How dumb have music listeners and musicians become?

[mep]

Yesterday there was a post about the “Turn it Up” campaign that was designed to help counter the loudness wars and educate both musicians and music listeners. The more I thought about this, the more chagrined I became. Once upon a time when men were men, we all realized that every recording had a Goldilocks point on the volume control where everything snapped into focus and all of the sound was in proportion. Dynamic range was a given in yesteryear’s music and we all knew why we had a volume control knob.

Fast forward to today. Now we have an entire generation of people who grew up hearing music that was compressed and had no dynamic range and the musician’s want their recording to be louder than their competition. They don’t even know what dynamic range is or that it’s a good thing. Now we have to have a campaign in order to educate musicians and music listeners and teach them how to use their volume control. Cripes! I think we’re doomed people.

Back in the day when men were men (before being emasculated and becoming metro-sexual and wearing a man-purse), having a good stereo system was a point of pride among men. Of course that was back in the stone ages before the internet and high-definition television, and the only video game out there was Pong. And back in those days, any guy who was serious about his system had multiple sources to listen to. R2R, LPs, and a good FM tuner were common denominators in many systems back in the day. And of course I only saw that by going to other peoples’ houses when I was growing up because my old man had a bunch of LPs, but he only had a crappy old portable record player. My mom had his onions safely tucked away in a drawer.

Back to my original point-if we have to have a campaign to educate people about how music is supposed to sound and how to use our volume control knobs, we have regressed terribly as a music listening society. Thank God for the 1950s and 1960s as that was when most of the greatest music in our history was recorded. And, we were even smart enough to know how to play it back at the correct level and appreciate the dynamic range that the engineers worked so hard to give us. It’s sadly ironic that we have arguably the best playback gear that we have ever had, a digital medium that is capable of incredible dynamic range, and yet we are given modern recordings to play back that are just compressed junk. There must be a bunch of old school recording engineers rolling around in their graves.

 

[bblue]

...
Back to my original point-if we have to have a campaign to educate people about how music is supposed to sound and how to use our volume control knobs, we have regressed terribly as a music listening society. Thank God for the 1950s and 1960s as that was when most of the greatest music in our history was recorded. And, we were even smart enough to know how to play it back at the correct level and appreciate the dynamic range that the engineers worked so hard to give us. It’s sadly ironic that we have arguably the best playback gear that we have ever had, a digital medium that is capable of incredible dynamic range, and yet we are given modern recordings to play back that are just compressed junk. There must be a bunch of old school recording engineers rolling around in their graves.

But why isn't this a good thing? As a music listening society at large we have already taken major leaps backwards for the commercial dollar. How is it regressing to try and educate those who have never heard good audio?

A big problem would be to convince them they need more than their iPod on which to listen to music and better than mp3's as a source. That would ruin many commercial sales models (iTunes, Amazon, etc). The backlash would be incredible.

--Bill

 

[mep]

But why isn't this a good thing? How is it regressing to try and educate those who have never heard good audio?

-Bill

The mere fact that you have to teach people what dynamic range is and how to use your volume control is de facto proof of the regression of musical and playback intelligence that was once taken for granted in our society. The fact that we need to have a campaign to try and right this ship is a sad commentary on where we are at today.

 

[treitz3]

A big problem would be to convince them they need more than their iPod on which to listen to music and better than mp3's as a source. That would ruin many commercial sales models (iTunes, Amazon, etc). The backlash would be incredible.

...But ohhh, so welcome to me. Seeing as how I despise the...what I refer too as the "convenience crowd" [along with the music industry itself] for molding music reproduction into what it has evolved into today, which is mostly crap for sound, I could care less. I don't want music that sounds good on those platforms. I want what we used to have [or at least the option thereof], with regards to well recorded music, before the convenience crowd even became a thought.

It's amazing to me that a recording from the 50's sounds so much better than the hottest selling Adele album of today, which honestly is a horrible representation of a recording. Folks actually believe that this is good sound. They are so "dumbed down" that they don't even know that they couldn't be any further from the truth.

 

[mep]

They are so "dumbed down" that they don't even know that they couldn't be any further from the truth.

Amen brother, that's my point.

 

[RBFC]

Hear, Hear! "Tell it, brother!"

Lee

 

[JackD201]

There is a glimmer of hope. I think the loudness wars in large part was about getting noticed on the radio, like having all the TVs cranked up at Best Buy. With radio's influence on music sales dwindling, I'm hoping the need to be LOUD will lessen appreciably. Then again I'm ever the optimist

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Nah, that was the last loudness war...the one that pumped up the singles of the 50s & 60s to be heard on car radios with the windows rolled down. This one is about the audibility of earbuds in noisy environments where people listen to their iPhones. But I'm still optimistic. Better headphones for portables are gaining in popularity, and loudness, like all trends, will pass. I hope.

Tim

 

[JackD201]

Who still uses earbuds?

 

[mep]

Who still uses earbuds?

Same people who love compressed digital music?

 

[MylesBAstor]

Same people who love compressed digital music?

Want to know why our recordings sound so bad?

AIR Lyndhurst Studio One.

 

[RogerD]

It's amazing to me that a recording from the 50's sounds so much better than the hottest selling Adele album of today, which honestly is a horrible representation of a recording.

I was shocked how bad this Adele recording sounds. If only somebody had a brain and a ear.

 

[MylesBAstor]

Yesterday there was a post about the “Turn it Up” campaign that was designed to help counter the loudness wars and educate both musicians and music listeners. The more I thought about this, the more chagrined I became. Once upon a time when men were men, we all realized that every recording had a Goldilocks point on the volume control where everything snapped into focus and all of the sound was in proportion. Dynamic range was a given in yesteryear’s music and we all knew why we had a volume control knob.

Fast forward to today. Now we have an entire generation of people who grew up hearing music that was compressed and had no dynamic range and the musician’s want their recording to be louder than their competition. They don’t even know what dynamic range is or that it’s a good thing. Now we have to have a campaign in order to educate musicians and music listeners and teach them how to use their volume control. Cripes! I think we’re doomed people.

Back in the day when men were men (before being emasculated and becoming metro-sexual and wearing a man-purse), having a good stereo system was a point of pride among men. Of course that was back in the stone ages before the internet and high-definition television, and the only video game out there was Pong. And back in those days, any guy who was serious about his system had multiple sources to listen to. R2R, LPs, and a good FM tuner were common denominators in many systems back in the day. And of course I only saw that by going to other peoples’ houses when I was growing up because my old man had a bunch of LPs, but he only had a crappy old portable record player. My mom had his onions safely tucked away in a drawer.

Back to my original point-if we have to have a campaign to educate people about how music is supposed to sound and how to use our volume control knobs, we have regressed terribly as a music listening society. Thank God for the 1950s and 1960s as that was when most of the greatest music in our history was recorded. And, we were even smart enough to know how to play it back at the correct level and appreciate the dynamic range that the engineers worked so hard to give us. It’s sadly ironic that we have arguably the best playback gear that we have ever had, a digital medium that is capable of incredible dynamic range, and yet we are given modern recordings to play back that are just compressed junk. There must be a bunch of old school recording engineers rolling around in their graves.

Maybe they read that best selling book Audio for Dummies.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Who still uses earbuds?

Millions of people who buy iPods and use what comes with them. We are the few, my friend. There is a growing interest in replacement headphones - decent ear canal phones, that sort of thing, but they are still a fraction of the market.

Tim

 

[fas42]

Fascinating. I don't know what format you were listening to this on, Roger, and I have no quality material of hers; but I downloaded the snippet from allmusic of the album 21, Tk2; which did sound quite atrocious on direct playback from the browser. The actual material is not heavily compressed overall, I've seen much, much worse so far elsewhere,

Anyway, I tried the MP3 to 24/384 offline resampling trick again; the earlier test had been done with material that was far less compressed, though a "thick" mix. I was curious what doing this exercise would achieve for something absolutely current, that had been processed with the latest ideas. And it was worthwhile doing ...

Again, just playing the 2 versions on the absolutely standard PC and speakers: big improvement, Adele's voice was smooth, the tonal qualities were there, no edge to the sound; the backing singers blended nicely, but the real jump was in the drumming well behind in the soundstage, the reverb in that totally separate acoustic was dramatically improved, and made aural sense. The drumming in the MP3 by comparison was a mess, almost unlistenable to. Same hardware, same initial file, only difference was how the audio data was being fed to the DAC.

Frank

 

[MylesBAstor]

Wonder why we had a golden age of stereo recording? Read this great piece done by Thomas Conrad.

http://www.stereophile.com/interviews/402roy/

 

[bblue]

Want to know why our recordings sound so bad?

AIR Lyndhurst Studio One.

How do you figure that, Myles? You can look at the control room in a picture and condemn it? I think not.

In reality that is not so far from what most top studios look like inside the control room. It's the equipment and the engineer that make it or break it.

--Bill

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

How do you figure that, Myles? You can look at the control room in a picture and condemn it? I think not.

In reality that is not so far from what most top studios look like inside the control room. It's the equipment and the engineer that make it or break it.

--Bill

Our recordings sound bad because people make bad decisions. It's that simple.

The jazz recordings from the early days of stereo have great purity because they were recorded simply, and with great skill. Some have a great sense of space, because they were recorded live, in studio, in large-ish, great sounding rooms. Some of the best examples are the Miles Davis Quintet recordings made in a hurry when Miles was trying to fulfill his Prestige contract and get on to Columbia. These are the Workin', Steamin', Cookin', Relaxin' albums. But many of the great jazz records of that era were recorded with instruments isolated and close mic'd, and they simply do not have the natural ambience people attribute to them. They were still much simpler than the heavily over-dubbed and bounced tracks of the late 60s through the 80s, and they sound great, but we're just not hearing the "room tone" we think we are, because the instruments were not playing together in one big, open room. They were isolated. And the mics were close. Famous examples include Kind of Blue and, yes, Way Out West. You don't get that kind of channel separation when recording the band together in a single, ambient space. It can't happen. YMMV, but in this case, you'll be wrong.

Tim

 

[FrantzM]

How do you figure that, Myles? You can look at the control room in a picture and condemn it? I think not.

In reality that is not so far from what most top studios look like inside the control room. It's the equipment and the engineer that make it or break it.

--Bill

+ !
+1

As far As i can recall some incredible Mercury recordings were made with the aid of a Van... a van!!! I wonder what kind of monitoring equipment did they have in the van and yet ..

 

[carolkoh]

From a friend in the industry who's worked Hollywood movies as well as game sound.

I've heard rants from him about what "clients want" and I think the problem is that we're in a bit of a Catch-22 situation. The question is what we as the educated listener can do to make the situation better. Drops of water in the ocean or the patient drips of water wearing down a rock? I like to think the latter, that the more we people we educate, the better and more demanding listeners we'll make. I for one, am always pleased to let a visitor to the factory listen to the music we're playing and educate them a little.