Comment on Anon doesn't like the doors
Tabooki@lemmy.world 3 days agoBecause it has no soul. Like a lot of digital electronic music. Hit a drum in a nice space and listen to the sound. Now listen to a high-end recording of that and you’ll be able to make out the sound of the room. Music that has been autotuned is similar to listening to electronic drums. No depth or soul to it because it’s synthetic. Btw: If you’re listening to crappy buds or Bluetooth it won’t matter anyways because the fidelity is already lost.
Bruh, what a boring elitist take. I don’t even want to take the bait and engage into long discussion about the topic which seemed outdated 30 years ago. Björk already put it perfectly:
Plus, if you can’t hear pure emotion and see soul in such songs with autotune as yet another instrument, it’s probably your lack of perception, not the artist’s fault:
Enjoying audio quality is elitist now? That’s sad. When I was young every young person wanted a great stereo. 😞
Btw Bjork puts tremendous effort into the audio quality of her music.
Enjoying audio quality is elitist now?
Nah, saying that music with autotune/electronic music has no soul. And claiming with zero evidence that everyone who disagrees with you just has bad sound equipment
I’m not saying electronic music sounds bad. I’m saying it lacks the soul in the audio portion. Like I said in my other example, on a well-recorded audio track, you should be able to tell where each person is standing and hear the shape of the room and the reverberation of sounds mixing into harmonies. When everything is done on a computer that’s literally impossible to do. That being said, there’s tons of great electronic music out there, but I still don’t like auto-tune as it just masks the singers inability to perform themselves.
I firmly believe that high-res bluetooth codecs have way more fidelity than my ears have left after years of enjoying music
Possibly but I’m not there yet. Huge difference with good headphones when you plug them in. Bluetooth can’t even handle the bandwidth of high end audio without compressing the crap out of it. For example the HD version of pink Floyd wish you were here is over 700mb per song.
Jokes aside, my ears are not that terrible, but modern compression is pretty damn okay.
I don’t have an anechoic, soundproof listening room, no soundcard I’ve measured myself had more than 80-90 dB SNR in real world scenarios anyway, and I am not going to turn off all electronic appliances in my apartment when I want to listen to music. Plus, most headphones that don’t cost a kidney or two will likely be a weak part anyway, as they are analog, mechanical, imperfect devices with manufacturing spread, wearout, and just general real-world mess.
I had pretty good ears as a kid, and I remember taking an mp3 blind test at a museum back then. Sure, the lower quality levels are easy, but past 128-192 or so kb/s? Maybe if you know what to listen for, and switch back and forth, but out of the blue I personally wouldn’t notice compression in anything higher.
Therefore, I believe that anything past CD quality is voodoo and won’t hold up to a blind test for 99,999% of people, especially if you randomize loudness a bit. The ~100dB dynamic range are more than enough for normal music, and the frequency range is plenty for everyone older than 3. Enough space for decent filters to practically eliminate aliasing as well. The only reason I see for higher resolutions and bit depths is mixing/mastering, if you want to modify things several times and not have audible quality issues.
No offence, but 700 MB a song from an old tape master sounds borderline snake-oily as well. I wouldn’t call tape motor rumble, dust specks or random background EM “soul”, and I kind of doubt you can squeeze that much resolution out of old tapes, but I may be wrong here, tapes were largely before my time.
Im likely the only one who will agree with you, except in my mind there’s nothing wrong with electronic drums when used in the right context. Otherwise, youre right but the pop music lovers are getting offended haha. Very very few artists today have the skill of the 60s and 70s artists recording to tape, that shit is HARD and kids have no clue the talent it took then. Now its all samples and easy as shit to make a song (and why the market is oversaturated and very difficult to find authentic good music that isnt completely quantized). However i will say if you look very hard you find amazing music now but it takes effort.
jwmgregory@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 days ago
this is the most boomer-ass fucking take on electronic music i’ve ever heard.
hey, 1989 called and it wants its “electronic music has no soul and lacks the human element^TM” tirade back…
i’ve heard people make music on synths and computers that has more “soul” and more meaning than any “real” musicians, as you might call it. you’re denigrating people’s work not for the quality of the work itself but because you have some weird, backwards stereotype in your head preventing you from even giving it a proper chance.
Tabooki@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I never mentioned human element. I’m talking about sound quality strictly. Live is best, then will recorded music that gets you close to live sound. Then electronic music that is flat and lacks sonic details because there aren’t any.
jwmgregory@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 days ago
that’s a pretty ignorant take still. electronic music is plenty capable of having “sonic details” nowadays. in fact, because of a lot of the ML advances lately, you can emulate pretty much any sound profile digitally now. this was becoming true even before people had the idea to use ML solutions to do it, too.
virtually all music you listen to that was produced after 1980 has had electronic production done to it. live shows now are actively mixed as the show happens. “well recorded music” is actually more about electronic post-production than picking just the right shangri-la-esc recording locale, now. you associate “flat” and “lacking sonic details” with electronic music for no other reason than ignorance. you’re discounting the work of thousands of engineers and billions of man hours who make those “best” live shows and “well-recorded” music you hold so dear even possible, and it’s incredibly disrespectful at best.
the quality of audio has vastly improved in the modern period largely thanks to electronic music. live and recorded music used to sound like shit, comparatively. take off your rose-colored goggles and see, man.
Tabooki@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Now that is funny. Even recording engineers lament the loss of fidelity. Especially after the loudness wars. If you have a good stereo and good treats it’s ready to hear the difference yourself. It’s part of the reason daft Punk used real musicians and why their album was so highly praised for its sound.
I have those fake sound profiles on my stereo and they always sound worse than direct audio.