3 ms·
> so lots of popular music This is the problem. I saw someone ask the other day, "What kind of speakers do professional audio engineers use to make master reco
by whoopdedo 11y ago
> so lots of popular music
This is the problem. I saw someone ask the other day, "What kind of speakers do professional audio engineers use to make master recordings?" And the answer was to buy the lousiest chinese made boombox from Walmart. Pop music mastering is done so it sounds good everywhere, including on the cheapest radios. That's how the loudness wars got started, because the most effective way to make something sound decent on poor speakers is to maximize the loudness.
Rather than pop music either have the people compare something with more range. If they don't like classical music, have them listening to a movie and see if they can clearly hear whispered dialog while not having their ears blown out by an explosion.
- TheOtherHobbes 11y agoBack in the 80s/90s a good percentage of studios had a beatbox above the mixing desk to complement the giant monitors. You wouldn't mix on the beatbox, but you'd check a mix sounded good on it and give some attention if it didn't. A lot of mixes were made to sound good on cheap bookshelf speakers called NS10s, made by Yamaha. Most studios had them. They weren't hifi, but the story was that if something sounded good on them it would sound good everywhere. I was never completely convinced, and a lot of bright and grainy mixes from then have been remastered since then with less edge. But it was a good story, and it helped sell a lot of speakers. Now mix engineers are more likely to listen in the car or on cheap headphones, because that's how most people listen to music today. Mastering studios are more likely to have very clean high-end equipment. Mastering needs subtle changes in tone and dynamics, and you need a clean reference to hear them clearly.