It's more about a trade off, or rather a complex mesh of trade-offs. The danger is that in trying to fix one particular *kind* of flaw, one becomes obsessed with it and fails to notice that one is introducing a different kind of flaw. And that process sometimes starts because different people are simply more sensitive to different kinds of flaws.
When CD was new, it was thought by some to be a "perfect" medium, because they couldn't hear the kinds of flaws they were so sick of hearing on analogue media. For some the bug-bear was vinyl surface noise, for some (like me) it was the wobbly pitches and "roughness" of analogue tape. It took a while for people to train their ears to not *expect* those old kinds of flaws, and be pleasantly surprised by the lack of them, before they could begin to notice that CD has flaws of its own... While other people, who weren't particularly bothered by the old analogue problems, nonetheless noticed that something sounded "different" and therefore "wrong" about their favourite albums in this new format. In some cases, what was happening was that the more accurate reproduction *exposed* errors and inconsistencies in the original recordings that had been helpfully disguised by a consistant mask of "analogueyness" in the previous editions: Even today, for example, there's often value in deliberately adding a very low level, but *consistent* layer of white or pink noise to a recording, to cover up intermittent bursts of random noise that weren't supposed to be there in the first place, and whihc catch the ear if surrounded by perfect silence. And in other cases, it's true taht the master recordings had been prepared with the expectation that they would be transferred to vinyl, and therefore had engineered-in compensations for the expected effects of that format. Whenteh same masters we transferred directly to CD, rather than re-mastered, the result was quite simply not what the mastering engineer had intended. It was, in a word, *wrong*.
That's reproduction. When it comes to performance, again we have trade-offs: If your personal bug-bear is pitch accuracy on your vocals, you might spend 75 takes getting it closer and closer to perfection, while being oblivious to the fact that your fellow band members and your engineer are getting progressively more bored, irritated and lackadaisical in a way that will adversely affect *their* performances. Or, realising that problem, you might resort to electronic pitch correction instead, but place the job in the hands of an engineer who hasn't yet realised (as perhaps you haven't yourself) that what excites your fans about your unique vocal style is the particular way you slide into the start of each note... He tweaks his nobs and creates the "pitch perfect" performance you wanted, but in the process unwittingly changes the shape of your trade-mark slide into something that sounds just like everybody else's generic run-of-the-mill slide.
Bottom line: One person's "flaw" is another's "interesting feature". And what each person sees as being one or the other can change over time, depending on their degree of exposure to the genre, or the artist, or the medium, and where there attention is focussed at the time.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2009-11-15 02:47 pm (UTC)When CD was new, it was thought by some to be a "perfect" medium, because they couldn't hear the kinds of flaws they were so sick of hearing on analogue media. For some the bug-bear was vinyl surface noise, for some (like me) it was the wobbly pitches and "roughness" of analogue tape. It took a while for people to train their ears to not *expect* those old kinds of flaws, and be pleasantly surprised by the lack of them, before they could begin to notice that CD has flaws of its own... While other people, who weren't particularly bothered by the old analogue problems, nonetheless noticed that something sounded "different" and therefore "wrong" about their favourite albums in this new format. In some cases, what was happening was that the more accurate reproduction *exposed* errors and inconsistencies in the original recordings that had been helpfully disguised by a consistant mask of "analogueyness" in the previous editions: Even today, for example, there's often value in deliberately adding a very low level, but *consistent* layer of white or pink noise to a recording, to cover up intermittent bursts of random noise that weren't supposed to be there in the first place, and whihc catch the ear if surrounded by perfect silence. And in other cases, it's true taht the master recordings had been prepared with the expectation that they would be transferred to vinyl, and therefore had engineered-in compensations for the expected effects of that format. Whenteh same masters we transferred directly to CD, rather than re-mastered, the result was quite simply not what the mastering engineer had intended. It was, in a word, *wrong*.
That's reproduction. When it comes to performance, again we have trade-offs: If your personal bug-bear is pitch accuracy on your vocals, you might spend 75 takes getting it closer and closer to perfection, while being oblivious to the fact that your fellow band members and your engineer are getting progressively more bored, irritated and lackadaisical in a way that will adversely affect *their* performances. Or, realising that problem, you might resort to electronic pitch correction instead, but place the job in the hands of an engineer who hasn't yet realised (as perhaps you haven't yourself) that what excites your fans about your unique vocal style is the particular way you slide into the start of each note... He tweaks his nobs and creates the "pitch perfect" performance you wanted, but in the process unwittingly changes the shape of your trade-mark slide into something that sounds just like everybody else's generic run-of-the-mill slide.
Bottom line: One person's "flaw" is another's "interesting feature". And what each person sees as being one or the other can change over time, depending on their degree of exposure to the genre, or the artist, or the medium, and where there attention is focussed at the time.