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Originally Posted by boojum  There is talk that MP3's have deadened the public ear to quality. But think back to what folks were listening with 20 years ago. Or even now. When we mix we have to mix for really good and the crappy table model less-than-boom-box quality player. And for everything in between.
There are just so many gigs available for field recordists. And good old Uncle Dweeb can squeeze out a quality guy just because he is cheap or free. But if they want to sell copies there will be some eventual resistance to what is Uncle Dweeb's work. And then they will come back. What you do to pay the bills in the meantime can be a problem.
The local radio station has a sound engineer who records from the balcony railing at the back of the hall with two mcs about 30' apart into an old Marantz DAT machine. His recordings are just awful. But he is "the sound engineer" because he is a ham radio operator. Makes sense, eh??!! LOL
There is an old saying, "Quality is like oats. If you want clean, fresh oats you must pay a fair price. If you can be satisfied with the oats that have already been through the horse, those come a lot cheaper."  |
All good thoughts.
One other problem is that today so many arts organizations are hurting. I was just talking to one of our non profits and two corporations that use to give them money pulled back their funding saying that they are now spending the money feeding the needy and giving to programs that directly impact the lives of people who have nothing.
Here in our town we have about 26% of the people that are below the poverty level and I guess these companies are trying to help the needy but they are pulling their help from the arts organizations just when a lot of arts organizations need the help the most. Ticket sales are down, people don't have money to donate to the arts organizations and prices of everything including sheet music and hall rentals are going up exponentially.
Not a good time to be a non profit or a school system.
We have to get out of this recession and back to a working economy with unemployment under 6% before companies are willing to go back and start funding arts organizations.
City schools are hurting big time. A lot of cities around here did not pass any of the levies that the schools were asking for so they have had to cut a lot of after school activities and funding for projects that are now considered expendable. This was due to a lot of people losing their jobs when places like Ford and York Air Conditioning shut down their plants or moved production to Mexico or the far east to save money.
Unfortunately in this area that means cutting out music and art and keeping the football and basketball teams.(because those are what are REALLY IMPORTANT to the alumni)
It has to get better. Hopefully sooner than later. We all talk about the Domino effect but in business right now we are seeing that effect all over. Companies are folding left and right, people are out of work, they can't buy things they want and companies that supply even the most basic things like food, transportation and shelter are hurting big time. Officially the recession maybe over but around here it is going to take at least two years if not more to get things moving and they may NEVER be as good as they were in the 90's.
FWIW and YMMV