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Comment by 1MachineElf | Hacker News Reader

>Doesn't make any sense, this would be like an audio engineer getting rid of their studio monitors and mixing on AirPods because that's what people listen on.

Skrillex, an EDM producer who became popular about a decade ago, did approximately this. They were iPod headphones back then, not AirPods. Perhaps designing according to the vast majority of users is effective enough?

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He took a music genre that you couldn't really listen to except you have semi professional equipment and modified the basses to make them 'hearable' for the masses on cheap equipment or even loud on their phones.

I kinda can see that this worked for him. Not sure if that transports well to other producers.

It actually makes sense. I struggle to see how one might enjoy Burial's debut album on a set of cheapo headphones. There's a lot going on below 100 Hz.

While I bet Bangarang was most listened to worldwide on that awful set of white Apple headphones everybody had.

I know Skrillex produces another "genre" of music, but Burial's is one of the seminal albums in the dubstep genre which Skrillex is part of.

(I've just learned the mid-heavy dubstep popularised by Skrillex & co. is called brostep)

The trouble with that specifically for audio, if you never test it on anything else you might miss things like crackles that only happen on speakers capable of producing crackles in that frequency range

He specifically talked about an audio engineer. Yes as a composer/producer you can get by without audio monitoring hardware if you have an audio engineer taking care of the mixing/mastering after you. Those are different profiles.

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