Apr 27, 2013
Wow.
When I accepted an invitation from the AES to go and speak at their regional convention in Mexico City during the Sound:Check Expo, I thought “it’ll be an adventure”.
I didn’t realise quite how right I was…
Mar 7, 2013
Dave Grohl’s Sound City movie is fantastic – anyone reading this blog will love it. Grab it now !
(I do have some reservations about the film, which were expressed really clearly in this post from Tape Op magazine – but it’s still a great watch.)
BUT
At the end of the film, we see Dave recording an album inspired by Sound City Studios – and sadly the amazing analogue sound Dave loves so much and talks about into the film hasn’t survived 100% intact onto the final CD.
Not because of some imaginary intrinsic flaw in digital audio, but because of the Loudness Wars… again.
Take a look at the video to see what I mean – and if you agree with my viewpoint, please help spread the word by sharing it wherever and whenever you can !
You can hear the whole Sound City album here.
Mar 4, 2013
It’s almost time for Dynamic Range Day again, and as usual I’m getting some questions.
One of the most common is – “So you say you’re against the Loudness Wars, but you give an award to albums that measure only DR8 – why don’t you ask for more dynamics than that ?”
In other words, shouldn’t we be campaigning for far more dynamic range, for higher DR values – DR14, say, like the Pleasurize Music campaign ?
I wrote an answer to this a while ago in a post called It’s not about the numbers, but here I want to take a different approach, using… more numbers.
The image above shows the loudness values of Steven Wilson’s awesome new album “The Raven That Refused To Sing“. As you can see, it’s very dynamic – the loud sections are “loud”, with a crest factor of only 8dB or so, but there’s still plenty of variety and contrast throughout.
But it only measures as DR9. That’s only one dB off the DR8 minimum we recommend. So how can the album be as great dynamically as I say it is ?
The answer lies in the limitations of the “DR” value as calculated by the Offline TT Meter.
The truth is, it’s a VERY blunt instrument.
Feb 18, 2013
Remember this sequence from the Matrix ? “There is no spoon”.
Well recently I’m hearing people talk more and more about “resolution” in digital audio, and I’m here to tell you -
There is no resolution.
It’s a red herring – an idea-virus left over from the earliest days of digital audio, perpetuated by gear manufacturers to try and sell us more kit we don’t need. Here’s why.
It all starts with the myth:
“Digital can never sound as good as analogue”
This statement simply isn’t true, but it doesn’t stop people repeating it like some kind of mantra. The reasons they give usually hang on the fact that digital audio samples the audio – “freezing” it at regular moments in time – and claiming that it can therefore never sound as smooth and continuous as the original analogue signal.
You can see it for yourself, they say. Zoom in far enough on a digital waveform and eventually you can see the blocky, grainy, digital “stair-steps” – so it stands to reason that you can hear them, if your hearing and equipment is good enough, right ?
Wrong.
There are no stair-steps.
Feb 1, 2013
So, at her pre-Superbowl press conference today, Beyonce finally answered direct questions about the “mime-gate controversy” – starting by giving a 100% live performance of the American national anthem. You can see the whole thing in the video above.
Answering questions about the lip-syncing allegations, she said:
“I am a perfectionist. One thing about me, I practice until my feet bleed, and I did not have time to rehearse with the orchestra. It was a live television show and a very, very important, emotional show for me – one of my proudest moments. Due to the weather, due to the delay, due to no proper sound check, I did not feel comfortable taking a risk. It was about the president and the inauguration, and I wanted to make him and my country proud. So I decided to sing along with my pre-recorded track , which is very common in the music industry. And I am very proud of my performance.”
So that settles it, right ?
Well, maybe.
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