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October, 2006
 
Resolution and Resolve
How Seriously Do You Take Your Music? by Jonathan Wyner The basic premise of this piece is that you, as an artist, engineer or producer, are passionate about what you are doing. There is something inside that is motivating you to attempt to succeed at something where therebs a low probability of success as defined by your bank account and your ego. Knowing that, you are moving ahead. The "average" artist will make two or three albums before deciding whether to persevere or call it quits. This represents untold hours of work, learning the craft, recording, mixing, mastering, marketing. In other words, you work HARD to create something that represents your best efforts to communicate your/their vision. What does the resolution of the recording have to do with it? And why should I bother recording at a 24 bit resolution? I mean, MP3 is good enough, or at least 44.1/16 bits is good enough, right? Wrong. There are two important reasons for recording using a reasonably high fidelity/resolution. Reason 1: Historically, professional media has been one or two generations more advanced than that which is in common use by consumers. Let's say you record at 44.1/16 bit resolution. That's the standard "acceptable" consumer fidelity in use for the last 20 years (CD playback). Let's say that four years from now, you have moved ahead in your career (or a client of yours has) and we have moved to a new, higher-resolution carrier, be it Hi Def optical disc of some sort (HD DVD or some such). There's a demand for your music that justifies the re-release in this new, higher-resolution standard. But you didn't bother to record in a higher resolution. Sure, you could simply say it's got that "vintage sound" of the last millennium, but seriously, you put yourself in the position of having to make excuses before you even begin your marketing campaign. And here's the sad fact: The additional effort and cost in recording in AT LEAST 44.1/24 bit or even 88.2/24 is likely nothing at all beyond the cost of a few more megabytes of memory. A simple sample rate conversion pass on your mixes and you are ready for CD release, but your archive/master version sounds better and is ready for future use/release. Reason 2: If you buy the argument that recording at a higher resolution requires little to no additional expense or effort, I will assert the following. By using a lower resolution, you lose some of the sound, and therefore some of the impact, of the music. You lose part of what you are trying to communicate, part of your vision. Assuming that you expect your music to represent you as well as possible, how is that acceptable? Of course, if you record/mix/master/distribute/market/spend your life savings so that onou record at 44.1/16 bit resolution. That's the standard "acceptable" consumer fidelity in use for the last 20 years (CD playback). Let's say that four years from now, you have moved ahead in your career (or a client of yours has) and we have moved to a new, higher-resolution carrier, be it Hi Def optical disc of some sort (HD DVD or some such). There's a demand for your music that justifies the re-release in this new, higher-resolution standard. But you didn't bother to record in a higher resolution. Sure, you could simply say it's got that "vintage sound" of the last millennium, but seriously, you put yourself in the position of having to make excuses before you even begin your marketing campaign. And here's the sad fact: The additional effort and cost in recording in AT LEAST 44.1/24 bit or even 88.2/24 is likely nothing at all beyond the cost of a few more megabytes of memory. A simple sample rate conversion pass on your mixes and you are ready for CD release, but your archive/master version sounds better and is ready for future use/release. I am not saying that recording at the highest fidelity possible gives you a greater chance of succeeding, or even that you could necessarily tell the difference between 44.1k/16 bit and 320k MP3 audio in a casual listen through your boom box. What I am saying is that it eliminates some reasons for not succeeding. The state of technology is such that we have put the tools to make recordings (see sidebar) at an astonishingly high fidelity in reach of anyone with a credit card with a low credit limit. That means there is no reason to not make those stellar recordings. Product Spotlight And now therebs really no excuse to not record in hi-fidelity: M Audio (www.m-audio.com) released the MicroTrack 24/96, a nifty, fits in your hand (4.3" x 2.4" x 1.1", 4.9 oz.) recording device that is versatile enough to be a songwriterbs sketchpad or a backup recorder when making a super hi-fidelity location recording. In short, it will record in resolutions beginning with relatively lo-fi MP3 and ending with full res 24 bit 96kHz sampling. It has analog inputs and a digital spdif input so you can use your high-end converters and send the result directly to this recorder. It will record in wav or aif (or MP3) directly to a flash card and you can move files to your PC either by a direct USB connection or by moving the flash card. Real-time playback is by analog only with built-in level control only, using either RCA out or the headphone output. This device can move between studio and location with ease. It includes editing software. Accessories include a miniature plug-in stereo mic on a stereo mini-plug. Jonathan Wyner has mastered more than 4000 CDs during the last 21 years, spanning every musical idiom (and some nonmusical idioms as well!). He is an adjunct professor at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Mass. Credits range from the extremely well known (James Taylor, David Bowie, Aerosmith, Kiri Te Kanawa) to the more idiosyncratic and independent artists/labels. Jonathan prides himself on the fact that he is among the elite group of mastering engineers to have run a marathon in under three hours repeatedly. Visit www.m-works.com. Jonathan Wyner has mastered more than 4000 CDs during the last 21 years, spanning every musical idiom (and some nonmusical idioms as well!). He is an adjunct professor at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Mass. Credits range from the extremely well known (James Taylor, David Bowie, Aerosmith, Kiri Te Kanawa) to the more idiosyncratic and independent artists/labels. Jonathan prides himself on the fact that he is among the elite group of mastering engineers to have run a marathon in under three hours repeatedly. Visit www.m-works.com. |