HI folks,


An audio engineer from St. Louis who's widely known in the
industry bought a remastered cd of JEfferson Airplane's
"surealistic pillow" and complained about the sound.

Since I know there are a couple lurkers here with some
understanding of music, and music pedagogy I thought you'd
find my comments in that thread interesting, or worth
commenting on yourselves.  HEre they are.

* Forwarded (from: REC.AUDIO.PRO) by Richard Webb using timEd 1.10.y2k+.
* Originally from Richard Webb (1:116/901) to all.
* Original dated: Wed May 09, 17:01


On Wed 2012-May-09 10:47, Frank Stearns writes:
> It's perplexing and troubling on a number of fronts. I wonder at
> times if we've  reached the point in the broad "evolution" of audio
> and society where these points
> are beginning to dominate:

> - engineers, producers and others in the "QC" chain who have
> actually /never/ in their lifetime heard acoustic music or acoustic
> sources. Everything, EVERYTHING  they've experienced is through
> electronics and transducers. Even something simple
> like a conversation is within the weave of reproduced audio in the
> background (or
> foreground, as some folks routinely have conversations with 75-85 dB
> music playing
> that you have to talk over -- loud crap that never gets
> extinguished).

I've argued this for a long time.  We've got a culture of
folks in the developed world who have never heard acoustic
music, or who are totally unfamiliar with the way sound
works without some form of mechanically reproduced sound
they need to talk over, or listen through to hear other
sounds in their environment.


> It's a bit like an artist who learned to paint in daylight v. one
> who only painted
> under flourescent light their entire life. The latter will likely
> have a rather odd
> color sense. And some garishly ugly colors might get used and not
> even be noticed
> under that light.

INdeed, and it's not just the constant listening through
transducers, but the amount of just general "noise
pollution" to borrow the term.

My remote trucks control room is pretty good about limiting
exposure to sources of noise pollution, but here in my
office, and in my home I have plenty.

My wife's oxygen concentrator runs 24/7 when we're home.
ADd to this the noise from a ceiling fan motor or two, a vhf ham radio
transceiver in hte living room, the hf transceiver here in the office as well
as a vhf/uhf transceiver, also
often the speaker which produces the synthesized speech
enabling me to read your article.  Just to hear her talking
to me from across the house means I have to tune through a
sometimes very high noise floor with my naked ears.

> - closely related to the above is a lack of music education or early
> exposure to many different types of music. True, you don't have to
> have this to push buttons and
> be a nice person that people like to work with, but IMO such
> engineers might lack
> aesthetic dimension in what they do, or be oblivious to serious
> problems with  the recording/mastering.

This is also true.  Too many people pushing the buttons and
manipulating the technology have never learned to appreciate a wide variety of
types of music.  These are for the most
part people who've spent their whole lives listening to
nothing that wasn't produced via transducers.  Even at
guitar lessons they played amplified guitars, never went to
hear an orchestra play, never sat down to listen to a lady
play an acoustic guitar and sing where she didn't have a
microphone in front of her, and maybe a pickup on the
guitar.

> If all those around the person at the studio or mastering house are
> the same way, no
> one's going to catch the disaster that just went out the door.

YEs, and a lot of people i know who are under 50 years old
have never experienced music that wasn't brought to their
ears via transducers.

> It's a theory, anyway....

A theory with some basis in fact I'm afraid.

Regards,
           Richard
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 - Origin:  (1:116/901)

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 * Origin:  (1:116/901)