PBS Series: Soundbreaking

[watchnerd]

It's an 8 part series on the recording industry, how records are made, etc. Very education, especially for those who have serious misconceptions about how the sausage is made:

http://www.pbs.org/show/soundbreaking/

Anyone else watching it?

 

[Thomas savage]

Yes I watched it a while back.

 

[watchnerd]

Yes I watched it a while back.

I just started...do you think it's worth the time investment?

 

[fas42]

The interesting thing with a recording "sausage" is that it becomes easy to hear all the individual bits of the sausage with a good system - but it doesn't matter, because the bits in themselves are all musical - otherwise, why are they there? - and it's pleasurable to "pick out" one element, and watch what it's doing ... while listening, you can choose to take in the big picture - which is what the mastering engineer probably was aiming at - or zoom in to some small detail within the whole - and both are good!

 

[Thomas savage]

Honestly for you possibly not, I found it really informative but that's more to do with my previous ignorance.

If you enjoyed the first one, I'd carry on.

 

[watchnerd]

The interesting thing with a recording "sausage" is that it becomes easy to hear all the individual bits of the sausage with a good system - but it doesn't matter, because the bits in themselves are all musical - otherwise, why are they there? - and it's pleasurable to "pick out" one element, and watch what it's doing ... while listening, you can choose to take in the big picture - which is what the mastering engineer probably was aiming at - or zoom in to some small detail within the whole - and both are good!

Actually, what you're describing is mostly within the realm of the mixing engineering / producer, not the mastering engineer.

By the time the mastering engineer gets the source the balance between the elements has already been set and fixed to 2 channels. The mastering engineer is limited to macroscale tools (EQ, compression, gain).

If I were to make an analogy to cooking, the mixing engineer gets to determine the proportion of the ingredients, but not the final spicing to taste. The mastering engineer is the opposite.