I'm using a 13 inch MacBook Pro these days; it's good enough for all of my
processing needs but I find the headphone output circuit to be too noisy for
working with quiet recordings (e.g. nature sounds). It is always hard to tell
where the noise in the recording ends and the noise of the Mac begins. Also,
the headphone output circuit's noise floor seems to be a moving target, getting
louder and softer depending on what's going on inside the Mac.
But there is a solution that is very cool...
I only use my Mac for processing, not recording, and that means I can take
advantage of the Mac's SPDIF optical output, which is built into the headphone
socket but suffers none of the noise problems because it is a digital feed from
your audio software. So rather than using a budget piece of recording gear for
my interface, for the same money I put together a very high quality monitoring
system consisting of a Musical Fidelity VDAC (Digital to Analogue Converter)
and Musical Fidelity VCANS headphone amplifier. The combination cost me about
the same as some of the typical audio interfaces designed for recording, but
all of that money was spent on playback electronics, not unnecessary microphone
preamplifiers and so on. The overall quality is therefore much higher than any
recording interface could provide at the same price.
It connects via a fibre-optical cable with a Toslink connector on one end and a
Mini Toslink connector on the other end (to go into the Mac's headphone
socket). These things are readily available at any hi-fi or consumer
electronics store; certainly any store that sells converters and headphone
amplifiers will also sell these cables.
I am extremely happy with that set up. I use it with three different sets of
headphones:
a) a pair of AudioTechnica AD1000s open back headphones, which provide my high
quality reference;
b) a pair of AudioTechnica M50 closed back headphones, which provide more of a
real-world perspective (I also use this pair in the field);
c) a pair of AudioTechnica ANC7 active noise cancelling headphones, which I use
for editing and similar situations where I need to hear right down into the
recording's noise floor (e.g. editing the end of a file after fading into
silence, etc.) - they are almost like having a soundproof control room in the
way that they allow me to block out external sounds and focus on the recording.
By cross-referencing between the AD1000s and M50s, and using the ANC7s for
editing and similar screwdriver work, I can get very good results.
I have mixed, edited and mastered numerous albums worth of material using that
set up alone, and rarely have any surprises when hearing it played back on
speakers. Before releasing any disc, however, I usually burn a CD and carry it
with me for a week or two, playing it back on any hi-fi or similar systems I
might come across to check how it is going to sound in the real world. In most
cases it is absolutely fine; sometimes I find myself going back to change
things but that is mostly for music recordings where mixing and so on has been
involved.
There are much cheaper alternatives to the Musical Fidelity combo I use; some
combine the DA converter and headphone amplifier in the same unit, and some are
USB bus powered.
In terms of bang for buck, you'll get much higher audio quality from a
dedicated playback signal path compared to a recording/playback signal path at
the same price. Likewise, you'll get much higher sound quality from a pair of
headphones than from a similarly priced speaker system. Considering the number
of hours of sound that are consciously consumed via headphones these days
compared to the number that are consciously consumed through speakers, one
could question the validity of speakers altogether - but that depends on who
your market is and how they are listening...
- Greg Simmons
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