[microsound] politics of digital audio redux

[Kim Cascone <kim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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?
	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.

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 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...