ProSoundWeb: Most of us feel that we know good sound when we hear it. We also have tools to help us analyze the properties of sound, and we’ve learned to interpret those measurements and equate them with good and bad.
But I find it fascinating that sometimes even when things measure “poorly,” we say that it sounds good anyway. Or, conversely, sometimes the measurements look spectacular but “there’s just something wrong.” The challenge is defining what actually constitutes “good” sound, and how we know it is so.
2 comments:
This was a fascinating read. I don’t know much about the technicality of sound other than some basics, and so reading this was super cool, as is thinking about how you make sound “sound good” and pleasing to many people, especially as everyone has different tastes, not to mention hears differently/thinks and processes things differently. I always get a little shocked when I hear myself recorded, as it sounds so different than I think I do! Crazy. Also in remembering sound, that’s a cool concept as I feel like in some memories I will listen to a song and it will immediately bring me to a place, which is super cool and insane to think how our brain does that. Them talking about live music being better was also interesting. There were live performers on the cut today outside and it was so nice! It’s like how seeing concerts live can be better than listening to music sometimes, as the experience of the sound is so different.
I think this is a very important concept to always keep in mind, that are ears can very easily lie to us. Take for example the fact that the longer you listen to something loud, the quieter it gets, leading you to continually raise the volume, which will lead to feedback. Tools and software can help, but they also pose a trap, where you rely on what you are looking at more than what you are hearing. This can most acutely be seen on any Audio engineering facebook group, where people post photos of someone else's EQ that looks atrocious, forgetting that they most likely had to EQ something like that due to the environment they are in and/or the equipment they have. Like the article said, live is live, you do whatever you can that works, as long as it sounds good to you. Audio is hugely subjective and it is different for everyone.
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