The bass heavy tendency of western consumer grade headphones/speakers is tuned for western pop music and does not sound very good with much else, some of the non-western pop traditions are not bad. Headphones/speakers with a flat response will sound lacking in bass but will not sound piercing with sources which were not mixed with bass heavy systems in mind and will play better with EQ. While flat may lack the deep powerful bass you will get used to it and you will be able to hear everything else in the track better, including the bass.
The way they get that deep powerful bass is not just by increasing the bass, that would leave everything outside of the bass too quite in comparison, they also put dips in the frequency response to accentuate the bass. These dips work fairly well as long as the instruments are fairly consistent in their ranges which is quite regular in western pop, everything is essential a bass, a guitar and vocals even when they are not and you have 10 instruments in the mix, everyone sticks to the various ranges which sound right and the engineer (assuming they are good) fudges things with the mixing. But the dips come at a cost, you lose detail.
If you want flat response but your music has lows that go down to around 20hz, the relative power required to make the 20hz audible to an equivalent volume is exponentially higher than to make 200hz audible. And drums will always sound better if you can hear 20hz, regardless of the genre.
I find even with "western consumer grade headphones", I need to add about +3db to 20hz, 0db to 200hz, -3db at 2khz, and 0db at 20khz, to be able to turn up the volume and hear all the instruments without any single freq range dominating. This makes such an improvement on every pair of headphones I've tried it on, that I wonder who came up with the "standard" frequency response curve of human hearing that the manufacturers are using as reference.
I setup an EQ with that shape on my girlfriend's headphones, and she was surprised how much more comfortable it sounded. Then she got new headphones, tried them out, and immediately said "ew, can you change the sound the way you did before?" I set the EQ in the new headphones' software and "much better."
Sean Olive. It's motivated by the fact that engineers are mixing audio on (actually-) flat-response monitors in studios with a slight echo, and a "flat" headphone response is the best way to emulate that. This curve is something they measured and published a paper on. If your headphones sound better with your EQ then they probably aren't meeting the Harman/"flat" target, or you're deviating from the norm in your preferences.
Musical instruments, live concerts, studio sessions, acoustic sessions? There is nothing warm and fuzzy comfortable about the above 4 things I mentioned.
I wish the stereo review industry would be honest and stop saying it's all about preference. It is,,,,but,,,some speakers/headphones are indeed better than others. If speaker A's output signal is closer to it's input signal than speaker B, it is a better product, period.
Eh, I was responding to someone wondering why the singular curve used was wrong. My point was that there is no universal answer that works for every individual, even if you are opinionated about how things should sound.
> If you want flat response but your music has lows that go down to around 20hz, the relative power required to make the 20hz audible to an equivalent volume is exponentially higher than to make 200hz audible.
That can often be the case, but it isn't necessarily always the case.
There is nothing in particular that absolutely prevents a transducer from having reasonably-flat (in an amplitude-vs-power sense) response in the bass region -- including all the way down to 20Hz or below.
Flat response is flat response. If the drums are barely audible in the mix at a comfortable listening volume, they would've been barely audible live at a comfortable listening volume.
If music sounds off in your flat response audio reproduction system, it's a poor mix or poor compression. A lossless version of a professional and well done mix always sounds amazing on my flat response system.
i agree, I feel the same with my studio monitors in my home office. The issue seems to be that flat frequency response with a full range is extremely hard to achieve with IEMs, there is something to the room and distance transfer function that is missing to IEMs, and even headphones. Thats why you're not supposed to mix on your headphones. You can master some in headphones, if you know how they compare to a room, but not in any IEMs I know of, but mixing exclusively in headphones is considered a no-no by all professionals.
> The bass heavy tendency of western consumer grade headphones/speakers is tuned for western pop music and does not sound very good with much else.
As a basshead myself, this reminds me of these Drum & Bass artists that found the speakers in the venues they played at were not tuned for the music they were producing, so they built their own soundsystem to bring with them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ck-kq6g0-QY
Oh yeah, this is definitely a thing with a lot of bass-heavy EDM. I'm always a bit wary of trying new venues because I never know if they're going to have proper subwoofers or not, since some genres just do not sound right without a sound system that gives sub-bass frequencies the room they deserve.
As an example, give a quick listen to Turn Off the Lights[0]. It sounds incredibly empty and tinny on small sound systems, but add a subwoofer and you discover a whole other layer of chest-shaking bass. This stuff is made to be played live on a properly tuned sound system.
I disagree that your ears get used to flat tuning eventually and then even the bass sounds better. This might be true for some people, but I know for a fact it is not true for me.
From what I have seen as an occasional musician and running sound is that these days most musicians are not willing to make the sacrifices and put in the time, they will not take that poorly paying weekly gig and spend a year or two refining their performance and learning to read the audience which is a major part of making it in music.
I know a good number a professional musicians who have made it to the point where they can live off of music without constantly working, every single one of them started out the same way, playing every single show they could regardless of pay or location. This started to change around 2010, the venue I used to do sound for primarily targeted musicians who were starting out either on the local scene or national scene (just starting to tour and trying to make a name out of their home town), by 2015 music was mostly done there because the 19 year olds who had only played a few shows were not happy with $25 and a meal to sit on stage with their guitar for an hour, they wanted $100 and expected to play to a full room.
The boom in home recording also probably played a role, the starting out musicians are often resistant to it because they see it as pedestrian and not for serious musicians, musicians record in studios, not at home. Record on anything anyway you can and bring a few dozen copies to sell at those poorly paying gigs.
>they will not take that poorly paying weekly gig and spend a year or two refining their performance and learning to read the audience which is a major part of making it in music.
they literally cannot afford to do such things unless they are already homeless. It could have been an okay side hustle as recent as a decade ago. But today you're not gonna do much more than grab grocery money without being in a very specific scene. That meal you mention can easily cost as much as what they were paid for the gig.
It's been declining for decades, no doubt. But when the economy starts getting hard, "passion projects" dry up. being paid $100 a week is much closer to a passion project than a side hustle at this point.
That is entry level for people who have no audience, the musicians equivalent of a paid internship and pays better than most entry level jobs with a bar so low, three chords will get you through the door, two if you are good. Beyond the flat rate there is often a tip jar and merchandise sales, a $50 gig can easily bring in a few hundred. And you make connections, get more gigs, develop an audience, make a name, etc. Once you develop a name you get paid better and even start getting a cut of cover and bar sales. The weekly house band gigs are pretty much being paid for band practice.
Unless you are working two full time jobs or the like it is easy money and affordable, broke teens working 30 hours a week washing dishes manage it. You may only make $50-$100 a gig starting out but you make it in an hour or two and as soon as you start drawing a crowd you will start getting better gigs.
>the musicians equivalent of a paid internship and pays better than most entry level jobs
what entry level jobs are you talking about? The horribly low Federal minimum wage is $7.25. minumum wage part time would come to $600/month. That's the extremely conservateive bar minimum I'd consider for anything to be "paying" (extremely poorly, but making something resembling cash flow).
So with that metric: what scene are you in that brings in $600 in tips or 6-12 gigs a month?
>You may only make $50-$100 a gig starting out but you make it in an hour or two and as soon as you start drawing a crowd you will start getting better gigs.
Not even close to reasonably paying and you greatly underestimate how hard it is to draw a crowd these days.
I'm treating this as a means to live, not some little hobby you do on the side. This isn't even close to an "entry level". my first gigs in tech had me making $12/hr for 20 hours of work during the school week, and people would rightfully call that way below my worth. But it passes my metric of $800/month, so it can be considered "entry level".
>So with that metric: what scene are you in that brings in $600 in tips or 6-12 gigs a month?
Why only in tips? $100 weekly gigs are not terribly difficult to get these days especially since no one wants to do them anymore, that is $400 a month right there without tips or merchandise sales. 6-12 gigs a month is also not difficult to manage, two gigs a week is very doable and most every musician I know who did the weekly gig also did a show on the weekend somewhere else (weekly gigs are almost always mid week). Why does it have to be a single scene? almost as arbitrary as it being tips only. Beyond that if you play regularly you will get more gigs without trying including private parties and the like, you will get asked to sit in with other bands, be on their recordings, session work, etc, it all adds up. But I was referring to hourly rate, not monthly earnings. Entry level has nothing to do with pay, it's the level you enter at for the field and for some jobs this is an unpaid internship or or poorly paid apprenticeship, doesn't matter what you think it should be.
Drawing a crowd is not difficult but you need to learn to read the audience so you can play to the audience first, one of those things the poor paying weekly gig is great for, you can't expect to draw an audience solely for being you.
The method doesn't matter, just the fact you can get there. Maybe you are talented, but I reckon most people can't turn that musical talent into a $600/month hustle.
>but you need to learn to read the audience so you can play to the audience firs
And you uncovered the issue: musicians can't just use raw talent most of the time, they need to also be an entrepreneur. An entirely different set of skills independent from music itself. Thars why most indies in any industry can't make it. You need to mix two ideas of art and product which are almost diametrically opposed to one another.
And it's a shifting formula. Because what's desired in art shifts constantly. It's a job in a job to get what's probably not even paying rent unless you're Low COL.
>but I reckon most people can't turn that musical talent into a $600/month hustle.
Most people can't do most things but the vast majority of people who succeed at their goals in life have one thing in common. Lots of people in this world and to make a living as a musician you only need to connect with a tiny fraction of a percent of those people. If you honestly like the music you make odds are there are enough people in the world to support you in making that music, but you need to find them if you want them to support you.
>And you uncovered the issue
I addressed this already, my use of the phrase "paid internship" was not accidental.
>unless you're Low
I lived in Duluth for awhile around the turn of the century. Low worked their asses off with endless touring for the better part of a decade to make their name and kept it up until Al and Mimi had their daughter, but Al kept playing constantly. Every Saturday it was The Black Eyed Snakes and a couple other bands at the NorShor, Tuesdays was experimental Tuesdays the experimental open mic he ran, plus sitting in with random bands, doing random shows, running his label, organizing shows, recording bands, doing all the stuff for Low, endless short lived side projects, being a dad, he never stopped working from what I could see. Charlie Parr spent a few years doing the poorly paying weekly gig every Wednesday at The Brewhouse, he got $50 and bottomless coffee to play for 3 hours to maybe a dozen mostly uninterested people until he figured out how to get them interested and then he packed the place every week and started making his name. Haley Bonar/McCallum used to serve me coffee and make me sandwiches at Amazing Grace, she put in years toiling away in obscurity before making it. Lots of good memories from those years, need to get back there, been too long.
I had to retrace the thread to be confident, but I think you leapt to Minnesota-local from an oddly-capitalized fragment of the phrase "low cost of living".
Nevertheless, I enjoyed your personal perspective on the scene history there. :) I can echo your observations from the Boston scene -- e.g. when the one song gets used in a movie or TV show, and new fans of the "new band" have no idea about the years of hard work and crap jobs and crap roommates that were required to get the opportunity.
I did. I was done with the thread by that point and put zero effort into parsing the acronym, only responded because of the nostalgia. Half suspected I got it wrong which is why I left "COL" out when quoting, figured I could feign ignorance since I was staying on topic and point.
>my use of the phrase "paid internship" was not accidental.
Is "intern" a different meaning where you're from? For me, it implies an opportunity to learn under a company, where learning is a primary objective over proper payment.
Who are these teachers you're learning under? Where and how are you finding a teacher in music that you aren't paying for but is paying you to learn?
>Low worked their asses off with endless touring for the better part of a decade to make their name and kept it up until Al and Mimi had their daughter, but Al kept playing constantly
If you haven't noticed, the world's gotten (ironically) much less connected over the last 20 years. I can barely get my friends out for lunch. People who already know and assumedly like me. It's simply gotten a lot hard to do that 80's style of living in a van, paying $1-2 a day for food, and playing your passions until you can move to a semi-normal standard of living.
It's not impossible, and I appreciate the pun. But that lifestyle wouldn't really be possible in urban America. Not even a matter of "I don't want to live in a van". Those cities just got a lot more hostile towards loitering and theft is on the rise. A van is just putting a target on your face for someone, legally or for illegal preying. Even just being on the streets because of no homes can get you arrested with where current legislature it going in my area.
its just gotten rough. If you don't have parents supporting you, it is literally a dangerous lifestyle.
Are you in a gig scene? The vast majority of the Brooklyn gig scene have service industry jobs, film sound jobs, or they play a lot of 3-4 hour event gigs (wedding bands but plus all events) on top of their own music projects. It’s not feasible to just do main music project gigs to start out in the slightest. And we all have the cheapest rents in ny.
True, but I argue that losing money on a hobby (or "bad business") means you can afford to do it. It's just not making you money, not keeping you off the streets.
What gig? For that matter, what audience? I was in a band in the 90's and we could find poorly paying gigs to a relatively full venue on a semi-regular basis. I took a long break to raise some kids and just got back into it in the past couple of years and... there's nothing out there any more. Nobody's hiring musicians because nobody's listening to them.
Yeah definitely. I’m a musician but I don’t have an interest in being heard, but I’ve noticed that those who do want to be heard don’t want to put in the effort to be heard.
Never heard of Kap before, I find the use of APL symbols and left to right parsing very difficult to read, my brain immediately starts reading right to left when I see APL symbols. I think Kap kills a lot of the elegance of APL as well but maybe I will feel better about it after I get a bit further along in APL, just started learning it a couple weeks ago and at my level of APL, Kap is very confusing to read.
Interesting observation. The fundamental syntax of Kap is the same as APL. The imperative style is added on top, and isn't really the way you'd normally write code. The examples were written that way in order to make a point the the code can he as verbose as you want.
I often use the code from the standard library that renders array output as an example of real world Kap code that is written in what I would consider regular style.
Years ago I found myself in your situation, I put most of it in a big box and sold in on craigslist and started over because organizing it all just demoralized me. Bought a bunch of resistor and capacitor kits from mouser or digikey that came with in their own storage, small parts cabinets of drawers. The drawers are all larger than needed and come with dividers so I was able to consolidate a few and have some cabinets for the parts I kept and ICs. The electronics distributors all sell these cabinets as well.
The use of CODE/;CODE/;ENCODE for defining words in lisp is great. I can see myself using this a good amount especially if I can get it playing well with Tk either through the FFI or lTk/nodgui.
Cell phones. Reasons seem obvious and too numerous to mention but I miss dial tones and busy signals and trying to catch someone when they are at home and within hearing of their phone's ring; knowing that every call was a sort of invasion on their personal life and not to be taken lightly. Waiting out rainstorms in a phone booth with your girlfriend making prank phone calls and chatting with the operator. The time delay on long distance phone calls and crossed lines. Never knowing who was calling or who would answer the phone and their unique ways of answering the phone which was not a reaction to who they see on the caller ID but a familial trait learned and honed and immediately identifiable. Memorizing phone numbers and using the phone book. Browsing the phone book just to see what your city had to offer or browsing it in the hotel while on vacation to see what you might do. Judging and comparing cities by the size of their phone books. Sharing a phone and its place in the household. Getting prank calls instead of spam.
99% translation dictionaries and grammars from what I have seen. AI does not really translate, it does not understand the context but can sort of fake understanding the languages in a very technical sense which works well enough when you don't know the language at all but loses all the nuance.
Edit: 99% is a bit hyperbolic, AI has a good amount of human translations to work off of as well which helps it with idiomatic/figurative language but it is still not translating, just playing the odds.
This seems possibly interesting but the general style of it being an endless chain of interjections and conjunctions from no where makes it difficult to care or believe. Anyone have a link to something topical but less obnoxious?
The main benefit for me is that it provides a very stable user experience since it is not under the influence of the war between linux distros; you learn the system once and you might spend 5 minutes after a major update learning what is new and configuring. But much of that software in ports is developed for linux with no consideration for BSD so it can cause headaches since the maintainers of those ports can not possibly test every possible use case and generally port it for their own case. A big rub for me is the sound situation, I love OSS but not all programs support it so I still get stuck using Jack.
I almost made the switch to FreeBSD a few times but Slackware still offers fewer compromises for me with the same ridiculously stable user experience and I don't have to worry as much about drivers when computer shopping. I assume I will end up switching to FreeBSD when Patrick dies since Slackware will probably die with him so I keep an eye on it and play with it once every year or two.
The way they get that deep powerful bass is not just by increasing the bass, that would leave everything outside of the bass too quite in comparison, they also put dips in the frequency response to accentuate the bass. These dips work fairly well as long as the instruments are fairly consistent in their ranges which is quite regular in western pop, everything is essential a bass, a guitar and vocals even when they are not and you have 10 instruments in the mix, everyone sticks to the various ranges which sound right and the engineer (assuming they are good) fudges things with the mixing. But the dips come at a cost, you lose detail.
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