KACastelein and DJLauten wrote:
>
> A couple of thoughts, maybe a bit late as I was away. It was good that
> John finally pointed out that if you are going to process those MD
> recordings to make music, be aware that you might find things get pretty
> ugly pretty fast. Maybe that is ok with you, and maybe you aren't going
> to process them too much (especially with digital gear), but think about
> it before you spend too much money!
And maybe if we tie these people down, smear them with honey and turn
the ants loose they will actually provide us with some examples of what
they are talking about.
Because I've pushed ATRAC recordings, examined just how far they or any
other recording can be processed and not found any such problems that
differ from source material from other recorders, I'm throwing down the
gauntlet, let's see some real examples. Some real details about how this
happened with nature recordings with current ATRAC versions. Not some
other compression, but ATRAC!!!!!!!!
I'm really, really tired of folks making general statements that they
can't back up about all this getting ugly pretty fast. Exactly what did
you do to make it ugly? When someone brings this sort of thing up I go
off and see if I can replicate it. And, if I can do that, a big if, I'll
then figure out how to fix it.
What most of this is about is music recording as it's done now. Mics on
each instrument, lots and lots of mixing and reprocessing, compressing
the dynamic range to nothing. Folks who think that it sounds good only
if it's run through a specific piece of gear that happens to be
"blessed". It bears a great deal of resemblance to religious ceremony.
It has very little if any to do with original recordings from one or two
mics. It's all about mangling sound.
Trot yourself off to:
http://wwknapp.home.mindspring.com/docs/greenhouse.frog.html
On there you will find links to a mp3 of the Greenhouse Frog calls. That
was recorded with ATRAC. It was also extremely heavily processed to
remove the air conditioners, remove insects and tone down the dog. It
went through 4 cut filter applications, 3 notch filters, two passes
through the noise reduction filtering, one pass through the declick
filter, plus several gain adjusts, some of which were for specific
frequency bands. Plus passing from the Portadisc through a USB converter
and a computer. And finally it was recompressed into a mp3. I have
already stated a while back I'm still not completely happy with it, but
there it is, well and truly processed through the kinds of things
normally used on nature recordings. And it truly does represent what
these frogs sounded like.
And it could hardly be called getting anything fast, that clip occupied
the better part of a day to sort out.
> An interesting point on Cornell (I'm not sure if this will annoy people
> more or not!), but when I was recently there, I found out that they just
> bought several HB Portadiscs because basically they are one of the best
> field recorders on the market right now.
In a sense I can see your point about annoying more. It does in a way.
Here's this group who's webpages on equipment choices slam minidisc big
time, in fact lie about minidisc to slam them. And they are buying
minidisc for their own work. That makes a big contrast. You certainly
won't be able to tell that's what they are doing from their equipment
recommendations on the web.
On the other hand, if they actually get out and learn how to record
properly with them, it will shut up a lot of negatives. Nothing like
reality to muck up a bunch of assumptions.
> But you know, if you find it productive to use all this space, and your
> time, continuing to bash Cornell, go for it. It does make me wonder
> what we gain out of such slamming...
Those of us who have personally sorted out the value of MD and how to
work with it gain very little. I know I'm fed up with it all. But there
is a lot to be gained for those new to nature recording. I used to hope
that the truth would win out without help. But, I've watched the same
untested assumptions about ATRAC be brought up time and again for 5
years, when it took me less than a week actually using and testing ATRAC
recordings to disprove the lot. So, it appears the only way is to keep
saying it every time this comes up. Make sure that every thread bashing
MD contains enough to get people to think. End the free ride for fuzzy thinking.
I'm tired of having to be careful to not say what I use to record. When
I do say, I'm very likely to hear how Cornell has this page on recording
tropical birds that shows I should not be using MD. And that often comes
from folks new to nature recording. When you realize I could say I was
using my Sony sports walkman cassette recorder and that would not be
questioned, you will see the extent of the problem.
We give a lot of lip service to science around here. But certain things
are so bad in science that they will end your career. One of the biggies
is publishing false data. That's what is on that tropical birds page,
false data, I refuse to believe a sound engineer would fail to recognize
clipping. And Cornell compounds the problem by keeping that up for
years, we used to just complain it was out of date and irrelevant, but
it turns out to be much worse. At least as far as science goes.
Cornell has folks who will support them no matter what, they can get
away with this sort of thing. They are the self proclaimed experts and
their word is law as to what's used.
Walt
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