Audio Myths Workshop

This is a video version of my Audio Myths workshop from the October 2009 AES show in New York City. For copyright and other reasons, Part 1 of this video includes only a portion of the live event that also featured James Johnston, Poppy Crum, and Jason Bradley. Parts 2 and 3 present a more focused recreation of my presentation, including many topics we didn't have time for at the live show.

In this video you will hear what phase shift sounds like, compare high- and low-end converters, learn about proper test methods, understand why hearing is not as reliable as test gear, and much more. So set aside an hour when you won't be disturbed, and enjoy.

The original high quality example Wave files mentioned in Part 3 can be downloaded from my web site: http://www.ethanwiner.com/aes

Also, watch for my upcoming book inspired by this video: http://www.ethanwiner.com/book.htm

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Audio
• fidelity
• frequency response
• preamps
• jitter
• dither
• distortion
• ABX
• converters
• stacking
• analog
• digital
• summing
• phase shift
• null tests
• blind tests

[MrYoorr]

Ethan, your Audio Expert book can't come soon enough. I'd like to have even a tiny bit of your expertise.

[EthanWiner]

@MrYoorr Thanks. If you email me from my web site ethanwiner (dot) com I'll add you to the list of people to notify when it's available in April.

[ent2186]

So when your demonstrating the phase shift its set to dry... wet/dry and you have it on the right. Shouldn't it be on the left so we just hear the wet?? unless its inverted from the labeling...

[EthanWiner]

@ent2186 The phase shift demo is set to 100% wet, so you hear only the phase shifted version. If it were 100% dry there'd be no effect, and anywhere in the middle would skew the frequency response. But I see what you mean, the way the control is labeled. It should say Dry/Wet.

[vvoois]

I had a good laugh with this video on the start. There is one part about cheap soundcards vs expensive soundcards that is not mentioned but is quite an important aspect: Latency of recording vs what you hear and the performance of the soundcard processing multiple tracks at the same time. Now there you have a very substantial difference. But i guess you know musicians buy soundcards to process multiple tracks and not record single two channel cd's.

[EthanWiner]

@vvoois Of course, latency and number of channels are important features of "music production" sound cards. But even budget cards can have low latency. My new i7 quad-core screamer can get down to 1 ms with a lowly SoundBlaster card.

[ostgur]

I am always produce in Linear and render in 512 :)

[EthanWiner]

@bukkakebab I think you need to watch this video again! :->) Once you understand that DAWs don't have a sound, you'll be halfway there. While you're at it, watch my Gearslutz Converter Test here on YouTube, then go to my web site and download the files. If you think you can tell which files were recorded through the Lavry, M-Audio, and SoundBlaster, send me an email with your guesses.

[AndGz7]

Thank you , very useful info

[Noahaddavis]

Thanks for the video! I'm new to music production and this just saved me a ton of money I might have foolishly spent.

[jasonhats]

Ethan Winer rocks!

[vvoois]

@EthanWiner Sure they can. But i was never able to use more than a few channels with an onboard soundcard before i got crackles during recording. With or Asio4All seems to work a tad better, but not grab too high hopes on ASIO4all.

I do have a card which has some nice internal mixing facilities (So i can leech non-downloadable songs from the net anyway ;)). Cheers.