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??
Relativism is a false god.
Heres another interesting video about how pop music has changed. Some of us saw it coming when napster got big.
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.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?
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.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?
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.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.
I think one part of mastering, that is most important and cannot be left out is: It's another set of ears.
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.
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).
academic art while technically impressive is quite boringThat'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
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.
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.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".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acade...r academicism or,of European academies of art.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.
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.
its the idea of trying to achieve photo realism in art which is the measure of art that can be done objectively.Really? You're talking about the 19th century movement and not using the term generically? That makes the original comment seem pretty random.