We are in a sense at the mercy of the choice of the recording
engineer.
In my opinion, that is their right, along with the recording artist. I figure that they intend it to sound a
certain way, and that is their sound. Who am I to tell them it's not correct or balanced?
You're the person who paid good money to listen to the disc that's who!
Heh! You you do bring
up an interesting point which has long intrigued me. Recorded music has the distinction of being one
of the few art forms where the end user has so much control over the presentation. In other art
forms the artist has near-total control over what the audience perceives. A painting in an art gallery
has few variables in regards to its presentation. Lighting would be the main issue and then perhaps
surrounding walls. Same thing goes for sculpture. A theater play or live music performance leaves
little control for the viewer\listener. An author writes the same words everyone reading the book
sees. A motion picture does not allow the viewer any adjustments. Home movies would be the only
other art form where the end user has more control over the picture and sound.
Still, the end user cannot fundamentally alter the art, and I do not feel that any of the usual
adjustments made to an audio system compromise the work to the point of it being unrecognizable.
No that it isn't possible; certainly you could pipe the music through a fuzz pedal or pitch shifter, but
that's highly unlikely. Since we cannot ever hope to know what the artist intended for us to hear
without speaking with them personally it seems only fair to be able to adjust the playback of the
reproduction to our taste. A few little boosts or cuts to certain frequency bands does not seem to
undermine the intent of the artist in my opinion!
Isn't it ironic that audiophiles have this moral aversion to tone controls and yet they do everything
else besides to control\adjust\tweak the sound of their systems? I find it humorous. You aren't
supposed to have two tone knobs on your preamp because all your audiophile friends will laugh and
point fingers, but you can allegedly swap around cables all day which are supposedly altering the
frequency response. Sounds like a "tone control" to me. Not to mention speakers; on what pair of
speakers did the artist intend for you to listen to the music? What kind of amp should you use? How
big should the room be? I've never seen such "minimum system requirements" on a CD! They don't
make such demands of the listener. The recording is open to adjustments!
Even recording studios take great pains to make their control rooms sound consistent, but there are
still going to be differences from one to the next. So since there's no absolutely standard against
which to judge the recording I don't see where something as insignificant as a tone control should be
considered a fundamentally flawed device.
