I think there's a factor of different kind of rig people would use on stage and in studio. Obviously things get turn up pretty loud on stage sometimes, and not so loud in studio. There's a thing in audio engineering that people call Psycho acoustic, it covers the phenomenon that human being perceived louder sound as being a "better sound" than softer sound, even if they're both identical. This is why you have to be carefull with car audio salesman who's trying to sell you the product that gives them the highest commision. In studio, engineer would request bassist to turn up their amp(if it ain't DI) just enough to get good signal to tape. Now if all the engineer wants is direct from DI, it's going to make a whole lot of difference! Bass would sound so different through headphones, than through your 4-10 cabinet for example. Ofcourse the bass guitar itself does an important part. But as i said, before you even touched on the bass itself, there's a lot of other factor involved. And also, studio monitors are very high fidility speakers, meaning they "show" you almost every frequencies that your bass produce; that weren't that obvious through your highest quality amp/cabinet. And since they're very honest speakers, they show you the ugliest tone/sound out of your bass that you didn't know was there before. Hope that helps.
Arvid Gunardi
Producer, Bassist, Engineer.
This message has been edited by arvidgunardi@hotmail.com on 03-15-2001 at 04:06 AM
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