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My father was an audio engineer/mixer and worked with some big names. He told me a similar story that happened to him later in life when he finally owned his o
by hysterix 14y ago
My father was an audio engineer/mixer and worked with some big names. He told me a similar story that happened to him later in life when he finally owned his own studio.
There were clients that would always insist on making audio adjustments, for no good reason at all. They were paying to have their music professionally mixed, yet still insisted on making adjustments and changes. Finally my dad and his friend came up with a great solution.
Mind you this was prior to everything being digital, so what they did was they had a massive 24 track. (a really big machine where you can individually adjust the sound of each track) Well what they did was installed a knob that looked just like the other ones in the track, but placed it a bit lower and near to where the client would be sitting.
The client was then told they can adjust the "openness", or the "richness" by adjusting this rotating knob to a particular setting (remember, the knob does nothing, and isn't connected anywhere). My dad said clients would spend hours adjusting this knob until they got it "just right", and would make sure to let everyone know in the studio that knob was dialed in and to not touch it.
It's amazing how many silly things people have to do in all walks of life to placate the ignorant.
- acdha 14y agoOne of the best designers I've ever worked with had a similar great strategy with clients who considered themselves design experts (usually senior marketing/advertising managers) and who would almost inevitably want to change something in the “final” design. The solution he had was to leave one obvious minor flaw in the final design – a color which doesn't quite match, odd font choice, etc. It was a lighting rod for unnecessary fiddling and was quite successful for keeping the changes quick and low-impact.
- hoka 14y agoThere's a (Dilbert?) comic somewhere out there about this. Can't find it at the moment, though :-/ edit found it: http://dilbert.com/dyn/str_strip/000000000/00000000/0000000/000000/10000/2000/400/12448/12448.strip.gif http://dilbert.com/dyn/str_strip/000000000/00000000/0000000/...
- bobbles 14y agoThe tv show had a part where they say they always give the manager a stupid option and a realistic option to make it feel like he made the decision
- og1 14y agothat is a corporate lore story. See item 5 "A duck" http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/07/new-programming-jargon.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/07/new-programming-jar...
- jbri 14y agoAn alternative is to add a duck, or something else gratuitously out of place.
- jpdoctor 14y agoYet another case of rubber duck debugging FTW.
- rogerbinns 14y agoNope, a reference to the duck in battle chess. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinsons_law_of_triviality#Related_principles_and_formulations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinsons_law_of_triviality#Re... and #5 at http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/07/new-programming-jargon.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/07/new-programming-jar...
- drhowarddrfine 14y agoWhy a duck? Why no a chicken?
- asimeqi 14y ago2 examples from a former communist country. - A theater director was putting on a new show about some workers in a factory. In the background he put a wagon wheel. Before the premiere the communist representative came to evaluate the show. It was usual that some random scenes would be adjudicated unacceptable and cut from the show. When discussion started the communist rep asked what the wheel, which was used in agriculture, was doing in a show about factory workers. The director argued that it shows the connection between proletariat and agriculture workers. A vigorous discussion followed at the end of which it was decided that the wheel should be removed. The director ended up being the first ever to not have any scene cut. - A painter visited France and desperately wanted to bring back some modern art reproductions so that his colleagues, who where not allowed to leave the country, would get a chance to see them. But modern art was forbidden and there would be no way customs would let the reproductions in if they knew what they were. So the painter got also some nude reproductions. The customs people confiscated the nudes as soon as they saw them and let the modern art go through.
- drhowarddrfine 14y agoMy brother is in construction and tells me similar stories about how they always leave something obviously wrong for the building inspector to find so he'll ignore the piddly things he'd otherwise complain about.
- mhatt 14y agoThis reminds me of a scene from the movie "This Film Is Not Yet Rated", where Stone and Parker describe inserting a super-graphic sex scene into the movie "Team America", which they knew the MPAA board would ask them to remove, attracting their attention and allowing them to keep their R rating.
- jpdoctor 14y ago> audio engineer/mixer Audio really attracts crystal-power wackos, somehow more than others. I've had to dodge all sorts of completely idiotic thinking both in the digital and analog world. Hell, it's the whole business model for Monster Cable, as one example. Video encoding is a close second.
- peterkelly 14y agoDid it go up to 11?
- raintrees 14y agoHave you ever noticed that the BBC podcast playback controls do go up to 11? Example: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p014wlmh http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p014wlmh
- bgruber 14y agoalthough it's one of those things that's hard to pin down as "real", this story is extremely similar to one that's told about murry wilson, patriarch of the beach boys. apparently as he was intent on mucking about during their sessions, brian eventually obtained a dummy console and let his father fiddle with the knobs to his heart's content.
- jaxb 14y agoThe "magic/more magic" switch is also this.
- dllthomas 14y agoNo, that one broke things, at least to some middling confidence level.
- chanux 14y agoWhen I was a kid, whenever my bro yelled to reduce the volume of the TV I just stay silent for a moment and say 'ok?'. Sometimes he demands to cut off a bit more noise. I wait for a second and say "NOW?". He's normally happy with the two tries. He sleeps happy. I waste time happy.
- seandougall 14y agoOne other pretty common (and slightly less imaginary) trick is to nudge the master fader up about 1dB and play the same mix again for the client. For some psychoacoustic reason I don't fully grok, we perceive things as sounding better when they're louder, even if the difference is too small to register consciously.
- amw 14y agoSignal to noise ratio. If your noise is at some average amplitude X, and you have signal at two levels, Y and Z (and both average above X, because otherwise you would just perceive X distorted a bit), then the lower of Y and Z will have more of its amplitude within the average X amplitude. I.e., if Y < Z, Y/X < Z/X, then (loosely), Z will have a larger percentage of its signal that is not masked by noise.
- caf 14y agoI believe the "Close Doors" button on lifts/elevators is based on this principle.