Board engineers being members of the AES: true. AES statistically made up predominant of board engineers: false. The latter was the point.
If the guy is daltonian (red/green colour blindness, one of my electronic friends has it, don't spill his resistor box) then he has no way of compensating short of taking a spectrum analyser around with him when he paints.
If he has a lower sensitivity in the reds, then he sees the sunset with less red, he sees the painting with less red, when the two match, they match for everyone (except the daltonian, he's stuck working in black and white or an eternal blue period.)
Same with audio. If you have been working thirty years as a television engineer you have a precise notch at 625 line scan frequency. (no, sorry, Stateside. 525 over 60 Hz. Don't know what that is as a frequency, but it should be within the audible) If something arrives at this frequency, you can't hear it. But if you've a steady roll off from, say, 2kHz at 3dB/octave, you're still going to hear some higher frequencies, they just won't be as loud. And the same goes for listening to the original source, so you listen to the original singer, you listen to the recording, they sound the same, is good.
But there is another factor; fatigue. You record the singer in the morning, do overdubs, you start the mix, work on each detail of each instrument, around two AM you put the mix down on tape and stumble off to bed…
Next morning, mix is shrill, aggressive, intolerable. As your ears got tired your HF sensitivity dropped, you added more treble here, there, everywhere. When the Aphex Aural exciter first appeared it was typical; as you got tireder, you added mor exciter, voice, strings, drums, more, more, I'm still not satisfied. And we didn't have automation back then, so when we came in next day to hear the mix practically sizzling at us, it wasn't just turn down an auxiliary send or two and run it back through, it was relearn all the movements.
Add that lots of high frequencies makes things louder without much increase in total power so, like the zero dynamic range principle it has to be applied to all CDs that want car radio play, or to be listened to in high noise environments. Makes the music sound lousy? Never mind, listen to how it cuts through. Takes the life out of the performance? Yeah, but at least you can hear the performance, and it can't sound any quieter than the one before or it won't be as goood.
Oh, guilty as charged. I've done it, for commercials, for film music, even live recordings. Not particularly proud of it, but you have to give the clients what they want, or they don't come back.
If he has a lower sensitivity in the reds, then he sees the sunset with less red, he sees the painting with less red, when the two match, they match for everyone (except the daltonian, he's stuck working in black and white or an eternal blue period.)
Same with audio. If you have been working thirty years as a television engineer you have a precise notch at 625 line scan frequency. (no, sorry, Stateside. 525 over 60 Hz. Don't know what that is as a frequency, but it should be within the audible) If something arrives at this frequency, you can't hear it. But if you've a steady roll off from, say, 2kHz at 3dB/octave, you're still going to hear some higher frequencies, they just won't be as loud. And the same goes for listening to the original source, so you listen to the original singer, you listen to the recording, they sound the same, is good.
But there is another factor; fatigue. You record the singer in the morning, do overdubs, you start the mix, work on each detail of each instrument, around two AM you put the mix down on tape and stumble off to bed…
Next morning, mix is shrill, aggressive, intolerable. As your ears got tired your HF sensitivity dropped, you added more treble here, there, everywhere. When the Aphex Aural exciter first appeared it was typical; as you got tireder, you added mor exciter, voice, strings, drums, more, more, I'm still not satisfied. And we didn't have automation back then, so when we came in next day to hear the mix practically sizzling at us, it wasn't just turn down an auxiliary send or two and run it back through, it was relearn all the movements.
Add that lots of high frequencies makes things louder without much increase in total power so, like the zero dynamic range principle it has to be applied to all CDs that want car radio play, or to be listened to in high noise environments. Makes the music sound lousy? Never mind, listen to how it cuts through. Takes the life out of the performance? Yeah, but at least you can hear the performance, and it can't sound any quieter than the one before or it won't be as goood.
Oh, guilty as charged. I've done it, for commercials, for film music, even live recordings. Not particularly proud of it, but you have to give the clients what they want, or they don't come back.
The accuracy of the recording with respect to the performance is beyond the control of the consumer. Moreover, accuracy in the recording/mixing/mastering process may not have been the engineer's goal, but rather delivering a product with a certain "sound."
The only data the consumer has is that encoded on the CD. It must be taken as the given. In designing or building or evaluating playback equipment the only criterion of "fidelity" available to the builder or consumer is fidelity of the acoustic waveform to the electrical waveform encoded on that CD.
Where was that written? Don't let markus' befuddled misreading lead things astray. My only comment was the contention made in the posted link that audio engineers are functionally deaf between 1.5 and 5 kHz is laughable bunkum.
Deaf??
I am not sure you have a clear idea what recording engineers are like.
Unlike a large corporate bureaucracy or like government, where the “Peter Principal” is the rule often enough to have it’s own definition, the recoding engineers I know are as picky as anyone in hifi. They are as picky as artists are about their craft in any area, that is their livelihood and reputation your talking about. They obsess on the sound of mixing boards, mic pre’s, microphones voices and so on BUT while critical listeners, all of them are realists and double check things and don’t fear comparing two things not knowing which was which.
If you’re thinking “what about the volume wars” or the near extinction of dynamic range in pop music? At a time when it has never been easier to have a VAST dynamic range, that is the record producers.
As one engineer said to me (referring to pop producers he works with) “they all want the loudest CD you can make” which since the actual level is limited to digital 0 dB, the only make it “loud” by increasing the minimum and average levels, now to the point where a traditional VU meter is stationary.
Why is that? That is where the money is, we have gone from thousands of record companies to a few giants and a handful of small ones.
That means there is a much smaller variety of music or even record company management styles and more of a stockholders Golem .
All that while the techoweanies like myself have been focused on “making it better”, but for the main market, is in opposition to the need for a super low dynamic range to play on an iphone and tiny ear buds and usually in a high background noise environment.
I mean if you’re in a room full of strangers talking the noise might be 70-80dB or in a car +90dB, you can’t easily add +40dB of musical dynamic range on top of that (with something easy to carry anyway).
Also, keep in mind you cannot capture a real event in “real to life” stereo except a very few ways and none of these hold up well enough when reproduced by loudspeakers to suspend disbelief (be fooled into thinking it is another space instead of simply being reminded of one).
As a result essentially ALL multi mic recordings are an artistic composition. If the engineer was good enough, you can hear the locations of instruments and sounds as if they were there in front of you in a believable array.
What you can do is get a measurement microphone and record ONE channel {mono} with a sound card. Unless you compress, eq, “fix” or alter it, it can be a very real sounding capture (try it).
This is a lot of fun as well as informative as unlike other recordings, you were actually present live and know what your dog, kids room, any noise of your choice sounded like live. If you play back through one loudspeaker, you will hear a mono hifi, if you play back through both speakers and they are equidistant to your LP, they ideally produce an image that is as real as if there were a center speaker you could point at and you don’t notice the R and L sources.
Anyway, if music is broken because of too much technical diddling, here is everyone’s chance to make a difference, to play at the capture end instead of just the reproduction end with no real reference. You don’t even need musicians to judge how real it sounds in fact non musical sounds are often harder to produce realistically because unlike music they do not have a harmonic structure and so adding either even or odd harmonics is noticeable (where high levels of even harmonics are hardly audible at all with music).
Best,
Tom
I am not sure you have a clear idea what recording engineers are like.
Unlike a large corporate bureaucracy or like government, where the “Peter Principal” is the rule often enough to have it’s own definition, the recoding engineers I know are as picky as anyone in hifi. They are as picky as artists are about their craft in any area, that is their livelihood and reputation your talking about. They obsess on the sound of mixing boards, mic pre’s, microphones voices and so on BUT while critical listeners, all of them are realists and double check things and don’t fear comparing two things not knowing which was which.
If you’re thinking “what about the volume wars” or the near extinction of dynamic range in pop music? At a time when it has never been easier to have a VAST dynamic range, that is the record producers.
As one engineer said to me (referring to pop producers he works with) “they all want the loudest CD you can make” which since the actual level is limited to digital 0 dB, the only make it “loud” by increasing the minimum and average levels, now to the point where a traditional VU meter is stationary.
Why is that? That is where the money is, we have gone from thousands of record companies to a few giants and a handful of small ones.
That means there is a much smaller variety of music or even record company management styles and more of a stockholders Golem .
All that while the techoweanies like myself have been focused on “making it better”, but for the main market, is in opposition to the need for a super low dynamic range to play on an iphone and tiny ear buds and usually in a high background noise environment.
I mean if you’re in a room full of strangers talking the noise might be 70-80dB or in a car +90dB, you can’t easily add +40dB of musical dynamic range on top of that (with something easy to carry anyway).
Also, keep in mind you cannot capture a real event in “real to life” stereo except a very few ways and none of these hold up well enough when reproduced by loudspeakers to suspend disbelief (be fooled into thinking it is another space instead of simply being reminded of one).
As a result essentially ALL multi mic recordings are an artistic composition. If the engineer was good enough, you can hear the locations of instruments and sounds as if they were there in front of you in a believable array.
What you can do is get a measurement microphone and record ONE channel {mono} with a sound card. Unless you compress, eq, “fix” or alter it, it can be a very real sounding capture (try it).
This is a lot of fun as well as informative as unlike other recordings, you were actually present live and know what your dog, kids room, any noise of your choice sounded like live. If you play back through one loudspeaker, you will hear a mono hifi, if you play back through both speakers and they are equidistant to your LP, they ideally produce an image that is as real as if there were a center speaker you could point at and you don’t notice the R and L sources.
Anyway, if music is broken because of too much technical diddling, here is everyone’s chance to make a difference, to play at the capture end instead of just the reproduction end with no real reference. You don’t even need musicians to judge how real it sounds in fact non musical sounds are often harder to produce realistically because unlike music they do not have a harmonic structure and so adding either even or odd harmonics is noticeable (where high levels of even harmonics are hardly audible at all with music).
Best,
Tom
Most recording engineers are some sort of gear head--often even against all evidence.
The practical dynamic range thing is for real. Especially when you are dealing with the mini speakers the kids(people who buy the most music) are listening to. The ear buds and current car stereos are much less problematic by comparison.
The practical dynamic range thing is for real. Especially when you are dealing with the mini speakers the kids(people who buy the most music) are listening to. The ear buds and current car stereos are much less problematic by comparison.
Most recording mix control rooms have addressed the problems of early reflections of the speaker's HF energy so they can concentrate on the mix, rather than the room.
I find that flat response in a speaker is not a problem, but as volume is increased, HF room reflections become more and more annoying.
The same speaker, same level, same music played outdoors, or in an acoustically treated room, no HF problems at loud level.
For those unwilling or unable to treat room problems, using speakers with high directivity to reduce annoying HF reflections is a good choice, or one can simply equalize the speakers for a response that sounds OK with the program material at the level of playback chosen.
Art
The Music
Hi There.
I've been following this discussion for a while and, while some very valid points are made, let me quote from something I read years ago:-
1) I would rather listen to a poor recording of good music than a good recording of poor music...(dunno who said this, but very true).
2) As the doyen of "rock 'n roll" (Mick Jagger) once said: -It's only "Rock 'n Roll" but I like it!.
3) Are we supposed to be listening to the music, or, are we listening to our sound-systems instead.
Now that should stir up a hornets-nest!!!!!!
Hi There.
I've been following this discussion for a while and, while some very valid points are made, let me quote from something I read years ago:-
1) I would rather listen to a poor recording of good music than a good recording of poor music...(dunno who said this, but very true).
2) As the doyen of "rock 'n roll" (Mick Jagger) once said: -It's only "Rock 'n Roll" but I like it!.
3) Are we supposed to be listening to the music, or, are we listening to our sound-systems instead.
Now that should stir up a hornets-nest!!!!!!
Why can't we listen to both? Is music some sort of sacred cow that is holier than all else? Is it wrong to like a good stereo system? Or do we just loudly proclaim "It's all about the music!!" because we feel guilty about our passion for equipment?
Are we not men?
Are we supposed to bow our heads and chant - "It's all about the destination, the car doesn't matter." Fine. You drive there in your Yugo, I'll drive in my Aston Martin.
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