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the Paradox of modern music production

arXter

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technology is advancing at such a rate, that even a modest home studio owner can now have access to hi-end audio gear - yet, it seems the majority of music fans these days listen to low-quality MP3 on limited bandwidth earphones, ringtones through tinny mobile phone speakers, or stream most of their 'collection' through YouTube.

large commercial studios are suffering. (only recently in the UK, Townhouse closed its doors and places like Abbey Road and Olympic are at risk). is it really worth investing in high-quality audio recording equipment when most people's music will be dithered down, compressed and encoded for MP3?

is sound quality still important? hopefully the trend will change when internet bandwidth increases and lossless wav/aiff format files become as speedy to download as MP3.

but at a time when high-end recording equipment is within reach of more people than ever, never has it seemed so redundant.
 
I made a long ass post but I'm not gonna post it because I will just piss people off by going in too many different directions.

So I'm gonna just say that from today and until eternity there will never come a time when people start to care about quality, it's all about loudness.
The music industry has come up with a way to fool people into liking music, and it is to make the music as loud and fast as possible.

Let me ask you all this, when was the last time you heard a ballad on a commercial radio station?
I have to go back to when I was a kid and heard songs like "Toni Braxton - Unbreak My Heart" and "Celine Dion - My Heart Will Go on".

They can't even do ballads no more, it's messed up.
 
^^ Nah I got ya, Bruce, your post don't piss me off at all, lol. There will never be a 100% agreement with how we look at this, there's just not. I actually loved the mono production of the sixties.
 
troubleman84 said:
^^ Nah I got ya, Bruce, your post don't piss me off at all, lol.
Click to expand...

Huh? :D I didn't aim that first line at anyone specific, and if I did it must have been at myself. :D
Before I posted my message I wrote a looooooooong post about the development of modern technology (mp3.com, myspace), faith in quality of records, reason of record companies dying, too much music in the industry e.t.c - But I never posted that message because it would've kind of taking away the focus on the point arXter wanted to get through :)

But I'm with you, it's like... Take a record like "ABC" and really listen to it, especially with finer audio monitors or headphones. Close your eyes and it's like you're IN THERE with little Michael in front of your eyes.
And why is that? Because they didn't compress the music as much back then, they left space in between all the instruments. Especially old Beatles records where they were just like "screw you guys, we're rockstars and we gonna put all the drums in the left speaker, the vocals in the middle and the guitars in the right speaker".
We can't do that no more, because that wouldn't work in the clubs... imagine one side on the club having all the drums and the other side just the guitars :D

(LOL, arXter I'm so sorry for getting all off-topic. I have to pimp slap myself)
 
I understand what you mean by that, Bruce. I was listening to a Four Tops record and felt I was in the studio with them. With some current music, you can tell it's made for your speakers to burst. :lol:
 
arXter said:
technology is advancing at such a rate, that even a modest home studio owner can now have access to hi-end audio gear - yet, it seems the majority of music fans these days listen to low-quality MP3 on limited bandwidth earphones, ringtones through tinny mobile phone speakers, or stream most of their 'collection' through YouTube.

large commercial studios are suffering. (only recently in the UK, Townhouse closed its doors and places like Abbey Road and Olympic are at risk). is it really worth investing in high-quality audio recording equipment when most people's music will be dithered down, compressed and encoded for MP3?

is sound quality still important? hopefully the trend will change when internet bandwidth increases and lossless wav/aiff format files become as speedy to download as MP3.

but at a time when high-end recording equipment is within reach of more people than ever, never has it seemed so redundant.
Click to expand...

To answer specifically on if sound quality is still important, I would "like" to think so. God, I hope so. But what you say is so true. Hell, I do it myself w/ my little iPod ear buds and laptop speakers. It's the only ways I have to listen to my music. I don't have good head phones or stereo speakers right now.

I don't really know where I'm going with this, but in a world where so much music is digital and synthesized (and hard to copy in a live setting, imo) I think it's hard for a normal listener to decipher what's good sound quality and what's not. They simply do not know. I also don't think they care, as long as they can hear their music in some fashion, which is sad to me.

And I consider anyone who posts in this section to KNOW what it sounds like to hear a good quality recording.

But yes, I still think quality is important. I think there are enough of us out there that want it that way. Many of my friends agree with me. But the non musical ones don't really have much of a clue what i'm talking about.

I guess what i'm trying to say is.........i agree with you....:lol:
 
paradox is a good word to use, for both music and music production. it's in the ear of the beholder. if it pleases you and does for you what it set out to do, then, mission accomplished. and, like trying to find good instrumentalists, finding a good studio can be hard, and engineers have been known to have as much of an attitude as some musicians...so, technology, and convenience tends to level the playing field. back to free enterprise, and resourcefulness, and keeping everybody on their toes. i don't know enough about technology, but when i got a small blue boombox and got the Invincible cd, i still heard sounds i never thought possible. and i was very pleased. lol. i don't know what kind of a boombox it was, but it was the shit. but then again, it coulda been the cd. lol
 
IvoryKeys said:
I think it's hard for a normal listener to decipher what's good sound quality and what's not. They simply do not know. I also don't think they care, as long as they can hear their music in some fashion, which is sad to me.
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There you go, only people that are passionated about music can really care enough to hear the difference.

It's like movies and photographies you know. People that have a fetish for analog stuff are pissed at digital photography and even HD recordings and shit.
And someone like me that don't know much about the tapes and shit are just like... I liked how the old Eddie Murphy movies looked like, the grittiness in them.
But I don't know why they looked like that, if it's because they we're shoot on a different tape than they shoot now days on, or if they processed the movies differently or what not.

I think it's also like that for people without knowledge but who still cares about music, they are like "Man I love how the music used to sound.", but they can't pin point on what the difference is since they don't have the knowledge.
I mean, I consider myself as someone that have at least a little knowledge about music but still I can't pin point everything that makes the sound quality as nasty as it is today.
Maybe it's a combination of too much compressing and making the music sound as loud as possible, and maybe it's because everything has become digitalized.
I mean, the drum sets, guitars, bass, strings, basically everything has become digitalized which means that the music is becoming more "de-humnized", which means you lack a "feel" in the music since every note and drum sound is exactly right on point because you have tracked out all the notes digitally and the computer hits every single note and sound in the exact right time.
And just a simple fact like, imagine how much "ambiance" you get from a room where you record drums and just simple things like the slides and fret noises you get from when you play an acoustic guitar by hand with a pick.
But of course this isn't important all the time, I mean how much of Teddy Riley's stuff on "Dangerous" has been recorded through a mic? They weight that up by recording small beat boxes and breaths and stuff to and a "warmth" to it. And nobody does that like Michael, it's just incredible when it comes to him.
But then again I could go against myself by saying "hey, Teddy at least recorded stuff analogy through synthesizers"
Man I could go on for days about this, it's just a whole science.

The bottom is line is that we've become almost lazy and careless now days, both those who provide and those listen to the music.
 
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all three posts above - you guys (and girl) NAILED IT.

arXOfApproval.png
 
BruceWayne said:
There you go, only people that are passionated about music can really care enough to hear the difference.

It's like movies and photographies you know. People that have a fetish for analog stuff are pissed at digital photography and even HD recordings and shit.
And someone like me that don't know much about the tapes and shit are just like... I liked how the old Eddie Murphy movies looked like, the grittiness in them.
But I don't know why they looked like that, if it's because they we're shoot on a different tape than they shoot now days on, or if they processed the movies differently or what not.

I think it's also like that for people without knowledge but who still cares about music, they are like "Man I love how the music used to sound.", but they can't pin point on what the difference is since they don't have the knowledge.
I mean, I consider myself as someone that have at least a little knowledge about music but still I can't pin point everything that makes the sound quality as nasty as it is today.
Maybe it's a combination of too much compressing and making the music sound as loud as possible, and maybe it's because everything has become digitalized.
I mean, the drum sets, guitars, bass, strings, basically everything has become digitalized which means that the music is becoming more "de-humnized", which means you lack a "feel" in the music since every note and drum sound is exactly right on point because you have tracked out all the notes digitally and the computer hits every single note and sound in the exact right time.
And just a simple fact like, imagine how much "ambiance" you get from a room where you record drums and just simple things like the slides and fret noises you get from when you play an acoustic guitar by hand with a pick.
But of course this isn't important all the time, I mean how much of Teddy Riley's stuff on "Dangerous" has been recorded through a mic? They weight that up by recording small beat boxes and breaths and stuff to and a "warmth" to it. And nobody does that like Michael, it's just incredible when it comes to him.
But then again I could go against myself by saying "hey, Teddy at least recorded stuff analogy through synthesizers"
Man I could go on for days about this, it's just a whole science.

The bottom is line is that we've become almost lazy and careless now days, both those who provide and those listen to the music.
Click to expand...

i think we are all passionate about music, whether or not we have the ears of an engineer. yeah some may get pissy about some things that another listener may not understand, but i'd be hard pressed not to say that music is like food, to everybody. they just can't live without it.

u know, quite frankly, the missing the analog, could easily be met with, people getting bored with it, when that's all there was, but now missing it, just because... just because it's been replaced. what's that lyric? lol '... paradise..put up a parking lot'...

now..as for fetish...:)
 
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arXter said:
technology is advancing at such a rate, that even a modest home studio owner can now have access to hi-end audio gear - yet, it seems the majority of music fans these days listen to low-quality MP3 on limited bandwidth earphones, ringtones through tinny mobile phone speakers, or stream most of their 'collection' through YouTube.

large commercial studios are suffering. (only recently in the UK, Townhouse closed its doors and places like Abbey Road and Olympic are at risk). is it really worth investing in high-quality audio recording equipment when most people's music will be dithered down, compressed and encoded for MP3?

is sound quality still important? hopefully the trend will change when internet bandwidth increases and lossless wav/aiff format files become as speedy to download as MP3.

but at a time when high-end recording equipment is within reach of more people than ever, never has it seemed so redundant.
Click to expand...
I'mma answer the bolded question directly: Yes...even though SOME people (even though I see you said "it seems the majority of music fans", but it can't be that you meant "ALL of them") are satisfied with low-quality sound. Sound quality has been important and will always be, for artists and music buffs:)

I think I'm one (not to that extent as many others', tho) and still bump tapes and cds sometimes without earphones. That's the way it's gotta be for me. Listening to music, for me, ain't about putting on some background sound while doing other things. I do nothing and kick my feet up and chilll when I listen to the music that I choose to listen to. I know some others, like my sister who ain't into music as much as I am, are happy to enjoy music through ringtone, i-Pod, MP3 files, etc. That's how they do and as long as they have music in their lives, it's all good.
 
Well, it's in the production work and also the medium. A couple years ago a DJ friend of mine was telling me how Akon sampled R. Kelly's "Ignition" for "Don't Matter". He pulled out a fresh vinyl and put it on the table... when he started playing it, I was like "WOW!" The clean sound of the vinyl... I know they say CD and Vinyl are so close in terms of quality that people who say they can tell a difference are likely suffering from a placebo effect, but damn... perception is everything, and that sounded so much better than CD.

As for actual sound quality of the files, production not withstanding, I don't have a big problem with mp3's, as I rip all my CDs to Apple Lossless and can't really tell a difference between a good LAME-encoded MP3 and the lossless files. I still think a good studio and good production are a must though. Michael Jackson's "Invincible" and "Dangerous" (and probably the albums in between) are prime examples: as good as the content (the songs themselves, the artistry, etc.) is on the album, the actual mastering and sound of them leaves a lot to be desired. They are very flat, with no "bite". Listening to older albums like Thriller and Bad (the remastered versions)... the sound is so much better, even when listening on puny earphones. So if a guy like MJ who's albums probably cost millions to make suffers when having the best the world has to offer, its proof that top-notch equipment and the know-how to get the most out of it is an absolute necessity.
 
wow. no placebo here. lol. to me, cd blows vinyl away. you're right, it is perception. lol

and to me, you can taste the thirty million that MJ invested in Invicible, as opposed to Thriller.
 
There's one thing on Invincible that irritates the shit out of me and that's that the sound clips (gets distorted) in certain places in my favourite track "Heaven Can Wait".
Sometimes the bass and kick clashes and it gets distorted. (check for an example 00:57 into it when Michael says wonderFUL, on that "Ful" it's just arghhhh. haha

Overall I must say that the remasters of especially Bad & Dangerous are absolutely flawless, it's pure ear candy. Especially those Teddy Riley tracks that have 100 things going on at the same time. It's so crisp you can almost taste it.

But if we gonna talk about mastering and mixing of world class then you should check out "Prodigy - The Fat of The Land"... If you like that kind of music you'll get the ride of your life, I've never experienced anything like that, mixing and mastering on another level. And this album is 12 years old.
On records like this the engineer really becomes like a additional member of the band since he's the one that decide how the album will sound like.
 
hmmmm the vinyl has to be 12" and in perfect condition then maybe.... but it's preference.

Alot of music today does seem flat... when i do listen to music i try to zone out and predict sort of where the song should go.... and today's music does seem to leave me wanting more at times.
I don't blame digital.. it's not the tools, it's the person using them.
 
Analog

I don't really like the digital recordings that are released today, I prefer analog.
 
This is a darned good topic. I've been wondering about this for the longest.
I used to produce ambient and electronica music back in 2001. And sound clarity was a big MUST in order to successfully convey certain subtle conditions of the music itself.
When I first opened my myspace music page and uploaded the tracks, i was horrified at the amount of compression involved. Now, I understand thats just a rough example of music compression, but it did really open my eyes, or ears i should say and realize where music quality was turning to because of it.
I never updated my page nor bothered with production as much ever since. I strongly felt, if I was forced to compress my files just to have them up online and sacrifice the subtlety which i truly felt brought my work to life, then theres just no point. I hated all my work in MP3 format. But in WAV, at the very least of 48kHz, was what I deemed acceptable. Anything lower, and I could actually notice it closing up into a smaller ambiance.
 
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