goosehorse @ goosehorse @lemmy.world

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1 yr. ago

At my home venue, I have no protection. If you fuck with me---particularly within the first twoish songs of a set---my usual response is to look them dead in the eye and say, "Where do you work? I'm going to come to your job and help you on Monday." And that usually scares them off.

Sometimes, I feel bad about it and will find and apologize to that person later, explaining why I reacted like that.

My favorite is when it's a local/college-age band and parents are around. Or spouses of older band members. "No, I can't get her vocal any louder because she's whispering six inches from the microphone and Jimi Hendrix up there is blasting his amp at 11."

All this said, it's a common misconception that "asshole" is the default mode of operation for a sound engineer. It's just that the job is fucking stressful, and if you catch us at the height of that stress, we will react poorly. I've definitely come across a few grumps, but most folks are nice on average --- kinda have to be so that people will want to work with you. Most of us just want to work with the team to make a good show happen.

To your original point, it's 100% true that the better the artist, the better/easier the mix. Can only polish a turd so much before it crumbles.

I have a masters in an academic field, but my profession is sound engineer. I learned the trade like an apprentice, but my academic background really helps my main job as a production manager --- lots of organizing and communication to handle on the business side.

I think a common misconception of (live) sound engineers is that we're always partying, but this shit is work, especially if you find yourself on the road.

I'm a little surprised there's no reference to The House on Ash Tree Lane in that wiki article

Maybe you typo'd that description of S-Town, but it was definitely non-fiction/investigative journalism!

Growing up in a rural area and having experienced a period of social isolation in my young adulthood, that story absolutely haunts me.

I had 3 cats who were all siblings born in my house. I didn't want to keep them at first, because I was a broke-ass grad student --- but of course, I'm a sucker.

When the ex and I split, I suddenly and unexpectedly became a single cat dad. It was a very fucked up time, but the felines and I made it through. A few years later, when they were around 10 years old, one disappeared, and the other two passed away within a year.

A mouse ran across our floor less than 24 hours after the last brother died, so, even though I felt a little weird about it, my then-housemate and I adopted an awesome little teenage dumpster cat two days later. No more mice.

Housemate and new cat friend moved out ~6 months later, and unfortunately, new kitty died of a heart defect almost a year to the day when we got her.

My friend/former housemate had already been considering adopting a playmate for the dumpster baby, so he got on the local rescue organization website that night, and lo and behold, there was my cat who had disappeared almost exactly two years before.

So, even though it was weird to make a new cat friend so soon after mine had died, the short and very happy life of dumpster kitty led to the return of my boy who had been missing for two years. We just celebrated his 12th birthday a few weeks ago, and I am so, so thankful to have him back in my life.

Tax payment, when he discovered where I grow the catnip a few days ago:

I'm a skinny American, and it's very difficult to find clothes that fit me right---always has been.

Tried on a pair of slim cut jeans the other day in a box store, and the thigh fit like a pair of pantaloons. This is partly due to the trend toward baggier fits (kill me), and even one of my go-to brands sits a little more loosely than I'd like, at the moment.

On one hand, I can still walk into the store I shopped at in high school, pick up my size and cut of pant, and walk out without trying them on, knowing that they will work. On the other hand, I'd like to walk into a store for adults and be able to find my size in a cut that fits.

I knew two years ago when I saw that rich white lady wearing what looked like Jncos for rich white ladies that I was about to get fucked by the resurgence of late 90s fashion styles. Baggy doesn't look good on someone who looks like they were built out of toothpicks.

All this to say: chin up! Your time is coming!

Until they get back to you:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3I-m-xAhTEs&pp=ygUIMTUgYmVlcnM%3D

Clappell Roan

The Spews

Pogs in a Pile

Grizzly Beer

Waylon Wennings

You might be interested in Zygmunt Bauman's analysis in his book Modernity and the Holocaust

From the linked wiki summary:

"Rather, he argued, the Holocaust should be seen as deeply connected to modernity and its order-making efforts. Procedural rationality, the division of labour into smaller and smaller tasks, the taxonomic categorisation of different species, and the tendency to view obedience to rules as morally good, all played their role in the Holocaust coming to pass."

A sociologist friend broke it down for me a long time ago, and, basically, rationalizing everything into a number helped to dehumanize people and paved the way for Nazi atrocities.

That said, I don't think "technology" on its own is fascist --- technology itself is dependent on how people use it, as others in this thread have pointed to the existence of FOSS as a foil to the use of technology as a method of control by those with power.

It got surprisingly heavy in places, and I didn't realize I had grown so attached to some of those characters!

Campaign 2 was great---I really loved the guest star and secondary plot, and I'm now on C3. Have been binging the hell out of it for the past 6 months or so

You ever get the feelin' that sump'n ain't right at the crick?

In no particular order, I listen to all of them regularly:

• Omnibus - general obscure history hosted by indie rocker John Roderick and Jeopardy's golden boy Ken Jennings
• The Dollop - (mostly) American history with a leftist bent. One comedian reads a story the other hasn't heard before.
• Not Another D&D Podcast - apologies for the first episode, but great world- and character-building. Really shows how great cooperative storytelling can be
• Last Podcast on the Left - comedy/horror. Conspiracies, cults, UFOs, and other weird shit. Their historical deep dives are awesome.

I listen to these regularly, but there's a limited series podcast I like to recommend called S-Town. It's excellent, especially if you're from the southern US or grew up in a rural area. If you aren't from the south or a rural area, it'll probably be an extra-wild ride!

He wasn't when we lost him, but I'm going to get it done soon.

That said, he's now a senior and diabetic, so I think he's gonna be an indoor boy from here.

Folks in Mississippi passed an initiative for a fairly lax medical law in 2020. Some Karen mayor of one of the suburbs around the capital city used judicial chicanery to get it thrown out at the State Supreme Court, along with the ability of the populace to vote on ballot measures going forward.

I doubt that OP was debating you in good faith, but it did happen at least once in the last few years. The Republicans certainly didn't waste the opportunity to minimize the effects of democracy on their power.

I'm working my way through House of Leaves right now, and the real horror is the grad school flashbacks from trying to follow the footnotes.

My TV is insulting like that. It technically has an EQ, but it makes no perceivable difference no matter what I do in it.

What the hell!

But assuming it worked, wouldn't doing that strictly with sound frequencies cause issues? Like, okay, most voices are louder because I boosted their frequency, but now that one dude with a super low voice is quieter, plus any music in the show is distorted. Or something like that.

Not necessarily. Regardless of vocal range, around 400hz-2000hz makes up the body of what you hear in human speech, or the notes for instryments carrying a melody. Below that, say, 160-315hz is going to be the "warmth" and "fullness" of the sound, while 2.5khz-8khz is going to be the enunciation and clarity (think ch-sounds, ess-es, tee-s, etc).

Sure, if you start really going hard on an EQ, you could absolutely throw everything out of balance --- if you cut out 12db at 250hz, all the warmth will be gone and everything will sound thin. If you scoop a bunch of 400hz-1.6khz, it will sound like a walkie-talkie, and if you make a large boost around 3khz-8khz, then everything will probably sound harsh and scratchy.

This is where, the listening environment becomes important to consider. Do you live near a busy highway or do you have a loud air conditioner? You don't need to answer these questions in public, but those kinds of ambient sounds can compete with the enunciation frequencies, or add to the buildup of "mud" in the lower part of the spectrum.

The size, shape, material properties etc. of your room and furniture also play a role here. For example, a bunch of bare walls and hard surfaces will cause a lot of the high frequencies to bounce around, potentially causing a buildup of harshness. This is why recording studios and your high school band hall probably have those oddly-shaped, cloth-covered wall "decorations" that serve to neutralize the cavernous sound you'd get in a large, bare room.

Overall, compensating for the environment is where you should probably aim your EQ. That is, even if source material varies wildly, it's probably best to try to EQ to the room you're in rather than each, individual program.

The way to do it is to find a song you know by heart, that you know how it sounds in the best way possible (there are a few that, to me, sound great in my car and on my favorite pair of headphones, so I use those), and play that through your TV. Then, fiddle with the EQ until it's as close to the ideal sound in your head as you can get it.

I would bet there is one mix created in surround sound (7.1 or Dolby Atmos or whatever), and then the end-user hardware does the down-mixing part, i.e. from Atmos with ~20 speakers to a pair of airpods.

In the music world, we usually make stereo mixes. Even though the software that I use has a button to downmix the stereo output to mono, I only print stereo files.

It's defintely good practice to listen to the mix in mono for technical reasons and also because you just never know who's going to be listening on what device---the ultimate goal being to make it sound as good as possible in as many listening environments as possible. Ironically, switching the output to mono is a great way to check for balance between instruments (including the vocals) in a stereo mix.

At any rate, I think the problem of dynamics control---and for that matter, equalization---for fine-tuning the listening experience at home is going to vary wildly from place to place and setup to setup. Therefore the hypothetical regulations should help consumers help themselves by requiring compression and eq controls on consumer devices!

Side tip: if your tv or home theater box has an equalizer, try cutting around 200-250hz and bring the overall volume up a tad to reduce the muddiness of vocals/dialogue. You could also try boosting around 2khz, but as a sound engineer primarily dealing with live performances, I tend to cut more often than I boost.

Audio compression is much older than 20 years! Though you're probably right about it becoming available on consumer A/V devices more recently.

And you're definitely correct that "pre-applying" compression and generally overdoing it will fuck up the sound for too many people.

The dynamic ranges that are possible (and arguably desirable) to achieve in a movie theater are much greater than what one could (or would even want to) achieve from some crappy TV speakers or cheap ear buds.

From what I understand, mastering for film is going to aim for the greatest dynamic range possible, because it's always theoretically possible to narrow the range after the fact but not really vice-versa.

I think the direction to go with OP's suggested regulation would be to require all consumer TV sets and home theater boxes to have a built-in compressor that can be accessed and adjusted by the user. This would probably entail allowing the user to blow their speakers if they set it incorrectly, but in careful hands, it could solve OP's problem.

That said, my limited experience in this world is exclusive to mixing and mastering music and not film, so grain of salt and all that.

Judging by The Dawn of Everything sitting next to it, I'd guess that book is Debt: The First 5000 years by David Graeber!