High-end Gear: Is It Really Worth The Investment?
Where does high-end audio equipment really count in your studio?
4,5 / 5,0 | 
We discuss some different areas of your home studio where high-end gear could be beneficial for music production, recording, and mixing.
In this Article:
Last week, we looked at the pros and cons of plugins compared to analogue hardware. So now, let’s look at some specific parts of your workflow where high-end gear really has value.
High-end Gear
It’s important to note that high-end gear has been designed for professional music production. If you’re a beginner trying to understand compression, a $3000 compressor is not necessarily going to be the ultimate springboard for your learning process. Instead, stick with the stock plugins that came with your DAW until you’ve really mastered them, before you step up to the big league.
High-end Gear: Microphones and Preamps
Your choice of microphone is an essential part of your home recording rig, as the quality of your vocals plays such a big role in the success of any song. Because most of us don’t have acoustic treatment or professional vocal booths at home, our choice of microphones is limited. For this reason, an SM57 or a broadcast mic like an SM7B or RE20 is generally preferred to an ultra-sensitive tube condenser.
Dynamic mics capture less of the room’s reflections, while condensers give you a more detailed ambient picture. However, dynamic mics are low-output devices, so they definitely require a preamp for optimal performance. This means that for home recording, a high-end mic preamp is a much better idea than a high-end mic, unless you have a treated room for it.
Preamps come in many shapes and sizes, you can find tube and solid-state preamps in rackmount and 500-series format with loads of discrete gain. What’s more, you also get more elaborate preamps called channel strips with EQs, compressors, and DI inputs for instruments. Although high-end channel strips are pricey, they do add more value with the added features.
High-end Gear: Compressors
Compressors are one of the most versatile audio tools, as you can use them while tracking or mixing, on individual channels or your stereo mix bus. The compressors used for tracking are often more simplistic in their design than bus compressors, and we use them in different ways.
For example, the job that the compressor we use in a vocal recording chain is shaping the transients on the way in. Meanwhile, a bus compressor is applied to a main mix bus to add punch, cohesiveness, and bring all the elements together. This is why, tracking compressors like the LA-2A and the TLA-100A have simple control sets and are often referred to as set-and-forget compressors.
Bus compressors on the other hand, have a more extended range of parameters. This allows you to adjust them for dealing with guitars, drums, and vocal groups. Although there are plugin versions of most of the famous compressors, plugins are generally used for different purposes, and don’t possess the same sonic character as analogue gear.
High-end Gear: EQs
In the last few years, equalizer plugins have become so powerful that the need for hardware equalizers is increasingly scarce. However, there are still situations where we can harness the non-linear characteristics and colour of hardware EQs in recording, mixing, or mastering workflows.
EQs like the 1073 and the EQP-1A became foundational in tracking and mixing over decades, being used on so many of our favourite records. While the modern approach often excludes using EQ while tracking in favor of using plugins in post production, a high-end hardware EQ can really help to match a singer’s voice to a particular microphone, and add high-frequency detail.
Just like compressors, using a stereo EQ on channel groups and your mix bus is a great way to shape sounds. You can help your vocals, guitars, synths, and drums to stand out of the mix, or create mix pockets for more separation. High-end EQs are also essential in mastering workflows, due to the level of precision and control they offer.
High-end Gear: Converters and Audio Interfaces
When I was studying audio, I was told that AD/DA converters were a studio’s greatest asset. However, there was no way we could’ve known the quality of digital conversion that would be available 20 years later at a near consumer level. Is high-end conversion the secret to making hit records? Not by a long shot, but there are certainly benefits to using high-end converters and interfaces.
Audio interfaces do a lot more than just AD/DA conversion, they provide microphone preamps, headphone amplifiers, and outputs for your studio monitors in one convenient box. Besides the overall sound quality, the more high-end audio interfaces also offer more stability when you work at higher sample rates like 96 kHz and above.
On the other hand, high-end multichannel converters can be used to bring signals into your DAW from a console or multichannel preamp. They are also essential for out-of-the-box functions like analogue summing and mixing. If you’re doing professional mixing or mastering, high-end conversion is essential for analogue mixing or vinyl pressing, which is still demanded by some clients.
High-end Gear: Monitors and Headphones
Even if your room is completely untreated, the quality of your studio monitors and headphones matters. A six to eight-inch speaker is a great size for the average spare bedroom, and within this category, there are some outstanding 2-way and 3-way monitors with DSP and calibration systems to compensate for your room’s acoustic shortcomings.
Better quality monitoring means that you’re listening to a more truthful representation of your music. In turn, this leads to making more informed decisions in your music production and mixing process, as you begin to fully trust that a mix is going to translate nicely onto any playback system.
Mixing on headphones is also a viable route to take for getting accurate results. While a great pair of headphones like the HD 600 is certainly not the most expensive available, they become more costly when you add in a headphone amplifier to optimize performance. As open-back headphones often have high impedance ratings, a high-end headphone amp is a worthwhile investment.
More about High-end Gear:
*Note: This article contains promotional links that help us fund our site. Don’t worry: the price for you always stays the same! We will receive a small commission if you buy something through these links. We appreciate your support!
This might also interest you
One response to “High-end Gear: Is It Really Worth The Investment?”
If I had 35 grand, I’d buy the hardware Fairchild 670 clone, because none of the plugins do what the hardware does. Being a valve mastering compressor, it’s near impossible to recreate it digitally. The plugins are ok, but SOME hardware is just too difficult to replicate via plugin, due to the nature of the components used to make it. There was an original 670 for sale recently, apparently used at Sun Studios, for £250000. Another £249995, and I could buy that!