| rankus wrote on Wed, 03 August 2005 16:48 |
Gentlemen. Time to put this thread to sleep.
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A case can be made for this because the topic has veered to posting about how people are posting. It's no longer about audio (which is my sole interest for being here), but rather a contest to see who can most cleverly extract quotes out of context, and use them to smear their opponent. Which may be entirely useful for those planning to join a debating team, or the Bush Administration, but hardly useful in pushing forward any discourse concerning audio arts and sciences.
The thread title is "How did you learn audio engineering?" I learn about it every day, but I don't learn it from interminable arguments over how we post on the internet. I learn it mostly from rising to the various challenges my artists present me with. Those challenges most often are above the "matching mics with preamps" variety - that is NOT all that audio engineering is about IMO. It is one aspect. But getting artists to perform in ways that will translate their core intent and reveal their core essence, and then utilizing my recording and mixing gear to enhance that, will transcend those sonic preferences which ENGINEERS tend to hold dear, but which artists and their audiences tend to know or care little about. That is: Making a recording so that the audience feels the artist's energy, rather than making a recording where the audience hears the gear and the recording technique but the artist's energy is lost in the focus on the gear and the scholastic approach to recording.
And this is precisely what rubs certain people on these forums wrong about some of my postings: They feel they don't have anything to learn in that regard, because they are "traditionally educated" by the recording schools, interning, assisting, et al, and so they stoop to attacking my culinary interests (which have absolutely no business being discussed on this forum unless I bring it up).
Artists tell me this regularly, how they feel the "pro" studios and their engineering staffs do not make any effort to understand what they are trying to do. They don't feel their core essence is even cared about, let alone catered to. So I share this information here, on a forum entitled "Reason In Audio," because I care about music. And I get attacked for it, by people who claim they know everything, and I don't, so I should just shut up and listen to THEM.
This is the inherent conflict in our industry, and it is pervasive. Don't take my word for it, because it's not something I dreamed up in my free time. Artists, their managers, audiences, supporters, and record label presidents have all told me this, repeatedly, over the years: The recordings often do not do justice to what they all know should be translated in the recordings of their works.
That is a fundamental conflict in our industry, and I am in a position of viewing this debate through the prism of that conflict. I didn't invent the conflict. It exists. If you're not aware of it, it's either because you don't maintain contact with artists and listen to them with the intention of understanding them, or you simply don't care.
Assuming that I'm attempting to justify my business model is getting the chronology backwards. I designed my business model to meet the solution to the problem. That's just good business, and I'm not taking credit in saying that. Any good business model recognizes an opportunity, and designs it products and/or services to meet that opportunity. That's Business 101. We don't invent a need in our heads, and then try to sell a market on a need which doesn't exist. I might be crazy, but I'm not stupid. Audio, yes, I am indeed "self-taught," but business, I went to school for.
Time to put this thread to sleep? Indeed. Time to put this whole debate to sleep, because there is one side which refuses to respect or listen to the other with the goal of UNDERSTANDING a fundamental problem in our craft, and there is the other side which is willing to learn, yet is facing a wall of denial.
I have too much work to do to, don't have time to sort this all out for all you experts who know everything, so I leave it to you. Happy hunting!
Poll
