The Weakest Link

The chain of equipment between the recording artist and the listener is long and complex. Every piece of gear, from the microphone to the listener’s speaker or headphones, has the potential to be the weakest link in this chain.

In this episode, I go through every major link in the chain and describe why it could be the weakest link in any recording situation. Are there types of equipment or facilities that have an outsized effect on the ultimate quality of a recording? What can we do about that?

By the way, I decided to try a new microphone for this podcast episode. It is a Sennheiser MKH8030, which is a bi-directional small-diaphragm RF condenser mic. I like RF condenser microphones because they have a lower level of distortion than traditional condenser mics. I like the sound of MKH8030, and I am sure it will get a lot of use on my sessions. But for my voice, I still prefer the AEA R44C that I normally use. What do you think?

email: dwfearn@dwfearn.com
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Transcript

Episode 113        Weakest Link                                                     January 16, 2026

 I’m Doug Fearn and this is My Take on Music Recording

What is the weakest link in your studio?

The process of recording music requires audio to pass through quite a few devices between the instrument or voice and the final product heard by the listener. There are many places where things can go wrong. And the laws of physics mean that everything we put the audio through has some inescapable negative effect on the chain from musician to listener.

I have always felt that it is our job to do as little harm to the artist/listener relationship. We must accept the fact that we cannot recreate the experience of being in the same room as the performer. But in most cases, that’s not our goal. We want to preserve the artistic integrity of a performance, of course. But we also have the ability to compensate for the lack of realism by using studio techniques to make a more compelling experience for the listener. I have talked about that before, so I won’t go into any more detail.

Today, I want to look at the devices that must exist between the music and the listener.

What do you think is the weakest link in that chain?

I know my answer, but you may have a different one.

My answer is that loudspeakers are the weakest link. That’s another topic I have talked about previously, so if you want to hear more about that, listen to the episode, “Monitor Speakers and how to get the best sound out of them” from February 2025.

In my experience, every time you upgrade your studio with an improved device, it starts to reveal defects in other devices. It can be a never-ending, and expensive, quest to replace the weakest link. As you solve each problem, you get into deeper layers of new problems.

There are those out there that do not really care about quality. Maybe they cannot hear the difference. Or the crudeness of the sound is part of their style. Or maybe the genre requires a low-fi sound. If any of those apply, then your life will be much simpler. I talk about that in more detail in the episode, “Does Quality Matter?” from April 2025.

My life in music recording has always been a struggle to improve the sound. The technology has come a long way in my 60 years of recording with professional equipment. And before I started, the advancements in sound quality were even more dramatic. We went from crude recording using a mechanical system of a large horn coupled to a cutting stylus on a wind-up turntable, to some pretty impressive sound by the 1950s. Since then, the improvements have been less dramatic and in smaller increments.

But with every advancement came the need to improve everything else. The weak links that were irrelevant earlier suddenly became the greatest irritant, now that they could be heard.

We have the tools now that perform at a level that would be astounding to the recordist of the 1940s.

Let’s look at the links in our recording chain and see the current status, and where improvement is possible.

Everything starts with the music, of course. The quality of a musical piece is entirely subjective. Everyone has different tastes and preferences, so we can’t make any rules about musical quality. But what separates quality music from sub-par music can be somewhat defined. That is beyond the scope of this episode, and I wouldn’t want to tackle that subject myself anyway. Most of us know what musical quality is, even if we can’t precisely define it.

But really good music follows some rules that society collectively has determined to be appealing to us. This varies by culture and tradition, but it is reasonable consistent. The music conforms to those traditions, and what a society finds attractive.

That would seem to be a limitation, and I think it can be restrictive. If everyone followed the same rules and never tried something new, our musical heritage would be stagnant and boring. We need innovation and rule-breaking to advance. And sometimes it takes time for the general public to accept something new and different. I think most humans dislike change. It makes them uncomfortable. But it is vital to keep music interesting.

But, in most cases, we do not have much control over musical quality, as recording engineers.

Next is the performance. Even a classical musician playing from a strict written part, driven by a conductor’s vision, brings something unique and personal to their performance. That’s what they were hired to do. 

This applies even more to the musician performing popular music, in any genre. They can’t just play the notes. They have to put something of themselves into their performance. It doesn’t matter if they are part of a group that plays together as a unit, or someone hired for the session. Their creativity and individuality are what they bring to the music.

An engineer can help facilitate that creativity by making the performing environment as good as it can be, but mostly the performance is another thing that we have very little control over.

Next, we get to the studio technology. First on this list is the studio room itself. I have talked about this in multiple episodes, so if you want more detail, listen to “The Room Where Music is Recorded” (April 2020), “Recording in Improvised Spaces” (May 2020), “Improving Acoustic Spaces” (October 2023), “Building a Studio” (May 2025), and “Bleed Isn’t Always a Bad Thing” (July 2025).

A poor-sounding room will affect the quality of the recording, no matter what you do. Often, you can use techniques to minimize the impact of poor room sound, but it will always be there.

Where you place instruments and voices in the room is another variable that affects the sound.

And then we get to microphones. There is both art and science in choosing the best mic for a given sound. Mics all sound different. And even vintage mics of the same model often sound different. The sound of a microphone deteriorates over time, so most mics will require maintenance throughout their lifetime.

More on mic selection can be found in “Microphones!” (July 2020), “Stereo Mic’ing Techniques” (October 2021), “Ribbon Microphones” (October 2022), “Choosing the Right Microphone” (February 2023), “Choosing Microphones to Buy” (November 2024), and “Single-Mic Recording” (December 2024).

The signal from a microphone has to get to the recording equipment through audio cables. Most cables are good enough and do not degrade the sound, nor do they introduce noise into the recording, but cables and connectors can have problems. Details on that are in “Cables, Connectors, and Studio Wiring” (January 2021), and other episodes where this topic is part of a larger concept.

Although the focus is on mic cables, the same rules apply to all the audio cables in your studio.

And patch panels may also be a weak point, especially in mic circuits. Anyone who has ever used a patch bay knows that they often have problems. Intermittent connections, noise, and distortion often come from the patch panel. Solutions include using more robust connectors, like XLRs, instead of TRS plugs and jacks, or using a relay-switched patching matrix controlled by software.

The low-level microphone signal must be amplified to bring it up to the line level needed for recording. The preamp could be in a console, a converter or interface, or in a standalone device. I believe this is a critical component in the signal chain, which is why the first product I designed was a vacuum tube mic preamp. You can learn more in “Microphone Preamplifiers: how I designed the D.W. Fearn preamps and how you can get the most out of them” from August 2020.

Your studio may have a console or mixer that provides level control and routing of the sound from a microphone. Or you might have the equivalent functions in a digital audio workstation.

There might be equalization and compression available, or the ability to add those effects and many others through software plugins or external outboard gear.

I have always found that the less electronics you put the audio through, the better the basic sound. I do not use a console; microphones go into outboard mic preamps and then directly into the converter. If I need to add eq or compression, that is patched in between the preamp output and the converter input.

Your converter will make a difference in the sound, too. I think most converters work pretty well in the digital part of the path, but they differ mostly in the analog stages on the inputs and outputs.

Most of us record to a computer drive through DAW software. You would think that the design of the software would make every DAW sound the same. But they don’t sound the same, regardless of the converter. Different software designers prioritize different aspects of internal workings of the DAW. It will affect the sound.

Whether we mix through a console or “in the box,” the sound of the mixer or DAW can degrade the sound. Of course, this applies whether you do the mix yourself or send it to someone else who specializes in mixing.

That’s most of the chain that affects the audio quality on the recording side. But other equipment, not in the primary signal path, also affects what we do. The major item here is the monitoring system in your control room. More on that in “Monitor Speakers and how to get the most out of them” (February 2025). A monitor system with problems will change the way you mix. It will change the equalization choices you make. It will affect the ultimate sound.

Most music is distributed digitally, usually through streaming services. Despite the availability of computers and internet connections capable of much higher quality, we continue to listen to music that has been data-reduced, in the form of MP3 or other data compression technology. I am amazed at how good these formats can sound, but there is no question that much of the nuance of our master is lost in the data compression. I think this is a major weak link.

Although a minor part of music consumption, vinyl records have shown significant growth in sales over the past 10 years. Recording music to be released on vinyl requires consideration of the limitations of the vinyl medium. If your recording is going to vinyl, you should probably modify your approach to the session with those limitations in mind. To get the best sound from a vinyl record, you need to consider what you do and how you do it, from the very start of the session. Listen to “Recording for Vinyl” from January 2025 for more insight on this.

The CD format is another weak link. That technology is over 40 years old now, and much better audio quality could be available in a physical format, but that’s not likely to be developed.

And then we get to the listener, the most highly variable component. First, how are they hearing your work? Most likely through a streaming service, while listening to earbuds, headphones, a car audio system, or a small Bluetooth speaker.

You may have some audiophile listeners who will hear your work on systems costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. They will be capable of hearing a lot more detail than your average listener, and they are critical of recording quality. It is a small segment, but one that spends a lot of money on content. They want a high-resolution download of the music they love, or vinyl.

Music consumers are a diverse group. Some only like a narrow segment of the music available. Others only listen to artists they love. Some may want a compelling music experience while others view music as an antidote to silence. It is only background noise to them.

Their listening situation is almost as diverse as their taste in music. I don’t have any statistics on how most people listen, but it looks to me like a very large audience segment listens on earbuds or headphones. To best serve that audience, we have to take into account how our recording will sound to them. Listen to “Headphones for Mixing” from December 2022 for my thoughts on this.

If the music is heard through speakers at the home of the listener, that’s another huge variable. It’s not only the speakers themselves, but their placement in the room. And the biggest variable of all is the sound of their room. We have no control over any of that.

Getting back to our studio, let me tell you about the experiences I have had with the “weak links.”

I made the transition to digital audio after spending decades in the analog world of tape. As soon as I did that, I immediately discovered that 16-bit recording was inferior to tape in most aspects. The emotional impact of digital music was very different from tape. Digital was better in terms of wow and flutter, caused by the mechanical wear in a tape machine. The frequency response, distortion, and noise were much better than tape.

Despite those improvements, it wasn’t until higher sample rates and greater bit depth made digital recording viable to me. I wasn’t totally happy with PCM digital, which eventually caused me to change my digital format to DSD. Listen to “DSD Digital Recording” from May 2025, and “DSD Recording with George and Geoff Hazelrigg” from August 2021 for the details.

What I found was that DSD uncovered many defects in the rest of my equipment that I never heard with conventional PCM recording, or recording to tape. The converters I needed for DSD sounded much better, too, whether I was recording in the DSD or a PCM format.

The first new thing that became obvious to me was the distortion in my condenser mics. This was not a factor in the tape era, nor did it matter much in PCM digital, especially with the early converters. But now I found the distortion distracting and annoying. I ended up selling many of my condenser mics and focusing on ribbon mics, which, to me, have very little distortion.

Also part of this process was improving my monitor speakers. Better speakers revealed a lot of things that were not audible on my old speakers. I use headphones for mixing, at least part of the time during a mix, and good headphones also made defects in the chain more obvious.

Once I made those upgrades, everything sounded better to me. And it wasn’t just me. The artists I was producing noticed it, as did some friends in the recording world. It made me want to go back and re-record everything I had done for decades. That’s not a viable option. I think it is a common compulsion we all have experienced after a significant upgrade.

Of course, all my mic preamps and outboard gear were products I designed and manufactured, so, by definition, they were what I wanted to hear. But customers over the past 32 years have often said that they wanted to go back and re-record everything they ever did, with my gear. And I am sure they had the same reaction with other major studio equipment upgrades.

I feel motivated to always make the next recording better than anything I did before. Some of the variables, like the music and performance, are mostly beyond my control, even when I am producing the session. But even there, I think I have made steady progress in improved my recording.

My studio and control room are not optimum, and those are my current weak links. Addressing those problems is expensive, but I have a design for a bigger and better studio ready to implement if circumstances ever justify it. Still, I get good results from my sub-optimum facility. I know how to work around the limitations of the space.

So far, I have not mentioned the engineer as a potential weakest link, but he or she can be. Put a poor engineer in a studio with the best equipment and facility money can buy, and they probably will not get great results. Buying the best equipment is just a starting point. Engineers have to rise to the level of that equipment in order to make great recordings.

So what is your weakest link? What would it take to improve your current worst component? Is that feasible?

But beware – you can’t just improve one thing. It will reveal another layer of problems. It can be a never-ending quest for better sound.

And there will always be people for whom this is not important. They either can’t hear it, or are satisfied with what they get. That’s a viable option for them.

But others will never be totally satisfied. And that is what drives the state of the art forward.

Thanks for listening, subscribing, and commenting. Let me know your thoughts on this, or any, episode. Or suggest a topic you would like to hear my thoughts on.

You can reach me at dwfearn@dwfearn.com

This is My Take on Music Recording. I’m Doug Fearn. See you next time.