Jun 29, 2011
Yesterday was one of the most enjoyable – and surreal – days I can remember.
Certainly it’s the first time I’ve ever dressed up in a reflective silver toga and gazed meaningfully into the depths of a mirrorball whilst trapped inside a giant plastic bubble pumped full of oxygen…
I’ll come to exactly how this happened soon, but for the time being let’s rewind.
Jun 22, 2011
It’s about music entrepreneurship. It’s about your relationship with fans. It’s about underground music scenes. It’s about technology.
It’s live, it’s online, it’s totally free, and it’s completely interactive.
We’re not going to talk at you and expect you to sit there and just listen. We want to talk with you. We want to hear your ideas. And we’re not just going to retread the same old territory. It’ll be fresh, intelligent, interesting and challenging.
It’s New Music Strategies, Amplified.
What more could you possibly need to know ?!
Jun 18, 2011
It’s all about great sound.
Not numbers, not measurements, not gear – it’s just about great sound
I have a Google alert set up to find people talking about the loudness war. Every so often it turns up a blog post that’s worth tweeting, sometimes it turns up a forum discussion that’s worth contributing to.
But more often than not it turns up things that frustrate me. The top contenders are: people trying to justify the bad sound of their favourite act’s last CD by saying it sounds better in the car/iPod earbuds/wherever; people claiming that we actually prefer the sound of crushed, limited dynamic range music (research says we don’t) or the classic “you can only hear how great ‘Death Magnetic’ sounds on really good equipment” (!)
What frustrates me most though, is people using numbers and waveforms to try and “prove” that something sounds bad, when it doesn’t. You can’t tell if something sounds bad by looking at it, or measuring it, you have to listen to it.
And before I go any further – of course I’m aware of the irony of me saying that.
Jun 6, 2011
Can you trust your ears ? Can anyone ?
In particular – do data-identical audio files always sound the same ?
I’ve just been taking parting an interesting conversation on the LinkedIn Pro Tools User group about the best type of lossless file compression to use for moving audio around.
Some people, including me, have replied “any, they’re all the same”, but several more very experienced, respected and successful engineers have commented there that they never use data-compression on their audio files, because they think it can affect the sound.
Now when it comes from people you respect, this is a fascinating claim, because the there is no theoretical way that this can be true, unless there is a fault with the playback system, or the testing method.
Because lossless data-compression has to be that – lossless – or it’s broken, by definition. And, if two files are data-identical, they are effectively the same file. So they must sound indistinguishable – again, by definition. If they don’t, then there is a fault or design flaw with the replay system.
Thats the theory, at least. And in my experience, the theory holds up. Here’s an example:
May 20, 2011
[Edit - The Beatles have been mentioned several times in the comments on my "LCR Mixing Sucks" post, and I was reminded of this post from way back - if you haven't already watched the video, I strongly recommend it !]
I’ve already labelled George Martin as a “god-like-genius” amongst producers – although, after watching Elizabeth Gilbert’s inspiring TED talk on nurturing creativity, perhaps I should use different terminology…
Either way, his work with the Beatles means that over 30 years later he is still regarded by many as the ultimate record producer. A musician, engineer and inspirational collaborator, without whom the Beatles’ music would have been unrecognisable, and – in my opinion – nowhere near as fascinating, important or influential.
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