Why Do All Records Sound the Same?

149 点作者 wsdan超过 10 年前

21 条评论

sparkzilla超过 10 年前

So many problems with this article. I recently started recording music after a long break and I love that everything is in the computer now. I had one of the very first Pro tools systems and it cost $12,000 (25MB hard drive). Gear that used to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars is now available with a click. I had always wanted to use great compressors and they are almost all available now as plug-ins. I also took some old tracks and ran them through the Waves maximizers - what a difference. What this means is that anyone with some musical and recording skills can compete against record companies.It seems to me that the writer of the article just doesn't like pop music, and doesn't understand the business of pop music. Pop music, and especially pop music on the radio, has its own rules. It's no use getting upset about them. There's a lot of skill in engineering recordings that work on the radio. And Autotune is great. It's like getting upset that a movie director uses special effects. Good music always transcends the technology. Do you care that Gravity wasn't actually filmed in space?If you want your music to sound like it was recorded in the sixties you can do so either by getting the vintage equipment or using vintage-style plug ins. But if the Beatles were around today they would be using all of the latest techniques, just like they were at the forefront of recording technology back then.Meanwhile, my ten-year-old daughter just bought a record player and Taylor Swift on vinyl.

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dankoss超过 10 年前

Nitpicks: "A great deal of quality is lost as those huge files are squished to the CD format, before being further squished into MP3s on your iPod." Not true, AAC files at high bitrates are proven to be indistinguishable from the original. <a href="http://xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html" rel="nofollow">http://xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html</a>"Every part of the signal chain—from earbuds to digital/audio converters—is improving and getting cheaper." Like other technologies, digital audio had rapid improvements in the first 10 years but has mostly leveled off as we have reached the limits of physics, signals and sampling. Good audio equipment is still expensive and power hungry in every part of the chain.Technology won't save what are fundamentally psychological issues. We respond emotionally to louder signals. We like songs that sound similar but not identical to things we've heard before. We listen to things that our friends like. All of this points to why top 40 songs sound the same, but "all records" is pretty broad. There has never been a better time to create something new in music, and yet we lean heavily on what has worked before -- in songwriting, in arrangement, in production -- so that others will like and identify with the creative output.

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api超过 10 年前

Stuff like this reminds me a lot of sugary simple-carb-laden junk food. The holy grail of popular marketing is to find a way to tap into some kind of simple and probably very evolutionarily ancient "craving" or "desire" pathway in the brain. Seems like they've learned a whole collection of hacks to do this with music, and are now just cranking out manufactured pop music full of those hacks. Combined with repetition in the radio (familiarity, another cognitive bias), they can churn out predictable hits.The question is whether people will ever get smarter and start being picky. We've seen a bit of this in food. The whole/natural/craft/whatever foods movement contains a fair amount of superstitious nonsense, but at its core it's ultimately about consumers being a lot pickier about what they eat. I think the overall effect is good -- people eating healthier food and deliberately turning down addictive nutritionally devoid junk. Maybe we'll eventually get an equivalent movement in music.

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101914超过 10 年前

"Rick Rubin's recordings of Johnny Cash are extraordinarily intimate and affecting. But they don't sound anything like Johnny Cash sitting in your living room playing some songs. They sound like you're perched on Johnny Cash's lap with one ear in his mouth and a stethoscope on his guitar."

chromaton超过 10 年前

This reminds me of this recent popular YouTube mashup: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vapt5C3yDeY" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vapt5C3yDeY</a>6 recent hit country songs combined into one. They blend into each other perfectly.

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k-mcgrady超过 10 年前

>> "In a very few years, we’ll have 1 terabyte iPods, easily capable of handling thousands of recordings in their original high-definition form."I doubt it. I think we'll be lucky if Apple has increased the maximum configuration to 256GB in a few years. The other issue is that people have moved to streaming and the connections aren't good enough to stream high-quality audio. I signed up for Tidal (lossless Spotify) and even on a decent internet connection it had to buffer and the experience wasn't good enough for me to stick around.

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S_A_P超过 10 年前

In my flirtation with being a musician I've learned a fair bit about how to record in a home studio. I think he has simplified a lot of this but considering the audience of this article I get it. The one point I do agree with is that technology isn't the problem.I use Logic, Sonar, Reason and FL Studio quite extensively depending on the project and really have very little problem sounding like it was recorded in the 1960s or 70s. Technology is good enough that all but the most trained ear won't notice whether you used a real Fairchild compressor or the UAD dsp version.(or substitute your favorite vintage compressor/effect/synthesizer/amp vs software) However most people don't want the whole record to sound that way. It's great for setting a mood, but the average pop listener wants loud repetitive and catchy hooks. Experimenting is for the established "wealthy" and "bored" artists that need to find long term relevance.In general the labels don't subsidize the breadth of records that they used to. One of the best ways to make the point that the industry is the problem is to thumb through my dads collection of vinyl. Some notable records he owns that would never be produced today are "Big Sounds of the drags" <a href="http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pEdfuX1ni9E" rel="nofollow">http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pEdfuX1ni9E</a> The Zodiac:cosmic sounds <a href="http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Zodiac:_Cosmic_Sounds" rel="nofollow">http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Zodiac:_Cosmic_Sounds</a> I have a ton of old vinyl from people who are not attractive enough to make a record today. Like it or not the recording industry is about image, marketing and recipes more than music. I don't think this is a revelation to anyone and it may not even be wrong. I think what many musicians get wrong is that they think they can try to latch on to the old business model and "make it"- becoming rich in a few years. These days that is .01% of artists. However if you think of a record as marketing and look for other ways to monetize your band and its brand you can get by in the middle class. Even in the hey day it wasn't a golden ticket for most artists. Really there has always been a problem with the record industry in some form or fashion, but since power is shifting towards artists and home studios labels are much more risk averse. No matter how good you are, it's a risky profession.

kokey超过 10 年前

I often recommend people read the little book "The Manual" by the KLF. <a href="http://freshonthenet.co.uk/the-manual-by-the-klf/" rel="nofollow">http://freshonthenet.co.uk/the-manual-by-the-klf/</a>It was written by them after they made their first number 1 hit single, back in 1988. They went ahead and had a few number ones since. That was over 25 years ago. It's a good overview of the chart music industry and much of the book is still relevant even now, and they were even able to predict that a lot of the studio work should be possible to do in the bedroom in the future.

Gracana超过 10 年前

> Worse still, the technology behind systems like Waves Ultramaximizer could easily be built into an iPod, automatically remastering all those dull old Neil Young records into BIG LOUD IN-YOUR-FACE BANGERS.I believe Museum of Techno has done some work on this problem.<a href="http://archive.museumoftechno.org/exhibition_detail.php?id=5" rel="nofollow">http://archive.museumoftechno.org/exhibition_detail.php?id=5</a>

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graycat超过 10 年前

I like music, really like music, but haven't been able to listen to pop music since I discovered Beethoven late one night on a radio while going to sleep.Now I like, say<a href="http://grooveshark.com/#!/s/Cello+Suite+No+1+Bach/3seBIM?src=5" rel="nofollow">http://grooveshark.com/#!/s/Cello+Suite+No+1+Bach/3seBIM?src...</a>

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enos_feedler超过 10 年前

“Musicians are inherently lazy,” says John. “If there’s an easier way of doing something than actually playing, they’ll do that"Musicians sound a lot like developers

sideshowb超过 10 年前

We are already starting to win the loudness war now thanks to iTunes SoundCheck. I'm not an iTunes user but as far as I understand it, it causes iTunes to adjust all tunes in a mix to the same perceptual loudness. If everyone adopted this or a similar technology (such as the open ReplayGain) there would be no incentive to master loud any more, for albums at least, because the player will only turn it down again meaning the net result is only loss of quality. Hopefully iTunes support for this tech is a turning point in the loudness war.

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mrbill超过 10 年前

Even twenty years ago when I worked in radio (89-93), the song playlist was determined 2-3 weeks in advance. The station had software that ran on a TRS-80 and I had a printout to follow every shirt.

evo_9超过 10 年前

Mainstream music, sure, but there will always be bands like The Flaming Lips, or My Bloody Valentine releasing records that are completely counter to this approach.I would argue that any 'true artist' - aka one that is consumed with the perfection of their art - is not going to be swayed to produce a 'hit' no matter what the studio wants (they simply won't sign with a big label to begin with, I know plenty of musicians that feel this way and are happy on an indie label).

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zaroth超过 10 年前

I started up here, and I ended up here: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOAowiF3y_8" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOAowiF3y_8</a>The lead up is a little long, but when the music finally starts it's bliss.I say, lament all you want. That's fine, some of it is cheap entertainment. But here's the thing, some artists will strive to create at that level, because that level is there, and it's never been more accessible. My takeaway is that the tools have never been greater. The level of access to other people, to grow organically, if not virally, has never been better.Has this resulted in us discovering greater artists and getting better music created? That would be an interesting article.@sparkzilla - 'What this means is that anyone with some musical and recording skills can compete against record companies.'Yes. It's not about being a 'fair fight' but there is a fight there.@dankoss - 'There has never been a better time to create something new in music'Totally agree. Let's hear it. Seriously, the response is, bring it. Great music will always draw an audience.

chiph超过 10 年前

This is why I enjoy listening to records that people like Alan Parsons have engineered (Dark Side of the Moon, Al Stewart's Year of the Cat, as well as his work with The Alan Parsons Project).Also good are those remasters reissued by Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs. www.mofi.comI'd probably enjoy modern pop music (even teen hits like Meghan Trainor) if it didn't all sound the same.

bobstobener超过 10 年前

Live mics. Live guitars, bass & drums. One take. Play loud. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iaINsgFHVs&spfreload=10" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iaINsgFHVs&spfreload=10</a>

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swills超过 10 年前

Found this video<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPQiHyJj7Wk" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPQiHyJj7Wk</a>introducing the Google Radio Automation suite which seems to be what came after the SS32 thing mentioned in the article. Seems like Google got out of that business in 2009:<a href="http://www.wideorbit.com/wideorbit-acquires-google-radio-automation/" rel="nofollow">http://www.wideorbit.com/wideorbit-acquires-google-radio-aut...</a>

mproy超过 10 年前

Hard to pick the best nugget to use as I email this to friends, but I like this: "The Strokes recorded Is This It on an old Apple Mac in Gordon Raphael’s basement studio. But it was mastered by Greg Calbi, who also did Born To Run and Graceland."Great essay. Really sums up modern commercially recorded music.

simonh超过 10 年前

You think pop is homogenous, try Country:<a href="http://kbia.org/post/you-know-exactly-what-these-6-country-songs-have-common&ei=Izq1VOS-F4mpogTrt4HoBQ&usg=AFQjCNG58rzCHZqBOLGaZRv70TfXIUxy4A" rel="nofollow">http://kbia.org/post/you-know-exactly-what-these-6-country-s...</a>

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SixSigma超过 10 年前

Records? What are records daddy ?

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