[Thomas W. Bethe]

Originally Posted by joelpatterson

Certainly-- anyone can invest a few hundred dollars in gear and "create" recordings-- but we're living through some strange epoch where this newly available ability has a 'blinding factor' that temporarily persuades some people that all recordings are created equal.

I'd advance the proposition that we, as engineers, were born with a heightened sensitivity to aspects of sound like sonority and resonancism (there's a word, eh?) that allows us to easily distinguish when something sounds like a cat being choked versus a mellifluous/gorgeous song playing.

In fact, that's the whole entire gist of what we do: the endlessly time-consuming effort to spin knobs and dials and faders and parameters to get the sound we're hearing from the playback devices under our command to conform to an ideal vision somewhere in the recesses of our heads.

Miraculously-- or not-- alot of people who try to do this are not in touch with their inner "arbiter of quality" and as a result, you get blitheringly catastrophic recordings, worthless and destined for the nearest dustbin that history has placed at regular intervals along the curb.

What can be done about this? Smile sweetly, don't be too cruel, realize that even Picasso was once a kid playing with crayons, and resist the impulse to laugh in anyone's face.

Well said as usual. Nice summation.