[M-13]

Wow... those are really beautiful MF

 

[Coq de Combat]

Like the artist intended...
 
I can't really recall the last time I really cared about "what the artist intended". First off, I'm not so entirely sure that the artist had all that much to say when it came to the mastering part. Second, and with the risk of sounding self-centered, juvenile and egoistic, but Mr. Artist, this is how it's going to go: it's my way, or the... Really, I listen to music to enjoy it, not to hear what the artist heard in the studio, or what they intended me to hear. That's why I like heavily colored headphones and EQ.

 

[MrEleventy]

https://www.dropbox.com/s/d9zpqf8glkos6ix/help%201.png

I asked how's the interview's going to go, and said that there's some small adhoc written quiz or something, but mostly they will test my technical knowledge verbally.

Congrats. Hope you nail it. What did you major in?

 

[MuppetFace]

  Like the artist intended...
 
I can't really recall the last time I really cared about "what the artist intended". First off, I'm not so entirely sure that the artist had all that much to say when it came to the mastering part. Second, and with the risk of sounding self-centered, juvenile and egoistic, but Mr. Artist, this is how it's going to go: it's my way, or the... Really, I listen to music to enjoy it, not to hear what the artist heard in the studio, or what they intended me to hear. That's why I like heavily colored headphones and EQ.

 
Yes, it's a problematic thing to say for many reasons.
 
-Musicians aren't necessarily involved in the mastering of their work. Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't.
 
-Often the master tape for an older, well known group's work will undergo many different remasters over the decades. Sometimes these remasters will themselves be remastered. Sometimes bits and pieces from different sources will be spliced together. Just look at Jimi Hendrix's confusing back catalog.
 
-Sometimes the music artist is also the producer, especially in electronica and hip hop.
 
-Mastering is, itself, something of an art. "What the artist intended" could legitimately mean the recording engineer. However it assumes that person was able to fully achieve what was intended. We submit work we're not completely satisfied with all the time.
 

Presumptions aside, at the end of the day the phrase is mostly just an affirmation folks use for source transparency. In other words, "don't let your gear get in the way of what the artist intended." It's one side of a binary opposition of gear's role in playback: that gear should add as little of itself as possible and just present a recording as is. The ideal would be to somehow beam the information into your brain with nothing in between. At the other extreme, gear is viewed as necessarily imparting sonic qualities to a recording as though it were itself a musical instrument with its own tonal character.
 
You see these two methodologies at work especially in the world of speaker design. Some designers go for 'musical' cabinets that resonate (like a musical instrument) while others go for as inert a cabinet as possible (like a diagnostic tool). One can perhaps imagine the back-and-forth arguments between the disciples of these two schools of thought.
 
"Your dead speaker cabinet sucks all the life out of the music"
"No, your vibrating mess of a cabinet distorts and gets in the way of the recording"
 
Whatever side one chooses to adopt---or whether one wants to sit comfortably in the middle---is up to the individual, and there are plenty of designs out there to accommodate an entire spectrum of tastes. I go into this more in my upcoming diary entry (assuming I can ever get myself to finish it), but for me it tends to depend more on the implementation, as I've heard good and bad examples of both and various points in between. A few points though:
 
~Too much damping can indeed result in an acoustically deadened or dull sound. Alternatively, an amp that is too analytic can lack a dynamic, musical quality and sound like its transistor butt cheeks are clenched too tightly together. I wouldn't really call either transparent because they definitely have their own type of sound.
 
~On the flip side, too much interaction between the driver and enclosure can produce ringing and unpleasant artifacts. In amps too much bloat / coloration / distortion can be problematic too.
 
~I've come to believe there's no genuine "wire with gain" in amps anyway.
 
~Over the years transparency has become, for me, how easily you can look past the gear and just focus on the recording. EQing a flat line doesn't guarantee this. Some folks have come to define it in a positive sense, ie. transparency is this particular sound signature X or Y. For me it can only really be defined by absence, when you don't hear too much of this or that particular feature so as to equate it to the gear you're using. A flat line EQ can be heard just the same as a particular 'flavor,' as in deafening silence. Some of my most transcendent moments of listening have occurred using iBuds.
 
~Transparency is, itself, just one ideal of many. There's nothing necessarily wrong with hearing your gear as imparting its particular coloring onto music. This may limit its versatility in the long run though.
 
~The notion of "artist's intentions" is a question that comes up often in postmodern reflection. One has no control over how a work is interpreted, though the audiophile who strives for fidelity (the term itself implies fidelity to something, ie. the original recording) would say it's more a matter of the canvas on which the art is presented. You can't properly interpret a book if you can't read the words, for instance. Yet the mode of transmission has itself come under scrutiny as in artists who experiment with mediums and the boundaries of framing. In music we see (and hear) this as manifest in DJ culture, re-mixing, and sampling. Mix tapes were originally about so much more than just putting songs together based on a theme: they involved literally re-mixing and blending together material into something new. Material gets recycled, chopped up and glued back together. Entire sub-genres have been founded on the foibles of analog playback, the pops and hiss of an imperfect medium, the exploration of degradation and playback.
 
~"Artist intentions" speak to a certain audiophile desire of recreating the live event as such. The ultimate goal for some is to reproduce the sensation of live music as best as possible.
 
~In either case, the recording itself plays a huge role one's audio chain. Vinyl often sounds better to people because it's culled from a better master. It seems straight forward enough, but some audiophiles seem to overlook this simple notion when they obsess about file formats.

 

[Argyris]

https://www.dropbox.com/s/d9zpqf8glkos6ix/help%201.png

I asked how's the interview's going to go, and said that there's some small adhoc written quiz or something, but mostly they will test my technical knowledge verbally.

 
Like the others who have commented said, best of luck!

That position sounds right up the street of the more EE-focused Head-Fi'er type. Be sure to keep us in the loop on how it goes for you.

 

[billybob_jcv]

https://www.dropbox.com/s/d9zpqf8glkos6ix/help%201.png

I asked how's the interview's going to go, and said that there's some small adhoc written quiz or something, but mostly they will test my technical knowledge verbally.

That position sounds like a very sweet one for a new grad! I think it's a bit unusual for a new grad to have an opportunity to do design work of any kind, let alone on new trends and technologies.

As someone that has interviewed a lot of technical folks, including many new grad engineers, I have one piece of advice for you: Be honest, but be POSITIVE. Don't tell them you know something you don't - but don't give them reasons to knock you out. Instead of saying: "No, I don't know anything about that, I don't think I could do that", instead say: "Wow, that sounds very interesting, I have not had an opportunity to do that, but I would love to work on it. What I have done is..."

Once you get past the drones in HR, and you get to talk to the hiring manager, then attitude is 90% of the solution. When I'm hiring a new grad, I already know they don't really have any direct experience. I'm looking for the guy/gal that wants to light the world on fire - the one with a mind like a sponge that is going gobble up everything I can give them. Be that candidate! Go get 'em!!

Oh - and find out as much as you can about the company and the people you are talking to. Look them up on Linked in. Google search the company and ask them questions about the latest news release.

 

[jgray91]

Congrats. Hope you nail it. What did you major in?

Thanks! Well I majored in something very different, really. Control and automation for aviation engineering.

That position sounds like a very sweet one for a new grad! I think it's a bit unusual for a new grad to have an opportunity to do design work of any kind, let alone on new trends and technologies.

As someone that has interviewed a lot of technical folks, including many new grad engineers, I have one piece of advice for you: Be honest, but be POSITIVE. Don't tell them you know something you don't - but don't give them reasons to knock you out. Instead of saying: "No, I don't know anything about that, I don't think I could do that", instead say: "Wow, that sounds very interesting, I have not had an opportunity to do that, but I would love to work on it. What I have done is..."

Once you get past the drones in HR, and you get to talk to the hiring manager, then attitude is 90% of the solution. When I'm hiring a new grad, I already know they don't really have any direct experience. I'm looking for the guy/gal that wants to light the world on fire - the one with a mind like a sponge that is going gobble up everything I can give them. Be that candidate! Go get 'em!!

Oh - and find out as much as you can about the company and the people you are talking to. Look them up on Linked in. Google search the company and ask them questions about the latest news release.

Ah, I've been trying to parse how to say "I don't know" in a more positive way for most of my waking time... Thanks for the tips!


And thanks for all the good luck wishes too!

 

[drez]

Yes, it's a problematic thing to say for many reasons.

-Musicians aren't necessarily involved in the mastering of their work. Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't.

-Often the master tape for an older, well known group's work will undergo many different remasters over the decades. Sometimes these remasters will themselves be remastered. Sometimes bits and pieces from different sources will be spliced together. Just look at Jimi Hendrix's confusing back catalog.

-Sometimes the music artist is also the producer, especially in electronica and hip hop.

-Mastering is, itself, something of an art. "What the artist intended" could legitimately mean the recording engineer. However it assumes that person was able to fully achieve what was intended. We submit work we're not completely satisfied with all the time.



Presumptions aside, at the end of the day the phrase is mostly just an affirmation folks use for source transparency. In other words, "don't let your gear get in the way of what the artist intended." It's one side of a binary opposition of gear's role in playback: that gear should add as little of itself as possible and just present a recording as is. The ideal would be to somehow beam the information into your brain with nothing in between. At the other extreme, gear is viewed as necessarily imparting sonic qualities to a recording as though it were itself a musical instrument with its own tonal character.

You see these two methodologies at work especially in the world of speaker design. Some designers go for 'musical' cabinets that resonate (like a musical instrument) while others go for as inert a cabinet as possible (like a diagnostic tool). One can perhaps imagine the back-and-forth arguments between the disciples of these two schools of thought.

"Your dead speaker cabinet sucks all the life out of the music"
"No, your vibrating mess of a cabinet distorts and gets in the way of the recording"

Whatever side one chooses to adopt---or whether one wants to sit comfortably in the middle---is up to the individual, and there are plenty of designs out there to accommodate an entire spectrum of tastes. I go into this more in my upcoming diary entry (assuming I can ever get myself to finish it), but for me it tends to depend more on the implementation, as I've heard good and bad examples of both and various points in between. A few points though:

~Too much damping can indeed result in an acoustically deadened or dull sound. Alternatively, an amp that is too analytic can lack a dynamic, musical quality and sound like its transistor butt cheeks are clenched too tightly together. I wouldn't really call either transparent because they definitely have their own type of sound.

~On the flip side, too much interaction between the driver and enclosure can produce ringing and unpleasant artifacts. In amps too much bloat / coloration / distortion can be problematic too.

~I've come to believe there's no genuine "wire with gain" in amps anyway.

~Over the years transparency has become, for me, how easily you can look past the gear and just focus on the recording. EQing a flat line doesn't guarantee this. Some folks have come to define it in a positive sense, ie. transparency is this particular sound signature X or Y. For me it can only really be defined by absence, when you don't hear too much of this or that particular feature so as to equate it to the gear you're using. A flat line EQ can be heard just the same as a particular 'flavor,' as in deafening silence. Some of my most transcendent moments of listening have occurred using iBuds.

~Transparency is, itself, just one ideal of many. There's nothing necessarily wrong with hearing your gear as imparting its particular coloring onto music. This may limit its versatility in the long run though.

~The notion of "artist's intentions" is a question that comes up often in postmodern reflection. One has no control over how a work is interpreted, though the audiophile who strives for fidelity (the term itself implies fidelity to something, ie. the original recording) would say it's more a matter of the canvas on which the art is presented. You can't properly interpret a book if you can't read the words, for instance. Yet the mode of transmission has itself come under scrutiny as in artists who experiment with mediums and the boundaries of framing. In music we see (and hear) this as manifest in DJ culture, re-mixing, and sampling. Mix tapes were originally about so much more than just putting songs together based on a theme: they involved literally re-mixing and blending together material into something new. Material gets recycled, chopped up and glued back together. Entire sub-genres have been founded on the foibles of analog playback, the pops and hiss of an imperfect medium, the exploration of degradation and playback.

~"Artist intentions" speak to a certain audiophile desire of recreating the live event as such. The ultimate goal for some is to reproduce the sensation of live music as best as possible.

~In either case, the recording itself plays a huge role one's audio chain. Vinyl often sounds better to people because it's culled from a better master. It seems straight forward enough, but some audiophiles seem to overlook this simple notion when they obsess about file formats.

I think both "hifi should be transparent" and "hifi should have its own character" are idealised views of music reproduction. I guess this assumes that most audiophiles are idealists, which I think is a fair supposition. This is something related i have been considering, does a pragmatic view of hifi exclude one from being an audiophile? Specifically i was considering the sound science crowd, but I came to the conclusion that they were idealists as well in that they either idealise accuracy of reproduction as far as can be proven by scientific methods, or embrace coloration while maintaining an active rejection of unproven or unprovable domains of the hobby. Definitely still idealists, and definitely still audiophiles.

If someone were to be truly indifferent toward sound quality, to see speakers, amps, headphones purely as instruments to allow one to hear music, to have no ideals of sound quality for the enjoyment of music, does this mean they are not audiophiles? Musicians for example, I'm sure they can hear differences between equipment, but recording and monitoring equipment for them might be an insrument for making records or performances. Musicians monitors designed for use on stage are coloured in order to make it easier for the singer, guitarist, drummer to hear what he is doing, not for musical pleasure. Some are designed to avoid fatigue when listening at loud levels and in so doing sound terribly dark and rolled off. Some musicians are audiophiles, but I'm sure many are more pragmatic about how they listen to music.

Its also interesting to consider idealsim in music, or rather instrumentality, most of popular music is to a large degree contrived to sell, maybe there is some other intentionality in there, mamybe even some attempt at creating art. Obviously 4 chord is intended for euphony, and given I cant stand contemporary classical and jazz music, (I find it far too cerebral, oddly even more contrived than more euphonic composition) I should probably
not be so much of a snob about it.

Compression similarly is another instrument of the music industry, is this the intention of the artist, or purely pragmatic?

What is intersting to consider is that when seeking to make gear transparent, we are no longer directly seeking to voice equipment for musical enjoyment ( I say directly as there is research that finds people tend to prefer accurate or flat equipment in blind tests, rather odd to have objective testing to measure subjective preferences). If we are not seeking musical enjoyment, does this mean we are no longer audiophiles because we are indifferent to direct musicality? I guess this leads to the subjectivity of musicality, how some find warm gear boring, others find faster gear boring.

Overdamped, underdamped - I did manage to overdamp a pair of,headphones while modifying earpads, it seemed to lose the bottom end and dynamic ability, it sounded artificially reserved, but still forward. IMO timing and dynamics are essential to musicality, if gear is missing these I consider it to be unmusical regardless of other qualities.

 

[MuppetFace]

I think both "hifi should be transparent" and "hifi should have its own character" are idealised views of music reproduction. I guess this assumes that most audiophiles are idealists, which I think is a fair supposition. This is something related i have been considering, does a pragmatic view of hifi exclude one from being an audiophile? Specifically i was considering the sound science crowd, but I came to the conclusion that they were idealists as well in that they either idealise accuracy of reproduction as far as can be proven by scientific methods, or embrace coloration while maintaining an active rejection of unproven or unprovable domains of the hobby. Definitely still idealists, and definitely still audiophiles.

If someone were to be truly indifferent toward sound quality, to see speakers, amps, headphones purely as instruments to allow one to hear music, to have no ideals of sound quality for the enjoyment of music, does this mean they are not audiophiles? Musicians for example, I'm sure they can hear differences between equipment, but recording and monitoring equipment for them might be an insrument for making records or performances. Musicians monitors designed for use on stage are coloured in order to make it easier for the singer, guitarist, drummer to hear what he is doing, not for musical pleasure. Some are designed to avoid fatigue when listening at loud levels and in so doing sound terribly dark and rolled off. Some musicians are audiophiles, but I'm sure many are more pragmatic about how they listen to music.

Its also interesting to consider idealsim in music, or rather instrumentality, most of popular music is to a large degree contrived to sell, maybe there is some other intentionality in there, mamybe even some attempt at creating art. Obviously 4 chord is intended for euphony, and given I cant stand contemporary classical and jazz music, (I find it far too cerebral, oddly even more contrived than more euphonic composition) I should probably
not be so much of a snob about it.

Compression similarly is another instrument of the music industry, is this the intention of the artist, or purely pragmatic?

What is intersting to consider is that when seeking to make gear transparent, we are no longer directly seeking to voice equipment for musical enjoyment ( I say directly as there is research that finds people tend to prefer accurate or flat equipment in blind tests, rather odd to have objective testing to measure subjective preferences). If we are not seeking musical enjoyment, does this mean we are no longer audiophiles because we are indifferent to direct musicality? I guess this leads to the subjectivity of musicality, how some find warm gear boring, others find faster gear boring.

Overdamped, underdamped - I did manage to overdamp a pair of,headphones while modifying earpads, it seemed to lose the bottom end and dynamic ability, it sounded artificially reserved, but still forward. IMO timing and dynamics are essential to musicality, if gear is missing these I consider it to be unmusical regardless of other qualities.

 
 
 
Perhaps I'm not fully understanding your assertion, but I know plenty of musicians who are also dyed-in-the-wool audiophiles. Talk to an experienced violinist. He or she will be able to tell you much about what makes certain violins special, their unique timbre and tonality. Talk to a guitarist about legendary guitars and their unique voice. Talk to a drummer about the intricacies of polyrhythms and timing. These are qualities that audiophiles often respond to even if they're not fully conscious of it all the time. The musicians I know, specifically, will often listen to recordings of their chosen instrument(s) for enjoyment, specifically to hear the skill of a particular player, to listen for the nuances of his or her playing which they do look for in better sound quality. One friend for instance who plays piano is obsessed with the way headphones render piano. He's rejected many $1k+ offerings because they don't get it right tonally. Some of the pickiest audiophiles I know are musicians! The key is that pragmatism you talk about is more of a stage thing, more of the technical checks they go through when performing. Most of them have told me at one point or another that they don't really obsess about timbre or acoustics when on stage, but rather they worry mostly about hitting the next note or about the flow of their performance.
 
Honestly, the term audiophile is ambiguous anyway. I think it has a lot of baggage associated with it.

 

[drez]

Perhaps I'm not fully understanding your assertion, but I know plenty of musicians who are also dyed-in-the-wool audiophiles. Talk to an experienced violinist. He or she will be able to tell you much about what makes certain violins special, their unique timbre and tonality. Talk to a guitarist about legendary guitars and their unique voice. Talk to a drummer about the intricacies of polyrhythms and timing. These are qualities that audiophiles often respond to even if they're not fully conscious of it all the time. The musicians I know, specifically, will often listen to recordings of their chosen instrument(s) for enjoyment, specifically to hear the skill of a particular player, to listen for the nuances of his or her playing which they do look for in better sound quality. One friend for instance who plays piano is obsessed with the way headphones render piano. He's rejected many $1k+ offerings because they don't get it right tonally. Some of the pickiest audiophiles I know are musicians! The key is that pragmatism you talk about is more of a stage thing, more of the technical checks they go through when performing. Most of them have told me at one point or another that they don't really obsess about timbre or acoustics when on stage, but rather they worry mostly about hitting the next note or about the flow of their performance.

Honestly, the term audiophile is ambiguous anyway. I think it has a lot of baggage associated with it.

Thats true, I think I omitted discussing this for the sake of the argument, I don't think I was giving an accurate characterisation of musicians by any stretch I was more interested in the audio metric idea.

True about the term audiophile, way too much baggage to warrant fretting over what it does or doesn't mean.

 

[tomscy2000]

 

[lee730]

lmao! Talk about tainted alright with those drives being exposed ...

 

[james444]

  Perhaps I'm not fully understanding your assertion, but I know plenty of musicians who are also dyed-in-the-wool audiophiles. Talk to an experienced violinist. He or she will be able to tell you much about what makes certain violins special, their unique timbre and tonality. Talk to a guitarist about legendary guitars and their unique voice. Talk to a drummer about the intricacies of polyrhythms and timing. These are qualities that audiophiles often respond to even if they're not fully conscious of it all the time. The musicians I know, specifically, will often listen to recordings of their chosen instrument(s) for enjoyment, specifically to hear the skill of a particular player, to listen for the nuances of his or her playing which they do look for in better sound quality. One friend for instance who plays piano is obsessed with the way headphones render piano. He's rejected many $1k+ offerings because they don't get it right tonally. Some of the pickiest audiophiles I know are musicians!

 

 
To put things into perspective, I'd like to mention that timbre / tonality is in fact a moving target. Resonance and radiation patterns of most acoustic instruments are very directional and inhomogeneous across the frequency range. Even a conductor standing only a short distance from the first violinist hears that very instrument differently than the musician who plays it. Not to speak about listeners in the auditorium, where room acoustics comes into play. So, which timbre / tonality are we actually talking about? 

 
Don't get me wrong, we all know that some phones get timbre / tonality glaringly wrong, while others seem to sound remarkably natural and realistic. As someone who's been found guilty of using the T-word on many occasions, I'd be a hypocrite to deny its importance now. But there's a fine line between attaching importance to something and getting obsessed about it, so that's what I'm trying to point out.
 
(@MF: great thoughts on various aspects of mastering & transparency, really really enjoyed the read!)

 

[Silent One]

 

Ken Shindo died this January. Only now realized this.​

 ​

http://www.stereophile.com/content/ken-shindo-19391502014​

 ​

R.I.P.​

 ​

Truly one of the great amp designers.​

His beautiful creations inspired me on many occasions.​

 
 
In honor of Shindo-san's passing and your acknowledgement, I'd like to display pix of my personal Shindo gears.
 

 
 

 

[billybob_jcv]

Wow! Silent - I think you've been holding out on us... Nice!!

Is that a Music Hall turntable?