But as with everything in life, it can never all be just fun and games – there are always a few situations or moments that slightly spoil the mood and get under my skin. Nothing drastic or severe, just more of a nuisance.
Tuesday, February 12, 2019
Pet Peeves: It Can Never All Be Just Fun & Games…
But as with everything in life, it can never all be just fun and games – there are always a few situations or moments that slightly spoil the mood and get under my skin. Nothing drastic or severe, just more of a nuisance.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
I do not know how I feel about the article after reading it. It seems like a way to let put some sort of irritation that the author has about what other people would say around him. I understand that he is irritated either because people are talking about audio is a way which takes away the hard work the job requires or because they are questioning the seriousness of his work.
Still, it seems like this article stems from not the best feelings which again is definitely not something new but is not the best motivation to read an article either.
Whatever the author is saying however, if thought of objectively just shows how people are unaware of the work that audio artists do to put up even a small gig; they are simply unaware that audio work requires precision, patience and hard work to put up even something as small as background music (if good quality music is wished for).
This article brings up two important points about sound issues before diving into the real issues. The first point is that these sound issues aren’t necessarily pinpoint-able to the average ear but it is unsettling to the average ear and differently noticeable to the sound designer. This is quite a common thing that Joe says during production audio whenever someone asks how noticeable these issues. Also, the other important thing is that these errors aren’t constant. The author of the article talks about how sound is always changing and different equipment has different issues. The issues brought up make sense though I’ve never heard that sound is easy. I’m always intrigued by what rumors exist about the industry. It makes total sense that people want to have standardization in sound. It might have to do with the newness of sound. I can see this being an issue with media as well. I feel like over time as these two departments become more standard in the rehearsal process there will be more standardization in the equipment.
It’s definitely a problem that people don’t understand the complexity of sound. I mean sure, a reasonably competent person should be able to set up a rudimentary sound system without too much trouble, but to start making it sound better or to scale up to more complicated systems or more subtle or precise effects very quickly becomes difficult. As the author mentioned, the wide variety of digital audio protocols doesn’t help anything, and I would add that that problem extends from audio networking protocols like Dante and AES50 to digital sound file formats like .wav, .flac, and .mp3 as well. While there are legitimate uses, benefits, and drawbacks to different formats, its frustrating when high end programs wont deal with .mp3, or lower end programs force the use of a single format like .wav or .aiff. Not to mention that most software doesn’t have a built in .flac converter (Looking at you, Logic), and on the rare occasion that somebody records something in .ogg, everybody instantly contracts a headache.
I also agree that the stigma around measurement tools is counterproductive. The ear should have the final say, of course, but measurement tools can quickly get us to a good starting place, pick up things we might miss, and in conjunction with critical listening, provide a visual aid to more finely tune or more quickly identify problems should they arise. Digital analysis is our friend.
Post a Comment