Posted: Sun Jun 09, 2002 11:59 pm
Well after reading a host of posts on various audio related forums dealing with the wow factors of this versus that piece of amazing gear I just had to say something, and I am afraid this is going to give my age away but here goes...
I would gladly *down* grade my current studio in terms of overall quality potential in exchange for artists who can write good inspiring tunes and play their instruments. I am totally serious. Listen to some older recordings. They may not be marvels of engineering prowness but that's not what makes them great, or sold them in the first place. Listen to Led Zepplin's #4. Crude but effective. Why? Great songs, great vibe, guys that can lay it on and arrange a tune to move people. Pink Floyd's Dark Side of The Moon, one of the best selling albums of all time. Why? Great songs, great vibe, guys that can lay it on and arrange a tune to move people. FleetWood Mac's Rumours, practically a whole album worth of hits. Great songs, great vibe, guys n gals that can lay it on and arrange a tune to move people. Steely Dan stuff, beautifully in tune, fabulous song craft, wonderful engineering. Hey, does anyone remember Al Stewart's Year of The Cat? I could go on and on. Also note that these particular examples are wonderfully dynamic and uncompressed. Very nice to listen to. Dynamics, remember what they are? If not don't be too hard on yourself, cause there are damn few examples out there to remind us music really does have such things any more, which is a bloody shame.
My point. The all time quickest, cheapest way to up the quality of any recording is to simply have great songs and great players. Everything else is of small consideration by comparison. I would sooner listen to a killer song recorded on a Sound Blaster than a lousy one on the most advanced systems available. I was once asked what the most important gear was in our studio. I pointed to the door and said, "Whoever walks in that door will be the most important gear in the studio". What I didn't tell him was that the worst gear also ends up walking through the same door. He left thinking that we really had a "customer first" attitude, which we do, but that was not what I was getting at. What sells albums is songs, and all the greatest gear or the best algorithms in the world will not improve on that. There is no lack of high quality gear. That cannot be said for song writing/arranging and playing ability in general and that, my friends, is what music is supposed to be all about. Or was, anyway. Also, despite the fact that gear has advanced considerably, giving us engineers the ability to achieve greater hi fi potential than ever before we are basically observing a lo fi trend like never before. Talk about under utilization of resources. Geez. Listen to the totally out of control use of compression, limiting and maximising. Lo fi in the extreme sense of the term. Tell me where the sense in fussing over a clean signal path and amazing specifications makes all that much sense when it all ends up taking a quality loss hit in the end through copious amounts of volume maximising? The only valid reason we can find, and the one we use here, is "Oh, hell...the song sucks anyway so I suppose it may as well be loud".
And on that note, I just have to leave you with this lovely story. This was an experiment I recently tried that just about killed me. I was mastering an album and for a gag I did two different masterings on one tune to demonstrate a couple of "approaches" to the band for their opinions and consideration. In the first example I did what I personally felt was a "quality first" approach that preserved the shape of the dynamics and maximised the overall tone and soundstage presentation. This file sounded very punchy, deep and dynamically extended. The second version I deliberatly butchered if you will. This included some entirely inappropriate EQing and compression *and* to top it all off a reversed copy of another tune mixed very low underneath. Then this whole mess was L2ed so that there was *barely* a whole db of dynamic range for the entire song file. It sounded just dreadful. So the band walks in a couple of days later and I play them the two versions and say, "Ok, whatever you decide sounds best that's the direction we take." All five of them picked the one I deliberately wrecked. I nearly died. So did all the other engineers when they heard about it. I tell you I was a long time getting over that incident. Actually the *really* funny thing was that I just went ahead and did the whole album using my original approach and when they came back in for the final approval they thought it was great and off it went for manufacturing. Nothing was even said about it sounding different than they last remembered it. Go figure.
I would gladly *down* grade my current studio in terms of overall quality potential in exchange for artists who can write good inspiring tunes and play their instruments. I am totally serious. Listen to some older recordings. They may not be marvels of engineering prowness but that's not what makes them great, or sold them in the first place. Listen to Led Zepplin's #4. Crude but effective. Why? Great songs, great vibe, guys that can lay it on and arrange a tune to move people. Pink Floyd's Dark Side of The Moon, one of the best selling albums of all time. Why? Great songs, great vibe, guys that can lay it on and arrange a tune to move people. FleetWood Mac's Rumours, practically a whole album worth of hits. Great songs, great vibe, guys n gals that can lay it on and arrange a tune to move people. Steely Dan stuff, beautifully in tune, fabulous song craft, wonderful engineering. Hey, does anyone remember Al Stewart's Year of The Cat? I could go on and on. Also note that these particular examples are wonderfully dynamic and uncompressed. Very nice to listen to. Dynamics, remember what they are? If not don't be too hard on yourself, cause there are damn few examples out there to remind us music really does have such things any more, which is a bloody shame.
My point. The all time quickest, cheapest way to up the quality of any recording is to simply have great songs and great players. Everything else is of small consideration by comparison. I would sooner listen to a killer song recorded on a Sound Blaster than a lousy one on the most advanced systems available. I was once asked what the most important gear was in our studio. I pointed to the door and said, "Whoever walks in that door will be the most important gear in the studio". What I didn't tell him was that the worst gear also ends up walking through the same door. He left thinking that we really had a "customer first" attitude, which we do, but that was not what I was getting at. What sells albums is songs, and all the greatest gear or the best algorithms in the world will not improve on that. There is no lack of high quality gear. That cannot be said for song writing/arranging and playing ability in general and that, my friends, is what music is supposed to be all about. Or was, anyway. Also, despite the fact that gear has advanced considerably, giving us engineers the ability to achieve greater hi fi potential than ever before we are basically observing a lo fi trend like never before. Talk about under utilization of resources. Geez. Listen to the totally out of control use of compression, limiting and maximising. Lo fi in the extreme sense of the term. Tell me where the sense in fussing over a clean signal path and amazing specifications makes all that much sense when it all ends up taking a quality loss hit in the end through copious amounts of volume maximising? The only valid reason we can find, and the one we use here, is "Oh, hell...the song sucks anyway so I suppose it may as well be loud".
And on that note, I just have to leave you with this lovely story. This was an experiment I recently tried that just about killed me. I was mastering an album and for a gag I did two different masterings on one tune to demonstrate a couple of "approaches" to the band for their opinions and consideration. In the first example I did what I personally felt was a "quality first" approach that preserved the shape of the dynamics and maximised the overall tone and soundstage presentation. This file sounded very punchy, deep and dynamically extended. The second version I deliberatly butchered if you will. This included some entirely inappropriate EQing and compression *and* to top it all off a reversed copy of another tune mixed very low underneath. Then this whole mess was L2ed so that there was *barely* a whole db of dynamic range for the entire song file. It sounded just dreadful. So the band walks in a couple of days later and I play them the two versions and say, "Ok, whatever you decide sounds best that's the direction we take." All five of them picked the one I deliberately wrecked. I nearly died. So did all the other engineers when they heard about it. I tell you I was a long time getting over that incident. Actually the *really* funny thing was that I just went ahead and did the whole album using my original approach and when they came back in for the final approval they thought it was great and off it went for manufacturing. Nothing was even said about it sounding different than they last remembered it. Go figure.
