Why certain recordings and mixes have a giant suckout hole in the midrange..

Back in '74 I enrolled in the "Recording Institute of America". The RIA booked classes in major studios around the country. I took my classes at Agency Recording Studios in Cleveland (above The Agora Ballroom where major artists came for concerts that were recorded upstairs for broadcast on legendary WMMS). Studio A, the 16 track room, had a 4-monitor set-up. Arnie Rosenberg claimed those monitors did not need equalization because they were flat as-is. The problem was, yes they were flat - when mixing in mono. A stereo mix, no so much. I never learned why they used 4 monitors to do a stereo mix. Evidently it was a fad (after seeing the Altec-Lansing photo above). Arnie had a low power AM transmitter and a cheap radio to receive the signal as a way to hear how the mix sounded on the radio .

What did I know, I was only 19 and wanted to become a world-class engineer. After the class ended I ended up with a home studio with pro gear. I bought Altec 3A's for monitors but soon abandoned them for smaller "near-field" monitors. My attic studio was way too small for those huge monitors.

 

Takes me back to my early only vinyl listening days, after I'd purchased a pair of Rectilinear III Lowboys. Liked their low and high reproduction, but stacking a Magnavox bookshelf speaker with a 12" woofer and treble horn in each one directly on top of each Lowboy made everything that much better...

 

We taught a class for the RIA back in 1975 at Studio West in San Diego. At that time I don't think there were any other programs for audio engineering. I wonder how many of those students made it in the industry.

 

So this is what is meant as "wall of sound"...

 

I still say it looks like an air freshener.

 

Oh man, I thought the knock on Bose was "no highs, no lows". Now you say no mids!?! My goodness, I'd better check my QC 35's to make sure there is actually sound coming out of them!

 

Sorry. Sometimes the joke outweighs the truth

 

The JBL 4311b or the Yamaha NS 10 was selected to represent the typical bookshelf speaker at home for mix evaluation. In the older days at US studios, the Altec 604 was the sensible near field choice.

 

Studio monitors should be as flat and neutral as humanly possible from 20hz-20khz, and then equalized for room anomalies. One must neutralize all the variables as possible. However recent recordings seem to have a hump in the upper midrange to my ears.

 

In 1990 I enrolled at The Art Institute of Pittsburgh for Music Production. In the first semester, my class attended a studio session with a local band. I got to do a punch-out on a vocal overdub. Whee. In the second semester, I looked around at my class, the class coming in behind us, and the classes ahead of us and wondered, "are there enough studios to employ all of us?" I dropped out shortly after that.

 

That photo almost looks like a joke. I would love to be able to go back in time and hear them although the set up looks like a recipe for sonic disaster.

My friend used to have a set of Altecs with those same 311-90 horns on top and big cabinets with dual woofers on the bottoms. They allegedly had belonged to Bobby Darin. They were not high end by current standards but they had a technicolor vividness that could be rather intense. He was driving them with some warm and slightly wooly Carver amps that were supposedly voiced to emulate tubes. I enjoyed listening to his system but I could not have lived with it on a daily basis.

 

Well let's see, I had my own home studio packed with older pro gear (Scully 284B-8 in the late 70's and then an AMPEX MM-1100 with some 1200 components in the 80's and early 90's and finally a DAW in 2000) and freelanced at a couple of local studios for projects that were too large for my humble bungalow attic studio. Had several singles and and vinyl albums pressed, many more cassette albums and a few CD albums).

As far as my "credentials" as a graduate of the RIA goes, I used then just one time in 1988 to get a full-time job at a community college's A/V department. There were 2 openings and every part-time A/V tech in the college district applied. My colleague, Bryan also went to the RIA (from a different RIA class, I did not know him at Agency). We submitted our resumes listing the RIA. We had to try and prove there was an RIA. By 1988 the RIA was out of business, Arnie Rosenberg and passed away and Agency was long gone (it's now a parking lot for Cleveland State). Despite not being able to find anyone to acknowledge the RIA even existed we both got the job. They must have though we were copying each others resume, in addition to the RIA we both worked for different radio stations.

 

Ya, what looks fake about it is who would use what looks like a theater speaker for near-field listening.
Horns, by design, need a bit of room to develop the sound. These dopes practically have their faces in them. What a cockamamie.

 

... which is why I appreciate speakers that have a trough in that very area, a well-known example being Dynaco A25's. As you're no doubt aware, the problem is when you get a recording that's more even, such speakers can sound a bit 'distant' or overly polite.

 

These headphones were murder in the studio!!

 

Sort of reminds me of Allen Sides' custom studio monitoring system in Sherman Oaks. Of course his is $$$$$$$$

 

Jack Douglas actually checks his mixes on those. Guarantees him virtually 100% translation. If he can get his mixes to sound good on the Bose Wave, they'll sound good on anything.

 

That's nice to hear. At Studio West, when we had the class, we had an MM-1000 and a 280-8. Soon after that we replaced the big beast with a Stephens 2".

I'm not sure what type of accreditation one got from RIA, but it was the only one at that time. I wasn't sure if the people taking the course were doing it as a path into the industry or just for fun.

 

Might sound good in there...

 

Ha!

 

Can you all identify some well-known albums with big midrange suckouts ...?

 

Sigh. The greatest consternation in recorded music to this day...

 

Same here, Doug. My pro career began in the mid-60s. When mixing I frequently switched between open-back 6" Jensens for reality checks. (The kind you'd see hanging on the wall playing Musak in retail establishments of the day.)

 

Ha ha, I listened to the first CCR album on Jensen speakers mounted in the back deck of my 65 GTO. We used to cruise Whittier Blvd, and I think Suzie Q was the most popular song to be heard there with the possible exception of In A Gadda Da Vida.