Sound or Vision?
June 16, 2012 Category: Articles 8 Comments 
Imagine you are invited by the inhabitants of planet Zarg to travel with them to explore the universe. But this opportunity comes at a price. You will never be able to return to Earth. However, you will be able to keep in touch with family and friends. Unfortunately the intergalactic communication technology does not allow sound and vision together. You have to choose sound only, or vision only. Which medium do you choose?
It’s difficult to understand why this simple thought experiment (or variations of it) has not been part of main stream multimedia education.
During the mid 1960′s, I was in my late teens and early 20′s. Lenard audio was the primary provider of sound for concerts and outdoor musical events in Australia. Many US and UK sound suppliers tell humorous stories of this early history.
Entrepreneurs were willing to provide large budgets for lighting but were resistant to spending money on sound. Entrepreneurs were often ignorant in understanding power requirements for lighting and sound at concerts. A single extension lead from a neighbouring farm house or from a toilet block in a city park, if we were lucky.
A common conversation with entrepreneurs, 30 minutes before a concert went like this – “You can have sound or lighting, but you can’t have both”. Long silent pause was the response, followed by “Oh”. With nothing further to be said, the lighting crew packed up their gear and went home, and the show went on.
Many of these events, where no lighting could be used, were the most memorable concerts of all. Candles and torches were used on stage and sometimes ingenious techniques, removing car head lamps and using them as spots.
There was always sufficient power for sound, therefore loudness was not a limitation. But strangely, most bands played quietly. Every instrument could be heard directly. Between songs you could hear a pin drop and a close intimacy evolved between the audience and musicians. Unfortunately, these magical live performances, without lighting, were rarely recorded and have been lost forever.
Another common experience, during this era, was going to a friend’s home in the evening, with the latest Eagles, Zappa or Beetles album. The smell of incense sticks, soft lighting from candles and a bong with a bag of dope. Rarely were electric lights turned on, and if they were, it was indirect and subtle. The TV was always off.
Years later, experiments were done to investigate the psychological effects of sound and lighting. The results are inconclusive, but one simple understanding did evolve. Vision, therefore lighting, dominates all our other senses. Taste, smell, touch and hearing become diminished in varying degrees, in the presence of intense bright flashing or moving lighting.
The survival of our species is understandably dependent on our sense of vision. Looking for food, watching out for hungry carnivores, mobility, looking where we are going, driving a vehicle etc.
But in the stillness and blackness of night, hearing becomes our dominant sense. Sitting around a camp fire, singing and telling stories is part of our evolutionary heritage. Hearing is the sense that uniquely, through language, gives us a self consciousness, from which we able to question the meaning of existence and create and enjoy music.
But in a consumerist, self-obsessed world, where time is limited a commodity, we are forced into competitive behaviour to survive and our humanity becomes diminished. The visual sense, psychologically and economically, dominates our lives.
The pro-audio profession is obsessed with brand image and model numbers. Live concerts have become spectacle events where lighting is the dominant medium. Rarely do people close their eyes and just listen to the music.
Domestic audiophiles are obsessed with golden cables. Our discernment for hearing is diminished to such an extent that small low fidelity speaker systems, reproducing hyper compressed recordings, often from a poor resolution, low bit rate MP3 format, while watching a video screen, is what most people do.
How can this be turned around so full fidelity, un-compressed sound can again be the primary medium for enjoying music?
I found this blog article to be thought provoking and something worth replying to, and so I will…
You managed to touch on various points throughout your post that, I too would like to discuss.
Firstly, I feel the reason why the simple thought experiment you mentioned in the second paragraph is not something that is part of the mainstream multimedia consciousness is, for the simple reason that, like you later allude, sound – the essence of what we as listeners, engineers, producers, and creators of aural content use for a medium – is not the focus anymore.
We are all caught up with model numbers, colors, gui’s, screens, layouts, plugins, DAW’s, and so forth, that we forget about the very medium that we are working with.
In my opinion, the only way to ‘listen’ is to isolate. By this, i mean the only way to truly hear anything is to shut down the most powerful sense, vision.
I am still currently a student, and this is what I am living. Never has it been discussed, or shown, really, how exactly to ‘listen.’ No one has ever talked about the senses and/or how to heighten them (without ‘enhancements’)
As for my current listening techniques, I have two of them. I do what I call “true black” listening, which entails the use of a “mindfold mask” (www.mindfold.com). When you visit the link, this should be pretty self explanatory, but it should be understood that this mask is a true black-out experience which, does exactly what we want to do to achieve a more acute sense of hearing (minus the drugs!)
My second approach, when I don’t have the mask, requires a ‘listening pose’ which uses both hands pressed together as if I were praying, while placed over my nose. Perhaps my explanation isn’t the clearest, but the idea is to try and look at my 5th finger (pinky) and, after awhile my vision will start to blur and I basically don’t see anything anymore – thus heightened hearing. While in this pose I try and control my breathing and minimize movement. It is almost like meditation (you’ll want to be on that level to appreciate anything, really)
It is really important for me to have no visual distractions while mixing music. I have a hotkey setup for my computer monitors so that they can go into “sleep mode” while not affecting the software. It is important to not be distracted with lights and colors, and to be focused on listening.
I also have ‘blacked out’ my listening room in the sense that there is no pollution from led’s and so forth so that I can simply just sit in the sweet spot and listen to music. This is my preferred method of listening as the sound feels to ‘appear’ out of nowhere. I don’t need a mask or pose to listen critically and enjoy the experience.
Why mention all this? Well, for one it is important to me to have finally found several methods to listen to music for different situations, but I also feel it can help others too who want to listen more deeply. I feel a heavy part of working with audio is the desire for perfection or excellence in every aspect. It starts with the room, followed by the placement of the speakers, next the speakers, d/a converters/bit depth and sample rate, and finally the end user. There are so many aspects to getting a good sound, yet I feel many skimp over them.
In order to turn things around I feel there needs to be a two-fold approach. We need to give people a reason to be able to sit and enjoy music – this starts with the hyper compression. Being in my mid-twenties, I can unfortunately say I had missed the whole vinyl era and pre-digital recording era. Having had the privilege of hanging out with a much older friend (64), it was from him and our listening sessions together that I began to understand the effects of ‘modern compression’ and ear fatigue. He simply can’t get through them like he would a warm vinyl. Hyper compression is our first problem.
Secondly, I don’t feel that many people have actually experienced true stereo and understood what is really happening in stereo. There was no greater joy experienced than the awareness of the phantom center and the illusion created through stereophonic listening. I just recently showed my dad some music through my setup and he said “cool, theres a speaker in the center” and I knew immediately what he was talking about. Needless to say his appreciation for what was happening, as well as the education that followed it, created a newfound appreciation for focused listening. We need to educate and excite people about stereo recording. This cannot be experienced in a car, with headphones, or from any other location than the center-point between two speakers – sorry.
Thirdly, and finally, I feel that more promotion for sight depravation needs to be made. Sight depravation, in my opinion, would best fit firstly in a classical music environment.
Imagine going to a fancy hall and being handed a mask (much like being handed a pair of 3-d glasses if we were in a movie), and with this mask you can sit in your seat and truly ‘listen’ – like mentioned earlier – and experience the sound in a whole new level. This can be further promoted by other bands and acts where all the lights go out in the venues and the only thing that matters is sound (in healthy levels…)
There’s so much that can be done to get people into Hi-fi sound. Youtube and digital media are here to stay and ‘people’ will forever want to ‘see’ the video as well as ‘listen’ to the audio. What we understand already is that they are doing more seeing that listening. Through, what I feel needs to be done, the three steps, and more, I think people would be able to endure music longer, have a more intimate experience with music, and finally be able to appreciate something they have taken for granted for so long.
You should feast your ears on some Lenard Audio Systems.
I’ve had bands go on in the dark because I never bothered to switch the lights on & then I’d switch the lights on so the band can see what they’re doing. I’m a sound engineer. The best live gigs don’t have much of a light show on offer.
My job is to get the music out of PA.
I’m lucky.
I get to hear music in full dynamics and in full range.
Wether analogue or digital.
A good 24bit digital audio device or file is as good as any analogue device or recording.
And a good analogue device or recording is as good as any digital device or file.
It’s capturing the music that counts when recording and mixing.
Volume wars (hyper compression) is terrible thing.
It should be more about getting more dynamic than less dynamic.
All you need to do is turn it up on playback.
This was precisely the answers I’d been searching for. Amazing blog. Incredibly inspirational! Your posts are so helpful and detailed. The links you feature are also very useful too. Thanks a lot
Keep functioning ,fantastic job!
Digital Mastering.
Mastering originally is to transfer a a finished mixed recording to vinyl, Radio or other medium.
Without going into many details, mastering to vinyl is an art in itself and requires a full understanding of the machinery used to cut a record to be able to do the task.
Mastering for radio playback required a knowledge of what can & can’t be transmitted. The analogue radio only has a small dynamic range, so the signal required compression to reduce it’s dynamic range so it could be aired with less distortion.
Now days we typically record & mix digitally & mastered digitally.
All the same medium.
This negates the original use of mastering.
What goes to the mastering engineer is typically the finished product from the studio how the artist likes it.
Mastering Engineers & there clients have developed a thing called volume wars, where they’re hyper compressing tracks so that they can be heard above other tracks & can be played back on small sound system with limited capability.
This comes at a sacrifice.
The dynamic range is reduced dramatically.
So we then play such a track on a sound system capable of full range & full dynamics & we still miss out on the full glory of what came out of the studio.
I believe that compression should be at the playback device end and not at the mastering stage.
Small devices, (iphones etc) should have there own compression built in and most do these days anyway.
Medium size devices will need less compression than smaller devices.
Large systems capable of full range and full dynamics need no compression at all.
Then when I listen to a track on a decent sound system the track will sound as good or better than what came out of the studio.
Then mastering will only be required to tweek the track in a better listening environment than the studio it was mixed in.
Otherwise it will be redundant.
If producers & artists & manufacturers can get there heads around that then the world will be safer from bad sound.
The same applies to live sound systems.
Feel free to ask any questions.
Mr Greg, you said it right.
I am retired, sit back in my easy chair, put on the HiFi, lean back and all I hear is overcompressed/limited/clipping shit.
(few exeptions of course)
Lucky to have conserved all the vinyl from 1955 on, even some 78′s. Until mid sixties and before stereo and solid state amps listening fatigue didn’t exist. After heavy compression introduced from the sixties recorded music went hill down, year by year thing were getting worse.
Most new CD’s from early 90′ies on don’t give music, it’s noise.
It’s nice to know there is someone out there who knows too.
Greeting, Huub.
“diminished to such an extent that small low fidelity speaker systems, reproducing hyper compressed recordings, often from a poor resolution, low bit rate MP3 format”
It is sad, I sometimes wonder why I want to build a “good” pair of speakers with the new material almost all compressed to nothing and no-one to listen with me who seems able to notice the audible difference between “Hi-Fi” and HTiB
I would chose visual commuication, words can be conveyed visually, through sign language printed word etc. The visual communication would be more important to me. ALthough I woud probably pass on the trip.