Mallette Posted February 12, 2014 Share Posted February 12, 2014 Funny how i have two ears but it takes 27 microphones to record 2 guitars , a bass and a drumkit and make it sound "real". Yeah. Fascinating, isn't it? Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrWho Posted February 13, 2014 Share Posted February 13, 2014 Posted Yesterday, 04:52 PM Mallette, on 11 Feb 2014 - 1:03 PM, said: The music is art. Mallette, on 11 Feb 2014 - 1:03 PM, said: The recording engineer's job is to deliver it to the listener as close to the original as possible (we are talking ACOUSTIC here). I don't know of one professional recording engineer that views that as a summary of his job title. What you are describing is the process of documentation. My point is that a recording engineer is just as much a part of the art as the musicians. If the recording "engineer" is an artist why isn't his title recording "artist"? Funny how i have two ears but it takes 27 microphones to record 2 guitars , a bass and a drumkit and make it sound "real". Wait, are we suggesting that there is no art in engineering? Regardless, I've heard some use the term "recording artist". A semantic argument really isn't shedding light on the reality here. My guess is the engineer title probably comes from the technical nature of the role.....there's a lot of technical work surrounding the art.Btw, the goal isn't "real"....The goal is "better than real". If your yardstick measures "real" then you will be disappointed by any artistic expression that intentionally avoids "real". To make a parallel to paintings, you're arguing that photorealistic images are the epitome of painting. I very much prefer the abstract paintings and might argue lightly there is more freedom for artistic expression there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ClaudeJ1 Posted February 13, 2014 Share Posted February 13, 2014 Funny how i have two ears but it takes 27 microphones to record 2 guitars , a bass and a drumkit and make it sound "real". It's called the inverse square law. When you do close miking to get details, you lose the ambience, so they mix it in the way they think it should sound. They are quite often wrong. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ClaudeJ1 Posted February 13, 2014 Share Posted February 13, 2014 (edited) My guess is the engineer title probably comes from the technical nature of the role.....there's a lot of technical work surrounding the art. I would prefer to call it a CRAFT, rather than Art when it comes to Engineering. It's repeatable and requires skill. Much like competent photography is a craft, but with modern lighting and digital enhancement tools, it can be elevated to ART in the right hands, but the more common practice is a CRAFT. Edited February 13, 2014 by ClaudeJ1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Turbox Posted February 13, 2014 Share Posted February 13, 2014 My system is very unforgiving on poor quality formats... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
etc6849 Posted February 13, 2014 Share Posted February 13, 2014 I agree. I use my PC for all media (DVD, Blu-Ray, DVD-A, CD) except SACD. FLAC files are great and handle multi-channel audio, and programs like Foobar2000 make backing up your music collection very easy. Not surprisingly, I've found no audible difference when using my PC for audio either. The nice thing is you can have one PC that shares your media throughout the house and don't have to deal with discs after you rip the media. PS: I'm not advocating privacy, but own all my movies, etc... Modern "users" use their computers (and now moreso their handheld portable devices) for music playback. It's only you old fart ancients that still have the issues of handling physical media But seriously, a USB stick to capture what you're doing would be very inexpensive.....and if you really care that much, it would be super easy to construct a "player" that you stick the USB stick into and it would just play the four files. Technology is absolutely there.....there's just no demand for such a playback environment. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CECAA850 Posted February 13, 2014 Share Posted February 13, 2014 PS: I'm not advocating privacy, but own all my movies, etc... So we can come over any time? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
etc6849 Posted February 13, 2014 Share Posted February 13, 2014 There's plenty of surround formats and codecs available (some are even opensource such as FLAC). All the one's I've used work using a single file (e.g. wrapper) to contain multiple streams. Even multi-channel wave files played back on my PC with no setup involved, just used windows media player. That's not to mention blu-ray, DVD-A or SACD that are all formats used for various albums, although some are hard to find and get expensive. I enjoy multi-channel audio a lot and believe most recordings can sound better than their stereo mixes. Although they don't have well known artists, http://aixrecords.com/ has some great sounding multi-channel recordings. Of course, I'm not sure how life like it is. I know the guy there doesn't use any post processing such as audio compression, but he uses a bunch of mics to make his recordings (at least two per instrument and places them very close to get the best possible sound). Given there's two surround mixes per track and one stereo mix (one "In the band" mix or the normal mix using the rear speakers to extent the stereo sound stage), there is clearly a lot of art even in mixing alone. The album I bought from him was Lawrence Juber - Guitar Noir. It sounds awesome on my four La Scala's. Folks may claim stereo is just as good, but I would guess that most poeple would disagree once they've heard great surround mixes. Maybe they aren't "better," depending on your point of view (e.g. more life like), but they can definitely be different offering even more ways an engineer can be artistic. Isn't that why the format died such a horrible death in the 70's was it? Or maybe 80's? I dunno - I wasn't there for that atrocity. I would peg it as 1977. And it was atrocious. And goofy. I was well into refined HiFi by that time and no one found any merit in the 4CH experiments. A novelty, that's about it. Acoustic Space I started saying a few year ago here that you can't reproduce acoustics. We can't put an acoustic event in a coffee can, and then open it up in some other room and turn it loose. Recording with mics is not duplicating an acoustic event. It's a change from one energy form into another And the mapping is not literal. What your speakers are doing to air, is not what was being done to air in the performance. It's only a simulation. There is no doubt "a few" that share your same tastes. It certainly isn't a universally held belief I guess I am suggesting that only a few have ever heard a really realistic recording. Seems certain to me that anyone really into the concept of "high fidelity" would embrace it if it were accurate and easy. It's easy to record, but no format has ever been developed to make it easy to play back. Wish I had skills in that area of programming. I just don't think it would be that hard to develop a "wrapper" to containerize 4 discrete channels into a package and then a codec for a player to play them back. Not sure what you mean by "preferring art." The music is art. The recording engineer's job is to deliver it to the listener as close to the original as possible (we are talking ACOUSTIC here). At the moment, we don't have a format accessible to people like me to provide discrete surround to people like you. Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
etc6849 Posted February 13, 2014 Share Posted February 13, 2014 If you're ever in the area sure. However, given that some claim backing up movies that I own is illegal, it's probably best that you elaborate on your thoughts first. After all, I don't want the FBI stopping by Personally, I'm sick of crap like high definition copy protection (HDCP) that HDMI uses. It makes everything take longer to handshake and can cause too many end user issues. That's not to mention cinavia copy protection that tries to make blu-rays unplayable after about 20 minutes if you rip them (all you have to do is use an older software player to get around this or hack a newer player to ignore the cinavia flag). If the industry doesn't want me to backup my stuff (seems pretty clear they don't), they probably shouldn't sell physical copies and force me to use the cloud. I'm not going to get up and walk several rooms away to put a disc in. Too inconvenient and unnecessary now days. PS: I'm not advocating privacy, but own all my movies, etc... So we can come over any time? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
etc6849 Posted February 13, 2014 Share Posted February 13, 2014 Not if you want blu-ray quality and all the special features. You could rip the DVD version, not sure if it uses Cinavia though. Luckily, most movies don't use Cinavia. It's mainly the Sony releases. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CECAA850 Posted February 13, 2014 Share Posted February 13, 2014 probably best that you elaborate on your thoughts first You said privacy and meant piracy. Little fun on my part. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mallette Posted February 13, 2014 Share Posted February 13, 2014 Wait, are we suggesting that there is no art in engineering? Depends on what you are doing. For those like me who limit themselves to the quest for preserving acoustic space/time events, there is no room for art. That is what the performer(s) are providing. Any delta from their sound as heard in the venue from the position of the microphones is a breach of fiduciary interest and a failure. I've yet to succeed, but I am determined to continue... Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
etc6849 Posted February 15, 2014 Share Posted February 15, 2014 I blame the 10 hours I spent watching trailer park boys on Netflix due to the snow probably best that you elaborate on your thoughts first You said privacy and meant piracy. Little fun on my part. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
minermark Posted February 15, 2014 Share Posted February 15, 2014 I blame the 10 hours I spent watching trailer park boys on Netflix due to the snow probably best that you elaborate on your thoughts first You said privacy and meant piracy. Little fun on my part. Trailer park boys? Get yourself your Fav libation and three seasons of "Deadwood".........thank me later. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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