GoodSoundClub - Romy the Cat's Audio Site

In the Forum: Didital Things
In the Thread: A CD off tune? The Big CD Conspiracy theory?

Post Subject: Music and Sound Recording (Tonmeister) (4 years) BMus (Hons)...Posted by Axel on: 8/27/2009

sounds like just what Romy could have excelled in for a carrier ---- because beyond the maths you need to have EARS and DISCERMENT for what is being recorded and exactly how it's done. (I met some sound engineers that did NOT strike me very musically qualified at all!)

Going with Romy's ongoing battle with just too many people in the industry that are clueless, it might not end with Audio-Morons but easily extend to idiot sound engineering -- who would say not so?

It is my understanding that in the currently depraved sound engineering environment (compression ueber alles!) just about everything goes. The digital medium mislead those 'experts' to mess with it to their hearts delight. Patching, level adjustments, expanding, COMPRESSION galore, etc. It is of course slowly being understood that each and every 'digital reshaping' is adding sound deterioration. Once again it's not what was first expected that digital would provide - the ultimate robustness of simple 0 and 1 only. If it was that 'robust' why should even some cheap Chinese pirate copy suffer?

Last point on the 'sliding' effect of the reproduction. For reasons known, orchestras (at least in the past) did NOT adhere to the same pitch for tuning (A = 440Hz), subject 'pitch inflation'. The a' could have been anything from 380Hz! to ~ 460Hz in the not so recent past.
If I listen to some recordings of different orchestras but the same musical pieces one can VERY clearly produce a pitch-slide effect also - when switching from the one to the other. The effect subsides mostly after a while, BUT there is such a thing a 'musical memory' and it also includes the 'known' pitch! If as in the case of the older Vienna SO recorded e.g. the "New World Symphony" with Kubelik and then one listens to the Berlin SO with the same conductor recorded many years later, the Vienna's had their a' tuned lower and so they sound darker and 'slower' then the BSO.
Axel

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