To be fair, “sheen without harshness” is one of the harder things to do in the digital world because you’re fighting against the nyquist frequency.
Agreed
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I mean your ears aren’t really transparent. Like your hearing. Record something as it is, it’s gonna sound dull and kinda weak played back.
This too. Even disregarding hearing damage and differences in imaging and frequency response, our perception of pitch changes depending on loudness, that’s why it’s REALLY hard to sing in tune without in-ears - at higher SPs our ear canals narrow to protect us from hearing damage and that actually makes us hear things slightly sharp (or flat, I forget which) - so if you are on stage with a band and sing in tune with what you hear, it’s not actually in tune for the audience EVEN THOUGH IT SOUNDS IN TUNE TO YOU.
Another one of my favorite things like that (picked up from a preproduction draft of the original Max/MSP manual when I was doing some informal proofreading of it, no idea if they left this in the final version but I’ve tried it and it works) is that we can hear phase interference even if it’s not actually there. If you have two slightly detuned sine waves hard panned left and right and listen to them on headphones you’ll hear beating from the phase interference, but because each sine wave is isolated from the other by the headphones there is never any actual phase interference happening. The two sounds NEVER INTERACT, but our brain knows that there SHOULD be phase interference so we hear it anyway.
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Or by sticking a finger in your ear, folk-singer style.
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“A la la la la long…”
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Did somebody already mentioned that you have to switch off time stretch? 
I love that this topic can never be stopped. The moderators have to admit defeat. We need this topic in our lives!
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I’ve only heard guitarists use the word “transparent” when the topic is overdrive pedals.
The guitarist playing a Les Paul, I suppose, might desire a high end boost, as humbuckers are not particularly bright-sounding, so that their guitar part might be heard in the mix.
The guitarist playing a Telecaster or Strat with the bridge pickup selected, OTOH typically does not want that high end boost, as that is a sure ticket to the dreaded Icepick Tone.
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Transparent makes me think of digital compressors that do the whole dynamics thing without adding any character/saturation etc…. So boring, I guess.
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The classic “transparent” pedal is the Klon Centaur, of course. I’ve never used one (I saw a couple in a shop in the late 90s at the absurdly high price of $275 each… if only I had a time machine) but I’ve used clones and they sound good but they’re definitely not “transparent” in the way people mean when they talk about and definitely tend to add something to the highs. They’re very good at their original purpose of making any half decent amp sound like a cranked Fender Twin - which is a pretty bright sound.
I guess. The first four Black Sabbath albums got their sound from aggressive use of a treble booster and they don’t sound over-bright at all. Although a p-90 isn’t that bright as single coils go. The whole British blues sound of the late 60s and early 70s is all about treble boost. Most of those guys used a Rangemaster all the time.
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Well, Black Sabbath isn’t really representative of the type of “transparent” overdrive sound most Strat or Tele players would want. Just think about it… how many Strat/Tele players, in your honest opinion, would want already bright sounding pickups to sound even brighter?
From what I can gather, Tony Iommi used a Strat on one Black Sabbath song then its went kaput.
Regarding the Klon Centaur the guitarists on TGP seem to agree with you that it’s not transparent, and in fact rolls off the highs:
The notion of a “transparent overdrive” is self contradictory anyway, heh. A pedal that doesn’t change your guitar tone, yet at the same time makes it sound dirtier… a contradiction…
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Yeah, I was just throwing Iommi out as an example of axtreme treble boost on single coil pickups not necessarily leading to an unpleasantly bright tone.
Of the top of my head, Alexis Korner used a tele and a treble boost. Too many guitarists to count used strat-style guitars through extremely bright solid state amps like the JC120 in the 80s. In general, if you’re actually playing with a band you usually want a pretty bright, thin guitar sound that sounds kind of awful in isolation.
I don’t really worry too much about the guitar diaspora, though, it’s up there with audiophiles these days. Sometimes I’ll dip in to learn more about some piece of gear and decide if I want to build one.
Well to be fair from Masters of Reality onwards the sound comes from tuning down to C#. IDK, the first two albums also sound a lot more uhhh evil than any of their peers, can’t just be down to using a treble booster? Iommi used Laney amps, a Supergroup and a Klipp at least at some point. A friend of mine had a few Klipps and they do have a pretty distinctive sound.
Let’s try not to stray off too far, and to keep things on topic. Please, and thank you. 
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I agree. Transparency has nothing to do with the OT’s sound quality.
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Funny though- remember where the last OT quality thread ended up? Loved that, Buttholes and Drone bands. And now here we are (feel sorry for OP).
One thing about Octatrack ,it’s so polarising - makes me think it’s a true work of art 
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The early Sabbath sound was pretty much a Dallas Rangemaster into whatever amp Iommi was using at the time. That and an extremely overwound, one-off custom pickup and absurdly light strings (I think his low E was something like .036, unbelievably light, because of his hand injury).
But yeah, back on topic (although with all due respect to AdamJay I kind of feel like derailing OT sound quality threads is almost a civic duty at this point): OT sounds fine.
A slightly different way of describing it is as the thread about knowing your arse from your e-bow.
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Public Service Announcement: I had a miniature crisis today when I was recording some piano loops in the OT, and the quality of the recorded audio didn’t match the incoming audio. In a moment of doubt, I asked myself, “Were those people on Elektronauts right? Is there a problem with the OT sound quality?”
Then I realized that I am an idiot and I had the recording fidelity set to 16 bit. I switched it to 24 bit, and then it sounded fine.
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