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

Posted by timothy on from the projecting-himself dept.

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."

22 of 468 comments (clear)

  1. Scathing, Absolutely Scathing by eldavojohn · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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

    --
    My work here is dung.
    1. Re:Scathing, Absolutely Scathing by tom17 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Abuse? Oh sorry, this is arguments. Abuse is down the hall.

      No it isn't.

    2. Re:Scathing, Absolutely Scathing by Tridus · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

      --
      -- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
    3. Re:Scathing, Absolutely Scathing by jamstar7 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Hey, us Trekkies have always been interested in keeping up with the Cardassians. Er, wait...

      --
      Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
    4. Re:Scathing, Absolutely Scathing by asdbffg · · Score: 5, Informative

      As far as them being the biggest offender I was under the assumption that if I posted a video with Alan Parson Project as the background music I am fully allowed to use it under "Fair Use", as long as I'm not making a profit.

      Fair use allows using copyrighted material for educational purposes, criticism, research, etc. Using a song for background music would not be considered fair use, especially if the entire song is used.

  2. "Pink Floyd engineer"? by catbutt · · Score: 5, Informative

    Yes, we all know he was engineer for Pink Floyd, but seriously, isn't his name most known for his own stuff? (Eye in the Sky, etc)

    1. Re:"Pink Floyd engineer"? by virgnarus · · Score: 5, Funny

      I know him most for a giant death ray entitled with his name.

    2. Re:"Pink Floyd engineer"? by gstoddart · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    3. Re:"Pink Floyd engineer"? by John3 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Sorry, I wasn't clear in my narrative.

      Me: Did you read that article about Alan Parsons?

      Average music listener: Alan who?

      Me; Alan Parsons. He was the recording engineer for "Dark Side Of The Moon".

      Average music listener: Oh, I know that album, didn't know the name of the engineer.

      --
      "We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
    4. Re:"Pink Floyd engineer"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Ask 100 Slashdotters if they can figure out what the fuck you're trying to say in your posts.

    5. Re:"Pink Floyd engineer"? by dna_(c)(tm)(r) · · Score: 5, Funny

      Sorry, I wasn't clear in my narrative.

      Me: Did you read that article about Alan Parsons?

      Average music listener: Alan who?

      Me; Alan Parsons. He was the recording engineer for "Dark Side Of The Moon".

      Average music listener: ???

      Me: You know, Pink Floyd?

      Average music listener: Ah Pink, but she's sooo 2005 - and who is Floyd?.

      There, fixed that for you.

  3. Those audiotechies killed dynamic range by Skinkie · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Support Eachother, Copy Dutch Property!
    1. Re:Those audiotechies killed dynamic range by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      When information is power, privacy is freedom.
    2. Re:Those audiotechies killed dynamic range by Yvan256 · · Score: 5, Informative

      In case anyone is wondering what Skinkie is talking about, here's the link.

    3. Re:Those audiotechies killed dynamic range by royallthefourth · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

  4. Audiophiles by sexconker · · Score: 5, Funny

    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".

    1. Re:Audiophiles by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      ++ This. Too dumb to become a real geek? Then become an audiophile. All of the angry nerd posturing with none of that meddlesome knowledge.

    2. Re:Audiophiles by John3 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      "We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
  5. Audiophiles don't listen to music. by Tackhead · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  6. then again, there's Beats by Dr Dre by sqldr · · Score: 5, Funny

    Sorry Dr Dre, but having you design speakers is like having an acoustics geek make a hip-hop record.

    --
    I wrote my first program at the age of six, and I still can't work out how this website works.
  7. Sensationalizing for Page Hits by pavon · · Score: 5, Informative

    The submitter works for the website that posted that interview. He certainly read it, but chose to make up sensational lies when posting it to slashdot to get more people to click the link.

  8. How audiophiles can fool themselves by steveha · · Score: 5, Informative

    Audiophiles are not known for using controlled, double-blind testing. That's a problem, because you can actually control a lot about how you hear things. In short, if you expect something to sound different, you can actually hear a difference; not imagine you hear a difference, actually hear a difference.

    JJ Johnston gave a presentation, Why Do We Hear What We Hear?. (PowerPoint, but LibreOffice should open it just fine.) If you look at slides 14 and 16 you will see him explaining the above points.

    With double-blind testing, the audiophile will not be able to tell the difference between a $2 cable from monoprice.com and a $1000 cable from some audiophile scam web site. Without the double-blind, a confident audiophile will hear differences that favor the expensive cable.

    The crazy thing, and I'm not making this up, is that some audiophiles claim that double-blind testing "doesn't work". They claim that you introduce errors that mask the superiority of the expensive equipment.

    P.S. If you would like to have quality audio gear, and you would like to see the gear tested scientifically, you have to check out the NorthWest AV Guy blog. He bought a $1000+ DAC/amplifier that audiophiles like and that tests well objectively, and then he designed a very inexpensive headphone amp that in double-blind testing cannot be distinguised from the expensive one... and he open-sourced the design; you can build one if you like, or buy one pre-built. He uses professional test gear, and for example he showed that the Sansa Clip really is a good-sounding media player (which plays Ogg Vorbis and FLAC, by the way). Check it out. (And NWAudioGuy, if I ever meet you in person, I'll buy you lunch or something.)

    steveha

    --
    lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely