Those who own a recording studio and have a minimum of critical sense continually ask themselves, during the production work, if what they are doing can be appreciated in a different listening condition. And punctually, listening to the song in the car or at a friend's house, one realizes how different the general balance of the song is, which in the studio for better or for worse gave the idea of a real piece.
"Of course, if you had the money to buy a good compressor and a couple of equalizers, or if you knew which plug in is the best ..."
And so begins the journey of no return of digital bulimia, a tunnel that will never see light.
Moments of hope will arise when the friend, with a couple of clicks, will post the Mega Sound Analyzer to download or the offer of a compressor with a “hot stamp” that will solve the problem definitively. Goodbye to the old amateur sound seems to be near. But when you buy the compressor, you find yourself with an extra object to dust and although it may have given a better stamp and less rustle, the most immediate satisfaction will be the likes on the photo.
In all fields, there have always been those who find their balance in these purchases, while producing songs of the same quality as those who don't have all this money.
The mix is a bit like a pencil and if the circles get crooked it's not all his fault. Sooner or later you will discover the pleasure of using an inclined table and you will understand that to avoid drawing an egg-shaped circle you need to see it from the right point of view, without getting too angry with a pencil.
But meanwhile the struggle does not end with the purchase of compressors ed equalizers and we go on to blame the Daw, then the computer and then the sound card and then in the end we elect the scapegoat, the real creator of this sound without substance and without presence: the speakers. Audio monitors, speakers, those with super bass, ultra bass, mega bass lettering. For a historical reason that dates back to the Duran Duran era, at house parties, these mega names still work, and the lower they have the cooler they are. And if it's not the mega lows, the mega highs will convince us. So welcome to the world of own goals, welcome to the path of decline. Sound, it was a pleasure.
The abysmal difference between listening in the studio and listening at home will inhibit us to the point of not letting any song come out of the studio. In there, well or apples, you will be able to listen to the piece at full volume and your friend will find (in a piece of three minutes and 20) at least a moment that will excite him. But off the Mac, the 14 cascaded compressors, the nine Plug In and the wall of equalizers, a deep doubt will lead us to consider that "highly technological" option that the shopkeeper (in a low voice and with the shutter half closed) revealed to us asking us to keep the secret: “… the red key behind the speaker…” which according to the seller will upset the listening by magically challenging the laws of physics and all the problems of standing waves and counter-phases. The little button that adjusts according to the room transforming it into Real World. You set it up and everything will magically be fine. At that point you'll wonder why big studios care so much about installing large acoustic ceilings, wasting space for silly gaps and heavy, bulky QRD diffusers, and why break the geometry of a room when the rectangle is so reassuring. You may wonder why mix gurus have distanced audio monitors from the wall for more than 50 years, throwing away the possibility of putting two sofas, a TV and a playstation. Maybe because 50 years ago there was no magic key behind the speakers?
The problem is that fetishism and technology put together are worse than a hallucinogen (nitro & glicerina SpA) and if a winning record was created with a machine or a plug in, in the collective imagination this will become the solution to create other winning records.
The ideal listening condition of a recording studio, although it may be a subject from which several philosophies start, such as the use of the fork or Japanese chopsticks, are still linked to ancient and irrefutable physical criteria, that is, they work, and if a dish is not tasted it is certainly not the fault of the fork which is not silver or the chopsticks which are not made of bamboo.
In the case of the various techniques for treating an environment, we can say that they all reach the same goal and have in common the management of sound, mainly using absorption and diffusion systems, since the sound, overlapping itself several times at a distance of a few milliseconds deteriorates, and this not since the cd format existed but many centuries before Jesus. In a cubic environment of mt 3,34 x 3,34 x 3,34, for example, the frequency of 100 hertz it will take flight because it has a wavelength of just three meters and 34 cm.
If the studies on the sound have made it possible to know the measurement of the wavelength of any frequency, still today there is not the same awareness regarding the importance of neutral listening, for the purpose of obtaining a good mix, where any "errors ”Are stylistic choices and not a bad interpretation of reality.
The technical listening of a real director, at the beginning of the session, is not as pleasant as theHiFi, especially for the layman of the mix.
The equation is around the corner: the surgeon is to the surgery as the sound engineer is to the flat tracks of a song. The surgery is raw, we are not putting lipstick on a woman's lips, but we are uncovering her facial skin with a scalpel to scrape her nose. Including this extreme metaphor, it is necessary to accept that sound is invisible and propagates in the air thanks to the air particles and to simplify the concept I would prefer that we imagine them as micro-balls which, hitting each other, make an acoustic message travel a 344 meters per second, like dominoes, thus remaining more or less where they are, like the wave in stadiums, something big moves but everyone stays in its place.
What a speaker delivers can be considered directional up to a certain frequency, but if we go down the wave is always bigger and behaves so differently from a high frequency beam that the specular calculation of the reflections can no longer be taken into account, and the criteria for evaluating the acoustic impact of a sound in a room begins to get complicated. The fact is that finding myself in a discourse that is halfway between the nature of sound and technology, I think it unfair that in a studio there are machines and systems of thousands of euros when your equalization must be shared between counter-phases and frequency alterations, comb, that is, at times increased by several db and at times canceled. What about our ear? For us humans, it is easy to tell if a frequency has had an increase in db. The difficulty lies in identifying the frequencies that are missing due to a cursed and transparent counterphase like oxygen.
The human eye is able to observe two circles of different colors and maybe even four at the same time, but I don't know if for two thousand circles it is the same thing. An experienced ear can recognize if a frequency of 5 db
80 hertz o 3 db on 500 hertz, but deluding oneself of "knowing the defects of one's speakers" in counterphase and standing wave conditions is the stuff of highly respected professional aliens, and not simple aliens that you can meet in the supermarket in a province of Saturn to be clear ...
This is why in a bad listening condition we sculpt the sound of our mix like a painter mixes his colors in a dark cave, illuminated by an old neon that goes green.
If the mix had the ability to handcuff you it would say: "... any extra sound you use will be used against you ...".
This is the simple concept that limits the career to many potential professionals: if in an unbalanced listening you find an increased frequency of 8 db, you will not turn it down, because the last mix, heard in the car, seemed to be seasoned on the dashboard of a black car for the period of July and August, but you will never think that the sound that reaches your ears is the sum of what you heard from the monitors plus what comes from the reflections of the rear walls plus another 2 decibels of bass coming from the side walls plus 2 db reflecting from the ceiling. You will never think, because they are not seen. So it means that you will be inclined to lighten, but is it normal that by increasing the highs to the ball you do not see the shadow of clarity of sound? Boh. Then we start again with the festival of compressor and spectrum analyzer and six cascading effects when by chance you find yourself on an old version of the song, sparse and without many interventions, the one you had discarded, and you realize that you like best, and there you begin to wonder who you are, where you come from, if god exists or if it's just an invention of tv. "... But what does god use to mix? ..."
The god we seek in these beautiful machines is also made of our own fantasy material.
Sound remains a series of simple particles in motion, and would reach the ear in a transparent and pleasant way if only we gave it the possibility to express itself in the space and environment it needs.
