You again..@midnight wrote:What are you talking about? Some alternate universe maybe?bmanic wrote:Take the SSL mixing consoles for example. These were the "behringer" mixing tables at one point in time.
You think an SSL 4000 was the "behringer" at some point in time? Behringer makes cheap shit even for a consumer level. What does this have to do with SSL, who make top end product?
You really have some strange opinions.
Perhaps I should have been more specific and mentioned the price instead. I thought the " .. " quotes between the unholy word would have been sufficient but I guess some people just need to pick everything apart.
Oh well, here goes, once more and explanation of my "weird thinking".
The 4000 line was very successful due to it's price, not it's sound. A 48 channel 4000 console cost way less than a 48 channel Neve desk (this was at the time when Neve was still run by Rupert Neve and was the "real deal". Nowadays the guys who own the Neve logo and company name have quite different innards in the desks. Same goes for the AMS Neve desks. As far as I know Rupert had nothing to do with those and was in fact quite annoyed by how his name got sold around while it represented none of his vision).
Now add to this the fact that the automation mechanism option ("flying faders") cost way less for the SSL desks than any of the competition and you got a nifty little channel dynamics section per channel + the buss compressor and you basically had a cracking deal.
Was it as well engineered as the Neves and APIs? As far as I know, no. The few crazy bastards that build their own highend stuff that I've talked with usually scoff at the word "SSL" and call it mediocre at best (one of these gentlemen has the surname Knif. He builds absolutely impeccable stuff and usually knows exactly what he is talking about). Well I'm no hardware builder but I do trust their opinion and stories of the 80's desks. When something costs a lot less than something else then it's usually a sign that some corners were cut somewhere, right? Of course, Neve was already adding $$$ to the price just because of the name but still..
So yeah, I stand by my opinion. SSL and their "sound" is most definitely not due to some kind of superior quality. On the contrary. They skimped on quality and sold desks by the bucketload due to the much lower cost of the system. Thus the numbers meant that a lot of records got made on them and some of those records sold like crazy. Boom. Suddenly SSL became a household name and people started justifying the record sales due to the "special sound" of the record, often attributed to the console (because the console was THE "sex" symbol of the studios of that time).
Now bugger off and leave me alone.
- bM
