Re: [microsound] politics of digital audio redux

[Bill Jarboe <billjarboe@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Oct 2, 2006, at 7:24 PM, Kim Cascone wrote:

> yes these questions are very important but I'm also looking at the use 
> of various audio technologies as a political statement...
> - for example:
> - an engineer uses a 16 track analog multi-track recorder for 
> recording drums -- is this a political act on some level?



 It's political in the sense that it's easier to explain to the 
musicians. It's also easier to justify the tape costs than for 
instance; the cost of purchasing eight rupert neve portico modules to 
get a similar effect. There's something gratifying in getting good 
results quickly. If something needs to be changed later , if 
substitutions are necessary  , it makes more sense to use one or two 
modules , preamps etc. to do the job.

> 	i.e., what sorts of decisions are involved in the decision to record 
> drums in this way?
> 	is it a reaction against digital audio? and if so why?
> 	what are the political issues surrounding buying, using, maintaining 
> and advertising the use of older technology such as analog 
> multi-tracks?
>
> a related question:
> from Wikipedia:
> 'a quote on the back cover of Songs About Fucking: "the future belongs 
> to the analog loyalists. fuck digital". -- Steve Albini'
> - can the opinions of Steve Albini (whom I admire btw) w/r/t the 
> technology and preference for analog audio be parsed as political? in 
> what way?
>
> a story:
> - I was friendly with some people who ran a new age label here in San 
> Francisco back in the early 90's around the time I was running Silent 
> Records...the label was flush with cash and had a very expensive 
> digital recording and mastering studio.
> I was sitting in their studio one evening and my friend asked if I 
> wanted to hear a new master he was working on.
> He put on a DAT of a new release they had just finished mastering and 
> played it over a pair of very expensive high-end speakers.
> The label manager sat back and lavished me with a pristine, super 
> clear, shimmering, digital audio sound field...it was an unmistakable 
> achievement in digital audio, a superb mastering job and a very 
> beautiful mix...I heard many thousands of dollars worth of equipment 
> and many man-months of time poured into this perfect yet otherwise 
> unspectacular and vapid release of new age music...in the words of a 
> record producer I met years ago: 'it sounds like money!'
>
> the new age mastering listening experience reminded me of being at an 
> AES show where they used to put on a Roger Nichols engineered CD to 
> showcase a pair of speakers or something costing a lot of money...it 
> had a sexiness that showed off the equipment in its best light...
>
> but the point is that the amount of capital/technology at the label 
> managers disposal represented a competitive advantage to him...and in 
> a not so subtle way he was letting me know that he was able to create 
> objects which displayed a quality of audio perfection -- while I was 
> not able to. This value seemed more important than the content itself 
> -- as if the content was in service of the abstraction of digital 
> audio perfection.

   There have been a few times when I was listening to sounds through 
expensive equipment for most of the day , and afterwards that portable 
sony tape recorder waiting at home sure sounded good. An inspired 
performance recorded on what I had available sounded great on the 
expensive monitors.

   Good equipment is marvelous: can't let your insecurities take over 
and rule your opinions in regards to something expensive sounding 
better.

> for some insight into the trend of digital audio perfection 
> see:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Audio_CD
>
> aside: what strikes me funny is that most of the new age studio's 
> compliment of technology can now be found on a Powerbook running 
> Max/MSP and Pro Tools (except for the speakers of course -- which are 
> the most important tool for composing music I find)...and that his 
> equipment only gained him a fleeting moment of 'perceived power' in 
> the breakneck paced marketplace of digital audio...again see the 
> Wikipedia article on the SACD vs DVD-Audio format wars...
>
> it was this experience that made me smile when I first came across 
> Oval's track 'The Politics of Digital Audio' -- as I knew exactly what 
> Marcus was critiquing right off the bat...
>
> but it raises certain questions:
> - what is the role of 'perceived quality' in a musical artifact?
> - can digital audio technology (or analog tech) lend a fetishistic 
> veneer/false value to an artifact?
> - does something like SuperAudio augment or diminish an artists work?
> - does technology such as Super Audio or DVD-Audio perform as a type 
> of advertising?
> - is the display of expensive technology merely a device to attract 
> potential consumers?
> - how is something like 'glitch' a political statement w/r/t digital 
> audio?
> - did Marcus (Oval) succeed in making a political statement with his 
> music?


   There's a saying that anything sensuous , a person grows tired of. 
The reason for this is it probably prevents living creatures from 
destroying themselves. If you've been listening to a recording medium 
with certain limitations , something else with different limitations 
will probably sound very very refreshing.

  What I'm hoping for with the newer digital formats is that people 
will be able to hear all of the glitches , all of the analogue 
goodness,, the transparency , the turgidness , whatever it was that 
made the people in the control room say: 'yeah!, it's a take.' I also 
find exciting the idea of letting dynamic and frequency ranges happen 
naturally instead of having to tailor the audio to compensate for the 
limitations of the recording medium.  In many cases I think that 
musical performances have been altered and choices have been made in 
order to utilize audio systems to good effect , often to the point of 
excluding certain genres and personalities from the music business.

> there are other aspects to this I find interesting from a Marxist 
> perspective...e.g. the roles of exchange vs use value...does digital 
> audio add an illusory exchange value to an object? does it add use 
> value?, what does a fetishistic collector get when they buy a 
> SuperAudio mastering of Pink Floyd's 'Dark Side of the Moon'? what 
> type of status does that sort of object afford her?
> etc etc...
   In the case of Pink Floyd the SACD isn't going to be that different 
, it's going to sound like really good analogue equipment.

                                                                 -b


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