danlavry wrote on Fri, 09 June 2006 19:56 |
Hi,
Your comments above a priceless! Many people are "star nuts". I do not have a thing against stars, and I am all for respecting those that deserve it for their accomplishments. I will buy a ticket to a good movie with a world class actor staring in it, but I am certainly not going to listen to a world famous actor give me medical advice, or perform hart surgery...
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Someone using the name GJordan made a very nice and succinct analogy in that SOS thread: "I have a lot of respect for fighter pilots, but I'm not going to give much weight to their explanations of the nuts and bolts of aerodynamics."
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Unfortunately, there are many that would be influenced by an well known actor advice in areas that have nothing to do with acting. The advertisement industry uses that fact routinely. Some actor will sell you pills, another sells tires, food items... name it.
It is not much different in the audio industry. For some reason, many "stars" (many grammys qualify one as a star) go outside their "proper boundaries". It is bad enough when some that has no clue about tires is selling tires by talking them up. It is much worse when an ear guy writes an article, posing as a technical guru. I saw a lot of that "stuff" when taking a stand against 192KHz. The sales and marketing magazines were full of "stars" saying 192KHz praise, and their "technical arguments" were total garbage.
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Indeed. I have been following your fight against 192Khz. I join the battle whenever I can. I am gratefull for you making a stand or I might be one of the people fooled by the marketing types.
Actually, reading some of your comments a while back made me research the topic and, amongst other things, read your sampling theory paper. I learned and am still learning alot because of that. Thanks.
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One thing to wonder about is: what is the motivation of the non technical star to pause as a technical guru. Is it a puffed up ego? Is it based on commercial interests? Is it a combination of both?
How else can you explain articles such as the Roger Nichole's article? Why would someone write stuff that shows such unbelievable level of ignorance of the very fundamentals? Those guys probably convinced themselves that they know what they are saying. It is pathetic.
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That is an interesting question. I have noticed two things. First, Mr Nichols doesn't seem to bother doing much research as has been demonstrated by the article in question but also by other things he has written. Lazyness? Ego? I don't know.
The other interesting thing is that he has bought the rights to all the plugins from Elemental Audio, changed the names of the products to silly juvenile names, change the GUIs to much less nice ones with his name plastered all over and, this is the worst part, increased the price by 400%. (Causing a huge uproar on many many forums). Maybe he is writing articles to increase his name recognition to sell these things? I don't know ...
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The other thing to wonder about is why so many audio magazines support non technical people posing as technical. Don't they have a responsibility to the readers? We all know that much is driven by advertisement money, but should they not guard the "technical sections" from occurrence such as we saw here? Let's see what SOS does. Will they change anything? Will they invite a "real technical guru" to replace the non real one? Will they insist that writer talk about what he know (recording) and stay away from the technical? Or will they do nothing.
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Well, judging by the very long debate on the forum, including the technical editor, I have a feeling that maybe no one at SOS quite understands the topic. That is how this article got through. Hugh Robjohns, the technical editor, did mention that they had a long internal discussion before printing the article. So they did have their doubts but obviously not enough to stop the article.
I won't claim to fully know all the ins and outs of digital audio myself but I am not writting any technical articles in a widely published magazine. I think that is a crucial distinction.
There are some things that I do know and understand. That article was in total contradiction with those things, hence my reaction.
Thanks.
Alistair