Rick Beato with a great dissection of the Zep classic Whole Lotta Love:
I like when he picks up the guitar and plays along with the solo.
Pretty sick!
recording
… The Great Analog Archives
A 1940’s era professional tape deck
Since the early 20th century millions of talented people have recorded music. Record labels stored these archives whether the artist sold well or not.
Some archives were lost to fire or flood, and many … Read the rest
Dither is Loss
There’s this thing in digital audio called Dither.
It’s the first step of lossy-ness.
But it’s never talked about outside of mastering engineer shop talk.
I think it’s ignored because it’s misunderstood, and frankly, would hurt sales if explained.… Read the rest
The Power of Labels
Degrade -d
- treat or regard with contempt or disrespect
- lower the character or quality of
- reduce to a lower rank, especially as a punishment
Synonyms: demean, debase, cheapen, devalue, shame, humiliate, mortify, abase, dishonor, dehumanize, brutalize, lossy
Original
- present
You Touch Me I Hear The Sound of Mandolins
Awesome rendition of this magical song written for a 1957 movie that I personally first heard performed by David Bowie in the 70’s. This is the amazing Nina Simone going way back to 1959:
[I’m having deja vu on this … Read the rest
A Tale Of Two Setups
I was in my new all-analog studio last night with a simple task – dump from the 4-track tape machine to something digital so I could share the tracks just recorded with the artists.
First I needed to do … Read the rest
Room Acoustics 101
Here’s a simple to understand, visual version of basic room acoustic properties. People argue about gear and formats and often times forget to deal with the most important aspect of what they are hearing – the room.
We Will See What The Digital Age Has In Store For Us
Records, record stores, record sales … it’s all gone.
It’s up to the young musicians to try an’ figure it out.
There’s no money in it. There’s no record companies.
It’s free! You can download it. Nobody gets paid, so … Read the rest
Dawg Gone Analog
It’s happening. I’ve considered and planned and anticipated this for 15+ years. But always compromised.
I’m going analog at the studio. Direct to tape. Outboard gear. No DAW. No computers needed at all.
The real deal. Why wait any longer?… Read the rest
Cliff Notes on the Loudness Wars
With master quality HD audio getting into people’s ears and getting more buzz every day, I think its important to look into one of the related issues in recorded music: The Loudness Wars.
It really does get to the core … Read the rest
A Girl Like That
The obvious back story to “Jessie’s Girl”
Loudness Wars Research
I’ve really been exploring my music collection lately* and along with the playback quality of the PonoPlayer, I’ve learned some things about the hated concept of “loudness wars”:
- I can really hear it start up in the early 90’s
Recording Quality Rule Of Thumb
Allow me to speak some truth about the recording arts — the overall quality of music production has been going down since before I started. I’ve done nothing to reverse the trend ;-).
This is due to multiple factors not … Read the rest
Best Thing Ever
Lofty headline, no?
Music is life. Perhaps we should all play music to each other, that might be a better world.
Instead we developed technology to record the music so we can play it on demand without musicians present.
After … Read the rest
Welcome to 1979
Me likee
… Read the rest
Lots of Gadgets Are Spying On You
I covered it last week here. Samsung gets called out for their smart TV’s listening and transmitting everything we say to a third party. Very 1984. You might have thought ‘Samsung isn’t the only one doing it’ – and … Read the rest
Word of the Day: Provenance
Provenance - Noun : origin, source, place of origin; birthplace, fount, roots, pedigree, derivation, root
You hear it on antiques shows and now you hear about it in digital music, and it’s … Read the rest
Pure Sound Quality
Quality:
- GoodMusic as MP3 = sounds pretty good – get your jam on!
- GoodMusic as 16bit FLAC or CD = sounds better – damn listen to that bass! – time to dance – pure and clean and timeless
- GoodMusic as