Comment by tacos | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tacos | Hacker News Reader

There are online mastering services and the results are tragic. Take a couple devs who are into music and maybe have some math chops but no actual mixing/mastering experience and no access to real equipment either. A little open source software and some headphones will do. Now throw in a music industry "endorser" (these guys are always investing in the wrong companies!) and spew out some automated schlock.

http://promasterhd.com/ http://landr.com

"Pro" this and "industry" that. The desperation is palpable. And often plainly visible in their faces:

http://blog.masterlizer.com/index.php/2015/12/14/re-imagine-...

Regardless people always prefer "the louder one" so you can immediately see where this is headed. Generate a "mastered" .wav file using open source tools and a couple Python rules, convert it to MP3 without paying the license fee, then charge people $9 if they want the "higher quality" .wav. $14 if they want all 24 bits instead of you running it through ffmpeg a second time.

Meanwhile SoundCloud streams 128k MP3s like we're stuck in 1992. Imagine if Vimeo or Flickr limited stuff to an equivalent lossy compression quality. People would not stand for it. But with audio it's somehow okay.

Now all we have to do is combine the two. Say... robo-mastered junk being served up as a SoundCloud MP3. Coming soon!

>Meanwhile SoundCloud streams 128k MP3s like we're stuck in 1992. Imagine if Vimeo or Flickr limited stuff to an equivalent lossy compression quality. People would not stand for it. But with audio it's somehow okay

HD screens are pretty much ubiquitous. Headphones (or speakers) that aren't trash I would guess less so.

Also, humans prioritize and are sensitive to visual input more than sound to a large degree.

I'm sure dogmen would have excellent audio systems and have perfected HD smell-o-vision alongside black and white VGA monitors.

> Also, humans prioritize and are sensitive to visual input more than sound to a large degree.

Our evolved ability to detect and localize sound in the dark at night is why we're here typing. Ironically codecs tend to see phase information and say "hey, we can ditch most of that and save a few bits!"

Any filmmaker will tell you that audio can make or break a picture. But for some reason audio always gets screwed commercially -- especially among technologists. The early iPod headphones and even modern MacBook/iPad audio is awful. The iPhone still only has a mono microphone. Beats headphones are shameful. Satellite radio is godawful. Anyone here want to sing the praises of "RealAudio"? Yet people tolerate it because there's no industry leader standing up for quality. And even when someone does, they're usually off in the weeds themselves (192k audio fad).

SoundCloud is a hopeless business, bleeding cash. Fred Wilson can claim he loves music but apparently he's not willing to say "Hey, maybe y'all should serve something that sounds at least as good as iTunes did in 2001." Like no other artistic medium I'm aware of, music appears to be worth significantly less than the bandwidth required to stream it properly.

The point of services like LANDR is that good mastering requires you either become very skilled and experienced, or spend a lot of money. Their output isn't great, but it many cases it's better than no mastering at all. Also, I imagine the technology will eventually improve.

I agree Soundcloud's shitty low bit rate MP3s are totally unacceptable, though. I never use Soundcloud for actual music listening.

I suppose. But pushing out a low-quality version of a previously high-quality service isn't disruption; it's just peeing in the pool. LANDR is now on version three of their algorithm and it still sucks. The goal here is to move people emotionally and maybe re-light the spark of a dying industry. This is the wrong direction:

"'There are good and bad things about it,' mastering professional Dave Gardner (Louis C.K., the Hold Steady, Black Lips) told Billboard in January. 'If someone can spend $10 a month and get something better than what they have but not very good, I don't know if that's going to make people appreciate mastering even more, or if it's the nail in the coffin.'"

Still, I don't think LANDR is intended for people who can regularly afford professional mastering. It's like saying netbooks are going to devalue the Macbook.

>LANDR is now on version three of their algorithm and it still sucks.

Sure, but can you imagine how difficult it must be to implement good automatic mastering? It may be a decade or so until it comes close, but eventually, I bet it'll become a viable option for many bedroom producers.

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