Telephones or High Fidelity

Written 6/20/2017

Sitting in the Chicago Amtrak station, surrounded by incomprehensible public address messages, OSHA-defying damaging noise levels from vehicles, police and Amtrak walky-talkies, people talking and shouting, and other machinery and equipment, I’m contemplating the death of the concept of high fidelity. While the bullshit end of the professional and audiophile audio industry are pretending to provide some sort of improved value from vinyl and high-def audio, 99+% of the public could not care less. It’s obvious in their everyday lives. The best evidence that a person doesn’t care about sound quality is the persistence of cellular telephones in their lives. Bandwidth-wise, a cell phone is about five generations down from 1950’s AM radio quality and not much better than an old Edison cylinder recording system. But that doesn’t seem to bother anyone. Except me, anyway.

I have friends who will speculate for hours on the fidelity difference between a half-dozen decent capacitor microphones and will carry on this conversation over a communications system that would make Patrick Stewart sound like Donald Duck. Asking for a repeat of a phrase a half-dozen times because the phone garbled that information into nonsense doesn’t bother them at all, but they pretend they can discern a 1dB difference between two microphones into a high quality preamplifier and recording system. I don’t buy it. If garbage in, garbage out doesn’t bother you on a daily basis, opining about one form of nearly perfect reproduction over another is pure self-delusion.

Fine tuned senses don’t work that way. Use ‘em or lose ‘em. Be picky (rightly) everywhere or be adult enough to admit you just don’t care.

Years ago, I changed our home telephone to a DSL-connected system from Ooma, on the advice of an engineer with whom I worked at the time and a small business man who was simply trying to save money. Immediately, I heard a dramatic improvement in sound quality over the hard line system we had previously from Comcast. Still, when I talk to many business tech or customer service or sales people, I’m impressed with how clear the audio quality is. When I get a call from an individual or, worse, a phone solicitor who is obviously on a cell phone, my first response is to hang up and see if they can call back on a better line. My second response is to downgrade my opinion of the person with whom I am having the conversation. Between the low fidelity, in the best moments, and the cut-outs, glitches, noises, and distortion during the worst, I am hard-pressed to imagine why anyone would consider a cell phone to be anything but an emergency communications device. Honestly, I’d be nervous about hoping to convey emergency information on a 911 call via cell phone, but if I’m lying in a ditch freezing to death or bleeding out, it’s probably the best I can hope for. If I’m home where I could be making the call from a decent telephone system, I can not imagine picking up a cell phone.

So, here’s my point. Pick one: your concern and obsession for high fidelity or your cell phone addiction. You can’t do both without making me laugh at your ridiculousness. If you can tolerate your cell phone, but whine about MP3 compression, you are only fooling yourself.

Who Me?

One of my least favorite things about teaching anything to modern kids is the fact that they appear to believe they deserve to have information served to them in tiny chunks that are "digestable" without effort. Of course, the current generation of "teachers" appears to believe this is a goal, too, so you can't really blame the kids. You can't. I can.

One of the funniest people I've listened to since George Carlin died, Jim Jefferies, made the statement that Americans are #27 in "education" but we're #1 in confidence. "We you're breeding stupid confident people. They're the worst employees in the f... world." I suspect he's right. In fact, everything I've learned about "education" in the last decade has convinced me he's an optimist.

The driving command in modern, especially for-profit, education is "retention." That's a polite psuedonym for "Don't let the suckers escape until we have all of their money." Of course the only want to "retain" kids who don't want to study and believe that being asked to keep their pants on is an unreasonable restriction is to dumb-down what passes for education until it barely passes the high standard for a decent bedtime story. Kids don't fail in this environment, but they don't really succeed, either. As Jefferies said, "You won't find out what the f... you're good at if they tell you you're good at f... everything." While our students are mostly mediocre at everything and exception at nothing, their grades don't reflect that at all. In fact 43% of all college grades are (wait for it) A's. That is freakin' insane. Seriously? 43% of today's college students are "exceptional" (the definition of an "A")? The most I can say about that is, "Horseshit."

The program in which I taught is called "Music Production." Like many, or most, colleges with a music program in the US, we're attempting to train students for the rapidly vanishing job of recording engineer or the nearly non-existent job of producer. Almost no one makes a living as a recording engineer these days. Hell, pretty much no one pays for music anymore. And they shouldn't. Most of what I hear on the radio is somewhere between bad elevator music and not-good-enough-for-Musac. The art of the songwriter is almost ancient history and has been replaced with monotone, monosyllabic, monophonic "rappers" (I know, I forgot the "c.") complaining about their two-year-old Mercedes or their latest bimbo or their gun.

If this career path did actually exist, it has only EVER existed for incredibly focused, highly technical or musical or personable people with an amazing work ethic and exceptional perseverance. However, most of the children who are pursuing this path seem to believe the most important thing in a recording studio is their latest text message. It takes them no less than 45 minutes to setup a simple drum kit, a bass DI, and mic a guitar amp; while doing all of that task poorly and in complete disorganization. For reference, I can setup all of that, start and document a session, and be ready for a first take in no more than 15 minutes by myself. Four of these kids at their peak performance couldn't do the same in an hour without constant assistance and babysitting. Career-wise, they are doomed. They will never earn a nickel in a recording studio until they decide what is really important; both in the room and in their lives.

Earlier this year, a friend who is an excellent songwriter and a pretty decent musician volunteered to be a studio guinea pig and came to the school for a pair of two-hour sessions. I did the performance room setup, because I'd promised him we'd accomplish something that day. I asked the kids to simply setup the session and prepare for 3 microphones to be used through the session. When I finished my part of the setup, I had to go into the control room and do the other 1/10th of the job because four of six students were busy playing with their cell phones.

I have no idea how to make it clear the level of disrespect for the artist this behavior demonstrates. Honestly, I am clueless as to how anyone could expect respect themselves after failing that miserably at the basic job; the easiest aspect of the job (and the only portion of the job that most "music technology" schools bother to teach; i.e. Pro Tools Certification). Obviously, I'm part of the problem because a good teacher would be able to get through the ADHD bullshit and make it clear to these kiddies that they are looking at a life in a Wal-Mart uniform if they can't perform any better than that. Hell, Wal-Mart probably has higher standards than that.The Army doesn't, maybe they can be a recording engineer in the Army?

Cellphone Focus

There has been a lot of talk among educators about how to reach the dumb-phone addicted. This short video might be a decent demonstration. Show the little morons how staring at some brainless "tweet" when you're supposed to be working is a great way to crush a brand new career before it gets started. One instructor noted that, after explaining his "no electronics in class" rules, he simply explains that "If I see you staring at your crotch and smiling, you're gone." AJ could have used a little of that tough love.

This was AJ Clemente's first (and last) day on the job. In fact, I'd imagine his hopes and dreams of being a television broadcaster probably went down the toilet with his over-priced, under-disiplined education. On-line, since he won't be on screen anytime soon, Clemente said, "Unfortunately KFYRTV has decided to let me go. Thank you to them and everyone in North Dakota for the opportunity and everyone for the support." In response to some comments about his "misfortune," Clemente followed that up with "I'm a free agent. Cant help but laugh at myself and stay positive.Wish i didnt trip over my 'Freaking Shoes' out of the gate."

I'd feel sorry for him if he wasn't obviously a brainless little rich kid. He has a degree in something-or-other from West Virginia University, a state diploma mill with the usual low education standards we've come to expect from the southeast. What do you want to bet that school hands out A's at the usual 70%-of-all-grades rate? Literacy is, clearly, not one of WVU's strong points; either is a decent work ethic.

To illustrate the near-complete breakdown of society, a variety of morning-moron shows "invited" this idiot on to national television to explain how his tiny brain works. Obviously, owning a television is an invitation to become mentally disabled. My wife can put up with hours of these chittering chimpanzees, but she's 3/4 deaf. I can't stand more than a few seconds of that awful noise without wanting to toss the televisions from our house (probably grounds for divorce in most states).