Quote:
Originally Posted by KevWind
#1 The room acoustics and its relation to the recording position, and the mic placement. (BTW the room is often by far the "weakest link" in most home recording situations )
#2 The quality of mic > and pre/s
# 3 If you're using out board analog processing on the in for recording i.e. the quality of the comp, eq , and or reverb. (Which I tend to not do, I basically record raw = unprocessed) .
#4 the quality of outboard processing units for mixing (Which do use a comp and a reverb)
Then we get to things which are ultimately can be a factor BUT (because of advances in modern digital electronics and software) are arguably much less important, and the least likely to have a dramatic or easily noticeable effect.
The quality of interface components and converters ,,,,, while it is true the better the components and converters, the better quality of sound..... BUT it is a fairly subtle difference at most. Today even the entry level "Pro-sumer" interfaces have quite usable conversion. As far as the actual circuity ? again given modern assembly consistency techniques, I would rate it fairly low in being a noticeable factor in sound.
And IMO the least important, to almost not important (as far as sound) is the software like the particular "Drivers" and the DAW algorithms. In fact in null test ,after test, after test, of DAW audio engines (no plugins) they all basically cancel
The difference in DAWs is about workflow not "sound of audio engine"
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+1.
Back when I was first getting into recording, I did some stuff at a nice studio run by Joe Weed, who has recorded albums for Martin Simpson among others, and he told me much the same story. He gave me his "top 10" list for what went into a good recording, which was:
1,2,3: the player
4,5,6: the instrument
7: room acoustics
8: the recording engineer
9: mics
Distant 10th place: all other gear, preamps, a/d's, recorder, etc
That said, if you're down in the minute details of that last few percentage points, one interesting test I ran across a long time back was the Sheffield Disc tests. There's a test for D/A conversion (not A/D, sadly - it's more meant for home theatre setup). I tried it on a pile of converters I had, from my built-in soundblaster card, to an RME fireface, Cranesong HEDD, and a few others. As I recall, the results were about what you'd expect, the Cranesong passed with flying colors, the RME was just a tad behind but still more than fine, and the soundblaster failed embarrassingly badly. That was quite a long time back, I imagine built-in soundcards are a lot better now.