The Truth About Music Recording

[atmasphere]

I've said from the point I got into audio as a hobby--almost 50 years ago, yikes--is that recordings are not akin to photographs, they are more akin to paintings, subject to an interpretation of "reality" that the musician, engineers, and producers want to create, and that is valid only on a similar playback system.

I've forgotten what all Ian Anderson remixed of older Jethro Tull material for re-release in the late 80s, maybe early 90s, but I know he was interviewed and quoted as saying he mixed it so the end result sounded good when played back on his wife's Walkman. No kidding.

As we like to say in the Midwest, "Welp...there ya go." Sadly, perhaps, Ian was ahead of his time.

A lot of mixes were made to sound right on car speakers. That is still a common practice.

FWIW though a Walkman with phones was not a bad sounding setup- it was meant to be hifi. Sony made a recorder version of the Walkman that was quite impressive. I used to do on-location recordings and one venue (a museum) didn't allow me to bring in the typical reel to reel stuff (this was the late 1980s well before Zoom recorders). So I set up my Neumanns and ran them into the Sony Walkman recorder. The master tape was surprisingly good.

 

[sejarzo]

A lot of mixes were made to sound right on car speakers. That is still a common practice.

FWIW though a Walkman with phones was not a bad sounding setup- it was meant to be hifi. Sony made a recorder version of the Walkman that was quite impressive. I used to do on-location recordings and one venue (a museum) didn't allow me to bring in the typical reel to reel stuff (this was the late 1980s well before Zoom recorders). So I set up my Neumanns and ran them into the Sony Walkman recorder. The master tape was surprisingly good.

Yep.

The only Walkman I owned was the WM-10, the tiny champagne gold cassette player. The sound quality from it was really good for the era. Too bad it stopped working years ago and was discarded because I see them going for $350 now. LOL