Party Vibe

its even more ironic that (as the Americans say) this has the effect of driving down the volume on FM radio – all stations (even pirate ones) have to put hard limiters on the TX input (lest they overmod into the aircraft comms band, which brings the wrath of Ofcom upon them…)

@cheeseweasel 382434 wrote:

I read an article a while back that interviewed some bigwig mastering engineer – he was complaining that he was being pressured to over-compress a lot of the albums he was working on by the record labels, who want their records to sound louder than everyone else’s. There’s quite a backlash against it in the pro audio industry – I was working in a studio before xmas and it was a pretty hot topic amongst the engineers.

The quality of sound we come to expect nowadays is a lot lower than it was say, 20-30 years ago, due to a combination of badly-built digital audio equipment, crappy MP3 compression, heavy-handed mastering and shoddy playback systems such as laptops and MP3 players (it used to be the case that if you wanted to listen to music you’d go out and buy an amp, some speakers and a CD player/turntable). Consequently, most people don’t notice/don’t care whether the music they’re listening to has a wide dynamic range or not.

this is exactly what I have been thinking about audio quality these days. Whats worse is this is a direct result of the “greater availability of content” which is very often free (either given away or simply stolen) – OK it “frees the art” but it means the money what paid for more studio time/engineers salaries/better equipment has gone out of the loop permanently, hence a drop in quality. There is no free lunch…

@noname 382466 wrote:

Not sure this is the case – the industry despite it’s general snark about piracy etc has been making increasing profits year on year, and engineers (even the highly paid ones like mastering engineers) get paid pretty small salaries in comparison to the army of parasitical “marketing” people/managers/cashers in on the current pop trend (and pretty much always have done).system),

the only way labels have preseved or grown their profits in the wake of downloads hitting revenue streams is for those with real power in the industry (i.e the marketing folk/managers) to reduce operating costs by reducing salaries / job security at the lower end – the artists and engineers, whilst of preserving their own positions.

Even then its fairly ruthless with a lot of labels merging and people being made redundant.

Of course it would be better if folk “did it themselves” but that involves the musicians/engineers taking on the roles of the marketers and managers as well as “making art” which not all are equipped to do (or we wouldn’t have this sorry situation). Having been a pro-audio engineer myself as well as trying to help people out with the unavoidable business side of music I have seen the dilemma at the frontline..

That said, I’d be happy to see the back of the entire pop music industry – in real terms it doesn’t add much value to this or any other nation particularly some types of urban music what encourage vioelnce – yet I doubt if it would stop people making music.

also the professional engineers are “feeding the monster” by putting up with these demands in return for keeping their jobs, if it really mattered to them so much they’d surely find another career? Engineering skills are very transferrable and TBH you can get better pay, conditions and job security working in “boring” IT or telecoms these days – and possibly spare time to still be involved in music if you so wish..