Deep Listening: Why Audio Quality Matters

[VitalPatricia]

I lived a similar situation. An artist brought to me a mix that was going to be in this artist's next album (with a local record label) . The poor mix didn't have any compression and the vocals were digitally very distorted. Apart from that the mix was in mp3 192 Kbps. When I told the artist about those problems he god mad at me because he was hearing this thing as wonderful. I had no choice but to do what I could and master it as it was. The record label approved it as well.

[raymondleeleggs]

when I put Mp3 on my mp3 player I encode at 320K

a 64K WMA is equivilent to 196K Mp3 and 196K WMA is equivilent to 320K MP3

[utpoia13w]

Just watching it and loving the different perspectives being given.

[svtcontour]

I really enjoyed this video. I've never heard anything higher than CD quality material as far as digital files go but I plan on building a small music playback system based on a fanless mini-itx computer with a decent USB DAC that supports up to 192Khz. I've found some music online that are higher bitrate than 44.1Khz so I want to try them out :)

[tanddonkey]

38:25 the bane of almost every modern audio professional.

[faun2500]

Good vid. I'm still young and I hate the loudness war!

[sdeanmusic]

I love this.

[thegrimyeaper]

Around 1:51:00 After Michael Fremer says music takes you places more so than movies, you can hear Craig leaning over to Steve and call Michael Fremer Columbo, referring to the wacky detective Columbo as seen on TV. Twice. That's not very nice?

[izaatmusic]

which have a superior sound quality? a mastering studio or a high end audiophile room?

[Anderskh]

I did an A/B comparison between having sex and listening to a good record on my stereo and my stereo just slightly won out.

Its quite obvious even in this pretty low-fi medium that LP sounds so much more natural and real and relaxed over the CD.

Open reel is supposed to be even better but I have around 200 original Living Stereo and Mercury Living Presence tapes but the LP still wins for low level detail which gets obscured by tape hiss.

[LaKuPuLa]

GSM buzz at 38:30 :D

[petehall347]

pity there wasnt a good sound man doing this interview

[aidfirst]

Greg is a mastering legend but he'd make a poor recording engineer if that's how he treats his mics ;)

[PihSant]

@aidfirst Hahahaha, I was thinking the same thing!

[boomaga]

Favorited, excellent. Man, I miss school.

[thenoti1]

ANALOGUE RULES

[floater89104]

I really enjoyed this. Thanks for posting.

[paulsn]

2:30 of bitching around... sorry to say so.

[mmediaaudio]

So many great minds tackling the topical points here... One thing I would note is that sometimes, as an audio engineer, we have the mastering rooms transfer to 1/4" tape, which really helps "glue" pop/rock mixes together... Sure, for Cannonball's "Somethin' Else" I wouldn't wan't a 2nd generation, but a tape bounce can help... The unfortunate side-effect is that it needs "denoising" in the heads/tails... I don't know what's worse for todays music, autotune or brickwall limiting...

[youtert]

Holy moly, I've never seen a Youtube video this long.

[Massivecarcrash]

@youtert

There's youtube videos out there over 450 hours long.

I'm not even kidding.

[yRegal]

Is this longer than 10 minutes? How did they break the youtube 10 minute limit buy several minutes?

[freqazoidiac]

furthermore, i am a vinyl collector and have always loved the ambience and have had a hard time accepting CDs as a serious document, more of just for convenience and background music. Just like the ipod is too..

I was surpised i could tell the difference on the video of the mr.tambourine man A/B.. in person, no problem.. the video camera had ok range ? but i did hear lots of distortion on the audio from some mics ..but no matter, great video

[freqazoidiac]

thanks for sharing this, it was pretty informative, and a round table like this is not generally accessible..just due to geographics and numbers invovled in the scene.

[Datavus]

Great discussions going on!

funny how its on audio quality and the quality of this video isn't that great haha!

[MrsNickJonas2015]

if thats greg calbi i might be related to him

[stefanopola82]

Very interesting indeed!

[GCougarMel]

Very interesting! I feel the exact way...if it's worth the effort to record, make it the best possible quality! Thanks!!

[LineSixDude]

The mic quality in the room could be better I guess... xD

My headphone was kinda disturbed a few times.

good video and... long