Making Records with Eric Valentine - Comparative Listening 

YES! Eric's back

Another comment: I would and probably most of us would love to see you mixing a track. I enjoy as you open the mixes and talk about the process. Also I guess from companies like puremix and mwtm it takes more time to make an on the go mixing video. However If you have time and can manage, I would very much like to watch you taking and acting intuitively and artisticly. It would be so much fun

Honestly - the most important vlog ever for audio engineers!

"I just about crashed my car and realized it's bass" Love it.

Thanks for taking the time to make this for us. I'm glad your family is well.

I’ve been waiting for another video and I think this is the perfect time for one, thanks Eric.

This is madly interesting - pure gold Eric. Thank you!

Great to see you back on here dude. Excellent video as always. Cheers!

the best vids on the tube. Love your insight and approach to audio recording and mixing.

Good to hear from you, definitely happy you and your family are safe. Thank you so much for the amazing content. This channel is life changing for some of us.

so glad you're back, thanks for the love

Glad to see you back!!!!! Missed you!!!!! Awesome content!!!!

Thank you for taking the time to do all these tests, and reporting it through your videos for our enjoyment. I do appreciate and learn a lot from it. Ah, and I love Topanga!

Good to see you back man. You've been missed

I always feel inspired and empowered after watching Eric's videos. So grateful for these.

So glad you're back, Mr. V!

We missed you! keep em coming please. These kind of things really help us. It would be great to know what kind of things you think make a huge differences (you mentioned some, but I want more haha).

Really enjoyed this Eric, remember hooking up a 192, a rme, an iz radar, a lynx aroura and a Motu 828 - sent me and my assistant out to play bass and drums, came back. Nobody could hit the blind test but everyone could pick out their bias when they knew. The main memory I have from the day probably 8 years later is how bad my drumming was.

Thanks for this great video, on a very interesting and mysterious subject and, Welcome back!

Yay!!! I have missed your videos so much. Hope the downtime during COVID means we’ll be getting lots more videos soon. It really is cool to hear someone so eloquent who has so much experience go through these topics.

Great topic Eric. Glad to have you back. Love the Heartbreaker performance and wow that EQ match!

This is awesome. Eric’s infectious enthusiasm has got me hooked to this channel and has made me a lot more attentive with the fine details when recording my own stuff.

Nice to see you back at it Eric and to hear you and your family are safe and well. As per usual, stunningly interesting vid so many thanks for sharing. Stay safe!!

Man I was really impressed with your drumming in that example! Great loose feel. Thanks for sharing your knowledge.

You´re such a great professional reference! Thanks for taking your time to share your knowledge with us. I've learned so many things since I discovered this channel.

Eric you are a wealth of knowledge I always get excited when a Making Records Notification pops up in my inbox. Thank You!

Thank you Professor. I love my Black Lion preamps and clone mics even more now.

Thank you so much Eric for sharing, stay safe with your family

This was a fantastic listen! That McGurk Effect part was mind blowing! Loved the Antelope story. Love what you do mate! Thank you! 🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻

great to have you back Eric! And thx so much for the external sidechain trick in protools 12 - cant wait to test it out with soothe2 :)

So nice to see you again! Very instructive Thanks

Eric, your videos are a tremendously valuable resource and I really appreciate your honesty and transparency. Please keep posting. Thank you!

I can’t tell you how much joy I get out of your videos. One, nobody goes down a rabbit hole better than you, and two, you just crack me up. Thanks for the great information, education and good laughs.

I loved this video and the whole Making Records series, really inspiring me to get back serious about recording some stuff Thank You.

Really feel you on this topic ! I'm happy to hear it from someone like you , just focusing on things that matters and bring something to the sound. Not bullshit adds

Your videos are literally the best

This was so very interesting and rewarding! And it made me buy Hofa Blindtest. Thanks so much for sharing Eric! Keep this up...your videos are really great!

Thanks very much Eric! Your vids are worth a fortune. Keep rocking!

I loved this episode!! Super interesting. Thank you

Hi Eric. Just to add to everyone else: this is great content, inspiring and eye-opening. Thank you very much! - Al

Yes. You nailed it here Eric. This meshes with my experience completely. Expectation bias is an incredibly powerful thing.

So good to see you. Changing a pattern or an expectation in the brain is SO hard. It asks your brain so much more effort. I'm doing a lot of A/B. I've had time for the past two weeks. Also testing plugins that compensate volume for a whole chain.

This is the best audio engineering page on youtube. Many thanks to Eric.

This was a great installment. So many times I've struggled with audio comparisons (hello devil loc we meet again...) And to hear you go in depth about it, your process, etc is invaluable. Thanks Eric!

Eric, please continue making this stuff. This is so much more worthy than a lot of the other stuff out there. Very much appreciated.

Wow. Love your videos man! Honestly inspires me every one I watch.

This data is absolutely amazing!!! Thanks Eric!!!

By the way... My wife is 85% deaf and I find this video very inspirational to myself and a way to connect with my wife.

Glad to hear you guys doing well!

I don’t know how I missed this episode originally, this is awesome, a topic I have been researching recently as well!!

Glad to see you back Eric ! when this confinement thing happend i thought "well Grace's tour will be suspended and Eric will be back with a new video !" ahah thank you !

Thank you Eric! Inspiring and revealing stuff as always!!!

I think this is my favorite RU-vid channel. Thank you, thank you, thank you 💜🤘💜🤘💜

Brilliant. Just what I needed right now. Thanks Eric.

Just rewatched. So good Miss your videos. I learn so many things

That Fa/Ba part blew my mind, even knowing ahead of time about visual priority, the sensory modulation was knew to me. Mind blown. Thank you for these incredible videos.

That was really great info. I always enjoy learning from a real world perspective. It's easy to get caught up in things that don't really matter when moving the microphone an inch will make much more difference.

wow, Eric you are a genius! I Love everything you do and I am constantly learning from you and the amazing music you have worked on. You are a huge inspiration to me and I look forward to meeting you one day. Stay safe, Cheers, Noah

Thanks Eric and welcome back! Stay save, buddy.

There you are, Eric! Thanks for posting! I will never see "Fa" the same way again! Help us get through the end times:) with your wisdom wit and positivity! Thanks, Man!

Great Video! This subject is my obsession in my day to day work..

the Fa and Ba test was LITERALLY MINDBLOWING.

Thank you Eric soooo much for doing these!

Thanks, Eric. Good to see ya! Looking forward to A/Bing the proper way. Be safe.

49 years ago my Dad and I started recording with a Sony cassette deck...been into performing and recording (pro) in studios for a great part of that time-gotta say, Eric that your revelations are eye (ear)-opening for sure. Especially your tips regarding brief A-B’ing and associated plugins. Thanks for the insights, love your channel.

So good.Loved this. Thanks, Eric.

wow so eye opening, its like I knew this stuff but didn't really want to think it really effected us that much! haha. thank you for this!

I think that my life has been changed by this video

Awesome insight! Thanks, Eric!

Nice to see you back. I use this plug in all the time. I think I do more of this than actual recording of music. lol

I love your energy explaining the listening tests, especially the clock story. For years I felt stupid if I could not hear these differences in preamps. At some point I recorded some dirt guitars through my BAE preamp and TG2 preamp and tested together with my buddy who has super ears - we both could not confidently pick out which was which. And this was at the time when everybody at Gearslutz was drooling about the TG2 (which I still have and love on dirt guitars). Now, it's often the other way around: we test various things and then I let the talent or clients give their opinion on the "massive differences" after which I often say "sorry I don't hear much difference at all". It is so easy to fool yourself. When people get too crazy about differences I often play a little game where I give them two soundclips and then asked which one they prefer after which I explain it was two times the exact same sound. I do it in a relaxed and friendly way after which we often chat a bit on how important it is to really listen and trust your intuition at first listen: either it felt good or not; or better or worse, we pick the better version and move on. Really cool channel you have here Eric, I'm really enjoying it and learning a lot.

Very solid information based on whats important. Experience!!! Thank you

This is awesome!! All I can think about is if we perceive sound with vision and perception then reality isn’t really a hard line but rather a unexplainable phenomenon.

You quelled about 3 anxieties about audio of mine in this video. Much needed relief. Thank you.

These videos from Eric are doing great on this quarentine hahaha love this

Very eye opening video. Thanks soo much! Lovr your videos!

Great! Thanks for nerding out :)

Eric, thank you so much for this absolutely fascinating video! Not only does it shed a light on the inner workings behind your masterful productions and mixes, it also reassures us audio fanatics that we are not crazy and not alone in our obsessive tonal pursuits! I remember having a similar experience trying to a/b different external clocks and not being able to spot a tangible difference, and ended spending that same money on different converters altogether, which made a BIG difference. Blind testing is the truly only objective way to go! Another quick anecdote- famed amplifier builder Dave Friedman works strictly using blind a/b testing when designing and modifying amps. He tricked me into thinking that his new BE50 amp was my vintage Marshall, at which point I had to say- "shit, you win!" and buy his amp haha! Thanks again, stay healthy and keep these coming! Dory.

words of wisdom and experience, thanks Eric

So far I've picked the difference every time when looping a tiny bit! Mind you, I'm wearing $7.5k HiFiMan Susvara headphones. The internal clock bass is louder / slightly muddier, the external clock is slightly quieter, less muddy, more controlled bass. The guitar strum treble is ever so slightly more present or nicer on the external clock. Not night and day difference, but certainly giving 0.79% to a clearer mix. Not worth the money. Changing power cabling makes a bigger difference, but that's just opening another can of worms. If I listen to longer sections, I can't tell the difference. The recording and the song is amazing! Love these videos! Massive Good Charlotte Young & The Hopeless fan! One of my top 5 favourite albums! Thanks Eric!

once again, hats off to you sir.

Okay Eric, you really got into experimental psychology this time. I love it! I recommend doing at least 30 trials in a blind listening test, because of the sample variance ;)

Interestingly enough, as a record/mix engineer, I lost count of how many times I tricked biased listeners out of a wrong choice during sessions just using that same knowledge to give their eyes what their brains wanted to choose, if you know what I mean ;). Great video by the way, welcome back!

I put off watching this for a while - why did i do that ? Listening is the most underestimated sense in the modern world - people living in accord with nature taught me this years ago. I am still learning and always humbled - many thanks.

Thank you Mr Valentine . I was amazed at the baa/faa video. Indeed now I need to Hosa my converters and analog vs digital. However sometimes you can feel when gear sounds good immediately without having to necessarily compare it to something else. If I can’t hear it I don’t care who many reviews it’s got.

thank god hes back!!!!

Incredible and informative as always. Eric and science win!!

Hi Eric! First of all I wanted to thank you for this amazing channel that you’re doing, I’ve stumbled upon it just a couple of weeks ago and already watched almost all of your videos, so thank you for the sharing your approach and your tricks and knowledge, that is priceless. Also that was a real surprise for me because I always thought that you were kind of enclosed person. My bad. 🤦‍♂️ That video proves that we as audio engineers must always use our ears first. Let me share with you this story that I’ve experienced, I’ve tested the DAWs the same way back when AE friend of mine was persuading me to switch from Cubase to Pro Tool(that was in 2011), so I did the same thing, Just recorded one of my songs with my band twice, with same setup, only one was done in Cubase and one in Pro Tools, I did the rough mixes and we listened to them back to back... I work in Pro Tools since and even became a certified Avid Expert. I also did the same thing second time(with different song), when I was considering switching from RME Fireface 800 to Universal Audio Apollo 16, UA won that battle. So here’s my little story, thank you and bye! :)

While I'm stuck at home I was planning on doing a comparison of some of the analog modeled plugins I've acquired over the years with the standard plugins that come with Logic X. Hofa Blind Test will be perfect for that. I've known about the McGurk effect for years and I've played that video for many people who are always amazed. There's a reason why double-blind, placebo controlled tests are the gold standard in science and we should accept nothing less in audio.

The McGurk effect has happened to me! I learned to speak a second language (French) when I moved to Montreal. I was good at understanding conversations in my second language when in quiet situations, but I had a really rough time when in loud environments. If I was speaking English (my first language), I had no issues. I went for a hearing test which revealed no problems. As I was describing my issue to the hearing technician, they noted that my hearing problems were in noisy environments ... alas I could not read lips in french! Thanks for these videos, they are fantastic! You live just down the road in Vermont now! :)

Super cool video, thanks again!

Thanks very much Eric! so good to hear you're on Hosa as well. I feel like I haven't wasted a load of money investing in Hosa cable now.

nice one E ! I love your dedication bruh. Cheers !

Thank you so much! This was awesome!

This was awesome Eric!!

This is brilliant, thank you!

How i have missed your videos!

EV dropping some truth bombs! Good stuff! Thank you.

MIND BLOWN! the BAH vs FAH thing

Thank you Eric for this video