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Cheap Audio Production
OneInEveryCrowd writes "Rolling Stone reports that four out of five new albums are now produced by a program called Pro Tools (or similar packages) that costs $495 for the home version or $15,000 for the pro version. The article describes a fairly amazing savings in time and effort compared to the older ways of producing an album. I realize that a talented producer can cost a lot of money and some bands drink a lot of beer, but why aren't the benefits of lower production costs being passed on to the consumer?"
Here is a Link to the people who make Pro Tools.
--sig fault--
Here is a link to a Potential Free Software Alternative, Ardour
(at least it's being worked on, anyway)
http://ardour.sourceforge.net/.
Because instead of having 4 studios that are full purposed, folks build their own studios and spend the money on their own equipment than they would have normally at the big boys.
:-) What kind of studios are they going to be running? Ones that are $100k - 300k in just equipment.
In the end, it STILL costs the industry the same amount of money or probably more.
That and the human element has gone up steadily as the pricing of the hardware has gone down. before the Home Recording Revolution occured, I was able to charge $20 an hour to show up and help someone with their gear...generally I was paid for by the studio I was in. NOW I show up at someones home, read the manual to them and charge them $75 an hour and I'm not even what I'd call professional (I've worked with several professional artists in the past and I'm going to be the head music tech for an up coming Al Green show next month, so I work with folks that are VERY professional...still pretty much a hobby for me so I can support my university and its research addiction).
And what happens AFTER folks finish their home opus? They generally head to the bigger studios to polish it up. Producers are going to ask a LOT of front money to work on this -- along with their own engineers that retrack certain items -- and they will STILL ask for points (though that generally comes out of the artists share...EVERYTHING comes out of the artists share
Looking at my HOME studio, I have 2 K2600s ($5500 each), Digital Mixer ($3k), Mac G4 ($3k), PC ($1k)Audio Interfaces for both Macs and PCs ($2k), Software (DAW -- Logic Audio $1k / Softsynths & Effects $2k). Thats almost $25k right there (Heh! Glad most of this was comped as I couldn't afford it). There is NO WAY IN HELL that Vig's entire studio is $15k at Stone tries to make out...I wouldn't be surprised to know it was on order of $150k at the MINIMUM.
BTW the $500 version of the CHEAP Protools is NOT Protools...its a cheap immitation with the same interface. its designed solely as a learning tool to get folks use to what the big boys use and hooked so that they can go into the studio with a little preknowledge OR convince them to buy the more expensive stuff.
Theres no doubt about it, recording a major label album is going to cost a lot of money. Indie albums will be MUCH less.
Don't take my word for it, I run one of the largest Logic user groups dedicated to digital audio. Take a look at:
http://community.sonikmatter.com
and check out our user forums. These folks know what they are doing and we have quite a few folks that have worked on albums that have resulted in precious metal on the wall. Again, I'm just a hobbiest that been caught up with the big boys because I was a geek when they needed technology taken care of and don't consider myself to be anywhere near their calibre -- but its a fucking shame to see that my bedroom studio is bigger and better than Butch Vig's if we are going to take this article at face value.
clif marsiglio
cofounder sonikmatter
So yeah, there are a lot of programs that do this. But Pro Tools is, and has been for a decade, the industry standard in professional hard disk recording systems. Some great things you can do with a Pro Tools setup:
The basic thing is, Rolling Stone is finally catching on to the what musicians have been doing in the mainstream for about 7 years now, and that's completely tapeless recording, and the move of recording out of the studio and into other places. There are enough plugins out there to clean up sound from even very noisy areas, so the need for a completely silent "studio" is much less. Studios are definitely going out of business as a result of this move to home-studio-based recording, and ProTools is generally a compatability requirement.
Me, I use Cakewalk Sonar at home, and this is one area where no free software product yet comes close. I'm on the Ardour mailing list, and use Ardour periodically to see how it's coming along, but definitely nothing there yet to replace my studio setup.
So to answer your question, Pro Tools is simply one of many hard-disk recording packages. However, among professionals it is the most widely used, and boasts a much larger library of compatible software than any competitor. Oh, and until about 4 years ago, it was Mac-only.
Matthew P. Barnson
I learn what I think when I read what I write
Well, the over-compression issued mentioned by grand-parent is seriously encouraged by ProTools... ProTools does not do logarhythmic metering - it does linear metering. As a result, 3 dB down from full amplitude (which is 1/2 the power) is 1/2 of the range in the edit window for a track. Down 6 dB is 1/4. Down 9 dB is 1/8. Down 12 dB is 1/16th of the window - and that's the average volume you SHOULD be at (for pop... SMPTE standard is to go down to -18 dB FS for 0 VU). However, do that, and it barely looks like you've recorded anything. As a result, ProTools users are encouraged to record too hot, with too much compression/limiting.
That's just ONE of the flaws of ProTools (can we say clicks and pops due to not finding zero crossings or doing automatic crossfades? yeah...)
-T
There's an argument running through this discussion which on the surface is coherent, yet in practice doesn't reflect reality. It goes like this:
"there is no alternative to brand X, and only one company sells brand X, so there is no viable competition. Therefore, the company can set pretty much any price it wants."
Yep, in a very basic, Econ 101 way of thinking, this is entirely true - up to a point, of course (i.e., where price exceeds consumer desire to purchase). If you have no viable competition you're in a monopoly position (corporate oligarchy, for the RIAA) and you can price fix all you like. So long as you don't raise the price beyond what the consumer will bear you can rake in the profit every time production costs decline.
What folks are missing is that competition isn't limited to these simplistic factors. As price approaches the limit that the consumer will bear, alternate methods of distribution will be developed to satisfy the desires of consumers who wish to purchase the product, but not at the price set by the monopoly. These are known as 'black markets' because they distribute the product without the sanction of the monopoly (and in contravention to law) and at a lower price than the monopoly itself (for goods that *can* be distributed at all - obviously, SAMs and the like will cost more just because distribution exists at all).
The more 'unjust' the price of a product is gauged to be, the larger and more developed a black market becomes. That is, each time you jack up the price of the product (or refuse to lower the price, when production costs decline), more and more of your consumers pass the point where the price is something they're willing to bear - whether or not they can afford the price. If percentage A of consumers find a CD ridiculously overpriced at $15 a pop, this percentage will turn to the black market for its needs. If percentage B of consumers find the price of the CD too much at $16, now percentage A + percentage B turns to the black market, and so on, minus those who simply stop purchasing in any form whatsoever.
(Note: there will also be a certain subset of consumers who find the only acceptable price to be 0. But unlike what many slashdotters seem to believe, in practice this subset is always tiny and has no observable effect on the market for that product. This isn't speculation, it's fact - do some research if you need it spelled out for you. People aren't by nature thieves, and an enormous amount of economic and psychological evidence bears this out; if you think otherwise, this isn't a statement about the character of the human race, but your character.)
The higher the price goes, and the more unjust that price seems to be, the more your consumers turn to the black market instead of buying from the monopoly. This has nothing to do with ethics or morals regardless of what ranting slashdotter decides to scream 'theft!' in response to this post. The fact is, increasing consumer use of the black market is an economic indicator that the product is overpriced and needs to be reduced in cost to the consumer. It's the economic form of 'civil disobedience'; when the powers that be don't listen to your complaints, you take action that hits them where it counts to drive your point home. Even if you yourself are unaware of the results of your actions (you just want cheaper CDs and don't care about the ramifications), from an economic point of view the group that turns to the black market is making a very clear statement about the price of the product provided by the monopoly, whether or not the individuals of that group care a whit one way or another about anything beyond buying the CD for less than the list price.
Unfortunately for the RIAA, there exists a 'black market' in the form of file sharing that makes turning to an alternative distribution source easier than ever before in history. While short-sighted twerps post on slashdot, going on and on about 'stealing' and 'piracy' and whatnot, this
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?