4 ms·

Tangentially, the placebo effect is everywhere. If it can affect tasting (wine) and hearing (audiophile gear), I'm surprised not to have noticed its affect in d

Tangentially, the placebo effect is everywhere. If it can affect tasting (wine) and hearing (audiophile gear), I'm surprised not to have noticed its affect in discussing photography. Will "computational photography" (as touted in the latest iPhones) that alters photos based on criterion of perceived quality end up bringing these kind of inane discussions there too? Edit: Never mind, I didn't factor in all the arguments about Photoshop altering.

taejo 8y ago
While there are endless debates about manipulation, when it comes to actual capturing of images, the photographic community (in my experience) has a healthy dose of "the best camera is the one you're carrying" and "a great photographer can take great photographs with any camera but even a great camera won't help a lousy photographer take great photographs" to go with its love of gear (who can help but love gear?)
- beat 8y ago
  Camera nerds are the worst. They're worse than audiophiles, if that's possible. Good photography requires nothing more than a bit of reason and observable standard practice, applied to aesthetics. You don't have to look hard to find someone with a $5000 camera/lens combo who doesn't know what the Rule of Thirds is or how to apply it. Last weekend, I was in DC, and snapping pictures of the Washington Monument on my phone. My sister was shocked at how good they were. It's not hard, really.
  - airbreather 8y ago
    Girl at work has 20k camera with 100k megapixels, but then again Huawei just asked to use her pics for their phone screen savers, so...
rectang 8y ago
I made my living as a mastering engineer for two years... To do good work in mixing and mastering, it's important to study the human perceptual mechanism and its propensity for illusion, and it's also important to understand masking effects and how to amplify certain components long enough to tweak them before dialing them back to recede into the gestalt. It's also important to understand that in sound reproduction the vast majority of the distortion on the analog side comes from transducers (microphones and speakers), not amplifiers. (I'm not even going to bother with the article, because amplifiers aren't an important problem: buy something decently engineered and overpowered, and you're basically all set. Then worry about your speakers and your room, because they're the hard part.) But it's likewise crucial to grok that the distortion introduced by digital components is disproportionately disturbing because it is enharmonic. And that practically speaking a lot of the damage that gets done in practice happens because people don't handle gain staging right and often don't understand the fundamental principle of preserving high resolution throughout production and only exporting to lower resolution as a final step. In summary, there are a whole lot of interesting conversations to have on the subject of audio and how perception relates to production. But it's basically impossible to find a community to discuss these subjects with. Either it will be overrun by audiophiles and their pseudoscience, or well-meaning but undereducated skeptics will dominate the discussion with plausible but misguided debunking. So every once in a while I throw up a piece like this into the middle of a giant discussion, with about as much hope as tossing a message in a bottle into the ocean.
- ericdykstra 8y ago
  This is pretty fascinating. I can't add to a discussion, but I would certainly read more about this if you have produced it somewhere. I'm also curious, what made you leave your job as a mastering engineer?
  - rectang 8y ago
    The profession of audio production is extremely competitive because there is a perpetual oversupply of labor. The total amount of money in the music industry is also deceptively small compared to its high public profile. I left the field (back in about 2003) because although I felt that I was good enough to compete and survive, I didn't love it enough to grind out a life as a workaholic and just get by. Most of my writings from that time were forum posts with the perspective of the well-meaning but undereducated skeptic and wouldn't be that interesting to read today. Also, what was probably my best writing happened in forums which don't have public archives which have survived 15-20 years later. (Which amuses me as a former mastering engineer because one of our primary objectives is long-term archival.) PS: not "enharmonic", "non-harmonic" dammit. The point is that while analog distortion is mostly harmonically related, digital distortion is not and therefore is much more poisonous in small quantities. Mixing especially (though mastering is similar) is all about making changes near or below the threshold of perception which sum to a cumulative perceptible effect.
- beat 8y ago
  I feel your pain. I produce and mix records - at an amateur level, but enough to get quite good at it. It makes me want to toss all this "objective", "measurable" bullshit from the skeptics right out the window - the subjective experience is all that matters. But it also makes me want to toss the audiophile voodoo out the same window. "Accurate" reproduction? I just want to show them how records are mixed. My pet example is that I put high-pass filters (12db slope) at 250-300hz on almost everything that isn't a drum or a bass instrument. I'm slaughtering the bottom two octaves of guitars! And if you solo a guitar track, you can hear it. But in the context of a mix, all those bottom two octaves do is make mud and confusion, distracting from the clarity that the kick and bass (guitar || synth) needs. And I need that clarity, because I'm not mixing for $500,000 audiophile systems. I'm mixing for car stereos, boom boxes, Alexas, cheap earbuds, and worse. So all that matters for me with audiophile systems - and I love audiophile systems - is that they sound good. That doesn't mean they sound accurate.
paulie_a 8y ago
Whenever I see the term audiophile I mentally replace it with "over priced bullshit" It's just someone being sold snake oil.
ken 8y ago
It's already here, for displays. I've seen lots of internet comments claiming I need the >450ppi screen on the new high-end iPhone, not the miserable old cheapo 326ppi one.

taejo 8y ago

While there are endless debates about manipulation, when it comes to actual capturing of images, the photographic community (in my experience) has a healthy dose of "the best camera is the one you're carrying" and "a great photographer can take great photographs with any camera but even a great camera won't help a lousy photographer take great photographs" to go with its love of gear (who can help but love gear?)

beat 8y ago
Camera nerds are the worst. They're worse than audiophiles, if that's possible. Good photography requires nothing more than a bit of reason and observable standard practice, applied to aesthetics. You don't have to look hard to find someone with a $5000 camera/lens combo who doesn't know what the Rule of Thirds is or how to apply it. Last weekend, I was in DC, and snapping pictures of the Washington Monument on my phone. My sister was shocked at how good they were. It's not hard, really.
- airbreather 8y ago
  Girl at work has 20k camera with 100k megapixels, but then again Huawei just asked to use her pics for their phone screen savers, so...

rectang 8y ago

I made my living as a mastering engineer for two years... To do good work in mixing and mastering, it's important to study the human perceptual mechanism and its propensity for illusion, and it's also important to understand masking effects and how to amplify certain components long enough to tweak them before dialing them back to recede into the gestalt. It's also important to understand that in sound reproduction the vast majority of the distortion on the analog side comes from transducers (microphones and speakers), not amplifiers. (I'm not even going to bother with the article, because amplifiers aren't an important problem: buy something decently engineered and overpowered, and you're basically all set. Then worry about your speakers and your room, because they're the hard part.) But it's likewise crucial to grok that the distortion introduced by digital components is disproportionately disturbing because it is enharmonic. And that practically speaking a lot of the damage that gets done in practice happens because people don't handle gain staging right and often don't understand the fundamental principle of preserving high resolution throughout production and only exporting to lower resolution as a final step. In summary, there are a whole lot of interesting conversations to have on the subject of audio and how perception relates to production. But it's basically impossible to find a community to discuss these subjects with. Either it will be overrun by audiophiles and their pseudoscience, or well-meaning but undereducated skeptics will dominate the discussion with plausible but misguided debunking. So every once in a while I throw up a piece like this into the middle of a giant discussion, with about as much hope as tossing a message in a bottle into the ocean.

ericdykstra 8y ago
This is pretty fascinating. I can't add to a discussion, but I would certainly read more about this if you have produced it somewhere. I'm also curious, what made you leave your job as a mastering engineer?
- rectang 8y ago
  The profession of audio production is extremely competitive because there is a perpetual oversupply of labor. The total amount of money in the music industry is also deceptively small compared to its high public profile. I left the field (back in about 2003) because although I felt that I was good enough to compete and survive, I didn't love it enough to grind out a life as a workaholic and just get by. Most of my writings from that time were forum posts with the perspective of the well-meaning but undereducated skeptic and wouldn't be that interesting to read today. Also, what was probably my best writing happened in forums which don't have public archives which have survived 15-20 years later. (Which amuses me as a former mastering engineer because one of our primary objectives is long-term archival.) PS: not "enharmonic", "non-harmonic" dammit. The point is that while analog distortion is mostly harmonically related, digital distortion is not and therefore is much more poisonous in small quantities. Mixing especially (though mastering is similar) is all about making changes near or below the threshold of perception which sum to a cumulative perceptible effect.
beat 8y ago
I feel your pain. I produce and mix records - at an amateur level, but enough to get quite good at it. It makes me want to toss all this "objective", "measurable" bullshit from the skeptics right out the window - the subjective experience is all that matters. But it also makes me want to toss the audiophile voodoo out the same window. "Accurate" reproduction? I just want to show them how records are mixed. My pet example is that I put high-pass filters (12db slope) at 250-300hz on almost everything that isn't a drum or a bass instrument. I'm slaughtering the bottom two octaves of guitars! And if you solo a guitar track, you can hear it. But in the context of a mix, all those bottom two octaves do is make mud and confusion, distracting from the clarity that the kick and bass (guitar || synth) needs. And I need that clarity, because I'm not mixing for $500,000 audiophile systems. I'm mixing for car stereos, boom boxes, Alexas, cheap earbuds, and worse. So all that matters for me with audiophile systems - and I love audiophile systems - is that they sound good. That doesn't mean they sound accurate.

paulie_a 8y ago

Whenever I see the term audiophile I mentally replace it with "over priced bullshit" It's just someone being sold snake oil.

ken 8y ago

It's already here, for displays. I've seen lots of internet comments claiming I need the >450ppi screen on the new high-end iPhone, not the miserable old cheapo 326ppi one.