Should Engineers Worry About Details They Can't Hear?

[Music Calgary]

We've all seen an engineer's expression change when someone mentions an abstract theoretical enhancement to a project they had been, up until then, quite happy with...

 

Let's say you had two A/D converters which you cannot hear the difference between in a blind test, but one of them has a far better reputation in product circles -- do you still obsess about putting the one with the better reputation on the "more important" tasks?

 

Or two preamps which you cannot identify separately in a blind test -- but one model is far more "famous". Does it really matter what order you place them in?

 

There's a sort of superstition about a lot of this stuff. I like that, it's fun. But I've been thinking a lot lately about how we make music and I did some experiments -- and the average pop music fan really doesn't seem to care *at all* about most of the little things we obsess about. They are happy with any catchy tunes produced in a reasonably clean/punchy manner.

 

They don't have the ears of an engineer.

 

As long and they like the tune they are equally happy with a great home recording as an average studio recording -- they are connecting with the song, not the dithering algorithm.

 

So the question is, if you know intellectually that there's some aspect of your final mix which isn't "completely ideal in theory", but you can't hear it -- should you spend any energy at all worrying about it?

[Cry Logic]

 

".......I did some experiments -- and the average pop music fan really doesn't seem to care *at all* about most of the little things we obsess about.

 

 

If that is truly the case then the entire recording "industry" is a scam!

[Rudolf von Hagenwil]

Of course he should be worried, but only until he hears.

 

We have a saying here which goes something like that in english: "Those who do not want to hear, must feel."

[MikeRivers]

No, but they should strive to hear details that casual listeners don't hear. Then (and only then) can they make intelligent decisions about what matters and what doesn't.

 

Too many beginners worry about weaknesses in their (usually by necessity) low cost equipment that they can't hear but someone else might. Almost always weaknesses are in their techniques far overshadow weaknesses in equipment.

 

This is not to say that there's no need for high end equipment, or that much-revered devices aren't worth the hype. Sometimes working with better gear simply makes things easier, When not fighting an equipment limitation, you can focus your energy on the music.

[Lee Flier]

I don't think anyone should EVER use "the average pop listener can't tell the difference" as an excuse for anything. That's an extremely cynical and unprofessional way to approach making music, one that guarantees you will always fall short of your potential.

 

The question is, can YOU hear a difference? Do YOU know you're doing the best job you can do with what you have? If you truly feel that you are, and you're happy with the results you are getting with some "no name" brand of gear, then of course you shouldn't obsess over it just because of what's on the nameplate. In some applications, you won't be able to hear the difference between a "just OK" preamp and a high end preamp, for instance, because maybe the difference is in headroom and you're using it on an instrument with few transients, where headroom isn't much of a concern. So if you're "comparing with double blind tests," the test material should approximate the actual material you'll be using. But after awhile you get to know your own gear and under what circumstances it matters to use your best stuff (or even rent something better than you have) and when it doesn't matter.

 

However most good engineers aren't, in reality, making decisions based on things that don't matter. That is, there's a reason the high end stuff is what it is - it usually does sound better and you can hear the difference. Or you may not hear a difference across a couple of tracks, but when you sum a lot of tracks together you definitely will.

 

I have known some engineers that spend inordinate amounts of time obsessing over stuff they can't hear - often because they can SEE something wrong on a grid and think they need to do something about it, or a track sounds bad when soloed but is great in the context of the mix. So it's true that you can't ever lose sight of the big picture, and you can suck the life right out of a project if you spend too much time obsessing over tiny details that don't matter. But not everybody has a good sense of what matters and what doesn't.

[Jeff da Weasel]

If I can't hear it, I don't care.

 

I'll qualify that by saying that I don't 100% trust my ears 100% of the time. So I do tend to seek out trusted opinions. But I don't care what gear is popular, unpopular, well known, unknown and so on. If I like it, I'm happy to use it. If I don't, I won't.

[blue2blue]

Everyone has their specialty: the songwriters write; musicians play; REs manage all the technical little details; and the audience's job is to put the top down on the Mustang convertible and turn up the sound.

 

Call me cynical (and I am) but in my experience a lot of musicians can be almost as unclued-in as the audience.

 

I think Lee and others have got it -- it's a balancing act. Nothing will ever be *perfect*... but the production team has to come up with a balance (within budget) that serves everyone as well as possible.

 

 

With regard to worrying about things I can't hear: You bet. My ears have been through a lot.

 

That said, in a practical test, I think my overall discernment abilities are pretty good. I've learned to cope with a drooping perception curve at the top end (okay, a precipitously falling perception curve ).

[Lee Knight]

 

In some applications, you won't be able to hear the difference between a "just OK" preamp and a high end preamp, for instance, because maybe the difference is in headroom and you're using it on an instrument with few transients, where headroom isn't much of a concern.

 

 

 

Great point. The point about headroom specifically. For instance...

 

I've got 2 channels of API and 20 channels of Urie (from a mixer) that sound great. And... I have a Behringer 8 channel ADAT interface with pres for backup.

 

I ran into a clock issue during a tracking date. The Uries were unavailable. Gulp. I've got 5 guys breathing down my neck. So I slid the Behringer into place and never said anything. The APIs went to the OHs. The RNP was already on Ribbons for room mic. And the close snare and kick got the love from the Behringer.

 

Guess what? It sounded great. Nobody knew. Now I've been living with these recording for 8 weeks doing overdubs and premixing, editing. The snare? Crap. If I solo the overheads, (API) the snare has all the punch and life I heard in the room. We tuned that Black Beauty to sound very nice. It does... through the API.

 

Why didn't I hear that then? Transients. He hit his snare... pop pop pop. Hey sounds better than I thought. But during tracking he's lit up. pOP. Thank God the API got what I needed.

 

So initially there wasn't much of a difference between the API/Uries and the Behringer. Not too much. But in retrospect, they are eons apart. And the guy killed during tracking. And I really wish I'd gotten the Uries to work.

[Lee Flier]

Oh yeah, nothing worse than using a pre with insufficient headroom on a snare drum. You probably could've used the Behringers on a shaker or a synth pad and it would've been OK.

 

And that is why a lot of this "double blind testing" stuff is usually irrelevant. You might well not hear a difference between two pieces of gear in any given specific application that was used for testing. But you do learn over time where a particular piece of gear shines and where it might fall short, and that's something you can only really figure out by using it in the real world.

[The dman]

IMO better pre's have more transient response and imaging and the difference can get pretty big when stacking tracks but..

 

There is no reason a budget pre should get in the way of outstanding recording. I think the song and the arrangement are way more important than the gear

[Jeff da Weasel]

With regard to worrying about things I can't hear: You bet. My ears have been through a lot .

 

No shit. 25 years of standing next to some bastard and his overuse of ride cymbal will not lead to golden ears. Hence my comment... I do rely on what sounds good to me, but I also require other ears to balance my hearing inefficiencies.

[Lee Knight]

IMO better pre's have more transient response and imaging and the difference can get pretty big when stacking tracks but.. There is no reason a budget pre should get in the way of outstanding recording. I think the song and the arrangement are way more important than the gear

 

:thu:

 

I've caught myself not recording when I'd look at my gear choices. How lame is that? Very. I'm past that mentality I think. You can make music on a cassette Portastudio.

 

My old band leader has Portastudio recordings that would make you weep in their beauty. And they sound kind of crappy. Except they don't, because they are wonderful music. I'd buy an album of songs like that made on a Portastudio by an impatient songwriter any day.

[The dman]

:thu: My old band leader has Portastudio recordings that would make you weep in their beauty. And they sound kind of crappy. Except they don't, because they are wonderful music. I'd buy an album of songs like that made on a Portastudio by an impatient songwriter any day.

 

I use to have some Jango Reinhardt records that sonicly sounded like crap backround noises etc but that never stopped me from enjoying the music:thu:

[Lee Flier]

 

There is no reason a budget pre should get in the way of outstanding recording. I think the song and the arrangement are way more important than the gear

 

 

I think we all know that. However if you're the engineer, your job isn't the songwriting and arrangement, it's to get the record to sound good. So I get a little irritated with hearing "the song and arrangement are way more important than the gear" in a discussion about audio engineering. I could say technique is more important than gear - an experienced engineer will know how to get the best results from whatever gear they have, and at least that's actually relevant to audio engineering. But gear still matters too, otherwise no great engineer would bother spending a lot of dough on great gear.

 

I've done loads of recordings with budget gear, and that's fine. Sometimes it's all you have, and it doesn't have to get in the way of making a great recording. But let's also not pretend it makes little or no difference. The OP seems to be implying that a lot of engineers make decisions based on the nameplate when they can't really hear a difference. This simply isn't true - there usually IS an audible difference, and depending on the application the difference can be dramatic. There's a reason those nameplates have the reputation they do.

[Jeff da Weasel]

I think we all know that. However if you're the engineer, your job isn't the songwriting and arrangement, it's to get the record to sound good. So I get a little irritated with hearing "the song and arrangement are way more important than the gear" in a discussion about audio engineering.

 

So very true. You don't ask a dentist to operate on your brain, even though without your brain, your teeth don't matter much. But you still want to have nice teeth.

 

Are my analogies getting more and more oblique over the course of time? I think they are.

 

Anyway, if you're an engineer, then make it sound great, even if the song/arrangement is a turd. And especially if the song isn't a turd, don't screw it up! There... your job description in two sentences.

[blue2blue]

I wouldn't say that double blind testing is necessarily 'usually irrelevant' -- but it's crucial to understand the limitations of the testing (which is what Lee [which one was that? ] was getting at, I think).

 

If a device or rig (being tested) only has one modality, one performance profile, one set of responses -- then you can set up a pretty straightforward, simple blind-testing regimen to evaluate that device/rig in the pertinent circumstances.

 

But in the real world, mics have different transient and frequency responses at different angles and SPLs, preamps have different saturation at different levels, variations in input or load impedance can make big differences...

 

But one of the most crucial aspects of experimental design is isolating and understanding the interactions of the variable factors involved and having a firm and realistic grasp on what information and understanding that can and cannot be derived from a given set of experiments.

[The dman]

 

Anyway, if you're an engineer, then make it sound great, even if the song/arrangement is a turd

 

 

IMO #1 (gear aside) if you don't have a song or good performance there's no amount of gear or experience that's going to make it sound great because in order to sound great you need the song,music, performances and the recording. It will just sound better but still uninteresting and certainly not great:thu:

[Jeff da Weasel]

It will just sound better but still uninteresting and certainly not great:thu:

 

Right. That's what we said. Your job (as an engineer) is to make it sound as good as you can with what you're given, be it the song, the arrangement, the talent of the performer, the gear at hand, and so on. No one said that your amazing engineering skills will make a shitty song great. That's the point.

[Anderton]

While I don't obsess over things I can't hear, I try my best to hear them. I truly believe that lots of little differences add up, particularly when it comes to minimizing noise and artifacts.

[Lee Flier]

Right. That's what we said. Your job (as an engineer) is to make it sound as good as you can with what you're given, be it the song, the arrangement, the talent of the performer, the gear at hand, and so on. No one said that your amazing engineering skills will make a shitty song great. That's the point.

 

Exactly - and the greatest song and arrangement in the world won't make a shitty recording great, either. The record may succeed in spite of the shitty recording, on the strength of the song and performance, but I don't think that's something I would brag about. "Oh, yeah, I engineered that record and the song is so great that it covered up the fact that I did such a crappy job. Isn't that cool?"

[Lee Flier]

 

But one of the most crucial aspects of experimental design is isolating and understanding the interactions of the variable factors involved and having a firm and realistic grasp on what information and understanding that can and cannot be derived from a given set of experiments.

 

 

But in reality, most people don't do that with audio tests. The experiments are too often poorly designed. And even more often, people draw poor conclusions from a study because they don't educate themselves as to the limits of the test, even if the designers of the test know. IMO it actually does the community a greater disservice to draw sweeping conclusions from a test and claim it's "the answer" than to just consider it a subjective matter that should be left to the individual engineer's judgement.

[Jeff da Weasel]

 

The experiments are too often poorly designed.

 

 

And/or designed with a particular agenda.

 

Moreover as has been said, I prefer to compare things in an environment that's meaningful to me, rather than in a pristine test situation. Sometimes, for certain applications, "crappy" gear sounds better. I recorded a guitar part with a $39 mini amplifier awhile back. It kicked ass on the thousand dollar amp I was originally intending to use. It's not that they compare on paper, but in practice, that's what sounded right. Quantifying that is just silly.

 

Spec sheets, which I help make all day long for various manufacturers, are mostly useless. Two seemingly identical products on paper can be anything but in use. I've always said, writing about music and audio products (my career, and often Craig's, and many others' as well) can be an exercise in futility.

[Beck]

You don't ask a dentist to operate on your brain...

 

DAMMIT! I could have used that bit of advice earlier.

 

Are my analogies getting more and more oblique over the course of time? I think they are.

 

That was an analogy? :poke:

[UstadKhanAli]

Wondering about what the "average pop listener" cares about and can hear doesn't enter into it to me. I am fascinated by sound, and fascinated by getting the best sound possible on a recording, and that's what drives me.

 

Furthermore, I think that the "average pop listener" can hear more than what many of you give them credit for. They may not know why or how, but if something sounds jacked up, they may subconsciously not want to listen to that as much.

 

We're the ones who are supposed to care about sound. If we don't, who will?

 

If any sound engineers actually cut corners in their sound because they feel that the "average pop listener" won't hear it, then maybe they should consider a career in accounting instead.

[UstadKhanAli]

And to answer the question, I'd consider aspects of sound that we may not be able to hear, but that may or may not ultimately affect other underlying audio, but not get too caught up in it.

 

I know that in my not perfectly tuned studio with my not perfect ears, there's some audio that I may not be able to hear that still affects the music, so yeah, I try and learn more about this to make my recordings better.