Posted by: "Scott Fraser"
>
> <<I like what you do with the exception that you depend too much on
> your hearing to make fine distinctions. Since what we hear is too
> influenced by our attitudes, our minds transform the sound to fit
> what we think about equipment for instance, it's really very hard to
> know what your hearing brought you. That makes your detailed
> statements hard or impossible to confirm by repeating the experiment. =
> And that's the basics of science, what we find must be repeatable by
> others. >>
>
> This is fascinatingly at odds with the predominant precepts at play
> in the field I come from; that of acoustic music recording. Certain
> equipment designers & engineers are excoriated for paying too much
> attention to specs & not listening. I've never heard the idea stated
> before that depending on our listening constitutes a fallacy in the
> pursuit of audio quality.
Most sound engineers I know pay attention to both. But when they want to
evaluate the technical quality of a mic they will lean to measured
values and not so much their ears. Those don't too much require you
analize the personality of the person reporting the quality, and are
repeatable. If you rely on reports of the sound quality as heard you
have to know a detailed analysis of the person doing the hearing to have
some idea what it means.
I've repeated numerous times, nature recording is not acoustic music
recording. It's a separate discipline that shares only some things with
acoustic music recording. You damage your ability to grow in nature
recording by trying to turn it into acoustic music recording.
Note there is a great deal of scientific research behind what I'm saying
above. It's a whole field of study, and one that anyone seriously
dealing with any form of hearing sound should be aware of. I did not
make up these things.
> <<Be aware I don't take folks statements without trying to repeat the =
> experiment to verify. I'm a scientist, it's built into my nature.>>
>
> There are those who feel audio recording is more about art than
> science. I guess it depends on the end use of the recording.
It also depends on the representation of the purpose of a recording
presented. If it's presented as a "test" of the quality of one or more
pieces of equipment it should be done at least with the concept of how
science verifies results. That's what I'm saying, you went where science
has well defined methods of arriving at results.
If one is evaluating a recording for it's entertainment potential, which
I believe is what you are getting at, then of course listening and
determining it's emotional effect and so on is probably the most
important part. You are only secondarily interested in the accuracy of
the sound reproduction. Go into the group, Phonography and you will feel
right at home. They split off from Naturerecordists early on because it
was clear they were taking a different approach than traditional nature
recording.
There is a distinction in nature recording. Some is obviously recorded
by people who are basically recording strange "musical instruments" for
entertainment/enjoyment. Either these recordings are used as is, or
modified by computer to reach these goals. Often they may be mixed with
man made music. No representation is made that these are exact
representations of the actual natural sound in the field.
But nature recording also contains quite a few who are striving to most
accurately reproduce the sounds as they occur in nature. For this one
may decide to go highly technical, something which is domanent in the
technical discussions in this group. But otherwise there is no group for
these folks, many of this type have become silent in the group. But it's
still a big part of nature recording. Obviously I belong more in this
area than in the entertainment area, though I do that too.
Science can, for various purposes, use either recording if necessary.
For obvious reasons they prefer the latter version. And for detailed
scientific measurements nothing most of us do will work and science has
to do it with their own protocols which are very strict.
Enough, I've got a 50 mile ride to get out on, and I'm sure what I'm
saying is being ignored.
Walt
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