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

I mostly agree.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sort of an audiophile myself, and I agree with most of his points, especially the stuff about expensive gear versus room acoustics and "garbage in, garbage out".

As for the YouTube comments, I doubt he knows how much YouTube actually does do for artist's rights. Didn't YouTube pioneer some audio-video matching algorithm to quickly identify infringing content? Don't they use hits to direct traffic to places to legitimately purchase music and videos, rather than just removing videos? This approach is much better for artist's rights than simply censoring things.

Then again, I abhor almost all pop music (all styles, including rock, etc.), and most of what I'm into is pretty underground, and that does contribute a bit to my attitude.

I want the editor's tracks.

[Karmashock]

I want an AC3 file (or whatever) with all the sound tracks split. Vocals, back up vocals, each instrument, etc on it's own track.

Noisy-environment mode

[tepples]

Compressed dynamic range sounds better in car stereos, iPod ear buds and noisy bars, which is where the majority of consumers listen to music.

Then why can't they just release records without overcompressed dynamic range and let the car stereo or the digital media player handle noisy-environment mode?

Re:Scathing, Absolutely Scathing

[yurtinus]

If you're going to complain about a misleading headline, don't be so selective in your examples. He did after all say:

The pro audio guy will prioritize room acoustics and do the necessary treatments to make the room sound right. The hi-fi world attaches less importance to room acoustics, and prioritizes equipment; they are looking more at brand names and reputation.

He says quite a bit more than that, and while not quite ripping it is still unfavorable to the hi fi fanatics.

Re:Those audiotechies killed dynamic range

[royallthefourth]

You're the one who's deluded since you think individual workers can just cease to do their jobs and go on living somehow. I go to work and do dumb bullshit all day long because it's how I am able to eat.

The only way it's going to stop is by people organizing and deciding they're not going to take it anymore, and that comes about by threats to their livelihood (pay cuts, benefit cuts) not by them actually caring about the dumb bullshit they make at work. Except, perhaps, in special cases where they make something other than bullshit which could be life-threatening, like a bridge. But as usual, Marx said it better than I can. This applies to audio engineers as much as any white collar worker and was as true in 1850 as it is today:

The fact is that these workers, indeed, are productive, as far as they increase the capital of their master; unproductive as to the material result of their labour. In fact, of course, this 'productive' worker cares as much about the crappy shit he has to make as does the capitalist himself who employs him, and who also couldn't give a damn for the junk. But, looked at more precisely, it turns out in fact that the true definition of a productive worker consists in this: A person who needs and demands exactly as much as, and no more than, is required to enable him to gain the greatest possible benefit for his capitalist.

Re:Scathing, Absolutely Scathing

[hairyfeet]

You forgot "Everybody sees Pink Floyd and figure there might be some cool bootlegs on the site and stampede the thing". Personally this is one thing i love about being a normal indie musician, we can just not compress the living crap out of our music. I'm happy to say the only compression I've ever used is a pedal to even out the string response on my basses and most of the local artists agree with me that compressing the hell out of the sound is crap. Better to just turn the volume down a little and have plenty of headroom for the instruments instead of squishing everything just so you can turn the volume up a little higher. This is especially true when you like to play three piece like i do as its the gaps between instruments that lets it "breathe" for lack of a better word and lets me and the drums get a nice chunky backbeat going while the guitar and vocals kinda float on the top.

Now while I agree with him on acoustics sadly most of us can't afford the kind of spaces required for that, especially for recording. That is why for us DIYers I'd say the local studio has the best compromise, with each instrument separated in soundproof doghouses and a clear plexi booth for the drummer so you can play together and get that live feel without having everyone stepping on each other tracks. Sure it would be nice if we could pipe the instruments to amps in their own large rooms to get some natural depth but those kinds of spaces are seriously costly so you do what you got to do. That said a good mike along with a DI mixed in does give a nice full sound even when you are using isolation boxes, at least IMHO.