[Gllug] Good quality audio cards

[Chris Bell]

On Mon 21 Jun, David Damerell wrote:
> 
> On Sunday, 20 Jun 2004, Chris Bell wrote:
> >   An ex-BBC sound man who made a fortune by turning his hobby, underwater
> >filming, into a profession sold his old hi-fi system to another friend, an
> >OB sound supervisor. The old gear (almost new) changed hands at 5,000 UKP
> >because it had just been replaced by a new system costing 50,000 UKP.
> >Various cables were swapped around during a demonstration of the new kit,
> >and I am told that it really did make a difference with kit of that quality,
> >but probably would not be noticed with cheaper kit.
> 
> No doubt you were told that, but was it demonstrated to you in a blind
> test? (Answer: no).
> 
> >   Many people would think that the sound from their TV speaker is good
> >until they are able to switch between that and their hi-fi system.
> 
> I don't understand the argument here. No-one is disputing that
> speakers inform sound quality; that does not mean that cables do.
> 
   The sound supervisor I was chatting to was the person who purchased the
second hand kit, I worked on the same crew with him for many years, and he
was the person who told me that he was surprised how much difference there
was just from swapping between two sets of apparently best quality cables.
   I also worked for a long time with Mike Valentine, the person who sold
the kit, before he left to do freelance underwater work, but have not seen
him for a while.
   The sound quality is affected by the surroundings, which is why we had a
listening room with a choice of speakers, deep carpet, and plenty of sound
absorbing material around the walls and ceiling. Mike Valentine had those
facilities at home where he worked on his own recordings.
   The average person does not have these facilities, and there is likely to
be much more "colouration" due to the surroundings than are caused by the
cables, but we are sensitive to absorbtion or reflections from surroundings,
we can tell when we are close to an object, we can sense small movements of
a sound source, and we are capable of an amazing amount of analysis of a
mixture of sounds.

-- 
Chris Bell

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