Consumers Have Spoken, Clearly It's Time To Throw Away Your Gear!

So I was doing the usual mix/edit/test on every speaker and headphone configuration I can get my hands on, when something occurs to me... The first thing most people (not all) seem to do with a purchased, professionally produced CD, is throw it on a stereo (or rip it and throw it on their mp3 players etc.) and despite the engineers agonising attempts to create perfect balance for that particular style of music. The consumer deems the mixing/mastering job to be sub-par and proceeds to pump the bass, mid and treble frequencies (sometimes) until the dials won't turn anymore. They legitimately don't seem to care that everything becomes a muddy, whompy, grainy mess and that the instruments/voices are at times pushed so far that their original quality no longer exists.
 
This leads me to one conclusion.
 
Apparently the average music consumers of the world have spoken and what they want is for us to forget all that expensive equipment and luscious plugin lists. Sure enough, taking some initial care in achieving some balance whilst mixing is possibly preferable? However, mix-agonising is completely unnecessary! Because then they would love us to import the stereo file, throw on an EQ and boost every frequency until it's distorting pretty much throughout the entire spectrum and burn the results! For (it would appear that) this is how the majority of listeners prefer the music! And how dare we try to sell something that "apparently" requires further engineering from the consumer?!!
 
So if there's a point to this post? I'd like to ask Cake to build a ridiculous, dynamics trashing, max-boost EQ. There are no dials. It has only one purpose/setting. And that purpose is to pump the living sh*t out of everything, so the consumer doesn't have to! I realise we can already do that via manual adjustment of existing plugs? But having a plugin set up for this specific task, would greatly save time! I've been tossing around names for this EQ and came up with: "Consumers Uliginous Nescient Tortious - EQ!" (Uliginous = Slimy, Nescient = Ignorant, Tortious = Wrongful) The acronym of this title should say it all: C*NT-EQ. It will hopefully be available for purchase as a VST from just about anywhere, for one easy payment of your slowly dying soul...
 
PS: This post probably belongs in the CH but I was already here and I'm too lazy to cut n' paste... Also if this type of rant has been done before, I apologise, but I couldn't be arsed searching either...

Some of my son's alleged 'music' sounds like absolute crap on my car's system, even with my bass turned essentially all the way down it STILL is booming sub-sounds.
 
Perhaps we could have a compression intervention for some of those producers.
 
Bob Bone
 

The worst offenders are people who don't seem to mind that their speakers are buzzing. There's a guy around the corner from me who sells books from a table on the street and he has this little ghettoblaster playing hip hop so loud that the speakers rattle and it's a distorted mess. It makes my eyes water just to walk past, yet he's quite happy to listen to it all day. Some people really do have cloth ears. The same goes for people who listen to beat based music in cars so loud that the speakers distort. They don't care about fidelity in the slightest.

I was thoroughly obsessed with Dolby Systems. When something was recorded on a cassette deck from vinyl or radio to a Dolby System, I always thought it sounded way more professional than any decks I had. Obviously, it wasn't Dolby that did it, but the decks that included Dolby Noise Reduction were in a higher class, and thus recorded better.
 
Anyone remember the Nakamichi Dragon?
 
But yeah, the abuse of the audio spectrum has driven us to sub-human standards.

brconflict
I was thoroughly obsessed with Dolby Systems. When something was recorded on a cassette deck from vinyl or radio to a Dolby System, I always thought it sounded way more professional than any decks I had. Obviously, it wasn't Dolby that did it, but the decks that included Dolby Noise Reduction were in a higher class, and thus recorded better.
 
Anyone remember the Nakamichi Dragon?
 
But yeah, the abuse of the audio spectrum has driven us to sub-human standards.

Yup I do.  I was the proud owner of a Nak 1000 tri-tracer, the first 3 head cassette deck.  When I opened my studio, I bought a Tascam 122 3 head cassette deck with an external dbx noise reduction module.  It also recorded at 3 3-4ips for higher fidelity.  The dbx units were superior to the dolby NR in the studio.  I also used the dbx mods on my Reel decks.
Now, its throw the mp3 on the SDHD card and stick that into the boom box.  ugh

I expect it is still best to provide the best substrate for user destruction if for no other reason than artistic pride. Should a cordon bleu chef stop trying because he suspects the diner will dump ketchup on his signature dish at the table? The tendency of listeners and less than perfect playback systems to alter the music is not new. Radio stations have done so from the dawn of radio time. It was hard to find a consumer stereo that did not have a "loudness" button even in the days of vinyl. The modern MP3 ripper software that "normalizes" the audio so that the guy with the plugs in his ears will not have to adjust the volume while jogging beside a freight train are just more of the same.

"I was thoroughly obsessed with Dolby Systems. When something was recorded on a cassette deck from vinyl or radio to a Dolby System, I always thought it sounded way more professional than any decks I had. Obviously, it wasn't Dolby that did it, but the decks that included Dolby Noise Reduction were in a higher class, and thus recorded better." There was me thinking I was the only person as a kid who had that obsession
 

brconflict
I was thoroughly obsessed with Dolby Systems. When something was recorded on a cassette deck from vinyl or radio to a Dolby System, I always thought it sounded way more professional than any decks I had. Obviously, it wasn't Dolby that did it, but the decks that included Dolby Noise Reduction were in a higher class, and thus recorded better.
 
Anyone remember the Nakamichi Dragon?
 
But yeah, the abuse of the audio spectrum has driven us to sub-human standards.

Wow.. I remember the Dragon and the Autorevers RX 505 still sends me to my therapist. Also the Aiwa M800 and the Tandberg TCD 440a were awesome pieces of equipment. To me then it was really about the accurate reproduction of music and the emotional connection that was made when that took place. Technology was a useful means to that noble end.
 
I am now yearning for some Khorns...... powered threw  a McIntosh tube amp... sigh....

So, Bob Bone, are you saying you were listening to Bennie Goodman on a crystal radio set made out of an oatmeal box?
 
I saw The Beatles live (I was a kid) and that is as much as I will date myself.

Geez... you guys are just old.   
 
I'm not sure I could ever part with my vinyl collection - most of which is circa the years those albums first came out all those decades ago - even though the only turntable I own is a USB version for digitizing.   But even back then, I remember we used to put matches up to woofers just to watch them blow out.  I guess that was our version of cranking the sub in the car.  Yet it still sounded so good.     Now I'm having flashbacks of those B&O straight arm turntables.... ahhhh.   
 
 

Back in '73, my friend Sam had a shut-in uncle who was a hifi enthusiast. (By the way, the spell check alert squiggle under the word "hifi" is offensive to me.)  He knew I liked music so he invited me in to see his setup.  AR3a speakers, ARXA turntable, and a Marantz model 19 receiver.  What an epiphany.  It didn't get any better than that back then.  I have spent a lifetime trying to capture the impact this exquisite system had on my 16 y/o ears.  But I have come to realize that Sam's uncle, and perhaps myself included, are anomalies.  When most folks hear what I have spent to achieve audio nirvana--which by the way is peanuts compared to what some high end enthusiasts will spend--they look at me like I'm nuts: even though my system is the best sound reproducer they will likely ever hear.  I have to hand it to the record labels for offering recordings that are as good as they are given the complacency of the typical listener.  And I will guaranty you that if the kids in the '60s and '70s could have cranked the bass, they would have.  The iPads and skull candies are orders of magnitude better than anything imaginable when I was growing up as far as consumer electronics is concerned.  And let them have their EQ so they can crank the bass by themselves.  Maybe that will keep the pressure off the producers among us who have to balance consumer taste with so called good taste, and I can still purchase well balanced recordings for a while longer.

konradh
So, Bob Bone, are you saying you were listening to Bennie Goodman on a crystal radio set made out of an oatmeal box?
 
I saw The Beatles live (I was a kid) and that is as much as I will date myself.

No - but I DID own an actual 78 RPM recording of Sergei Rachmaninoff playing piano on his Prelude in C# Minor.
 
And cars I first owned only had AM radios in them, with single speakers.
 
And, I remember the switch in Batman to color.
 
And, while not Benny Goodman, in the 60's, as a kid, our family went to Disneyland, and we watched Tex Beneke and his band play all of the Glenn Miller stuff.  FABULOUS.  (He was a member of the original Glenn Miller Band, and took over as leader of it when Glenn died in a WWII plane crash).
 
And, I saw the Jackson Five in Chicago when MJ had a nose.
 
Bob Bone
 

...and all the coveted Beatles and Beach Boys vinyl were all cut in mono to fit the AM squelch boxes in dad's old ford falcon.  Mixed for AM car radio, huh!  ...talk about lipstick on a pig...

I think this explains it very well...
 

When I was a boy...and we liked it!