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But is it not true that the tools necesary for decent recording are only getting cheaper and more accessible? I'm not suggesting a crappy mic and no brains is

by dedward 14y ago

But is it not true that the tools necesary for decent recording are only getting cheaper and more accessible? I'm not suggesting a crappy mic and no brains is all it takes to produce a record, but your home PC these days can handle the mixing that it used to take hundreds of thousands of dollars in gear to do, and good recording gear can still cost a pretty penny, but it must be getting better and cheaper like everything else. We've seen more well-produced stuff by "amateurs" these days than any time in the past...

mechanical_fish 14y ago
Unfortunately, if you make one component of the supply chain cheaper it doesn't affect the other components. Digital audio workstations are, indeed, a lot cheaper. But they're just one piece of equipment, and it's capital equipment at that. (That is, you buy it once and then use it for years, to produce hundreds of recordings. You don't pay by the hour and it doesn't wear out rapidly with use, though it does become gradually obsolete.) The rest of your kit includes mics, preamps, amps, cables, consoles with jacks and lights and knobs and sliders, power supplies, stands, properly designed studios with isolation and acoustical treatments and talkback mics and quiet air conditioning, and so forth. Although almost none of the technology behind these things has changed since 1965, they are a bit cheaper today, because we've gotten more productive at manufacturing. But they aren't "Moore's Law cheaper". Meanwhile, revenues from music sales are "Moore's Law smaller". The other thing that hasn't gotten cheaper is the time. Audio engineers are trained experts. Setting up all those mics and positioning them right and listening critically to the results through take after take is necessarily time-consuming, and your audio pros need to be around most of that time, fiddling with things. And they're paid by the hour. There are definitely specific genres of recording that are in their golden age. If you like the sound of stuff that doesn't bother with all the recording techniques that have been patiently developed since the 1950s, but just parks a few mics around the garage and plugs them into the 4-track, you're all set, because every part of the production chain after the 4-track has tiny capital cost now, and distribution is cheap. If you stick to digital instruments, you're all set. If your talent consists of taking samples and mixing them into music, or spending months recording one track at a time in your bathroom with strategically placed towels on the walls and a single decent mic, and then mixing and transforming the results in post using that cheap DAW, things are pretty good for you. And lord knows that there's never been a better time to be an amateur audio engineer. But if you want the modern equivalent of, say, Revolver? Decreasingly economical, unless it's part of a larger project, like a show or a soundtrack.

by dedward 14y ago

mechanical_fish 14y ago

Unfortunately, if you make one component of the supply chain cheaper it doesn't affect the other components. Digital audio workstations are, indeed, a lot cheaper. But they're just one piece of equipment, and it's capital equipment at that. (That is, you buy it once and then use it for years, to produce hundreds of recordings. You don't pay by the hour and it doesn't wear out rapidly with use, though it does become gradually obsolete.) The rest of your kit includes mics, preamps, amps, cables, consoles with jacks and lights and knobs and sliders, power supplies, stands, properly designed studios with isolation and acoustical treatments and talkback mics and quiet air conditioning, and so forth. Although almost none of the technology behind these things has changed since 1965, they are a bit cheaper today, because we've gotten more productive at manufacturing. But they aren't "Moore's Law cheaper". Meanwhile, revenues from music sales are "Moore's Law smaller". The other thing that hasn't gotten cheaper is the time. Audio engineers are trained experts. Setting up all those mics and positioning them right and listening critically to the results through take after take is necessarily time-consuming, and your audio pros need to be around most of that time, fiddling with things. And they're paid by the hour. There are definitely specific genres of recording that are in their golden age. If you like the sound of stuff that doesn't bother with all the recording techniques that have been patiently developed since the 1950s, but just parks a few mics around the garage and plugs them into the 4-track, you're all set, because every part of the production chain after the 4-track has tiny capital cost now, and distribution is cheap. If you stick to digital instruments, you're all set. If your talent consists of taking samples and mixing them into music, or spending months recording one track at a time in your bathroom with strategically placed towels on the walls and a single decent mic, and then mixing and transforming the results in post using that cheap DAW, things are pretty good for you. And lord knows that there's never been a better time to be an amateur audio engineer. But if you want the modern equivalent of, say, Revolver? Decreasingly economical, unless it's part of a larger project, like a show or a soundtrack.