Re: Michael - The Great Album Debate (Only Go Here if You Want To Continue The Controversy)
Hard to tell, but you can see it is positioned specifically and there are different shapes, at the right height.
It looks like soundproofing foam but it's far from ideal. I personally never seen such limited use of soundproofing material. The home studios I know that all the walls / full panels of soundproofing. Plus I really do not see a vocal booth. Even if those limited foams can reduce some echo, they wouldn't stop from picking up other noises. In short I really do not think it's pretty good studio.
(Teddy went to their home after started working on the songs. He might be talking about the latest version of the studio)
even in the newer studio that odd sound proofing bugs me
and a better one will look more like this
for the second argument, it's more a question with business and financial questions attached, not ethics. if you look at it from ethics point of view, it's wrong to include songs that need such level of manipulations as legit Michael Jackson songs. i don't see much room to argue the otherwise. can it be ethically right to include the cascio tracks?
if you go with "business / financial perspective". The answer is "profit" as long as it sells and bring money anything is okay.
Ethics is the portion that adds "responsibility" into the mix. And ethics isn't as clear cut as you portray to be.
For example some argue that ethics depend on the business goal - such as if the goal of walmart is to find the cheapest priced items then it's ethical for them to achieve those objectives. Similarly if the goal of MJ Estate / Sony is to earn money for the MJ estate then anything that achieves this will be okay.
some believe that ethics will include "no harm" which means you must achieve your goal with following the laws, society rules and not cause bodily harm. so if you go with that as long as the vocals are MJ any level of processing will be acceptable. (assume they release an album "MJ as a chipmunk" - the vocals are MJ but it's processed to a level that it sounds like a chipmunk. As the vocals are legit it would be fine).
another group would add social responsibility to the mix which is further than our discussion.
ethics in marketing will include truthfulness and transparency. "recently brought to completion" - meaning other people worked on these songs after Michael died, Teddy Riley's rants openly acknowledged that those songs were heavily processed and included copy paste elements. Estate statement acknowledged the concerns. In short they were quite transparent about their actions. or they never said "these are perfect quality vocals that we didn't touch left as Michael left them".
so in short in my opinion business ethics isn't as clean cut as portrayed and it's a question about your choice to buy or not.
For example we talked this before : fast food . It's not the "best" food out there, it also has the capacity to "harm" people's health. so do you think from an "ethical" stand point it shouldn't be sold? or if the company puts a notice on it saying the fat content is this and the health implications is public knowledge but yet people chose to buy it, what happens?
Is the fast food company being not ethical with such a low quality possibly to cause health issues product or as they are honest about their product is it every persons own choice?
