Is audio quality really that important?

[nobo]

Yes, I know it's what a lot of us here do for a living (or hobby), and I agree that it's important to do pursue things to the best of one's ability. I also agree that it can be appropriate for mega star artists to have mega recording budgets and use top gear (and top ears).

And yet ...

1) There are some great recordings which are frankly very low fi. Whilst this sometimes this spoils enjoyment, sometimes it can add character. And other times, see points 3 and 4.

2) There are other (sometimes successful) recordings that were recorded on relatively cheap equipment (i.e. often in home studios studios costing £5 - 25k). Or were made on, for example, late 80s/early 90s equipment which had shocking technical specs - a lot of early 90s UK dance music, for example, with crunchy 8bit time stretching (which became part of the sound), early generation akai samplers, e.g. Squarepusher, the first Prodigy album, DJ Shadow's Entroducing (done on an MPC, an adat and a couple of effects boxes), pretty much any jungle / old skool rave, hardcore, etc. [Yes, I know this is different to recording a full band!].

3) Most listeners does really care that much about production, they just care about the song / the music.

4) Most listeners aren't able to distinguish between average / great production. Possibly because most people are listening to mp3s through cheap headphones, or on fairly basic hifi setups. I'd guess that 90+% of listeners are listening on systems costing under £1000 (often much much less) in untreated spaces, and often set up very poorly. True, you can still distinguish great production on cheap systems or headphones, but it seems to me that a lot of people just don't care or aren't interested - they're just as happy listening do rough demo quality as a £100k production. Quality of performancy, songwriting and arrangement are vastly more important.

[I accept that production can influence your perception (even subliminally) of the music to a degree]

Forgive me - I'm not deliberately trolling! Apologies if this does get anyone's backs up (and note my caveats!). Just curious for opinions really - it seems a lot of us get quite stressed out about microscopic detail / very marginal improvements (but then that is of course the job of a professional recording engineer!). I guess what I'm saying (actually, I'm not really sure what I'm saying!) isn't all that controversial. If there is a point, I suppose it's not really aimed at professional engineers but more hobbyists / home recorders / self producers - spend less time (and money!) worrying about the gear you have (or don't have) and more time (and money, as necessary) on the songwriting and performance. Perhaps this thread is bourne out of self-frustration, coz it's certainly something I'm guilty of!

[hle144]

Don't forget you are talking mainly about music production. You have some good points that I agree with, but don't forget that there are other fields that require high end audio not just consumer listening pleasures.

-Music and sound for the major movie productions requires high end clarity.
-Classical music recording also comes to mind.
-Sample cd's

All audio is not destined to become mp3's.

[nobo]

Agreed. Good points!
Though to an extent, the points about end users not being especially concerned with quality or having the equipment to appreciate the finer nuances on still stand.
(However, I would guess that the most serious of jazz and classical listeners probably have passable hi-fi systems

[Slim Cutty]

Good read and great point although some will disagree ... it's all about "INTEGRITY" and maintaining that integrity in the music regardless to what the public thinks. Sound is sound ... some frequencies combined sound better than others.

Too much time spent on making music "sound" good verse the music being good in the first place. But that's another argument. Best I can explain it ... ... it's like watching your favorite movie and lets say it was recorded through a hand held camera without any effects what so ever ..no filters no nothing ... would it still be as interesting a movie? Is watching the bootleg more gratifying than actually seeing the real thing? A good quality bootleg is just that ... a good quality bootleg. Fans may not be able to describe it much ... but they know the difference in quality music and what isn't.

sorry for the ramble ramble ramble (I need to lay off the coffee ..lol)

[AllAboutTone]

All i can say is, it depends on who's listening to it...or what its being used for.

[Chapiro]

Thre is a speck of truth in what u re saying but on the other hand, Artists that had a hit with cheap gear or lo fi are a very small percentage of the total number of commercialy succesfull records out there and usually its an artists first effort with great music in it that "gets lucky" like say Alanis Morisete (sorry if misspelled) first record that was supposedly made on first gen ADATs but i dont think she ever went back to that ADAT sound afterwards. Also many times what we call lo fi is just a artistic manipulation of hi end gear to make it sound as if its done on a home studio. If you try to obtain said sound on prosummer gear it becomes obvious that there is much more than some mackies and berringers involved in the process. ALso we are on a gear oriented forum where proffessional and hobbyist engineers share their knowledge and experiences and part of our responsability should be to educate our clients on how important is to be able to capture sound accurately and i think few would disagree that the best way to do it is by a skilled engineer at a professional studio with controlled accoustics and hi end gear.

[HIGHENDONLY]

Someone correct me if i'm wrong, but i read about this rapper"SHINE" that was in jail and they recorded most of his vocals over the phone. How much more low end can you get?

[vernier]

Is audio quality really that important?

It's important, always. Don't ever let your guard down.

[Bubbagump]

Originally Posted by nobo

3) Most listeners does really care that much about production, they just care about the song / the music.

Most pop hits anymore are nothing but production... without the production the tunes couldn't stand. Ever hear an acoustic record from Brittany Spears?

In all though... the answer to your question is it depends. That's why we can make value judgments. I want to barf every time I hear modern country records as every single one seems to be more shiny and produced than bubble gum pop. Hank Sr didn't have no damn super production. On the other hand every punk record I hear locally produced is under produced and sounds like a sack of mud. So you have to just judge the project for its merits, give the client what they want, and consider the music as a whole.

[nobo]

interesting and totally valid responses - can't say i disagree!
admittedly there's a degree of devil's advocate involved here in that i'm lucky enough to have a reasonably listening system and environment. i also really enjoy well produced music, and find some albums hard to listen to because of poor production.

[u b k]

Originally Posted by nobo

Though to an extent, the points about end users not being especially concerned with quality or having the equipment to appreciate the finer nuances on still stand.

i'll take the position that, while the typical listener may not consciously be concerned with production quality, it very much affects how they perceive a song, and very much impacts whether they like it. even teens with their earbuds listening to ipods... play them a portastudio demo of the latest favorite song, and they'll respond quite differently to it.

a song that sounds good, that hits hard or rings clear, this is an assumption on the part of their brains. that they don't know they've made this assumption is not the same thing as saying it doesn't matter to them.


gregoire
del
ubk
.

[nobo]

Originally Posted by bubbagump

Ever hear an acoustic record from Brittany Spears?

Actually I've heard a few of her songs done acoustically (live) by other artists and they sounded great. But I know what you're saying ... most of Britney's or [insert pop artist's name] material really wouldn't work acoustically without all the (cow)bells and whilstles.

[PRobb]

What Ubik said.

Consumers don't say "nice snare sound" or "cool vocal reverb", but they know when something moves them. And that is the cumulative result of thousands of tiny details.

[kats]

Is audio quality really that important?

As an engineer trying to make a living, you shouldn't worry yourself over questions like this. The reason is simple.

Try and market yourself by promoting that your services are "average at best, but don't worry the listeners of your product can't tell the difference." See how well you do

Secondly, you can argue until the cows come home about how important or not sound quality is, but no one is going to argue that good sound quality is bad for music. And you won't lose one client because you have high standards.

How important it is in the grand scheme of things isn't a question for engineers to answer. Your a specialist for clients who believe that it is. It's for them to decide.

[cornutt]

There's one other thing to keep in mind about MP3: The demand for it is motivated by the technological limitations of the equipment currently preferred by the consumer. However, this situation won't last that long. As the state of the art improves in memory and bandwidth, eventually we'll all have gigabit pipes into our houses and we'll all be walking around with 500GB iPods so small that we can barely press the buttons. At that point, transmission and storage won't benefit much from compression anymore. MP3 will start to give way to low-loss and lossless formats, as consumers realize that better quality can be had at little additional cost.

When that day comes, artists and producers who planned for it will have an advantage. High-quality productions will reveal new details in the new formats, in the same way that CDs revealed detail that was previously inaudible on vinyl. This will spur new consumer demand, but it will also reveal the limitations of poorer productions. People whose back catalog consists of things produced under the assumption that they would always be MP3 are going to be screwed.

[PRobb]

When you look at a painting, is it necessary to understand the details of the brush technique, the chemistry involved in creating the paint or how theories of perspective were employed? No. You just know if it speaks to you or not. All those details are absolutely crucial to impression you get. But you don't see those details. You see the result.

[frans]

Think about it in terms of texture: do you want a recording where everything is "gray", grainy or out of focus? Or do you want one where everything is smack-clean and shiny? OR... do you want to have control over ...THIS element will be crummy and THIS will be shiny and this will be hard as concrete - it's the art. These are our paintbrushes, which we will use as we like. I don't fooookin care about any consumer, they can listen to what they want, BUT I WANT TO HAVE FUN recording and that includes sounds as I deem them fitting. Even if everybody out there would listen to it on their cellphones, I don't care, I'll do the recording to the highest standards I can, so I have fun. Aw, yep, the money too doesn't hurt - clients come back, you know.

[Byrne]

Dude, I swear that there shoule be an AE equivalent of the Hippocratic Oath. Seriously, where the f*ck does "good enough" stop?

So many people who post here obviously love music. Let's see, make sacrifices for it? Check. Spend long hours tweaking that mix so that it's as good as you can humanly get it? Check. Realize that crafting that sweet, sweet mojo is infinitely more rewarding than getting those last tags on GTA or beating the piss out of Halo again? PRICELESS.

Well, Halo 3 ain't out yet...

I ramble too much when I post, so I'll try brevity for once.
There seems to me to be a depressing trend toward laziness and apathy. I've seen people with that knew they were getting lackluster sounds say the cliche "Oh, we'll fix it later/in the mix". When I was getting trained in and going through my education, that was certainly effing not an acceptable attitude. You worked until the sound was right and that was it.

The human mind is great at rationalizing, right? So we have hundreds of wanna-be "engineers" running around that have been raised on Sound-Replacer and Auto-Tune and McDonald's and immediate gratification that say it's "good enough". There's a wash of garbage that we have to listen to and wade through that's unimaginative and craptastic and derivative because it's "good enough". Because why bother making it sound good, right? Kids are only listening through iPods, anyway, so who cares?

We still should, dude. I really hope that your original post was more rhetorical than anything, because I'd hate to see another practitioner of mediocrity. F*ck "good enough" and the laziness that goes with it. If you love music, spend time with it and give it the respect that it deserves. That means laying off of the L2 paintbrush-waveforms and the sampled everything and shoddy recording techniques. Maybe the sheep can get led back a little toward the good grazing instead of the artifically greener pasture. I'm bad with metaphor, sue me. My ultimate pont is, make it sound as good as you can. It's the consumer's choice to wreck it if they want. I personally enjoy music that doesn't sound like grainy ass and I personally never feel right when I know I could've done better on a project.


Oh yeah, and the Hippocratic Oath has this for an ending. It should apply, right...?
"If I keep this oath faithfully, may I enjoy my life and practice my art, respected by all men and in all times; but if I swerve from it or violate it, may the reverse be my lot."

[nobo]

Thanks for the responses. Hope I've not caused too much offence!

The question was somewhat rhetorical, and as I said earlier, I'm an audiophile/production junkie. I totally agree that engineering professionals should be making things sound as good as possible! The thrust of the thread, however, wasn't really aimed at professions. But I guess I was curious to see what the thought would throw up. To my mind, so of the most stimulating responses have been:

1) re: future proofing (a time beyond mp3s).

2) the role of the subliminal in consumer perceptions of music / no need to understand technique to appreciate it. i guess it's a question of the extent to which you value the idea vs the exectuion (and to which the two can actually be disentangled).

I guess the post was also a response to threads that come up here (and on other forums), along the lines of "you can't make a professional record using x equipment", e.g. because you're not using A/D converters costing £500 per channel. True, I agree it does a substantial amount of amounts of expensive kit/acoustic treatment and (more importantly) a good, experience engineer to make a good sounding record. And a £5k studio generally won't sound like Abbey Road or wherever. But countless records (and major hits) have been made in much lesser facilities. Also, consider how things have moved in the past 20 or so years (alone) in the digital music field. Records were made using digital effects and converters say 10-20 years ago that wouldn't stand up to some budget equipment these days. So it can be galling for the non-professionals to be disuading enthusiasts on the merits of their gear (the exception to this being that very few amateurs take acoustic treatment seriously enough, or are even aware of the issue at all - cheapest fix available, imho!). Hobby-ists, I would venture, are more typically limited by their lack of time and experience (and dare I say skill!) to deliver the goods rather than equipment. I guess that's not a very controversial statement, but the amount of money some people spend on gear for their home studio - hoping it'll bring improvements where there are other areas they ought to be focussing on - beggars belief. This I'm guilty of! (Probably too much time spent on forum's like this

[soundbarnfool]

I for one appreciate clarity in all things. That includes hearing distortion clearly.

[O.F.F.]

It matters to me for two reasons:
1) Its a one-way street; you can make a sublime recording sound lo-fi if it neds it but you can't make a lo-fi recording sound sublime.

2) Possibly more important: you're gear is your tool and if you hate your tools your job will become a nightmare. It doesn't really matter if the consumer can't tell if I used a B*******r or an SSL, I just would not enjoy working on a piece of s**t everyday.

Bottomline: You will be (or at least should be) happier with yourself using good kit to produce good recordings.

[Bubbagump]

Originally Posted by nobo

Actually I've heard a few of her songs done acoustically (live) by other artists and they sounded great. But I know what you're saying ... most of Britney's or [insert pop artist's name] material really wouldn't work acoustically without all the (cow)bells and whilstles.

I was more thinking about the orchestra hits.

[The Kamillion]

Great post. Here's the questions...


Can you make a BAD song a GOOD song with the best engineering?

Can you make a GOOD song a BAD song with lil bo peep behind the desk?

Does radio compression make bad songs sound better, and great songs sound worse?

Those are my questions...(and answers)

[u b k]

Originally Posted by The Kamillion

Can you make a BAD song a GOOD song with the best engineering?

i have no idea, but i know sure as sh¡t you can make a BAD song a POPULAR song with the best engineering.


gregoire
del
ubk
.

[stampen]

There is also the responsibility to the musician.

If someone has spent hours every day for years to perfect every little detail and nuance just the way he/she wants, then the AE better not **** it up.

I am surpirised no one has mentioned this before.

/A

[JP11]

Originally Posted by The Kamillion

Can you make a BAD song a GOOD song with the best engineering?

Deja Vu. There's a 10 page thread of philosophical balderdash just around the corner.

I think the words "bad" and "good" should be disallowed in all future music and audio discussions because my bad is your good.

[JP11]

Originally Posted by nobo

spend less time (and money!) worrying about the gear you have (or don't have) and more time (and money, as necessary) on the songwriting and performance.

I think this is a good idea. Oops, I said good already.

[JP11]

Originally Posted by bubbagump

Most pop hits anymore are nothing but production... without the production the tunes couldn't stand. Ever hear an acoustic record from Brittany Spears?

This is Travis doing Hit Me Baby One More Time:

<object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/-NwqN-xj9Xs"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/-NwqN-xj9Xs" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object>

Here's Richard Thompson doing Oops, I Did It Again (first song under "Studio 4A performances):

NPR : Richard Thompson, Live in Studio 4A

There's a bunch of acoustic versions on YouTube, some are alright. I think her hits are as good as anyone's around now. If someone in the 60s did Toxic, or if The B-52s did it, I think it would be considered a really cool song.

EDIT: Look what I found (sounds like a mess , but....):

<object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/n-TIm0wt5M0"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/n-TIm0wt5M0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object>

[bexarametric]

I think that there were great albums that were recorded well and great albums that were NOT recorded well. The fact of the matter is that they WERE great albums. I am very familiar with a lot of the music that the original poster is referencing. Being a musician that does both routes (using a lot of synths samples and also tracking drums, guitar, vocals etc) production is quite different when going down either of these two avenues. I think if it's good, then it's good. That being said, my top 5 favorite albums that I would take on a desert island with me were all well written, but they were also well engineered. I own many albums where the engineering is alright, but the songwriting is superb. To me, bad engineering does take away from an album. I always wanted Metallica to rerecord "And Justice For All" because I thought the songwriting was amazing, but the engineering was horrible. They were mad about the death of Cliff so they turned the bass down.

[Kermit]

I don't agree that the average listener cannot hear a better production.

Think about this, a person may be illiterate about music, know nothing about modes and scales and stuff, but can point out a wrong note easily. Likewise, an ordinary listener can point out that the better production is more pleasing, though not exactly knowing why.

A good production will sound good on crappy systems, mp3, at low volumes, etc.