Avantone CLA-10 (Yamaha NS-10M Clone) Review

[amirm]

Quite frankly I don't think I'm the one guilty of assuming. You assume that tracks you don't like the sound of is made by people in need of being taught about the "good sound". You assume the sound is not made by purpose. You assume that it will be better if art is adhering to standards.

I made none of these assumptions. Indeed, I have explicitly said that we get a soup and we can't disambiguate the parts. What I can hear as a trained listener, is obvious distortion and lack of fidelity. That you don't agree and assert otherwise is the problem. To which I said fine: show me some research. Don't just sit there and claim that if the Weeknd track had higher fidelity it would be different kind of music. That is an assertion with no foundation.

For us audiophiles? What is an audiophile?

If you don't know and have to look it up, then you are not one.

 

[amirm]

From my POV, Amir, you are trying to be the judge of taste and to define what qualifies as high fidelity and being an audiophile.

Nope. I do bring an informed opinion though based on having been an audiophile for decades, having many friends that are, and importantly going to hundreds of suites at audio shows and seeing what gets played. I always report on this in my show reports for that specific reason -- it allows people to discover well recorded music. I have also shared my demo playlist and feedback has been positive. Likewise, I have gotten playlists from others like Kevin Voecks of Harman and his playlist fully matches my idea of what are reference quality tracks.

As I have explained I am also professionally trained to listen for impairments which I use on daily basis as I review products. All of this allows me to have an opinion, or even a strong one on the matter. Putting me down and then claiming you know what Weeknd music and is not makes no sense. You have no qualification or knowledge in the latter.

 

[amirm]

Source meaning how the artist intended it. Meaning how the artist wants it to sound. Now, surely we should expect an artist like The Weeknd to be in control over his products' sound.

First, lack of standards means we are not allowed to know what the artist intended. We are hearing a different version. So if you believe in above, our case is made that we need standards.

As to what Weeknd liked, you don't know if he would have liked a cleaner mix better, or been apathetic about it. Either way we could have gotten a better version of his music. Somewhere someplace, an experiment must be performed where higher fidelity version of a mix is presented to these artists to see what the reaction is. As it is, we have a cartel that is between the engineer, the label and the artist and stuff gets jammed down our throat.

My personal feeling is that a bunch of bad ideas have gone into making a music with such poor fidelity and the artist did not know or care to complain. It sounded good to him in the studio which for all we know, could have sounded like anything.

There is a lot that is broken here and we are not going to remotely get to the bottom of it.

 

[Deleted member 48726]

I made none of these assumptions. Indeed, I have explicitly said that we get a soup and we can't disambiguate the parts. What I can hear as a trained listener, is obvious distortion and lack of fidelity. That you don't agree and assert otherwise is the problem. To which I said fine: show me some research. Don't just sit there and claim that if the Weeknd track had higher fidelity it would be different kind of music. That is an assertion with no foundation.


If you don't know and have to look it up, then you are not one.

What makes you so absolutely sure that youre trained ears don't hear exactly what the artist wants you to hear? What makes you think it's a flaw?

I won't participate anymore in this debate with you as our opinions differ on a fundamental level.

As you clearly state, one needs to have trained ears and to be an audiophile to have an opinion on standardisation of art and I won't claim to possess the gateway qualifications.

 

[Robbo99999]

@Travis
I've done a little recording yes. For some background perspective, most of my life I've used electrostats. Had a few different ones. I remember hearing a good classical guitar player from a local university music program in person at a hifi shop. It brought home what I liked about ESLs. Though not sharp the plucking of guitar strings has a quickness to it up close. Over a speaker, it sounds like half or more of the pluck has come and gone before the cone catches up to make sound. This was quite some time ago when many speakers were rather boxy sounding to boot. Playing minimalist recordings over my Acoustats at the time, you seemed to get maybe 80% of the pluck with just a little of that initial sound shaved off. They had no boxy coloration, and seemed subjectively quick or fast with excellent transients.

So skipping to recording. At the time the small monitors I had just didn't cut it. I recorded lots of practice sessions for the experience. Mic placement and other things to learn. On site, I found using IEM's with hearing protection ear muffs on top for isolation worked okay with minimalist two or 4 microphone recording. Was not good for up close multi-miking. On both I'd take them home and make final decisions listening over my Soundlab electrostats. I spent a year with an ailing relative away from home, but was still recording. I saw quite a few credible guys on gearslutz say the JBLs were the small affordable monitor to get. I listened to some Eris and others and also thought the little 305's were the deal. So for that year I used them. They helped with mixing decisions and translation improved dramatically. They weren't quick sounding the way an ESL is, but were an honest relatively even sounding monitor. I still checked the work on my Soundlabs too.

I have a surround video setup with a pair of Revel F208's up front. I listen to quite a bit of two channel music on those as well. They don't sound like ESL's. Most large panel ESL's share a general trend of this response of Quad 989s courtesy of Stereophile.
View attachment 306835
A somewhat elevated upper bass, a dip in the vocal range and more midrange just above that. They vary more in the upper midrange and treble. Various measurements of Acoustats, Quads, and Soundlabs have shown the same trend in multiple rooms over multiple models. That bass hump sounds altogether different than such a hump in a box speaker from I assume how panels interact with the room. The Soundlabs show a similar though somewhat less lumpy result across the whole band. I've applied the curve from my Soundlabs to my F208s and listened. The F208's don't turn into ESLs, but they sound much closer than you might think and they do seem to have increased apparent speed or transient response. Now subjectively experienced transient speed or goodness and actual transient response are not the same thing. Which is the reason for Amir's comments on the matter in this thread.

What I have is not much better than anecdote and not explored scientifically. I don't present it as anymore than that.

My experience is getting microphones and speakers that are flatter, more linear and with good directivity give you a clearer view and the results are fine without checking for translation. I'm no pro so plenty who are disagree. They are pushing an argument that is illogical. Whatever merit their practices have it isn't the one being peddled to us much of the time.

Oh and the idea about approved by the artist etc. PLEASE! In a minimalist recording they don't have any idea what it is supposed to sound like. They have a right to have it sound how they want, but there is no way they know what is real. They are in the group playing among other musicians and what they hear bears no resemblance to an audience 20 feet or more away. In a more produced recording sure it should sound to suit them.

I was surprised at how easy it is to get a good audiophile grade sound with some stereo miking and a little experience (you need a good room too where the music is played for recording). I then played some of it to the group. As it started this sense of space bloomed at the end of my living room and the music started. One of the ladies wanted to know why it had this noise. I explained it was the hall sound. She then agreed it did give some sense of that hall. And said, "I don't listen to anything to hear the place it was recorded, I'm listening to the music. Could you get rid of all that?" For anyone not a crazy audiophile well she is of course right. They don't expect a realistic reproduction, just some good clear music.

And compression everyone complains about. Being naive, I quickly found you pretty much have to have some. This is a real translation issue to me. My reference on that is can you listen to it and enjoy it in a car. I don't want it super squashed, but you need to hear it without too much issue in a basic quiet sedan. I'm not making something you can use over earbuds while operating a jackhammer in your day job.

I've never mixed over 16 channels. Usually less. I've seen real experienced pros can do this better than I can with limited experience. Of course they usually eff up some other parts in ways. In fact for myself, I've ended up with simplified mixing. L_C_R mixing. Everything goes left right or center in my multi-miked work. I may do some compression differently and EQ and a few other tricks so things don't get in the way of each other. I can get something at least not terrible pretty quickly. I also found you cannot do 100% left and right panning because it sounds weird on headphones. I go for 85-88% panned and it sound fine on headphones and you cannot tell it is different over speakers.

So I DO NOT have experience to say some pro who says using HorrorTones can help him in mix translation is wrong. I can say it is irrational, and there are better ways. Our minds are wondrous. Unfortunately they are also wondrous in tricking us as sometimes that is needed and sometimes just an artifact of how our brain and senses work. Crooked rulers don't add up any better than a calculator that doesn't always indicate 2+3=5.

Oh you asked, and my recording is digital. Difficult recordings are much easier to nail down with good even gear. Microphones, speakers and headphones are places where it matters the most.

That's interesting, I figured that's where headphones would come into use re the recording process. (Your panning point.)

 

[PeteL]

He was a Chroma Synesthete. Someone that perceives color while listening to music. There are several famous composers and singers who have this brain functioning.

See? Not that hard? Let's just train these engineers to see sounds in colors and we're set, video already have all these great standards. Copy-Paste. Done.

 

[goat76]

As to what Weeknd liked, you don't know if he would have liked a cleaner mix better, or been apathetic about it. Either way we could have gotten a better version of his music. Somewhere someplace, an experiment must be performed where higher fidelity version of a mix is presented to these artists to see what the reaction is. As it is, we have a cartel that is between the engineer, the label and the artist and stuff gets jammed down our throat.

My personal feeling is that a bunch of bad ideas have gone into making a music with such poor fidelity and the artist did not know or care to complain. It sounded good to him in the studio which for all we know, could have sounded like anything.

Believe it or not but low fidelity is also a thing some artists aim for, Weeknd and his musicians did obviously go for that drum sound containing drum sampling machines which have a plethora of settings to form everything from how dry or roomy those samples sound, and everything else.

As the sound samples can be adjusted right there in the drum sample machine, it's possible that there wasn't much processing going on for the drum sound in the mixing outside of what was already coming out from that drum machine, and if there was a further reduction of fidelity to those drum sounds it was most likely intentional to reduce the impact of that particular instrument in the mix.



In this case, the sound in the recording is "the sound" they aimed for and they go to great lengths to simulate that exact sound when playing live, as seen in the video below.

And in the following video is one of the drum machines used in the Weeknd recordings, a Roland SPD-SX. Do you think it sounds way better as a (likely) direct-injected feed than how it ended up sounding on the record by the Weeknd?

He sure seems to enjoy that type of sound in the recording studio, and I'm sure he heard the finished mix before it was released.

But really, what have all these comparisons of what kind of sound the different music productions did go for have to do with the monitors in use, in what way do you think these audio productions would have ended up sounding differently if other monitors had been used?



.

 

[Deleted member 48726]

Believe it or not but low fidelity is also a thing some artists aim for, Weeknd and his musicians did obviously go for that drum sound containing drum sampling machines which have a plethora of settings to form everything from how dry or roomy those samples sound, and everything else.

As the sound samples can be adjusted right there in the drum sample machine, it's possible that there wasn't much processing going on for the drum sound in the mixing outside of what was already coming out from that drum machine, and if there was a further reduction of fidelity to those drum sounds it was most likely intentional to reduce the impact of that particular instrument in the mix.



In this case, the sound in the recording is "the sound" they aimed for and they go to great lengths to simulate that exact sound when playing live, as seen in the video below.

And in the following video is one of the drum machines used in the Weeknd recordings, a Roland SPD-SX. Do you think it sounds way better as a (likely) direct-injected feed than how it ended up sounding on the record by the Weeknd?

He sure seems to enjoy that type of sound in the recording studio, and I'm sure he heard the finished mix before it was released.

But really, what have all these comparisons of what kind of sound the different music productions did go for have to do with the monitors in use, in what way do you think these audio productions would have ended up sounding differently if other monitors had been used?



.

What a shocker, they know what they're doing..

 

[Ported]

Believe it or not but low fidelity is also a thing some artists aim for, Weeknd and his musicians did obviously go for that drum sound containing drum sampling machines which have a plethora of settings to form everything from how dry or roomy those samples sound, and everything else.

As the sound samples can be adjusted right there in the drum sample machine, it's possible that there wasn't much processing going on for the drum sound in the mixing outside of what was already coming out from that drum machine, and if there was a further reduction of fidelity to those drum sounds it was most likely intentional to reduce the impact of that particular instrument in the mix.



In this case, the sound in the recording is "the sound" they aimed for and they go to great lengths to simulate that exact sound when playing live, as seen in the video below.

And in the following video is one of the drum machines used in the Weeknd recordings, a Roland SPD-SX. Do you think it sounds way better as a (likely) direct-injected feed than how it ended up sounding on the record by the Weeknd?

He sure seems to enjoy that type of sound in the recording studio, and I'm sure he heard the finished mix before it was released.

But really, what have all these comparisons of what kind of sound the different music productions did go for have to do with the monitors in use, in what way do you think these audio productions would have ended up sounding differently if other monitors had been used?



.

I also feel some real world factors may be lacking in these observations.
Time and money being a key one .. recordings are usually set to budget and therefore time constraned. This can lead to compromises on fidelity (no time left to do it better).

If in my recording studio ownership days (80s) record companies had said we will pay you this if standards are equal this and the bank manager said yes.. no brainer if it also looked like better gear!.. if comissioners can see a profitable new or value added product it would happen very quickly.

Personally I would not talk long and hard to coal face workers about the quality of there tools. It needs to be commissioner driven in my mind.

Also there have been many occasions in my recordings where the first "setting the level" take has been the better emotionally driven one (the one that the artist thought was not being recorded). Fidelity may not be so good but many producers and artist would pick the performance over fidelity.

Another real world generalisation from my experience is that recordings of small ensembles that don't include heavy rock dums, distorted guitars, square wave derived syths and electric pianos were relatively easy to mix and find a fidelity everyone was happy with.
Conversely busy tracks containing signals already containing exaggerated harmonics (fuzz etc) can become very difficult to mix due to lots of common occupied bandwidth.. NS10 to sort the wheat from the chaff.

Also ear fatigue... Should be less of a problem now in the digital domain but there was usually an insistence to get this one done now. Try distinguishing the wood from the trees on your 50th listen that day.

Quality of Instruments and gear can also have a huge bearing on fidelity.. had big trouble mixing in a bass guitar once .. sounded okish isolated.. the strings were 10 years old! Easily resolved..

Lastly in my (multitrack tape only) experience a good cassette copy of the final mix had more presence and fidelity than any product at that time .. high speed cassette duplication was atrocious and LP records pretty bad .. some 12inch 45s were closer. In my mind was always the mastering stage that lost the shine...trying to be all things.

 

[RobL]

First, lack of standards means we are not allowed to know what the artist intended. We are hearing a different version. So if you believe in above, our case is made that we need standards.

As to what Weeknd liked, you don't know if he would have liked a cleaner mix better, or been apathetic about it. Either way we could have gotten a better version of his music. Somewhere someplace, an experiment must be performed where higher fidelity version of a mix is presented to these artists to see what the reaction is. As it is, we have a cartel that is between the engineer, the label and the artist and stuff gets jammed down our throat.

My personal feeling is that a bunch of bad ideas have gone into making a music with such poor fidelity and the artist did not know or care to complain. It sounded good to him in the studio which for all we know, could have sounded like anything.

There is a lot that is broken here and we are not going to remotely get to the bottom of it.

Dr. Toole mentions using musicians as subjects in listening tests in his book. I believe he thought they made poor listeners as they were more concerned with the “performance” of the piece than with actual fidelity.

 

[lowkeyoperations]

I get it that they want to create that repetitive monotonous tone but I am not sure that is what people prefer to hear. I know I don't. Love to see them do the mix two ways and have a panel judge it blind.

This thread has been a real roller coaster!

How did we get from wanting to hear a mix the same way the artist did in the studio to running the artists work by a judging panel who would determine what people prefer to hear before it gets released?

In the context of The Weeknd this is a bit uncalled for in my opinion.

If a guy has a song played 3.8 Billion times on a single streaming service, and 2 other songs with over 2 billion plays each, sells 75 million records, as well as having the longest charting song by a solo artist on the Billboard Hot 100 of all time, then I think we can safely assume that he doesn’t need a panel to tell him what people prefer to hear.

In the end artists should decide what they release. Whether it is what people want to hear or not will be evident in the sales.

I think this is beyond what the standard should be looking at solving.

As to what Weeknd liked, you don't know if he would have liked a cleaner mix better, or been apathetic about it. Either way we could have gotten a better version of his music. Somewhere someplace, an experiment must be performed where higher fidelity version of a mix is presented to these artists to see what the reaction is. As it is, we have a cartel that is between the engineer, the label and the artist and stuff gets jammed down our throat.

And somehow the thread has now moved on to telling one of the biggest streaming musicians in history how to “make better versions of his music”.
..
Again, I think the standard makes sense. But not trying to remix artists songs for them.

 

[maverickronin]

I'm gonna go out on a but of a limb here and state that popularity has little to no connection with technical or artistic merit...

 

[amirm]

How did we get from wanting to hear a mix the same way the artist did in the studio to running the artists work by a judging panel who would determine what people prefer to hear before it gets released?

Simple. It was you who repeatedly asked for example of bad mixes and then went on to claim that tonality is the only thing we have a beef with. And if we had that, all the world's problem would be solved. To which I gave this example:

In the context of The Weeknd this is a bit uncalled for in my opinion.

If a guy has a song played 3.8 Billion times on a single streaming service, and 2 other songs with over 2 billion plays each, sells 75 million records, as well as having the longest charting song by a solo artist on the Billboard Hot 100 of all time, then I think we can safely assume that he doesn’t need a panel to tell him what people prefer to hear.

The "guy" is capable of producing good sounding music as well as the crap I post in this thread. To wit, this track of his was used in at least a couple of audio suites:

B&O Belolab 50 speakers: Earned It (Fifty Shades Of Grey;From The "Fifty Shades Of Grey" Soundtrack) by The Weeknd. https://shz.am/t221708306

Very nice.

That was sound that went with video which may have been the same reason Adele's video content has better fidelity. I don't know. What I do know is the difference between well recorded music and what is not. You on the other hand, seem to want to simultaneously go for numbers and quality. A single McDonald's sells more hamburgers than all the restaurants in a good sized town. You want to bring that up as proof that theirs is tastier? No. It may be tastier but that data only comes if you performed a controlled test. Not because they sold more.

I have said and will repeat that the Weeknd track is "catchy" as is a lot of his other music. This is not in dispute. What is in dispute is your stance that the production music is beyond criticism by likes of us. How dare we we are said. They sell a lot of music. And these guys know what they are doing so shut up and listen. That is just bluster, not facts.

 

[amirm]

And somehow the thread has now moved on to telling one of the biggest streaming musicians in history how to “make better versions of his music”.

He wasn't told that. I had warned you to not create drama by creating disputes like this. Take caution in hitting post next.

For now, the suggestion I made was for once create two versions of a mix and run it by an audience in a controlled test (audiophiles and otherwise) and see what the data says. Maybe it says the worse sounding version is superior in which case you want to diagnose it further and find out the factors for such preference. Don't just sit on your behind and claim everything you chose to do in creating a product by definition must be right because you are a superior human being that can never do wrong.

Such closed loop development occurs in many domains including those that have to do with taste such as food and wine. Bring some modesty to the table and assume there may be something you don't know that could advance your art.

We used to be in dark ages with speakers thinking any and all design must be acceptable because we are all different. Here comes Dr. Toole who tests that hypothesis and finds out majority of us like neutral sound. Many were up in arms as you are that this can't be. They should have the freedom to design whatever speakers they want because, well, everyone is different. But decade after decade this idea that audiophiles and non-audiophiles have similar tastes here, and that we have an internal compass that tells us what is good tonality and what is not, took hold and we all benefit from it. We can go from a cheap speaker for a few hundred dollars to those that costs thousands and get this neutrality.

We need to do that with music creation if you care and aspire for excellence. If you don't and other priorities are more important, that is fine too. There are plenty of content producers that attempt to give us both (by accident or intentionally) so we are good. It is just that you have lost your argument here and best to move on instead of claiming you are experts at producing great sounding music.

 

[amirm]

As the sound samples can be adjusted right there in the drum sample machine, it's possible that there wasn't much processing going on for the drum sound in the mixing outside of what was already coming out from that drum machine, and if there was a further reduction of fidelity to those drum sounds it was most likely intentional to reduce the impact of that particular instrument in the mix.

While you are at it, why don't you also mention angels sat on their shoulders and told them to create this track this way? When you don't know something, that is the end of it. Don't tell us "it's possible" this and "it's possible" that. You don't know.

What you do know is that I heard it and I think it is poorly recorded music as far as fidelity. This, you can take to the bank as it is factual. It is also factual if you were one of the people who said this was not a bad sounding track (where you?). If so, research needs to be performed to find out what it is that makes me think it is a bad recording and you not. Or your abilities to hear impairments vs mine. Such research will also tell you if a better recording could have accomplished the same: the creativity goals of the talent and the needs of us for ultra high fidelity. Don't just sit there and guess. Do some research.

Bottom line is that audiophiles since beginning of time have rated music as both art and fidelity. Same is true of movie reviews for videophiles where picture and sound are rated in addition to rating of the movie itself. You don't get to take that away from us. Our hobby requires it. We spend a lot of money and time to optimize fidelity. It is what we do extra above and beyond being a music lover. We want content to put on the plate we have so meticulously cleaned that showcases it as that gives us additional pleasure. Some people in Pro industry care about this. Sadly many do not. Which is fine, that is life. But, don't come here and brag how everything is intentional as you claim here, and that this is the best there was. This is all nonsense word arguments meant to silence criticism.

 

[goat76]

While you are at it, why don't you also mention angels sat on their shoulders and told them to create this track this way? When you don't know something, that is the end of it. Don't tell us "it's possible" this and "it's possible" that. You don't know.

No, I have no doubt at all that those drums sound exactly as intended, I know, that's why I said the following in the part you decided to leave out from the reply:

"Believe it or not but low fidelity is also a thing some artists aim for, Weeknd and his musicians did obviously go for that drum sound containing drum sampling machines which have a plethora of settings to form everything from how dry or roomy those samples sound, and everything else."

Those drums were intentionally mixed that way because they wanted them to sound like that, it was their artistic choice and not a mixing mistake. That drum machine has almost exactly that same sound out of the box after fiddling with all the settings, that's why I said it's even possible it was a straight recording of that drum machine with very little processing applied. Did you watch the demo of that thing, did you find it sounding drastically different than on the Weeknd song?

What you do know is that I heard it and I think it is poorly recorded music as far as fidelity. This, you can take to the bank as it is factual. It is also factual if you were one of the people who said this was not a bad sounding track (where you?). If so, research needs to be performed to find out what it is that makes me think it is a bad recording and you not. Or your abilities to hear impairments vs mine. Such research will also tell you if a better recording could have accomplished the same: the creativity goals of the talent and the needs of us for ultra high fidelity. Don't just sit there and guess. Do some research.

Yes, I do know that you don't like how the song is mixed and how the sound objects in the mix are processed in the mixing stage of the production.
But I don't think you know if they were poorly recorded in the first place, as far as I know, those drums can have sounded exactly like that and were most probably captured through D.I.

What I subjectively think of the decisions that went into the mix is not important, the main thing is that no obvious technical mistakes can be heard and by that, there are no reasons to think that the mix isn't sounding as intended. The things you mention that you don't like are just subjective things, you obviously don't like intentionally-made low-fidelity drum machine sounds.

The main reason why I ask you for poor mixes is not to find out what you subjectively like or don't like, I want you to point out mixing mistakes that were obviously caused by the use of a certain monitor you don't think is good enough for the task. Or do you really think the Weeknd song would have sounded drastically different, and more to your liking if the monitor and studio were approved by the standard you think is needed?

Bottom line is that audiophiles since beginning of time have rated music as both art and fidelity. Same is true of movie reviews for videophiles where picture and sound are rated in addition to rating of the movie itself. You don't get to take that away from us. Our hobby requires it. We spend a lot of money and time to optimize fidelity. It is what we do extra above and beyond being a music lover. We want content to put on the plate we have so meticulously cleaned that showcases it as that gives us additional pleasure. Some people in Pro industry care about this. Sadly many do not. Which is fine, that is life. But, don't come here and brag how everything is intentional as you claim here, and that this is the best there was. This is all nonsense word arguments meant to silence criticism.

The big problem is that many records are dynamically destroyed in the mastering process, I'm against that as I rather use the volume knob if I want to listen to it louder. Loudness War stuff tends to sound really bad at higher volumes, while records with the dynamics intact tend to sound even better when listening fairly loud.

What I don't have a problem with is the artistic choices that went into the recording and the mixing stage of the production, those things are often part of the art form of sculpturing the sound to the artist's liking. If the artist wants to have fairly un-dynamic drums or whatever they thought would suit their vision of their art, I say go for it even if there are some people out there who don't like that particular choice.

Art and music should always be made out of pure self-satisfaction, what other people think of the art should never be of the artist's concern as long as he or she is satisfied with the result, a result that hopefully came close to the vision the artist had when the project started. My view is that the best quality art can't be done if the main goal is to satisfy others.

 

[amirm]

Or do you really think the Weeknd song would have sounded drastically different, and more to your liking if the monitor and studio were approved by the standard you think is needed?

Once more, and boy you all don't really want to read responses or remember them, this discussion about Weeknd and such was NOT about tonality but generally low fidelity music that is produced. So don't go asking me this when it has already been answered including today.

Back to Weeknd and his drummer Ricky Lewis, here is short at a live concert:

https://www.tiktok.com/video/7248286426394234158

There is a ton of acoustic elements in his arsenal there which if recorded well, would have sounded fantastic. So the notion that Weeknd's sound is dependent solely on poorly sampled drum set as claimed is non-sequitur. I would have loved to hear a comparison of Save Your Tiers using sampled drum set vs a real one as he is playing above and see how the audience would vote.

In the age of digital delivery, we are not stuck with having one release anyway. If folks really cared about fidelity, they could release two versions of the album.

 

[amirm]

Art and music should always be made out of pure self-satisfaction, what other people think of the art should never be of the artist's concern as long as he or she is satisfied with the result, a result that hopefully came close to the vision the artist had when the project started.

Total nonsense. He can do that if he wants to be his own audience. The moment he wants to make money selling it to us, then our opinion matters. We are the customer damn it. He didn't give away his art.

This is like saying no one should review a restaurant either. And that the chef only needs to cook food that he likes to eat. As I noted at the outset, you all think we the customers don't matter. As long as the talent, label and mix/mastering engineer are happy, the job is done. Well, it is not. As a minimum as I keep saying, they should conduct formal tests to better understand the importance of fidelity and how to best get there. Constantly claiming it is art so they get to decide is absurd.

Alternatively, declare that quality production doesn't matter and we can go our ow separate ways and find artists and engineers who care about our opinion.

 

[amirm]

The big problem is that many records are dynamically destroyed in the mastering process, I'm against that as I rather use the volume knob if I want to listen to it louder. Loudness War stuff tends to sound really bad at higher volumes, while records with the dynamics intact tend to sound even better when listening fairly loud.

That too. Did the industry conduct formal, large scale tests to see if there is real merit in using such compressors? No. A few complained about it but the rest went along with it and here we are. If you had some real data on hand, then you could go and argue with the labels. But you didn't so allowed people in suits to determine the nature of the art. So much for the artist having the final say about that!

 

[goat76]

Once more, and boy you all don't really want to read responses or remember them, this discussion about Weeknd and such was NOT about tonality but generally low fidelity music that is produced. So don't go asking me this when it has already been answered including today.

Excuse me, but what is the reason you want to discuss low-fidelity music productions in general, wasn't the main thing here that you think poor measuring monitors affect the quality of mixed music, or have this discussion now shifted to what we personally think is poor mixing decisions by the mixing engineers?

Back to Weeknd and his drummer Ricky Lewis, here is short at a live concert:

https://www.tiktok.com/video/7248286426394234158

There is a ton of acoustic elements in his arsenal there which if recorded well, would have sounded fantastic. So the notion that Weeknd's sound is dependent solely on poorly sampled drum set as claimed is non-sequitur. I would have loved to hear a comparison of Save Your Tiers using sampled drum set vs a real one as he is playing above and see how the audience would vote.

In the age of digital delivery, we are not stuck with having one release anyway. If folks really cared about fidelity, they could release two versions of the album.

We discussed a particular song that contains a low-fidelity drum machine, that is “the sound” of that particular song which they replicate at live shows. I never said they never use acoustic drums.

It's up to the artist what instruments are used and how the different tracks sound. If Weeknd is not particularly interested in releasing another version of a song that wasn't in his original idea of the art he wanted to make, how can we as listeners expect him to make changes to his art just because someone may preferred it differently?