Re: on 'listening' and 'use your ears'
Posted: Tue Dec 15, 2009 8:51 pm
knotkranky wrote:kb420 wrote:knotkranky wrote:When I was a wee lad working from analog tape, there were no visual cues apart from a VU meter wiggling about. You only knew what was there from listening. No waveforms, no transients to measure, no part to see coming up next, no clipping to view, etc. It was a mystery what was on a track before you actually played the sound itself. Every decision was based on only the ears. You responded to the sound and nothing else. I know for a fact that it helped me develop my keen hearing because there was much less to rely on. No choice being a good thing in this instance, as it often is in production. There's simply too many distractions in computer production. A lot of the visual conveniences have made listening more difficult imo.
Fair enough, but in some ways analog was more forgiving, especially when you are talking about clipping.
I'm going to have to disagree. Analog is way more difficult to use. noise floor was a paltry 65db on a good machine. Keeping noise out of an ongoing project with generation loss at every turn takes expertise. Gain structure was god, Setup, calibration, parts wear out, project loses hi-end super fast after too many plays, yada yada yada.... Clipping was smeared with analog tape but we didn't rely on that, we just did our best with ears. I'm really glad and done with tape. Working with audio is freakin kindergarten today.
