WELCOME TO AUDIOBITES!
By George Petersen
Episode 1: What’s your Problem, Anyway?
Welcome to AudioBites, my weekly rant/rave about all things audio and musical. The idea behind this started out simply as a blog, but we wanted to add an element where the discussion would go farther than the usual editorial slant, so we’ve provided a comment field where you and other readers can toss in your two Euros worth.
The whole idea here is interactivity, but this will be a semi-moderated free-for-all, where slander, obscenities, personal attacks and incoherent ramblings from participants who drool incessantly may be subject to the a simple stroke of that QWERTY key marked “DEL.” But what you should expect from AudioBites may be sometimes provocative, sometimes evocative, but (hopefully) always thought provoking and maybe even entertaining.
One of my pet peeves has to do with affordable technology. No, I’m not getting off on a tired tirade that only $$$ gear is worth using. Today, for the price of a couple months of car payments (depending on what you drive), you can assemble a decent recording setup. No, it won’t be world-class, but that paltry sum is enough to buy some basic tools that could lay down some respectable-sounding demos—even masters. And if you’re in a band and can split the costs among several players, the possibilities for buying even more (and improved) goodies are even better.
Now with all the parts in place, we come to the crux of the situation. Once you have the gear, it’s nice if somebody knows how to use it. And not just how to plug it in and get a meter to move, but having someone who actually took some time to understand something as basic—yet essential as—gain structure and maybe even mic placement.
Once upon a time, even getting a signal down on a pro analog deck required knowledge of machine setup and alignment. And unless one was very careful to optimize levels, tape hiss would quickly destroy the character of a recording. Once digital removed that nasty hissing sound and the alignment chores, EVERYBODY suddenly became an audio engineer.
And with no tape hiss, you could just record signals at -30dB and boost them during the mix with no problems, right? Wrong! As soon as you start chucking that much dynamic range out of your tracks, your pristine 24-bit system (at least it said 24-bit on the outside of the packing box) suddenly outputs 12- or 14-bit recordings. Hey, there’s no tape hiss, and that chic lo-fi sound is “in” these days, so who cares anyway?
And that’s what really bugs me. All this great, affordable high-res digital gear is going for rock-bottom prices, and with a little know-how and applied techno-savvy, the right band could break out of the basement and change the world. So where are these musical masters? I’m not talking about the “gee, we have our own record” types.You’ve heard of the million monkeys typing…So if a gazillion groups are out there (some are very out there) doing self-produced album, by now, there should be a least a dozen certified cases of household-name superstars emerging from those roots. Hell, the Cowboy Junkies broke with a cassette recording made around a campfire. So where are the next breakthroughs?
Certainly, there are valid reasons why latching onto affordable high-res tools don’t instantly turn the user into a George Martin. But the question remains: Where’s the revolution? Click on the comments field below and offer your take on this.
I’ll be back with some more quasi-coherent rambling next week, but until then, consider this…
BONUS TRACK:
DUMB FORMAT OF THE WEEK
This week’s dumb format award has to go to the miniSD (Secure Digital) line of removable media. Don’t get me wrong: I’m all for solid-state memory, and the postage-stamp-sized SD format is very cool. But is a data cart that’s two-thirds the size of a postage stamp really a breakthrough? Worse yet, since most people don’t have miniSD card readers, you need to carry around a mini-to-standard SD adapter for compatibility with everything else, making miniSD somewhat less than convenient and kinda defeats the idea of ultra-compact storage.
Somewhere, there must be some kind of ergonomic rules that apply to media that become too small to handle. What will we do when the first 500 Terabyte microdots come out and someone’s entire life’s work gets lost, stuck to the fuzz at the bottom of your pocket and accidentally thrown away? Hmmm…
When not working on Mix stuff, George Petersen records and performs with the SF Bay Area-based rock band ARIEL. Check ‘em out at www.jenpet.com.
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So what do YOU think?
CLICK ON THE “COMMENTS” BUG BELOW TO READ/LEAVE COMMENTS…
August 23rd, 2006 @ 6:07 pm
Drooling Monkey One, reporting for duty!
Well, George, so they found a new way to keep you chained to your keyboard (yikes, bad image!). Bully for them. Be that as it may, you managed in one blog entry to hit on several of MY fave peeves all at once. I’ll try to keep it short, though.
There are a few different problems that surface in relation to your comment on tools versus quality of their use.
1) Digital technology is so seductive that up-and-coming audio geeks often forget about basics like sound, that stuff that has to do with moving air. Without an understanding of sound and transducers, even electronic music suffers, as (at the time of this writing), it still is eventually rendered by transducers into sound. Even the principles underlying tools like filters are often eschewed in favor of learning a neat keyboard shortcut.
2) Some time ago, the complexity of digital tools began increasing at a rate that far exceeded the rate at which people could learn them. Your cool digi-whatzis is obsolete WAY before you really learn it in the kind of depth that the Old Masters were able to learn their gear. There are two results from this: first, people go for what’s easy to get to, and, two, people go for whatever is flashy (and easy to do). But mastery and the subtlety that it can bring are, in a practical sense, nearly impossible now.
3) There was a time when people consumers cared about fidelity. Even in the heyday of eight-track players and cassettes, people either had or wanted nice home stereos to listen on. Now, people listen to music in cars and on iPods and that’s about it. Nobody sits at home and listens to music. If they have a nice audio system at home, it’s for watching movies and TV in surround. When your music is playing on tiny earbuds with no low end response to speak of and its function is closer to wallpaper than entertainment, people simply don’t care about the difference between MP3s and high-fidelity. Really, really sad, but it’s the way it is now. It’s pretty easy, under these circumstances, to just say, “why bother to try and get high-def recording?” At this point, I strive for better fidelity almost exclusively because I get my jollies that way, not because it’s commerically necessary by any stretch.
The world is always in simultaneous states of ascendancy and decline, with the balance one sees depending on the criteria by which one is judging.
But I have to agree that, while I like small, high-capacity media, ya gotta be able to hold it comfortably with your fingers!
August 24th, 2006 @ 12:49 pm
you can but the most expensive paints and brushes
in the world but, when you wake tomorrow you still won’t be an artist. You can’t but God’s
gift of inspiration. Sorry mommy and daddy can’t
buy everything. Thank God.
August 24th, 2006 @ 1:50 pm
Hey GP:
The Bravery recored their debut album at home with an iMac G4, DP4, stock plug-ins and, literally, a 1/4″-to-1/8″ adapter. They’ve sold 300,000 records in the US. This is just one example. But I do believe this qualifies as “…household-name superstars emerging from those roots… ”
Hugs and kisses, big guy.
R
August 24th, 2006 @ 4:14 pm
I agree 100%
I think they should make people take a test befor they can officially call themselves an engineer and open a “studio”! I know someone who says they do mastering, and actually get people to pay for it. They use Yorkville monitors and a bunch of cracked software plugs to do it! In a bedroom. Now if this is settinmg the bar for indie musicians, there will always be a gap between a professional recording that was properly done and complete crap. Unfortunately, with todays technology it has ruined the perception of the creative process that goes along with the recording. For instance, I’ve been in sessions where the drummer wasn’t on. Instead of letting him do a bunch of takes and warm up and try to pull it off, the engineer says “just get the hits in and we will edit it to the grid”. Right Away!! “And don’t worry about the mic placement and sounds we are getting, I will sound replace them all anyway”.
Why not use a drum machine and cut the guy right out of the process! I hate the comment “i have a plugin that will”. and it usually have something to do with fixing a problem that could have been prevented.
Technology should be used for creative applications as a tool to help the overall process. Not as a crutch to help the lack of knowledge and work ethic.
August 25th, 2006 @ 2:06 pm
Interesting. Let me ask the gang this, do we make people take a test before they buy a copy of MS Word? What makes someone an author? At what point is someone who owns a copy of Final Cut a filmmaker? In the early 80s, a couple of nerdy DJs picked up secondhand Roland 808s, threw out the manuals and modern electronic music was born. What was initially said about the first guy the turned the gain knob up to 10 on his guitar amp? Didn’t that person technically do something “wrong?”
And who cares about some knucklehead calling himself a mastering engineer? If a shitty mechanic opened a shop and did bad work, how long are they really going to last? And if someone is dumb enough to take their car there, they deserve whatever happens as a result. That’s called being a dumb consumer.
It’s all about entertainment. We’re all in the business of selling to the masses. And ultimately, their tastes determine what we in the audio industry do. And it will never be the other way around. Yes, people used to buy big expensive hi-fi systems. (You know, the ones with the Bass Boost button that threw everything out of phase. Gotta love the good ole days!) Now they want 5,000 songs in their pocket. Tastes change. Figure it out.
August 26th, 2006 @ 10:11 am
I would totally agree that it does take training to get the most out of digital these day. I also agree that engineers agonize over so much and the general public is so into MP3s that it makes you wonder why 16 is not enough anyway.
I believe Sony abandoned SACD for want of a large enough buying audience. Plus the fact that the only affordable DSD recorder, the Tascam, those discs cannot be played back on anyone’s SACD player.
What all of this decent, inexpensive gear should be doing is making the first few weeks of American Idol so much less painful. Can’t these wannabees pony up for a $69 Behringer mixer and an Sennheiser 835 and listen to what the rest of us have to endure, BEFORE they embarrass themselves on national TV? These products are inexpensive practicing tools that even anyone who sings at church should own. The truth is most people do not sound good singing in their shower. I know the reverb is great!!! LOL
I guess they really need more pairs of shoes, $50 pre-ripped jeans, and a $5 latte. And now Elton John wants to do hip hop? Do we need hi rez for this? Probably not.
August 26th, 2006 @ 1:23 pm
hmmmm.. well first of all it takes more than a couple of car payments worth of gear. you can’t get a decent drum sound without enough mics, cables stands, preamps etc. [personally i don’t think beat boxes are really going to take us any further than they already have but hey - that’s my personal bias]. and when it’s not super pricey gear then it at least needs to be the ‘right’ gear and that could take years of experimentation etc. to get a real feel for. [yes - i know, there are lots of half and fully baked dreamers out there who suck but who help us afford these gizmos just like there is a lot of well produced garbage on the airwaves that keeps big studios in business]. and you need good songs and good performances and good instruments and good amplification and you need to keep it all out of the rain and not get it stolen and not get yourself evicted for violations of noise bylaws and you need to eat and whatever else you have to do to stay sane in this mad mad world and that’s not necessarily that easy so it’s going to take some time before us mad little monkeys turn out something decent. there will always be exceptions to the rule - ie: the michelle shocked texas campfire tapes - but there is a real reason why say abbey road or rumours wasn’t recorded on an answering machine. and please, it’s not just about ‘entertainment’. are we not talking about a musical revolution here? that may in fact be entertaining but it’s also got to be a lot more than that because god knows we have enough garbage already. [supersize me baby - eat McDonalds for long enough and gee, why do i smell like walking corpse?]
August 27th, 2006 @ 5:35 pm
I definitely think there are lots of bad musicians and bad “engineers” making bad music out there. On a less technical side, what about the music industry and business. Seems to me that it’s a lot harder for “break-out” artists to make it when record labels control so much of what music makes it on the air and gets distributed.
August 28th, 2006 @ 9:10 am
I agree with the fact that we’re just in different times. A time where sonic quality isnt a necessity. It’s a “Burger King” society and everyone wants a quick hit so they dont worry about sonic depth etc. They focus on being famous and the money.
August 29th, 2006 @ 12:19 pm
not digital’s fault right? Recording is part art, part science. Folks need to know recording basics. They need to be master of their tools. It doesn’t matter if it’s digital or analog - if they know how to use their tools - they will be able to solve lots of problems and overcome challenges.
I recorded for and in my own personal delight in facilty for so long. Back then, PODs, plugins and samples were the norm (I couldn’t possibly get an ampt to 1 in an apartment complex). But since putting up a commercial recording studio facility, my investment money has gone to good old analog gear. top of the line preamps from great river, API, universal audio, focusrite… converters from Apogee… and processors from Pendulum Audio, Purple Audio, TC Electronic, Eventide, Lexicon, Aphex, Presonus. I have the SSL plugs for my PT LE 7 based rig but nothing beats getting a signal right at the source with simple and basic mic placement - the best and most transparent EQ of all.
well, it’s a stuggle everyday anyway. We Audio guys shouldn’t sweat it. Majority of the musicians can’t play anyway. We’re just recording crap most of the time, right? Agree?
September 10th, 2006 @ 4:20 am
Long story short: Market decadence and democratization of audio and music industry.
It used to be a complete exciting experience to buy a record (vinyl). the creative, technical and artistic process took a long time, the excitement of new music made people stand in lines to purchase records… you had to have the record, otherwise you’d end up listening to a badly hissed home recorded tape, and you’d be too embarrassed to brag about that to your friends! Peopled cherished and loved the artists and their music, people used to listen to what their music said, it was part of their lives…Currently music is noise, background noise, it doesn’t matter who’s singing, it really doesn’t matter if it’s a repetitive vulgar chord and lyric, it doesn’t even matter how good musicians perform, its just about who sells more and for the ones who buy: who has more storage memory for millions of songs that they will never have enough time to listen to!
Technology is great, it is so nice to have tools that allow musicians to create, tools that let ideas to flow and come to sound as fast as being thought, but the music industry currently has more tools and updates than ideas; catching up with every little adjustment.
Versions and updates becomes the rat race of the modern studios; obsolete month old tools. Every time a new version is released, you need to re-purchase plug-in packages, you need new hardware, you need new OS, you need this and that… it’s almost impossible to be up to date.
It used to be those good old days when recording took some time due to its complex processes; the results were the sum of creative challenge and dedication; you spent some good time at the studio and had so much to do that time was never enough. The only real downside of analog and tape was that it took out lots of time and slowed down the creative flow. I definitely don’t miss editing tape… It was cutting and pasting for real! Hiss was a problem, but never an obstacle.
No matter how cool new apps and programs are and how affordable they become, any monkey can record…but few of us are privileged to have a good set of ears, passion and love for what we love the most: sweet sound on a great song!
Digital and analogue gear will always need each other, you can have the most advanced HD set up, but if you don’t have a modest well placed Mic… and you have no idea what dynamics, limiting, compressing and EQ is… you should have better made payments on a flashy car.
Dreams should be just dreams for the ones who don’t want to get their hands dirty with hard work.
Peace.