[Dynagroove] Re: sona & the 500

[Will Yardley]

On Fri, Jun 17, 2005 at 07:23:15PM -0700, Rylan White wrote:

> as for the urei sounding better than the rane 2016 correct me if im wrong
> but the THD on that urei is .05 while the rane is .01 from unbalanced outs?
> dunno how much noise or crosstalk the urei gets since they dont publish
> those specs anywhere that im aware of.... that doesnt mean it wont sound as
> good as the rane but harmonic decay is generally a 'bad thing'

[ I'm betting all the non-dj nerds on the list are getting annoyed now -
see what you started, Cade? Pretty soon it's just going to be a big
bunch of geeks on this list. ]

Can you hear the difference between .05% THD and .01%? I bet I can't.
We'll have a blind test or something. :> Also, are those specs for the
old 1620 or for the new (reissue)? Either way, "sounding better" is
obviously subjective, and doesn't mean "as clean as possible. In fact,
most equipment that "sounds good" is likely introducing some sort of
distortion (in the sense of changing the sound, not in the pro-audio
sense of the word "distortion") into the signal path. Often it's the
older gear, made before the days of mass-production that seems to have
the most character, and that's precisely because it's often not the
world's most transparent stuff.

People who are bigtime into the Urei swear that it just makes things
sound great (I have a friend who sometimes runs his tracks through his
1620 after editing them in pro-tools - maybe a little over the top, but
he swears it makes a difference).

There are different types of distortion, and some types are more
pleasing to the ear than others. For example, one reason people like
the sound of tubes is that when they distort, the distortion reinforces
the (IIRC) even harmonics, which are pleasant to the ear, rather than
the odd harmonics.

Side note on this... has anyone played on the reissue 1620, or does
anyone have one? I've heard mostly good things so far, but curious to
hear what people have to say.

Let's have a mixer-off at the Meet and Greet and have the crowd vote on
what sounds best. Then Cade will have to use whatever mixer wins for the
next year.

/w