Comment by Lio | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Lio | Hacker News Reader

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> Analog media really were a bit crap.

True but I find it strange how many of my favourite recording were made with this "crap" analogue equipment (well before I was born) and how many modern "perfect" recording sound terrible to me.

To me the sound of even subtle autotune is "eww". I can't stand the over compressed, "sugary" sound of current pop music. It's just not for me.

Perfection is Herbie Hancock's Head Hunters where his analogue synth goes out of tune and he brings it back without loosing the groove. The recording is better for that detail IMHO.

I never listen to Nevermind or Collected Ambient Works 1 and think, that would be better if it was recorded with a DAW.

Horses for courses I guess.

Over compression is horrible, but unrelated to this.

I grew up with cassettes, but was happy to switch to CDs when I was around 18. The better the recording and playback, the closer it is to what the artist intended, and to how it would sound if the artist was playing right in front of you (if they don't use autotune or compression).

It's a fact that people get accustomed to the distortions in music playback, in the old days it was the noise of vinyl, which got better later, then cassettes, then heavily compressed MP3s. People should aim for the best possible audio quality and get rid of their preference for distortion.

> the closer it is to what the artist intended, and to how it would sound if the artist was playing right in front of you

This doesn't really bear any relationship to what happens in recording studios.

Almost no "recordings" are a recreation of a single live event. Producers choose microphones, consoles, compressors, limiters, equalisers and FX because of the way they colour sound.

It's a completely artistic set of choices.

When someone like Dave Grohl chooses a studio with a Neve and a 2" multitrack he's not doing it because he wants more fidelity. Again, recording to a DAW would not necessarily improve the end product.

You mention over compression of MP3s, well people have also used bit crushing as an effect for a long time too.

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