An interesting misconception about sound quality

Well, that should go without saying, that PROPER and CAREFUL dithering and SRC is, or can be transparent. Yes, one must know what to listen for, and you really need to A/B to the source to tell where trhe differences are. The end listener who has no access to the source will most likely not know.

Good thing you mention DAW. Not all are created equal as far as SRC and dither options and quality are concerned. Some don't even belong on the market, as far as i'm concerned. I also never heard of a pro using software-based dither and SRC, but i'm sure someone, somewhere is.

 

And, it doesn't help when the companies don't give you any of the old product to choose from. See how fast those older Chicago CDs disappeared in favor of the smashed, smeared remasters?

 

Heh! The next time I do a project for someone, i'm going to give them the properly mastered version and purposely smash another version to hell, just like a commercial CD, and see which one they like.

 

In a sense!

I don't mean to prolong the debate, if that's what it is, especially when I agree that we're pretty close in many ways, but in reply I'd say that the Forum goals are to a) champion the cause of excellent mastering and b) teach people the basics and the fine points of how to distinguish excellent mastering from mediocre mastering from poor mastering. If there's no standard outside our own subjectivity, if it all comes down to taste, then neither of those goals makes any sense.

None of this is to say that taste and subjectivity play no part in the process of mastering or listening. They play a crucial part, of course. That's why we can agree that two CDs, say, are mastered very well, but prefer one to the other. If one person prefers the sound of vocals on BBC mini-monitors like the LS3/5A, while another really likes the Quad sound, while another swears by JBL studio monitors, I wouldn't call any of those choices "wrong." But I would maintain that we can tell the difference between good mastering and poor mastering, just as we can tell the difference between good speakers and poor speakers, regardless of taste. Otherwise, we have no way to say that the cheap speakers in a GPX "all in one" system are bad. We can only say "I don't like that sound."

Aristotle said that the purpose of education was to train us to love that which was truly good. If what is "truly good" is only a subjective matter, then education becomes mere indoctrination. We don't learn anything; we're merely trained (by some powerful person, say) to have the same preferences. That doesn't mean that we can all agree on what is truly good, or that our judgment of what is truly good is reliable or utterly objective. It does mean that we have to believe that at least some important part of our judgment, maybe even our experience, is bigger than we are.

This Forum is a wonderful example of many people who love music coming together to talk, not just about themselves, but about something much bigger than any of us, something we all want more of.