In the recording class I've taught for over 15 years, I usually start with a trick question for the students: What piece of equipment is most important in making a sound system sound good? Answers typically cover the obvious candidates like the microphone, the mixing console and the speaker. My answer? That organic hunk of wet wrinkled protoplasm that sits between our ears. Our brains not only make it possible to learn how to operate audio gear, but, more importantly, determine how we evaluate the audible results of what we do with all those knobs and buttons.
My interest in that complex and contrary organ began as soon as my own brain developed enough horsepower to contemplate itself. I was drawn to the study of psychology, which I pursued through the completion of three university degrees, only to toss away all that prodigious effort in favor of chasing a musical (and, ultimately, an audio) career. Crazy musician jokes aside, there is a compelling link between audio and psychology. Both fields sit (often uncomfortably) at the crossroads of hard science and black magic.
In the case of audio, the point where science fades and voodoo begins is around the eardrum, where air pressure is changed into nervous impulses. Up to that threshold, sound propagation is pretty much a matter of physics, and the rules and measurements are well defined and predictable. Once that boundary is crossed, we enter the murky realm of psychoacoustics. Here, freed from the constraints of logic, our core reptile brains pass judgment upon our auditory perceptions. The results aren't always consistent.
Often our judgments are colored by preconscious beliefs and imperatives. Thus, in the early 90s, my brain was completely convinced that recordings made on my $60,000 analog 2-inch tape recorder were far superior to anything recorded on the far-more-affordable Alesis ADAT. Now that I've sold my studio, I'm convinced that, in a double-blind test, I could not reliably distinguish between a digital recording and an analog one.
Of course, I've never performed such a test. Such objective measurement attempts are just not standard practice in an audio industry that thrives on psychoacoustical mythology and marketing spin. I don't mean to imply that our cherished beliefs (many of which are subject to vigorous debate) are all hallucinatory; but I do wish to underscore the need for more testing and verification.
In fact, not only is much of what we believe and do highly subjective and unreliable (i.e., variable from one measurement to another), we may not even agree on the standards to which we aspire. Has anyone reading this ever tweaked a sound system to his perceived standard of near perfection, only to have someone else roll her eyes or cover his ears? And how about the audio placebo effect - maybe you've tweaked some setting, heard the improvement, and then realized that the control you changed wasn't even in the signal path?
Generally, we accept what our brains tell us, regardless of factors such as acclimation (if you listen to something long enough, it starts to sound right), comparison (when what you hear now is influenced by what you just heard), and fatigue (when you've had enough hearing for one day). And then we use those perceptions and judgments to make purchasing decisions that can cost many thousands of dollars.
The next time you feel the urge to declare that tube compression is always "warmer" than optical-based compression, or that Brand X sounds way better than Brand Y, consider that your opinion, however passionate, may not only differ from someone else's, it may also differ from your own judgment at another time, when your brain chemistry is a bit different because you ordered pepperoni on that pizza. My point is that much of what we believe about what we hear has not been verified. We can measure and validate such things as loudness, reverberation time and frequency content - but we've yet to agree about what it all means once our brains get ahold of it.
I guess I ended up being a psychologist after all.
MORE INFORMATION
Dr. Robert McPeek is international director for Sabine Inc. He has over 20 years of experience as a producer-engineer-musician and has recorded hundreds of artists.
This article first appeared in the March, 2000 issue of Sound & Video Contractor. Visit their website at www.svconline.com
Music without words means leaving behind the mind. And leaving behind the mind is meditation.
Meditation returns you to the source. And the source of all is sound. — Kabir
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