The Death of High Fidelity

(lolbini)

This article in Rolling Stone by Robert Levine leads me to believe (read: finally understand why) some music I think is annoying might actually just be suffering from the new model of mixing and mastering.

I love listening to records, and I have a good track record guessing which albums have been finished in ProTools vs. done straight to tape. I like nuance in my music. I get little thrills out of the small sounds like strings vibrating against a wooden neck, the hollow reverberations of a cavernous double bass and the wholeness of a raw vocal performance. I don’t restrict myself to listening only to albums that relate that way (my issues with Fleet Foxes notwithstanding, reverb can be great sometimes), but I’m always thrilled when I uncover an old gem or hear an album that was done the old-fashioned way. I still enjoy seeing music performed, and I like to think that I’m a thoughtful listener.

All that being said, I do make the choice to listen to most of my music digitally — mostly for convenience’s sake. I try out new records in headphones on my computer – very rarely do I have time to sample a pile of demos in car speakers or on a good system. I have a hard drive stuffed to the gills with things I want to put on my iPod. Many of those files are classics that really deserve a better format. I have to accept that, and do my best to give things second chances when it might be warranted.

I think a lot of music sounds like crap because it is crap. I believe that if my ears get tired listening to something that is trying to “maintain consistent energy” with dynamic range compression, there’s probably a good chance my ears would be tired of it without said compression. I believe that I can tell whether or not I like something despite intentional level-smooshing.

It is a really sad situation though, as there are many groups out there using a wide variety of instrumentation very creatively, and I might be missing out on sounds almost completely. Things even out, though: the listening community has decided (and begun acting as though) recorded music doesn’t have a monetary value of any consequence, and as a result of these millions of listeners preferring computer speakers, we suffer poor quality. We could change that only by rejecting digital music entirely – which won’t happen. We can make up for it by watching artists perform live when they come to our town. There’s undoubtedly a gap between what an artists hears in the studio when recording and what we’d experience in the audience, but the authenticity of a live performance is about all we’ve got when it comes to actually hearing songs the way they were meant to be heard.

I’d like to close with a Donald Fagan quote:

“We’re conforming to the way machines pay music. It’s robots’ choice. It used to be ladies’ choice — now it’s robots’ choice.”