HEAT, NEVE 8048 Listening Challenge

[c.evans]

The important thing to remember is what does the 14 year old kid slamming Lady Gaga out their ipod at 128K AAC file think? I'm sure they would pick HEAT!!

I also love how some folks in this thread describe lack of low end as lack of warmth What the crap? I thought there was a lack of Height

I love audio descriptions!

[c.evans]

I also have to chime in to say.

Wouldn't a true blind or (double blind) listening test take out any preconceived notions of the processing and/or summing? Shouldn't you just simply choose the best sounding mix?

I don't get trying to identify HEAT when I've never even heard HEAT. I went for best sounding and got 3 out of 5 Neve and picked the Neve for my fav. I don't know what that means exactly, but it seems that it would have been best to just choose the best sounding clips overall.

If you tell folks that one is PT, HEAT, and Neve the assumption is that NEVE is best and the goal is to choose the best. Presumably the NEVE.

I'm not sure if I know what i'm saying anymore.

later

[Dism]

Originally Posted by c.evans

I'm not sure if I know what i'm saying anymore.

Now we're actually making some sense.

Considering that the whole idea of this topic was to evaluate the sounds and not to evaluate the integrity/validity/sense/etc of the challenge... it's easy to say this thread has strayed away from people actually caring about how either actually sound, and more towards how people think the challenge should have been set up.

[rotfuhr]

Originally Posted by velvettone

And this is the scary part (and why I originally chimed in on this thread)...

In section 5, I chose "Pro Tools only mix" as the best mix, yet it told me that I chose the "Neve summed Pro Tools mix".

Avid, I think your challenge is severely flawed!!!

I did (almost) exactly the same; I chose the Pro Tools only as the best sounding, and it told me I chose the Neve-mix. This is pretty disturbing as a lot of people here have said they picked the Neve-mix. I'll assume they only mixed up the last bit.

I think this challenge really shows how much this is an engineer/speaker-issue. The people listening on really detailed speakers generally prefer one of the more distorted mixes (which to me just means people are a bit uncomfortable with too much detail), while people listening on less detailed ones either can't hear the difference (which to me just means using a lot of money to get «that» sound may be a bit of a waste on commercial mixes) or they pick the cleaner one (which to me just means we want a certain amount of dirtyness/cleanness, and the listening system plays a bigger part than the summing bus).

I listened on the Beyerdynamic DT 770 (what I had around), which, while quite detailed (at least compared to your average consumer system), is a pretty dark sounding set. I had trouble telling the early bits apart, but the difference was more obvious as the density and level increased and the distortion followed.

I chose «I don't know» on every part but the last, simply because I didn't know which was which. (I have only ever used the Neve preamps and EQs.) On the last i liked the cleanest the best, and assumed it was the Pro Tools only mix. I was correct. I assumed the dirtiest was the Neve, but was incorrect. On the DT 770s, the HEAT mix was quite mushy, and to me severely overdone. I was glad to find they had doubled the processing, because, although quite a fan of Mr. Hill's HEDD box, I was quite put off by it. And I was also glad to find that the Neve isn't THAT distorted. (It sounded very nice to me.)

What do you think? I definitely agree that we want most mixes to sound the best on the best systems, and that how it sounds on a crappy system really doesn't matter for our personal taste. However, to me it seems a lot of engineers pick the dirtiest mix because they assume that is the analogue one, and therefore must be best no matter what. A lot of times things are dirty enough by far, and the cleaner mix makes for better results.

I'm also glad to hear that the difference between the summing part of the Neve and Pro Tools systems really aren't that different if you just know how to work them.

[b1daly]

Just a quick question...there are comments above that the results are being reported incorrectly (saying you prefered the neve mix when you actually prefered the PT mix). How do you know this, has there been a list of which sections are which published somewhere?

In anycase, I found it hard to hear major differences. The clearest for me was the last section where I liked the "B" version. The test reported this as the Pro Tools mix. I listened a few times and consistently liked this mix. What that tells me is that most attempts to improve a mix seem to pay a price somewhere else. I notice it a lot when running an analog insert on a mix: Just the bypassed version seems worse from the DA/AD round trip. I usually perceive it as a loss of space, a slight narrowing in the stereo image and distortion in the hi end.

I messed around with the HEAT demo and didn't like it much, it actually made my ears hurt as I listened over time. Somekind of weird hi-freq fuzz.

Another observation: I have been experiment running my PT mixes through an old Ampex 354 1/4" tube tape deck. It's not working exactly right, but I must say that it provides a radical change in the mix that none of these plug-ins come close to. Major "glue" a lot of compression, and a nice softening of distored guitar. It sounds very rock.

thanks for putting this together!

Originally Posted by b1daly

Just a quick question...there are comments above that the results are being reported incorrectly (saying you prefered the neve mix when you actually prefered the PT mix). How do you know this, has there been a list of which sections are which published somewhere?

I know this because I scored a 100%. In other words, being that I identified ALL of the sections correctly, I effectively have a list of "which sections are which".

For example, let's say that I identified the "pro tools only" mix as section 5f (I used 'f' as not to give the correct answer away), and identified the "Neve summed mix as section 5m. Then I chose 5f as the best mix for the last question and was expecting to see "In Section 5 You Preferred the "Pro Tools only mix"", however, to my surprise, it returned the result "In Section 5 You Preferred the "Neve summed Pro Tools mix"" which was 5m, not 5f as I chose. Remember, I scored 100%, which means that I correctly identified all of the mixes in section 5.



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Not trying to stir up the pot more than I already have (and please don't misconstrue this as a campaign against Heat), but, in response to this post...

Originally Posted by Tom Graham

The point of the test really is, they are all cool and close.

If you really think about it, a score of 0% could potentially be every bit as good as a score of 100% in terms of being able to "hear the difference" between the mixes. I'll explain...

If you had to guess the ‘name’ of each summing method because you've never heard a Neve 8048 or Heat, and had no reference as to weather the Neve summing or "pro tools only" summing would be the brightest/biggest/harshest/etc, you're just guessing as to how each method gets 'labeled'.

If you wrongly labeled ALL of the “pro tools only mix” sections as “Neve summed pro tools mix” and also erroneously labeled ALL of the “pro tools mix with heat” sections as “pro tools only mix”, you would score a 0%. To me, that’s 100% correct in being able to tell that there are “differences” between each summing method, but you failed to label them correctly. Technically, you can score a 0% and still be able to tell the difference between each summing method with 100% confidence.

Originally Posted by Tom Graham

To me, the average score of 30% means people can't really hear the difference, it's slightly less than 33% if you randomly pick 3.

Mixing up the naming convention on only two of the summing methods would only give you 33% score. 66% is probably just guessing, considering if you consistently identified two of the summing methods correctly, the third one should automatically fall into place and be correct also, giving you 100% instead. So, with that being said, people who can "really hear the difference" between all of the summing methods, but are not familiar with the 'sound' of heat or a Neve 8048, stand more of a chance of scoring 0% or 33%, than 100%. Which could be another explanation of an average 30% score. Any statistics majors out there?

Originally Posted by Tom Graham

If the NEVE (Analogued Summing) mix was hands down better, it would be obvious for people to hear and they would pick that mix as their favorite.

I thought that the "Pro Tools only mix" was hands-down better, yet it logged me as picking the "Neve summed mix". Not that it's relevent at this point, but, why are the percentages of "who preferred what" not being revealed in the challenge results?


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[supersoul]

I had 70% right and preferred the Neve summing mix. Shockingly i did this on my MacBook Pro Laptop speakers at about 50% of volume. I picked HEAT 5 times out of 5 just by presuming how it would sound. Bass compression and more grunt, which on the small speakers wasn't good as what i presumed would be the Neve summed mix (somewhere in between the clean signal path of PT and the HEAT tape simulation). Interesting.

[Mr. Anxiety]

Just tried the challenge.

Although the track is a very cool bit of music, I must agree that a track with more bass guitar or synth bass info would have been better to test out this comparision, especially how bass level affects the analog characteristics of these consoles.

My 2 cents...............

[Tom Graham]

Originally Posted by velvettone

I thought that the "Pro Tools only mix" was hands-down better, yet it logged me as picking the "Neve summed mix". Not that it's relevent at this point, but, why are the percentages of "who preferred what" not being revealed in the challenge results?


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Hey Guys,

There is in-fact a problem posting the correct answer for which you preferred - but in no way affects your final correct score (although it currently does misinform you which mix you preferred...) So first off, my apologies for that - we are fixing that ASAP.

If we used the same song (because it's otherwise too difficult and expensive to get another song/redoo) and did a different style test - I'm curious:

a. Would that be something you would really like?
b. What would the proposal you would like to hear that in your mind would be useful?

Thanks as always,

Tom