Pink Floyd Engineer Alan Parsons Rips Audiophiles, YouTube and Jonas Brothers 468
First time accepted submitter CIStud writes "Famed 'Dark Side of the Moon' engineer Alan Parsons, who also worked on the Beatles 'Abbey Road,' says audiophiles spend too much money on equipment and ignore room acoustics. He also is surprised the music industry has not addressed the artists' rights violations taking place on YouTube, wonders why surround-sound mixes for albums never took off, and calls the Jonas Brothers 'garbage' all in one interview."
"Pink Floyd engineer"? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Those audiotechies killed dynamic range (Score:5, Informative)
In case anyone is wondering what Skinkie is talking about, here's the link [wikipedia.org].
Re:Audiophiles (Score:4, Informative)
Audiophiles are pretty much the dumbest group of people ever.
No, you can't hear a difference between this $5000 speaker and this $150 speaker.
Um, you're dead wrong about that one.
Re:"Pink Floyd engineer"? (Score:5, Informative)
And let's not forget, he was the Cambridge physicist who invented the laser!
Re:Audiophiles (Score:3, Informative)
1. Is the quality of the source material good enough to make a difference? Crap quality audio will sound like crap on any speakers, no matter how expensive. However, if the source is of good quality (and some other conditions are true) then you can definately tell a difference.
2. Is the sound of the room masking the sound of the speaker? A speaker, no matter how good, can NOT compensate for a terrible sounding room. Standing waves, reflections, and damping from the room can ruin the sound of the audio. In order to properly hear the audio, this must be compensated for. Typically, you start by adding room treatment to deal with low-frequency standing waves and then work your way up to deal with high end comb filtering and reflection points in the room. The orientation of the room is important here as well, the optimal sound does depend very much on the placement of the speakers in the room relative to the listening position.
As for cables, the only real difference between cheap/expensive cables is how long they last. A cheap cable will most likely not put up with much abuse where as an expensive cable is more robust.
Re:Those audiotechies killed dynamic range (Score:5, Informative)
Q: Do you think that sound quality is driving this trend? Are people tiring of low-resolution sound and compressed recordings that lack dynamic range?
A: That may well be. The majority [of consumers] are happy with MP3, but they donâ(TM)t know what they are missing. Being fast and free are priorities, and thatâ(TM)s why MP3 is popular. Thereâ(TM)s another damaging situation: You can complain about iTunes and subscription sites being damaging to copyright owners and having inferior audio quality, but one of the worst culprits is YouTube.
Re:"Pink Floyd engineer"? (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry, I wasn't clear in my narrative.
Me: Did you read that article about Alan Parsons?
Average music listener: Alan who?
Me; Alan Parsons. He was the recording engineer for "Dark Side Of The Moon".
Average music listener: Oh, I know that album, didn't know the name of the engineer.
Sensationalizing for Page Hits (Score:5, Informative)
The submitter works for the website that posted that interview. He certainly read it, but chose to make up sensational lies when posting it to slashdot to get more people to click the link.
I agree on his point about the room. (Score:5, Informative)
IF they spent $100.00 on the fricking room they would make more of an increase in sound than $10,000 in gear.
Problem is Audiophiles, the type that read Audiophile magazine and Buy bullshit like B&W are not looking for sound quality, they are trying to show "HOW RICH I AM"
My home theater I built in the basement only tapers from front to back by 1 foot. the rear wall is 1 foot narrower than the front and the ceiling also tapers by that much. Floor is flat except for the riser. This cost me NOTHING extra in the build out.
I then covered the walls in cheap carpet tile and the ceiling is simply a drop ceiling with 3" of fiberglass batts laying on top of them for weight and more sound control (so I cant hear the wife stomping around upstairs)
It sounds better than the $200,000 theater rooms I have installed for rich people. Because I have reduced the room nodes significantly by eliminating parallel walls. (rear is parallel to front, but I have bass traps back there.)
Re:Scathing, Absolutely Scathing (Score:5, Informative)
As far as them being the biggest offender I was under the assumption that if I posted a video with Alan Parson Project as the background music I am fully allowed to use it under "Fair Use", as long as I'm not making a profit.
Fair use allows using copyrighted material for educational purposes, criticism, research, etc. Using a song for background music would not be considered fair use, especially if the entire song is used.
Re:Those audiotechies killed dynamic range (Score:4, Informative)
An audio/video explanation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ [youtube.com]
Re:Scathing, Absolutely Scathing (Score:5, Informative)
As far as them being the biggest offender I was under the assumption that if I posted a video with Alan Parson Project as the background music I am fully allowed to use it under "Fair Use", as long as I'm not making a profit.
Have a look at : http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html [copyright.gov] and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use [wikipedia.org] re Fair Use.
I think your described use would not fall under Fair Use.
Re:an old guy (Score:4, Informative)
Seriously, did you RTFA?
All he said was that the sound quality of things you find on You Tube is generally low. That's it.
The tone of his answers bear no relation whatsoever to the summary ... he didn't rip, blast, shred, flame, or even really put down anybody. He offered up some opinions, in a polite way, and without a whole lot of bile attached.
The entire summary is a joke, and is almost entirely unrelated to the interview except that it was Alan Parsons, and he did mention You Tube and the Jonas Brothers. Oh, and he also said that while you could spend an outrageous amount of money on equipment, it made only an incremental difference in his opinion.
How audiophiles can fool themselves (Score:5, Informative)
Audiophiles are not known for using controlled, double-blind testing. That's a problem, because you can actually control a lot about how you hear things. In short, if you expect something to sound different, you can actually hear a difference; not imagine you hear a difference, actually hear a difference.
JJ Johnston gave a presentation, Why Do We Hear What We Hear? [aes.org]. (PowerPoint, but LibreOffice should open it just fine.) If you look at slides 14 and 16 you will see him explaining the above points.
With double-blind testing, the audiophile will not be able to tell the difference between a $2 cable from monoprice.com and a $1000 cable from some audiophile scam web site. Without the double-blind, a confident audiophile will hear differences that favor the expensive cable.
The crazy thing, and I'm not making this up, is that some audiophiles claim that double-blind testing "doesn't work". They claim that you introduce errors that mask the superiority of the expensive equipment.
P.S. If you would like to have quality audio gear, and you would like to see the gear tested scientifically, you have to check out the NorthWest AV Guy [blogspot.com] blog. He bought a $1000+ DAC/amplifier that audiophiles like and that tests well objectively, and then he designed a very inexpensive headphone amp that in double-blind testing cannot be distinguised from the expensive one... and he open-sourced the design; you can build one if you like, or buy one pre-built. He uses professional test gear, and for example he showed that the Sansa Clip really is a good-sounding media player (which plays Ogg Vorbis and FLAC, by the way). Check it out. (And NWAudioGuy, if I ever meet you in person, I'll buy you lunch or something.)
steveha
Re:Those audiotechies killed dynamic range (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Those audiotechies killed dynamic range (Score:5, Informative)
The loudnesswar has killed virtually anything on a digital medium, [...] give us back the -12dB, then complain about our rooms.
Alan Parsons Shares Lessons Learned During Legendary Career [prosoundweb.com] (from 4 years ago):
But one of his biggest pieces of advice for students and anyone interested in recording now is not to join the loudness war.
"Record labels want their records to sound louder than everyone else's so they compress the s--t out of them," he says. "It's terribly sad and I hope you will support me in resisting this concept.
"If a song has dynamics and breathes then don't push it. If your record is quieter than someone else's then just turn it up with the volume knob!"
Better Summary (Score:3, Informative)