[Juho L]

Originally Posted by jasedee

You look at a really high end, beautiful sounding console, and the "Silly" resistors they use cost about 10 or 20 times more than the ones you would find in a Behringer/Mackie mixer. And as far as op-amps goes (chips), these things are the most horrible sounding shit you could ever hope to run a signal through. You think about all the analogue "warmth" Vs. Digital "coldness" arguments and most of the time the analogue gear they are talking about DONT use chips/op-amps, they are running through transformers and high quality capacitors/resistors etc....or tubes!

You know, you can use the high quality components with opamps too. And of course crappy opamps sounds crappy, but keep in mind that an opamp is the saviour of analogue electronics. An opamp is a very good component because it has very neutral frequency respones, really low noise and huge output impedance. In addition to that it's bloody simple to use because most of the components are inside the IC so the use of "noisy" external components is in minimum and it's ridicilously cheap die the IC structure. Even an opamp is an IC, it's still has the analog sound. There's always place for opamps and the "vintage" bulk components. They excell eachother in various areas. The strenght of an opamp is the value/quality rate. Choosing between vintage components and opamps is like choosing between a Rolls Royce for a million or a BMW for a 20 euros.

You can pay $100 for a behringer parametric EQ, full of op-amps.....and then, you could pay $10,000 for a Manley MASSIVE PASSIVE, full of beautiful circuitry made up of transformers and other high quality parts (NOT op-amps/chips) and these things are like the best sounding bit of gear you will ever come across.....you dont even need to actually use the EQ, just run your signal through it and it comes out the other end sounding "Better".......

The one reason why to use opamps is the price (although it's quite trivial to compare crappy Behringer products to highend hifi gear, ?hih). Of course the sound is lovely vintage on the "traditional" circuit but the price difference is huge! Opamps allowed a production of nice analog gear with really low price. For example Korg MS-series sound very nice, even they are constructed from "the most horrible sounding shit you could ever hope to run a signal through". I start to smell analog purism here. Tshihihi.

The parts inside your mixer 100% determines the sound quality that comes out the other end. This is why shit desks sound shit, and Neve desks sound fuckin awesome!

That's naturally true. Cheap isn't good. But even Neve sounds incredible, it doesn't mean Soundcrafts and Mackies would be shit.

Also, think about in Live sound, where the engineers will often use the VCA groups for sending the drum channels, because they dont want to pass their signals through another set of fader circuitry, as it will degrade the signal more so than a VCA circuitry would.....This is a normal procedure in Live sound, and one which translates into the studio world as well. Engineers will often try to record using the purest signal path, the one that doesnt pass through a whole bunch of extra circuitry, the simplest route. On it's own it may not make a lot of difference, but collectively.....?????

It really depends on the gear used. Of course on paper the difference exists. If you use a noisy and distorting mixer then you'll end up having a bad sound when you run the signal through channels multiple times. But if you have a good mixer then avoiding faders at all cost might be a bit paranoid.

That live thing you mentioned is making me wonder... I'd understand that on a studio, but why they do that on a live setup? Usually the live situation is not even near hifi which means you really can't tell the difference between a single fader signal or 32 fader signal because the listening situation has loads of background noise from the fellow audience, noise from the guitar/bass amps & PA's and high power PA's are not-very-high-fidelity (they just concentrate on being loud).

Gosh I wish I had more knowledge of electronics......

Why don't you study? Electronics is simple. It's not harder than basic physics.