Pink Floyd Engineer Alan Parsons Rips Audiophiles, YouTube and Jonas Brothers

First time accepted submitter CIStud writes "Famed 'Dark Side of the Moon' engineer Alan Parsons, who also worked on the Beatles 'Abbey Road,' says audiophiles spend too much money on equipment and ignore room acoustics. He also is surprised the music industry has not addressed the artists' rights violations taking place on YouTube, wonders why surround-sound mixes for albums never took off, and calls the Jonas Brothers 'garbage' all in one interview."

Comments

Scathing, Absolutely Scathing

[eldavojohn]

Pink Floyd Engineer Alan Parsons Rips Audiophiles, YouTube and Jonas Brothers

Oooh, now this should be good. Let's see what we got here.

Everybody strives to get perfect sound and we work hard to get the best sound we can. A certain artist or song or style of music will sound a certain way. It would be ridiculous for me to make a Jonas Brothers record using the techniques and procedures I normally use. The techniques used to make many modern pop records involve a lot of compression and that's what those consumers want, according to the labels. A lot of the processing that audiophiles criticize is a style thing and part of the music itself.

Oh, my god, the Jonas Brothers are so burned! He did not just say that they are trying to get their sound to be a certain way that their audience prefers. Oh no he did not! I can't believe it, I haven't seen a meltdown like this since Christian Bale flipped out on a stage hand. Somebody, call Disney and have them put the Jonas boys on suicide watch tonight in their cells -- not even paper underwear, they know how to hang themselves with that. When they hear this news they'll probably never perform again.

I think what perhaps critics don’t appreciate is that there is a lot of luck in getting a good sound. It's not all about the equipment, spectral response and compressing. It's all about the quality of the musicianship, the songwriting and the sound reaching the microphone ... that's crucial. It's often been said, "garbage in means garbage out," so if that's the case you won’t get a good sound.

Wow, I am so glad I'm not an audiophile right now. I would be fuming! Never have I heard such a direct and searing attack on audiophiles. The era of hipster sound snobs may be over as we know it.

There's another damaging situation: You can complain about iTunes and subscription sites being damaging to copyright owners and having inferior audio quality, but one of the worst culprits is YouTube. You can look for any record ever made and it's on YouTube for free - usually with crappy audio - and let's not even mention the video content that's out there to go with it. I sense there will be a huge copyright court case over the content on YouTube someday.

Oh, now he's stepping on a big dog's toes. You cannot print that, that is slander and that is libel. YouTube promises to provide only the highest quality sound and video ... Certainly Google's legions of lawyers will see Alan Parsons in court.

Seriously? That's considered "ripping"? Everything I read was fact and on top of that, he's still predicating his sentences with "I think."

"Well gee golly, Fred Rodgers, how will we put up with all these harsh words flying out of Alan Parson's mouth?" I think you need to take a trip to the Abuse Department to hear some real

Re:Scathing, Absolutely Scathing

[GodfatherofSoul]

That's the new "Internet News" media standard. Story titles will flat out lie if they have to get you to click that link. It's all about driving traffic. "A rips B" is a classic New Media headline. BTW, the HuffingtonPost is the worst at this. I used to read it regularly when it was a political site and before it turned into a tabloid Kardashian watch rag.

Re:Scathing, Absolutely Scathing

[Tridus]

We've now reached the point where even the people writing the article summary don't RTFA.

Re:Scathing, Absolutely Scathing

[gorzek]

Yeah, that was a really retarded thing for him to say. YouTube complies with the DMCA and takes down anything it gets notified about. There will not be some huge lawsuit because YouTube isn't actively policing its content, unless something like SOPA/PIPA becomes law. Besides that, he even admitted most of it is really lousy quality. So what the fuck is he worried about? If someone cares about quality, they'll go get the music from a more quality source--and perhaps pay for it! How novel!

And YouTube even provides links to purchase songs, so it's completely asinine to imply YouTube is somehow promoting infringement and thus ripping off artists. It's helping artists, so maybe he should shut the fuck up.

Those audiotechies killed dynamic range

[Skinkie]

The loudnesswar has killed virtually anything on a digital medium, resulting in a worse quality masters. Far worse than compressed phonogram recordings in the past. Sadly this seems to be the new standard for every commercial publication. So first give us back the -12dB, then complain about our rooms.

Re:Those audiotechies killed dynamic range

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Its not the techies who did it, its the marketing departments. Any audio engineer who refuses to over-compress is just going to get replaced by someone else who will.

Re:Those audiotechies killed dynamic range

[royallthefourth]

If audio engineers had a little bit of professional self esteem they would refuse to go along with this loudness war thing.

They care a lot more about making their next mortgage payment than some immaterial bullshit about professionalism and integrity, just like everybody else.

Audiophiles don't listen to music.

[Tackhead]

I think what perhaps critics donâ(TM)t appreciate is that there is a lot of luck in getting a good sound. It's not all about the equipment, spectral response and compressing. It's all about the quality of the musicianship, the songwriting and the sound reaching the microphone ... that's crucial. It's often been said, "garbage in means garbage out," so if that's the case you wonâ(TM)t get a good sound.

All true, Mr. Parsons, and entirely beside the point. Music lovers care about the music, but they're listening to you because you're exceptionally talented. They love your music so much they're even willing listen to put up with crappy 128kbps encodes on YouTube.

But we're not talking about music lovers here, we're talking about audiophiles.

Audiophiles don't use their equipment to listen to your music. Audiophiles use your music to listen to their equipment.

Re:Audiophiles don't listen to music.

[GrumpySteen]

Having good equipment set up well in a good room isn't silly, but paying thousands of dollars for a speaker cable and a few hundred more for a CD/DVD demagnetizer) is.

There are two definitions for audiophile. You seem to be using the "someone who loves good audio" definition. The person you're replying to is using the "someone who spends ridiculous amounts of money on things that claim to work in ways that would break the laws of physics" definition.

Damn it!

[r1348]

You slashdotted the site before i could read the second part of the interview! Do you know how BAD that feels? Also, the guy seems very reasonable an pacate, and this is a blatantly inflamatory title. Can we tag titles "-1 Flamebait"?

Re:Audiophiles

[John3]

Probably trolling, but what the heck....

There are certainly are noticeable differences in the sound produced by different speakers, different amplifiers, etc. However, if the source material is compressed and equalized so there is minimal dynamic range then the differences in sound from one setup to another will be less noticeable.

Re:In other news...

[orthancstone]

I presume those would be aimed at the Beats by Dre crowd, not the audiophile crowd.

Re:"Pink Floyd engineer"?

[gstoddart]

I think the vast majority of music listeners would say "Alan Parsons?", with the logical response being "He engineered Dark Side Of The Moon".

I'd be willing to bet you're overstating "vast majority". By a lot.

Find 100 people, ask them if they've heard Dark Side of the Moon. Of the ones that say yes, ask how many know who the sound engineer was. I bet you'll find it quite small.

I've got pretty much everything published by Pink Floyd up until about '95 or so ... and I know Alan Parsons from his band. I was actually going "really?" when I read the summary.

Then again, I'm neither a musician, nor someone who knows the endless trivia about who was sitting where during the recording and if he was wearing pants or not. That is the "vast majority" of music listeners. The behind-the-scenes talent remains anonymous to most of us.

That's not to say there aren't loads of people out there who do know these things; but I seriously doubt it's even close to a majority, let a lone a vast majority. It's really only the hard-core music geeks who keep track of such things.

Re:Audiophiles

[demonbug]

Audiophiles are pretty much the dumbest group of people ever.
No, you can't hear a difference between this $5000 speaker and this $150 speaker.
No, these cables don't sound "warm".

There is a very significant difference between a $150 speaker and even a $500-$1,000 speaker. Not even approaching audiophile territory here, any random person you pick off the street who isn't deaf is going to be able to tell the difference. Stupid audiophile territory starts a little higher; once you get to around $5,000 plus or minus a couple thousand, yeah, you're into the realm of rapidly diminishing returns and you probably aren't going to hear any difference unless you really look for it.

Agree about the cables, though - that is just dumb.

All that said, I think the point Mr. Parsons was trying to make is that a lot of people will pour money into their speakers, cables, amps, turntables, etc. but totally ignore the room they are in. There's absolutely no point in my trying to put together an ultra-high-end system because I use it in a room that also has a refrigerator, often times AC or heater running, people walking around, noise coming in from the street, no attention to acoustics, etc. Basically, no matter how perfect the system is, the listening environment is sub-optimal. Unless you spend the money to install some acoustically perfect and isolated listening environment (basically, a recording studio), it makes absolutely no sense to spend tens of thousands of dollars chasing those last tenths of a percent of performance. And if you do install such a room, then I'd have to agree with one of the other commenters - at this point you are more interested in listening to your system than you are interested in listening to music.

I'm no specialist, but...

[Stormwatch]

I must disagree about this point:

It would be ridiculous for me to make a Jonas Brothers record using the techniques and procedures I normally use. The techniques used to make many modern pop records involve a lot of compression and that’s what those consumers want, according to the labels. A lot of the processing that audiophiles criticize is a style thing and part of the music itself.

Crushed dynamic range and signal clipping are not a "style" or "part of the music itself". They are production errors. They are defects. If done in purpose, they are a sign of defective thinking -- "it has to be as loud as the latest #1" rather than "it has to sound as good as possible".