iPod...the death of stereo?

[dwoz]

I have recently taken to observing a large number of teen-aged users of iPods and iPod-like devices.


I must report that a VAST MAJORITY of them spend most of the time listening with one ear-bud in, one dangling.


Because, of course, being entirely sonically cut off from the rest of the world is undesirable. They might miss some fundamentally critical bit of teenager information that will change their life.

So they listen one-ear only.

most of the time.

How's your mono-compatibility these days?

dwoz

[eagan]

Er....what does mono compatability have to do with this?

That's not mono, it's just "half of stereo".

And while what you're talking about is a good valid observation (albeit just a tad disturbing and sad), in a way I'm not sure how much point there is in thinking too much about the specific point you're talking about, for the simple reason that what you're looking at there is people with extreme low awareness of music in general who don't really give a shit anyway.

Yes, they exist, and they're everywhere, but to a certain extent, what use is it to even think about them much? Better to focus on the people who do actually care about music, really listen to it, and care how it sounds. Yes, the latter do still exist, they just don't get nearly as much attention in all the frenzy of "new media, digital whatzits everywhere, new era of music business models and consumption" bullshit that's everywhere.

For anybody who makes musical recordings, in any role, at any level, those are the people to be concerned about, because those people notice, and they care.

The former group don't notice and don't give a shit, so what difference does anything make?


JLE

[dwoz]

Er....what does mono compatability have to do with this?

JLE


er....everything?


if a large number of significant listeners are listening to your work using a single transducer in one ear, what is your response to them?


this is a carefully worded question...the word placement of "significant" is critical...you have answered that in fact, these users are not significant. Interesting choice.

dwoz

[eagan]

I guess you could probably debate the topic of whether or not listeners are significant, in the context of mixing decisions, when it seems that they aren't really paying attention to what they're listening to.

I suppose there's a practical philosophical question there of how far do you go to try to accommodate any possible ridiculous listening situation, which is of course an ancient question in this stuff that people constantly wrestle with.

But in this case, again, mono compatibility is beside the point. I have to presume they're not actually listening to stuff combined in mono (I think that's a reasonable presumption to make here), but simply taking stereo material and just removing one channel of the pair that make the mix at hand.

Which is a different thing. Mono compatibility is not involved here if the two channels of a stereo mix are never combined. Now we're into "how does it come across, what might be missing, if you're missing half the stereo mix", and that's a completely different issue. If people are really concerned about this, it seems to me there needs to be some new term invented for it.


JLE

[dwoz]

If people are really concerned about this, it seems to me there needs to be some new term invented for it.


JLE

how about "moron compatibility"?

dwoz

[eagan]

how about "moron compatibility"?



Yeah, there we go. A term I think we can all live with in being more technically accurate, and getting down to the gist of the matter.

I forgot to ask.... have you ever gone up to one of these goofballs you've observed and asked them what they were listening to?


JLE

[Brendo]

The "Neverm" album by "Nirv". The song that's on at the moment is "Smells like T"...

[Brendo]

Er, but seriously, I even do this a bit... but I usually pick the ear which is going to give me the best listening experience... usually the left, it seems - go play some old Metallica and turn off the right speaker. What're you missing? Pretty much nothing.

For an extreme example, take a listen to "Porcelina" by The Smashing Pumpkins. The only things common to the left and right channels are the drums and bass, through 3/4 of the song... sometimes the vocal. So that's definitely a "left channel only" song if I have to listen one sided. Although... the right channel version, is almost like listening to a crazy remix... two for the price of one.

I think most people who do this realize that they're missing half the music. I've even seen, when people are sharing earbuds to show someone a song, they will swap earbuds because "the good bit is coming up in this one".

Also, these same people are the ones who have iPod stereo docks at home, and car adapters and all that sort of thing... stereo computer speakers, and a hifi in the living room. So there's still plenty of stereo...

[Bob Olhsson]

Many a program director's office has only one speaker working. If ya want to make money producing popular music, you always need to take listeners' experiences into consideration.

[eagan]

Yeah, The Beatles and George Martin (and associated engineers) might have made something of themselves, if only they hadn't done all that crazy stereo stuff with odd panning so stuff was only in one channel or the other.

:D




OK, seriously, yes, it's a fair point, Bob, but once again, how far do you go to accommodate any possible stupid listening circumstances?


JLE

[dwoz]

Ok...time to check that mix on the sonar.


I tend to agree with Bob...(like THAT's a longshot!)...If your people are listening on tin cans, you mix to tin cans. Or anyway, you CHECK on tin cans.


In the big picture, who matters more....listener #1,285,006, or YOU.


dwoz

[Bob Olhsson]

Yeah, The Beatles and George Martin (and associated engineers) might have made something of themselves, if only they hadn't done all that crazy stereo stuff with odd panning so stuff was only in one channel or the other.The Beatles and George Martin were appalled that some mook at Capital had done that and then even given himself a co-production credit.

[clicktrack]

But doesn't this all come back to the fact that you check your mixes to the lowest common denominator?

On the nice perfect big monitors.

In headphones.

On the shitty computer monitors.

In full stereo.

In mono.

And all combinations above.


At that point, even if the moron compatibility factor has to apply, said moron doesn't miss the important information that you are trying to pass to them by way of your mix.


And if they are missing information...



...and that is NOT what you were intending...



...then who is the moron?

[eagan]

The Beatles and George Martin were appalled that some mook at Capital had done that and then even given himself a co-production credit.

Please understand that I'm not talking about the infamous Capitol "pseudo-stereo" abortions on some of the earlier era stuff where somebody took what (if I have this right) was basically a 2-track submix master done with separation of vocals on one track and the instruments on the other, and said "ooh! we have a stereo record now, boys!".

Never mind that. I'm talking about the later stuff when they set out from the start to make stereo mixes and panned things fairly radically. A couple months ago I was pondering stereo mixing while listening to the Parlaphone release version of Revolver, thinking about how strange some of it was.

JLE

[Bob Olhsson]

Remember that at that time nobody ever sent out stereo promo copies and in many cases the artists and producers had nothing to do with the stereo version. The records were produced for mono with the production decisions based on hearing the music in mono. Virtually everybody's first experience was with the mono version and it was the basis of their decision to spin or buy the record.

When the stores refused to order mono in the late '60s we came up with the "everything important in the middle" formula that lives on to this day.

[lebouche]

I always thought it was George Martin who did all that panning...
cool post.
On the ipod I'm shocked to find that I actually want one after I borrowed my friends last night.
I would prefer to have something with 16 or 24bit files on it but its so easy to listen to so much music...put it on random etc. It's got to be great for the enviroment s well producing less jewel cases. I'm sure with those huge 12gig drives in them now you could fit plenty of 24bit wavs....that would be amazing if you could download songs 24 bit. The internet is due I heard to get much much faster it wont be long surely until the death of the MP3.

[eagan]

I can understand what the general idea was back in those days, and the obvious cool thing here is we have you around as a reference as a guy who I understand was right in it up to your eyeballs when it came to the usual practices in pop music recording in that era.

Myself, I lived through the sixties but was just a kid then. So from that perspective, I remember what listening situations often were, as you're talking about. For that matter, my main musical diet growing up then was CKLW, so in a way I was right there on the receiving end of your world back then.

Still, I'd like to know if this is wrong, but the impression I've gotten from every interview I've encountered from the people involved (The Beatles members, Martin, Smith, Scott, et al...) was that while when it came to time to get singles together, it was certainly still "it's a mono world", but once The Beatles got into what we'd generally call their "studio era", that they specifically decided to make things interesting in stereo for the LP mixes, and started going wild with placing things in stereo (even doing stuff like overdubbing a second drum part and having drums left and right now and then, things like that).

Actually, this being Bob's Corner and all, if you feel like a little typing, Bob, I'm sure most of us would be interested in a little historical review of "mono versus stereo through the ages".


A little bit of irony in this stuff is that somebody reading this thread could almost get the idea that I'm arguing in favor of stereo mixes with stuff plopped in one side or the other. Actually, no, really, in fact, I generally tend to not be a fan of those kinds of mixes, and pretty much like my "stereo information" to be a bit more balanced, either something pretty much in the middle with some ambience around it (whether from room mics or synthetically created), or doubled parts more or less identical and panned in pairs.

The only reason I'm rattling on about this is that I guess it bugs me to consider the idea that people shouldn't do that kind of stuff based on the constraint that some occasional knuckleheads are going to listen to stuff with one channel of the stereo pair missing completely.

I grok the idea of checking how things sound on a range of different hardware in different situations, to get a gauge on real world listening, but like I already said a couple times, how far do you go before it just gets unreasonable, and maybe even starts to lessen the experience for anybody who does listen in reasonably decent circumstances?

I always thought what it came down to was checking how things translate, but working to some kind of reasonably nominal playback situation.


JLE

[Swafford]

And if you have the time, Bob, if you could address this:

But doesn't this all come back to the fact that you check your mixes to the lowest common denominator?

I've been told by a few people that this is a futile exercise , but I can't give a reason why.

[Bob Olhsson]

It really all comes down to common sense.

We can't optimize for cheap sets because they vary all over the map. What we can do is try and get the midrange right and make sure we aren't losing anything that's too musically important on a cheap player or one that only has one channel working.

It's somewhat ironic that as monitoring has improved quality-wise, the sound quality of the average recording has declined. My guess is that this is because back when we knew we couldn't trust our monitors, we learned to work in broad enough strokes that we weren't just creating band-aids with eq. and compression for our particular mixing enviornment that could make things sound worse in a different room. I suspect many people trust monitors way way too much today.

I remember asking Armin Steiner about the horrendous control room monitors at his favorite scoring stage for recording strings. His response was that he always had the second turn off the amps so he could only use the Auratones and never be tempted to move a mike from where he knew it needed to be placed. That comment led to one of my major improvements in recording skill.

[Mixerman]

Perhaps the solution should be a switch within the Ipod to play in mono.

Mixerman

[Brendo]

Better yet... pressure sensitive earbuds that sense when you've only got one in, switch the sound to mono, and play it only through the one you're using to avoid annoying people with your remaining dangling earbud.

OK... maybe that's a way off yet...

[eagan]

Perhaps the solution should be a switch within the Ipod to play in mono.

Mixerman

This, of course, would be the simplest and most sensible and obvious solution to this particular matter. But you have to wonder, would the goofs who do this actually be conscious enough to USE it?


JLE

[nobby]

Perhaps the solution should be a switch within the Ipod to play in mono.

Mixerman

Ha! Back to the future. The 6 transister radio.

A few years ago I suggested to a poster on an internet forum that mixes should work in mono, i.e. without phase cancellation of vital information, and we got into an argument, with the other person going ballistic rather than "lose the argument". It's always "interesting" when someone asks for advice, then doesn't want to hear it, even if you're being nice about it.

Anyway, I want my mixes to work in mono, and everything vital to the recording is happening in both channels -- vox, kik, bass guitar up the center, rhythm guitars doubled and panned wide. The other stuff, wherever. You might hear the lead guitar out of one channel, the reverb out of the other, that sort of thing. More hat one one, more ride on the other.

[Mixerman]

This, of course, would be the simplest and most sensible and obvious solution to this particular matter. But you have to wonder, would the goofs who do this actually be conscious enough to USE it?


JLE

Sure. You just have to give it a name that the kids understand.

"One ear mode."

Or put the functionallity on the earbuds as Brendo suggested. Make it so I can kill one side, and once I do that, the entire mix gets pumped into the other side. I wonder how small a summing node can be made.

Mixerman

[Bivouac]

Oh, man. A subject very close to my heart...

Let's get this straight. I'm 22, so it's my peers who are pioneering the art of ignoring the world around them via iPod and I find it disgusting. I don't know anyone my age who owns more music or put as much money and effort into their HiFi as I, but I'll be damned if I need to listen to music every waking hour of the day. The music I own isn't background music and I refuse to treat it as such.

What about the music of life? The sounds of the city, birds, people laughing?

There were kids when I was in high school (a whole five years ago :Roll eyes: ) who wore headphones between classes and stuff, but they were also social outcasts who didn't want to talk to anybody. Now EVERYONE does it. Everyone on my college campus is either on a cellphone or listening to something on an iPod in transit...

[Mixerman]

Oh, man. A subject very close to my heart...

Let's get this straight. I'm 22, so it's my peers who are pioneering the art of ignoring the world around them via iPod and I find it disgusting. I don't know anyone my age who owns more music or put as much money and effort into their HiFi as I, but I'll be damned if I need to listen to music every waking hour of the day. The music I own isn't background music and I refuse to treat it as such.

What about the music of life? The sounds of the city, birds, people laughing?

There were kids when I was in high school (a whole five years ago :Roll eyes: ) who wore headphones between classes and stuff, but they were also social outcasts who didn't want to talk to anybody. Now EVERYONE does it. Everyone on my college campus is either on a cellphone or listening to something on an iPod in transit...

I've got news for you. When I was a kid everyone walked around listening to their Walkman. This isn't a new phenomenon. It's merely a resurgance.

Mixerman

[Bivouac]

I've got news for you. When I was a kid everyone walked around listening to their Walkman. This isn't a new phenomenon. It's merely a resurgance.

Mixerman


Fair enough.

Coincidently, I just bought my first iPod recently. It's really nice to be able to have a mix ready for a party or a long car ride where carrying around 400 CD's isn't really an option. I still can't imagine wearing earbuds every waking moment of the day...

[Mixerman]

Fair enough.

Coincidently, I just bought my first iPod recently. It's really nice to be able to have a mix ready for a party or a long car ride where carrying around 400 CD's isn't really an option. I still can't imagine wearing earbuds every waking moment of the day...

We didn't have earbuds. They came later. We used the small cheapie headphones.

Mixerman

[Bob Olhsson]

Those small cheapo headphones didn't block out other sounds!

[Brendo]

Neither do earbuds if you put them at a reasonable, non-ear-killing volume.

[Swafford]

Go old school analog, baby. Not only does it play in stereo, it records in stereo.

To tape!

Stavros, tell that punk to turn that thing down!

[GilesReaves]

Like others have mentioned, most folks don't even set up their stereos correctly, sometimes with one speaker in one room, and one in another!

But what it comes down to is that most music fans are just that - MUSIC fans. Not recording fans. They listen differently than we do, and they enjoy it! If you play them the same mix on a really nice setup, they will most likely still enjoy it and maybe even appreaciate the difference. But it really is about the music, not the sound. This is how I listened as a kid, before I was trained to listen for all the crap and to all the details.

Our options, IMHO?
Just keep on making the best recordings we can - and be glad that there's still folks out there that ARE listening!

Giles Reaves

[chckn8r]

Yeah, it's an unfortunate and sad state, but the art of active listening is fading fast - look at the promise of DVD-Audio / SACD with surround sound mixes. All cool stuff, but the folks who developed and marketed these formats didn't quite realize that people don't have the time or patience to sit in one place and really listen to a recording.

It seems as though the vast majority of folks out there relegate listening to music as a passive kind of thing - turn on the tunes to get a beat or a mood set for themselves....

[GilesReaves]

Yeah, it's an unfortunate and sad state, but the art of active listening is fading fast - look at the promise of DVD-Audio / SACD with surround sound mixes. All cool stuff, but the folks who developed and marketed these formats didn't quite realize that people don't have the time or patience to sit in one place and really listen to a recording.

It seems as though the vast majority of folks out there relegate listening to music as a passive kind of thing - turn on the tunes to get a beat or a mood set for themselves....

I'm not saying it's a sad state, or that anything has changed. The art of active listening is alive and well - at least with the few who have always been into it.

Back when I was a kid, most folks listened to music on AM radio or really cheap turntables. Today it's mp3s and one ear bud! There will continue to be audiophiles and those who want to listen to the highest quality sound available. But there will also be those who just love music, even passivly. :Wink:

I also don't worry too much about passive listening - again, nothing new - and I often do it myself!

I try to remember that many of our listeners only care about the music, or rather the "tune". If you can hum it or whistle it, it's all good. Let's not look down at them - but likewise there's no need to cater to them either. I will always strive to keep making the best recordings I can, but never at the expense of the "music". Folks can (and will) choose to listen to it however they like.

Like I always say, I'd rather listen to an incredible performance on 78s than an uninspired one at the highest possible quality. But that's just me...gotta take the yin with the yang.

[Brendo]

My car only has the left channel!

[lebouche]

I'm deaf in one ear....
WHAT?

[chckn8r]

I'm with you Giles! I wasn't trying to imply that anyone should look down on others for any reason (one ear bud or not ;) ).

Maybe I'm getting to that "when I was your age" stage of my life (oh god no), but I can remember buying LP's, sitting down by myself or with friends and really absorbing the music. Taking out the liners / lyrics, and all that stuff and really getting into it.

I just don't see that anymore. It's not a bad thing per sea as I think the advent of digital music distribution and portable players have really opened up doors to consuming much more music (legally or not, I don't know). Which again, is a good thing as it keeps folks like us in demand.

I guess I'm getting all old and crotchety - remembering the good ol' days when I had to walk 10 miles to school through knee-deep snow, uphill both ways...

[GilesReaves]

I'm with you Giles! I wasn't trying to imply that anyone should look down on others for any reason (one ear bud or not ;) ).

Maybe I'm getting to that "when I was your age" stage of my life (oh god no), but I can remember buying LP's, sitting down by myself or with friends and really absorbing the music. Taking out the liners / lyrics, and all that stuff and really getting into it.

I just don't see that anymore. It's not a bad thing per sea as I think the advent of digital music distribution and portable players have really opened up doors to consuming much more music (legally or not, I don't know). Which again, is a good thing as it keeps folks like us in demand.

I guess I'm getting all old and crotchety - remembering the good ol' days when I had to walk 10 miles to school through knee-deep snow, uphill both ways...

Maybe the reason why you and I listened like that, and why most folks didn't (and still don't), is that we were (dispite our parent's best efforts) preparing ourselves for the rock-n-roll lifestyle! :Twisted:

Or at least the studio life. :grin: