The New Fidelity: Mixing for the Digital Age
MP3s change the way we listen to - and make - music
Once only available on physical formats like vinyl records and CDs, today the latest music is available to consumers and fans through a wide variety of methods. Whether on MySpace or on iPods, one of the most popular ways for contemporary music fans to get their fix is the MP3.
As compressed sound files, MP3s have some distinct advantages over their physical counterparts. The small digital files allow for quick transfer speed over the Internet, and being able to store an artist’s entire discography on a pocket-sized device is something that would have been unimaginable a decade ago. To achieve this speed and portability, the data that reproduces the music must be compressed. By stripping away “non-essential” aspects of the sound, a music file can be reduced to one-tenth of its original, non-compressed size.
But this convenience requires sacrifice in quality. Those “non-essential” elements of songs are the same elements that artists painstakingly labor over in the studio in an effort to give their music texture and dynamics. Focusing on making the highs higher and the lows lower, many songs end up just sounding loud.
“We have at our disposal some of the best sound equipment with the ability to make great sound,” legendary mixing engineer Jimmy Douglass, whose credits include the Rolling Stones, Jay-Z, and Missy Elliot, told Full Sail students during a guest lecture on campus last month. “Unfortunately, most of the public is listening to music on a format that’s worse than cassette.”
Mastering engineer Herb Powers, who was also on hand for the lecture, expressed a similar distaste for the MP3’s effect on audio fidelity. “I was in the studio just a few weeks ago with [gospel artist] Kirk Franklin and he was bombarding me with all of these questions about the nuances of the music, and I finally just told him, ‘Everything you’re worried about, people won’t be able to hear,’” he told students. “I told him that his music is going to get played on lo-fi church systems and as MP3s on iPods. He was floored, but it’s the truth!”
While this shift in listening trends has been met with plenty of resistance from some, not everyone in the industry is vehemently against the MP3 movement. “It’s kind of hard to say if it’s better or worse – it’s just different,” Kori Anders, mix assistant at Patchwork Studios says. Since graduating Full Sail, Kori has worked on albums from T-Pain, Ciara, and Akon. “Obviously a lot of people love the analog sound, but you’ve got to look at what’s relevant today. When we mix, we keep in mind which format will be the predominant one and mix accordingly so that the mastering engineer will be able to work with it – like, ‘let’s keeps the hooks a little bit lower because I know they’re going to get raised up in mastering.’”
Full Sail Recording Arts grad Michael Makowski, who has recorded with artists such as Common and Kanye West and was an assistant engineer on Amy Winehouse’s GRAMMY®-winning Back to Black, also attests to studios catering to other formats when mixing. “Ringtones are such a newfound wealth to labels and artists these days. Kanye will take music he’s working on and put it through a program that turns the song into a ringtone, and he’ll play it on his cell phone in the studio just to see how it comes out,” he shares.
Michael indicates that though the way we listen to music may be demanding more and more compression, measures can still be taken to ensure that fidelity doesn’t suffer. “As an engineer, I’m always trying to use the best mic or preamp to get the best sound. There are certain artists, like Christina Aguilera, who will convert a song into MP3 format in the studio and do a separate MP3 mix right there, so that the quality is the best that it can possibly be.”
Powers went a step further, indicating that the power to preserve the quality of music lies in the hands of the consumer. “From the consumer, to the artist, to the engineer, let’s champion the form and the sound,” he urged students. “I have nothing against [digital] content delivery … [but] encode at a higher rate, and buy hard drives because they’re cheap as hell! I remember when two gigs cost me a thousand dollars – now you can get that on an iPhone. Just buy more hard drives and fill them up with bigger files!”
As compressed sound files, MP3s have some distinct advantages over their physical counterparts. The small digital files allow for quick transfer speed over the Internet, and being able to store an artist’s entire discography on a pocket-sized device is something that would have been unimaginable a decade ago. To achieve this speed and portability, the data that reproduces the music must be compressed. By stripping away “non-essential” aspects of the sound, a music file can be reduced to one-tenth of its original, non-compressed size.
But this convenience requires sacrifice in quality. Those “non-essential” elements of songs are the same elements that artists painstakingly labor over in the studio in an effort to give their music texture and dynamics. Focusing on making the highs higher and the lows lower, many songs end up just sounding loud.
“We have at our disposal some of the best sound equipment with the ability to make great sound,” legendary mixing engineer Jimmy Douglass, whose credits include the Rolling Stones, Jay-Z, and Missy Elliot, told Full Sail students during a guest lecture on campus last month. “Unfortunately, most of the public is listening to music on a format that’s worse than cassette.”
Mastering engineer Herb Powers, who was also on hand for the lecture, expressed a similar distaste for the MP3’s effect on audio fidelity. “I was in the studio just a few weeks ago with [gospel artist] Kirk Franklin and he was bombarding me with all of these questions about the nuances of the music, and I finally just told him, ‘Everything you’re worried about, people won’t be able to hear,’” he told students. “I told him that his music is going to get played on lo-fi church systems and as MP3s on iPods. He was floored, but it’s the truth!”
While this shift in listening trends has been met with plenty of resistance from some, not everyone in the industry is vehemently against the MP3 movement. “It’s kind of hard to say if it’s better or worse – it’s just different,” Kori Anders, mix assistant at Patchwork Studios says. Since graduating Full Sail, Kori has worked on albums from T-Pain, Ciara, and Akon. “Obviously a lot of people love the analog sound, but you’ve got to look at what’s relevant today. When we mix, we keep in mind which format will be the predominant one and mix accordingly so that the mastering engineer will be able to work with it – like, ‘let’s keeps the hooks a little bit lower because I know they’re going to get raised up in mastering.’”
Encode at a higher rate and buy hard drives because they're cheap!
Herb Powers
Michael indicates that though the way we listen to music may be demanding more and more compression, measures can still be taken to ensure that fidelity doesn’t suffer. “As an engineer, I’m always trying to use the best mic or preamp to get the best sound. There are certain artists, like Christina Aguilera, who will convert a song into MP3 format in the studio and do a separate MP3 mix right there, so that the quality is the best that it can possibly be.”
Powers went a step further, indicating that the power to preserve the quality of music lies in the hands of the consumer. “From the consumer, to the artist, to the engineer, let’s champion the form and the sound,” he urged students. “I have nothing against [digital] content delivery … [but] encode at a higher rate, and buy hard drives because they’re cheap as hell! I remember when two gigs cost me a thousand dollars – now you can get that on an iPhone. Just buy more hard drives and fill them up with bigger files!”
