasing or decreasing humidity tend to affect specific sounds? And same with temperature? Does the speed of sound change with temperature and humidity, and how does that translate into what we hear? Or is it more a factor of walls becoming more or less reflective or absorbant.

2nd: What is an LTI system?

Sorry if these questions are embarassingly remedial, but thanks for stooping to help the uneducated! :w:

I am personally excited about the way Focusrite is heading. I talked to them at the AES show. You can't just stay in the past and talk about their IA 110 that Mr. Neve was behind. You have to stay with technology and the way things are going.

The Platinum series is great for project studio owners who record for fun and want the best equipment on a limited budget. The stuff sounds good for its price. Of course it's not pro gear, but then they are not claiming it is, nor are the people buying it. I personally have a Mixmaster and I would put it up against Waves Mastering plug ings and the Finalizer.

They are also staying with what they are known for. With the ISA 428 with the 4 mic pre's and now the improved ISA 430 Mk II. Not to mention the ISA 220 that Sting picked up for his studio. If you want the British Focusrite eq and mic pre's this is the way to go. If you want flexibiltiy it could be that their new Liquid though not perfect may help your studio have additional flexibility.

Originally posted by white swan:

I am very interested in learning more about this fascinating area, but I will honestly admit that much of your answer went over my head.

So, if it wouldn't be too much of a drag, would you mind elaborating on a couple of things you said?

1st: I accept your premise that humidity and temperature affect the way a room sounds (and certainly an instrument as well!). But could you, in layman's terms, be more descriptive? In a qualitative way, how does increasing or decreasing humidity tend to affect specific sounds? And same with temperature? Does the speed of sound change with temperature and humidity, and how does that translate into what we hear? Or is it more a factor of walls becoming more or less reflective or absorbant.

2nd: What is an LTI system?

Sorry if these questions are embarassingly remedial, but thanks for stooping to help the uneducated! ;) to hear the difference, but there is a difference.

Furthermore, the study of thermodynamics reveals that hot materials and substances, like coffee, are that way because their particles are excited. In other words, their particles are rapidly moving and bumping into eachother. Send a sound wave through hot air and you get a touch more diffusion, which makes the reverb sound a touch thicker.

The effect of air quality on electrical and electronic components is a little more complex, but how many times have you seen a used piece of gear for sale advertised as residing in a 'smoke-free studio.' Or the computer labs in your school frigid?

2. LTI means linear, time invariant. Linear refers to a system which, when given an input twice as big, will produce an output twice as big; or three times as big, etc. (you can quickly see that preamps do not fall in this category, although, some devices have a linear range, like the genelec frequency response) Time invariant refers to a system who's whose output will be the same tomorrow, or at any other instant in time given the same input.

Simple example: A tennis ball falling for 1 second will see an acceleration of 9.8m/second squared. So if it starts at rest, it will be moving at a downward velocity of 9.8m/s at the end of one second. If it starts at an upward velocity of 19.6m/s then it will be at rest in two seconds, and so on. If you do it tomorrow, same result. Pretty linear and pretty time invariant, huh?

:But: this model fails to take into account those pesky little air particles we just discussed. Now just imagine this huge tennis ball bumping into the air particles in its path. Each of these particles has about as random a velocity, position, and acceleration as it gets. A simple study of collision principles reveals that both paticipants in a collision experience a change in velocity. (Remember, velocity is speed with direction: 10mph east is not the same velocity as 10mph west)

So how do you account for the change in velocity and acceleration that these particles create? Very laboriously. And never precisely. But, the key point is that a system, like reverb, which, on the outside, seems to be LTI, is in fact not. And that's how most of nature works.

mitz

Originally posted by AudioGaff:

But what does a piece of gear have to cost before it's considered "quality?" Why are some multifunction units "quality" and others "cheap shit gear?" Again, where's the dividing line between cool and crap?

Great quality gear costs more for several reasons. The two most important reasons is that high quality parts are required for great quality audio gear and thus cost much more to produce and to manufacture into a product. Second, great quality audio products are not mass produced, so the basic overhead cost, components, assembly and distribution is much higher than that of a big company that has the resources to mass produce and bring production costs down.

Agreed. However, WRT to the Liquid, it's in the same price range as other gear that routinely gets described as "great." So in this case, it's not the price - I don't think anyone here is saying that that 3500 bucks is chump change. And with that kinda price tag, I think it's safe to say it's not aimed at the bottom feeders.

OK, so it does a bunch of different things in one box. So does a SLAM or an ISA 430. Again, not many are saying these boxes are crap. So I don't think it's the multifunction aspect either.

Mass produced? OK, I can see that. But how many 428's, or API's, or Vintech's, or [insert your favorite piece of high dollar gear here] rolled off the production lines over the past 6 months? What number of units per month or quarter is acceptable, and what number is considered "mass produced?" I mean, the Liquid hasn't even started shipping yet has it?

Is it the emulator thing? As I mentioned previously, I've never been a big fan of modelers and emulators myself so I can basically understand that gripe. Quality of components? OK, I can understand that as well. Has the origin of any of the Liquid's components been disclosed in any of released press pieces about it? Are we just assuming that the components - and labor - are coming from offshore or do we know that for a fact?

Again, just playing devil's advocate here. I'm not trying to be argumentative or an apologist for Focusrite. I'm basically just trying to pin down what the whole "cheap" thing is about in my own mind. The Liquid - at least at first glance - doesn't necessarily appear to fit the mold.

I figure if I had $3500 to spend on a pre/comp. I'd buy a $35000 room to put it in first.

100 $35 preamps!

mitzelpik,

I hope you know you have the rare gift of being able to combine technical knowledge with eloquent communication skills! If all my teachers were like you, I would have probably stayed in school!

I am very grateful for the opportunity to learn from you. People like you and Audiogaff are a treasure! :h:

Now it may take audiogaff's ears to hear the difference, but there is a difference.

Ok, very funny! :D
I was going to jump on the air temp/humidtity answer but got lazy as it requires a lot of thought to communicate well. Mitzelplik did a great and more complete job than I would of done explaining it. Kudos to him (or her). I would add that you not only can hear a difference but you can feel a difference as well. The thing to keep in mind is that if you are making major adjustments to your sound with levels and or eq in the extremes of temp or humidity, you will hear different results when you hear them again in a more normal temp and humidity range. Not only that, but analog gear also is affected by temp and humidity.

WRT to the Liquid, it's in the same price range as other gear that routinely gets described as "great." So in this case, it's not the price - I don't think anyone here is saying that that 3500 bucks is chump change. And with that kinda price tag, I think it's safe to say it's not aimed at the bottom feeders.

Ahh yes, but with digital products the formula changes. When a well designed good digital product is released it's price not only reflects the cost of parts, assembly and all the other normal production things, but has to reflect the need to pay for all the engineering development costs and even any license costs to it's technology. Digital products lose their value much, much quicker than great analog gear which is likely to increase becuase of parts cost and availability so you need to try to recoup those costs up front as quickly as possible and before the product or the technology becomes obsolete.

As to the other Focusrite analog products, These are products that are semi-mass produced. True mass production is more akin to a production line that never stops like with cars. Semi-mass produced is done in batches or what is refered to as lots. API/Vintech and many other products are done the same way. Semi-mass produced products have to be scheduled so that you run these batches/lots to meet current demand and sales forcasts but not any more than you really need as you don't want to be stuck with a big idle inventory of parts or units. But your profits are tied to productions costs, and production costs are lowered when you can mass produce.

So it really comes back to how somethng sounds and how much value it adds to your needs that either makes it great or not and that is a fuction of how well it is designed, and the components used to build it. The better you are to able to mass produce that, and reduce production costs, the cheaper you can afford to sell it for in the marketplace and the more customers that can afford to buy those products.

It wouldn't surprise me if the price on the Liquid was discounted after the product has been on the market for a while. I have seen this happen many times. I didn't know the price of the unit at the top of this thread and I mistakenly thought it was a low end product. My bad. I wonder what kind of pre amp circuitry it is utilizing? If it is the same as the platinum things then it is still rack crap, albeit expensive rack crap ...

I hope you know you have the rare gift of being able to combine technical knowledge with eloquent communication skills! If all my teachers were like you, I would have probably stayed in school!
I am very grateful for the opportunity to learn from you. People like you and Audiogaff are a treasure!

I was going to jump on the air temp/humidtity answer but got lazy as it requires a lot of thought to communicate well. Mitzelplik did a great and more complete job than I would of done explaining it. Kudos to him (or her).

Awww guys, you're gonna make me cry!

I didn't learn how to make a damned thing in engineering school, but I sure learned a lot of theory. I'm starting my masters program at Johns Hopkins in January so I hope it pays off! Oh and I'm a him audiogaff! I really appreciate the comments guys. I love this forum.

mitz

Maybe another company will make something that emulates Focusrite gear, and a few other companies will also hop on the bandwagon and we'll have a whole bunch of stuff that emulates Focusrite

Yeah, and soon Focusrite will be making $3,500 boxes that emulate Behringer pres. Good grief...

I spoke to an engineer today who's ears I truly respect. His mixes are all first rate and has great equipment. His contacts that are using this thing already love it and claim the sounds are incredible.(admittedly not analog) The plan as he told me is for Liquid to be fully incorporated into PT and automated so that a session's preamp settings are saved with everything else. To me that sounds like a pretty good idea. It would make sense to choose a great mic, pick your pre and never EQ again, and then be able to come back to it.

I'd be interested to hear someone’s comments who has actually used the thing, rather than someone who knows a guy, that knows another guy who says it's great. Double hearsay.

"Jack of all trades, master of none." I have to say that I hope everyone starts using these things and as a result eBay gluts with API, Neve, Manley, Great River... I will happily pay $100 per unit if people want to unload it privately to save themselves the public embarrasment...
The fact that this new box costs $3500 does not mean it will sound good.
My suspicions about this gear are caused by:
-the crappy sound of the prosumer level stuff I have heard from Focusrite the past few years.
-the fact that they are trumpeting it as sounding EXACTLY like 1000 top preamps. That is the claim of a hype-ster, not a respectable audio company.
Don't think I am making fun of anyone here. I respect everyone's right to have an opinion contrary to mine, and that both of our opinion's can be "right" in the sense that one's correctness does not exclude the other. I am jeering at Focusrite (and I am sure they don't even care). David

Kurt,
I know its hearsay - but I passed it along only because I truly respect this guy's ears, and he (just like all of us) can't hear everything created. He's lining up to buy it based on THEIR word. To me, at least, that's the closest I've heard to an endorsement of this product to date(by someone other than the company) so I shared it. I think that's the point of this forum. I'm not suggesting anyone go out and drop $3500 based on my info,(as if anyone would) but I also don't think you can rip on a product based on your assumptions about focusrite's prosumer gear.
If hearsay isn't allowed then neither should innuendo,stereotyping, and generalizations - but this forum is full of all of the above. (it's not a court room) I think that's OK
:p:

Originally posted by pmolsonmus:
If hearsay isn't allowed then neither should innuendo,stereotyping, and generalizations :p:

Agreed, this stuff has been driving me crazy for a long time. I guess it's too much to ask people not to judge the worth of gear unless they've actually used or heard it.

No problem in general, but especially on new products with limited releases, hearsay is all we have at first. I would hate to think we can't idly speculate or at least acknowledge its existence until we've actually heard it ourselves.

And I don't even have a problem with "so-and-so says it sounds..." Usually it's your own ears that you need to trust, but am I the only one who knows at least a couple of people who's ears I trust? If Bob Ludwig came over to my house, looked around, and said - "you know, brand x monitors would sound amazingly good in this room", I would have no real problem relating that experience to others on this board. Even if I never heard brand x myself.

Aww, thanks guys, now you're gonna make me cry!

i ask this question not to troll but quite sincerely... why is there so much hostility about a company that is attempting to use new technology to achieve their goals?

marketing hype aside... there are engineers at focusrite trying to make a good pre... maybe this isn't one of them, time will tell, but why prejudge it based on its technological underpinnings? did the stuff that was brought in to replace tubes do so successfully? nope! did it mature into something equally as useful? yup!

i am hopeful, and pretty confident, that all the emulations and convolutions will evolve into new breeds of recording technology and we will all be better off for it.

does this mean i'll buy something simply BECAUSE of the technology behind it... no way! but it is just as myopic to discount it for that same reason.

maybe if so many gear snobs (and i am NOT referring to anyone here with that) weren't so caught up in the past then the marketing folks wouldn't feel the need to rave up and down about how the new stuff emulates the old... they wouldn't do it if no one was buying it! then we could all just talk/debate about what sounds good and not what sounds like what else.

liquid channel... haven't heard it so i can't say and even if i did who the hell am i anyway!? just some guy with a computer and some free time...

cheers,
greg