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The Future of Mastering

Cbdb2

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Heres another interesting video about how pop music has changed. Some of us saw it coming when napster got big.

 

raistlin65

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I have a comment: I mentioned 'computer' to include the huge universe of plugins and software technology {'all the knives to undertake surgery'), I mentioned Sonata HD Pro to imply a belief that it matches the quality of the best and most expensive studio gear since 'all DACs sound the same' right??

I don't think most of the members of the forum believe the sweeping generalization that "all DACs sound the same." Rather, that a lot of DACs and solid state amps measure so accurate that they should sound the same.

And the Sonata HD Pro is accurate enough that that's likely to be the case. Seems very likely you would be unable to tell the difference between it and the RME ADI-2 in a properly volumed level, double blind test. Assuming you were using the Sonata just as a DAC, or with headphones that it could properly power.

That is assuming that the Sonata and your Windows PC were playing well together. A few people seem to have some latency issues.
 
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paulraphael

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Heres another interesting video about how pop music has changed. Some of us saw it coming when napster got big.


The idea can be distilled to the pros and cons of democratization. It's happened in many other technological art forms—photography, cinema, video installation art, book publishing, etc. When the means of production become more accessible, more people produce stuff.

I'm amazed when people complain about it. It's not a new complaint. Photography's gatekeepers—mostly white men of the leisure classes—started crying about democratization as early as the late 19th century, when film was invented and photographers no longer had to be full-time alchemists to make a picture. The trend continued with the Brownie, commercial film processing, polaroid, and then digital cameras. You see a similar progression in music production and all these other media.

Of course you get more junk to sift through. But you also get the voices and visions of all kinds of people besides ... white men of the leisure classes. And some of these voices and visions are brilliant. Of course, ones that aren't brilliant to you or to me might be brilliant to all kinds of people who are different from us. The marginalizing of centralized gatekeepers makes the world a much more interesting place. A messier one too.

Before complaining about the democratization of any medium, we need to think hard about what we're really complaining about.
 

digitalfrost

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Is it possible for any audiophile to practice what a mastering engineer does? Can a person, with or without studio working experience, set up a good studio environment according to the books, use smaller but well-performing studio monitor speakers e.g. Adam Audio etc, and such technology as mastering software, plugins, studio monitor headphones etc to master their own streaming content?
People can certainly try to master stuff by themselves. They may not be able to achieve what pro mastering engineers can, but the tools are cheap and available enough that I don't see the quality of either the tools or the hardware to be in the way anymore.
Heck you could argue that affordable consumer speakers might be better than the highest-end stuff of 20-30 years ago.

Can they master their own content? No. I think one part of mastering, that is most important and cannot be left out is: It's another set of ears. There's this book out Audio Mastering: The Artists and it contains interviews with mastering engineers. One question that everyone is asked is "What is mastering?". And most give long answers. So it's not 100% clear what the process involves. But I think having somebody...not as familiar with the material or not in love with it as the creators give a 2nd opinion is a big part of it. Of course, we can also argue if mastering is even necessary anymore. When a bedroom producer has put a compressor on the final bus, it meets the loudness requirements of Spotify or what have you, can we consider "mastered"? In a way yes. On the other hand, is it worth it to pay mastering engineers for every piece of music that gets put out there?

Aren't the audiophiles who consider things to the highest and deepest levels those who are basically mastering engineers even if they don't work professionally as mastering engineers?
Yeah why not. I got interested in fixing some albums that I like, so that got me interested in mastering and now I've done a whole lot of them. It's a nice side of the hobby, if you're gonna listen to your favorite albums anyway, might as well remaster them.
 

dfuller

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Can they master their own content? No. I think one part of mastering, that is most important and cannot be left out is: It's another set of ears.
This is SO important, and it's what I mentioned in my first post in this thread. Mastering is, at its core, a quality control job. It's not a "make it loud" job, it's a "catch issues, sequence songs, and make final tweaks" job.
 

paulraphael

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I think one part of mastering, that is most important and cannot be left out is: It's another set of ears.

This!

I got interested in fixing some albums that I like, so that got me interested in mastering and now I've done a whole lot of them. It's a nice side of the hobby, if you're gonna listen to your favorite albums anyway, might as well remaster them.

Also this.

I don't do it much anymore, because it's way too much work. Sometimes just fixing an especially bad song ... which some might argue isn't really mastering.

I remastered the original release of Paranoid Android, which always sounded shrill and overcompressed to my ears. But I like the sound of one of the more recent official remasters better than my version. So that early attempt went into the bin.

For me much of the value is educational. I've learned quite a bit about what makes a recording sound the way it does, and what qualities I like and dislike. And I've gained much more appreciation for the engineers who actually know what they're doing.
 

MattHooper

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Most people who start as audiophiles end up making really miserably poor recording and / or mastering engineers. Fact is, what makes a great record isn't the "chin-stroking audiophile definition of perfection". It has to be something that's actually worth listening to. Records that meet both of those criteria are few and far between.


Also, a good mastering engineer (and not some dude with a laptop who calls himself a mastering engineer) is invaluable, but they're few and far between. They need to know a reasonable amount about the medium they're mastering for (especially if it's vinyl).

That reminds me of when a local musician friend, from a well known canadian pop/new wave band, started doing solo projects. One of his guitarists was, like me, an audiophile as was an engineer he knew. They pushed the pop artist to do a "higher quality audio recording" for his solo album, more acoustic, more chesky-like.

Well, the album ended up sounding...good I guess, in that chesky "set up a few mics like you are listening live" way. Except I found in every other respect it just fell flat. It lacked all the guts, punch and grab-you quality of "normal" production. It was the audio equivalent of "looking at an actor without makeup" or "being on the set of a movie watching everyone perform live" that made it a mundane experience, vs actually seeing the work "processed" in to an actual movie - more artificial, but more engaging.

I gave up on audiophile recordings - that is recordings made by audiophiles/audiophile labels - long ago. I go "wow" about the sound at first but nothing maintains my interest. I certainly do appreciate great recordings of course, of music I like. I'm sure many here feel similarly.
 

spartaman64

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That's one way of seeing it, not the universal way. "Some" view it as art in the classical sense, with some (or even a majority of) objective facets.

Very true, but it's at best naïve to think that technicality (and other things like originality, "substance", etc...) doesn't play a role.

Relativism is a false god.

I agree that some good albums have been produced in subpar conditions, but the typically high clarity production that suits pop is probably harder to do in your bedroom (mostly electronic music is a different animal, though). Anyway, Blumlein was just bantering about the "quality" of Eilish, not about the recording quality.
academic art while technically impressive is quite boring
ever since photography came out that kind of art lost their charm
 

paulraphael

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academic art while technically impressive is quite boring
ever since photography came out that kind of art lost their charm

What is "academic art?"

Seems to me that many of the interesting artists today are also academics. If you're a poet or painter or photographer or playwright or ... whatever ... teaching is one of the only remaining ways to pay the bills.
 

abdo123

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I gave up on audiophile recordings - that is recordings made by audiophiles/audiophile labels - long ago. I go "wow" about the sound at first but nothing maintains my interest. I certainly do appreciate great recordings of course, of music I like. I'm sure many here feel similarly.

I whole hardheartedly agree, I feel like instead of using the gear to listen to music, audiophiles use someone's music to listen to their gear. it's mundane boring and dissatisfying once you established how 'good' the setup sound.

I just learned to lower the volume a bit and enjoy mainstream music. or listen to live music (opera, tours .etc)
 

LeftCoastTim

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This being an equipment forum, the bias for equipment over music is understandably strong. Still, people do seem to forget that the whole point of all of this is the enjoyment of the music.

I have an mp3 (128kbps) made from a cassette recording of a band performing live. It's the only copy I have. The band is long gone. Thanks to it being mp3, I have heard it hundreds of times without it being destroyed.

I think audiophiles using music to listen to their gear is very true. I can't stand any of the "audiophile", "hi-res" studios. Give me over compressed, badly produced, but interesting music any day over the boring crap coming out in "audiophile quality".
 

dfuller

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I think audiophiles using music to listen to their gear is very true. I can't stand any of the "audiophile", "hi-res" studios. Give me over compressed, badly produced, but interesting music any day over the boring crap coming out in "audiophile quality".
100% agree with this. I can't stand most "audiophile" music - I listen to extreme metal and grindcore and work on it too. It's not as though you don't need a good system to not have it turn into mush.
 

Cbdb2

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The idea can be distilled to the pros and cons of democratization. It's happened in many other technological art forms—photography, cinema, video installation art, book publishing, etc. When the means of production become more accessible, more people produce stuff.

I'm amazed when people complain about it. It's not a new complaint. Photography's gatekeepers—mostly white men of the leisure classes—started crying about democratization as early as the late 19th century, when film was invented and photographers no longer had to be full-time alchemists to make a picture. The trend continued with the Brownie, commercial film processing, polaroid, and then digital cameras. You see a similar progression in music production and all these other media.

Of course you get more junk to sift through. But you also get the voices and visions of all kinds of people besides ... white men of the leisure classes. And some of these voices and visions are brilliant. Of course, ones that aren't brilliant to you or to me might be brilliant to all kinds of people who are different from us. The marginalizing of centralized gatekeepers makes the world a much more interesting place. A messier one too.

Before complaining about the democratization of any medium, we need to think hard about what we're really complaining about.

What you don't get is the experience of producers and engineers that have been in the business for 20 years. Is making music also a craft? Then like any craft its a huge advantage to learn from a master even in photography. And taking a picture is a lot easier than writing, playing, recording and mixing a song.
 

paulraphael

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What you don't get is the experience of producers and engineers that have been in the business for 20 years. Is making music also a craft? Then like any craft its a huge advantage to learn from a master even in photography. And taking a picture is a lot easier than writing, playing, recording and mixing a song.

I "get" that experience has value. I'm not dismissing the value of professional producers and engineers, of professional musical training, or any of it. Just saying that the world is a better place if we don't make these things requirements. It's more important that all the voices get a chance to be heard, rather than just the the minority that can impress / afford the professional gatekeepers.

If you think making a song is fundamentally easier than making a picture, you should look at what it took photograph and print a landscape in the 1860s.
 

Cbdb2

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Not saying it has to be a requirement I'm saying it makes a big difference and its being lost. Do you think photographers in the late 1800s learnt how from somebody else? Back to this millennium. Lets talk about the democratization of video. You think a guy who has made 100 you tube videos with his buddy can take the place of a DP on a movie shoot who has spent years learning his craft from other DPs? Do the you tube videos look as good as even a 30 year old Hollywood movie even when using more advanced technology? Last question. Do you think using an experienced producer and engineer will make your music worse? And writing a song is harder than taking any picture.
 
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spartaman64

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Really? You're talking about the 19th century movement and not using the term generically? That makes the original comment seem pretty random.
its the idea of trying to achieve photo realism in art which is the measure of art that can be done objectively.
 
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