Older folks mastering music - are they hearing everything?

We have a sound engineer in Argentina by the name of Mario Breuer. Every record mastered or worse yet, ¨remastered¨by this ***** sounds like utter kerrap. To add insult to injury right channels have no treble wahtsoever, which may stem from the fact that this old geezer hearing may be lopsided as feck. If I see this name credited on a cd/lp, I don't want it. Not even as a present.

 

How's your 4Khz ? That's where presbiacusics generally strikes first; a dip around that freq. that drags the others down as it becomes deeper with age. Upper treble is affected but initially not that agressively.

 

Never shown a problem with test tones. Above 12 or 13kHz I struggle to tell white noise with and without those frequencies consistently....can clearly hear test tones up to 15kHz and above that there's some roll off going on, I can hear it but I need a bit of a boost.

 

Well I'm not a professional mastering engineer, but I have made and mastered lots of recordings over the years. I am over 40 and have really tried to take care over the years to preserve my hearing, and I still can detect really subtle nuances and differences in mastering, so perhaps it's more down to perception and experience? I know that recordings I made 20-25 years ago do not now appear to sound dull or need 'brightening' - in fact, with experience I've gone back to those early recordings and to an extent have been able to fix their original flaws and make them sound better as a result - would be interesting to take a hearing test just to see, I'm sure my hearing will have deteriorated, but hopefully not too much...

 

It is my belief that test tones do not tell the whole story, of course we need some kind of a standard for testing....I guess. I just have problems with posters assumptions based solely on age, your post reaffirms my position. Professionals take care of their tools!

 

Last week a poster here called me --ahem --"Pops" ... and now this.

 

I can remember when I could easily hear the 15,750 Hz horizontal frequency from TV sets I used to work on back in the 70s (tube sets). I haven't had a hearing test in a long time, but one day about 5 or 6 years ago, out of nowhere, I woke up with a ringing in both ears (which I now know is Tinnitus) and from that day, it's never gone away. It's there 24/7 and drives me crazy. I try to tune it out but since it's always there, I can't totally get it out of my brain. Of course, I notice it more in a quiet setting and just before sleeping. I only wish I knew then what I know now. Too many years of loud stereos, rock concerts, etc would one day be a huge drag. Hopefully one day there'll be a treatment for Tinnitus, as of now, there's really not much that can be done.

Protect your hearing!

 

The audience for a lot of that stuff done by "older folks" are also "older folks".
Being one of those older folks I'm fine with it.
That's why god made those EQ controls on your system ya damn whippersnappers!
(Waves cane around and stumbles off to Denny's for the early-bird special)

 

Well....as long as they stay off your and out of yo' grass!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

I am old and people seem to like the way I arrange and produce.
Something to consider is that often hearing loss isn't total.
What I mean is that at low volumes it is a bit tougher for me to hear high frequencies than it was when I was younger, and I always, after doing an initial mix and getting everything right, then crank it up and tweak individual instruments with it cranked.
You don't really normally completely lose frequencies, you just start hearing them differently.
Of course this doesn't apply to those who lose significant amounts of their hearing, just the normal upper frequency definition losses that old men have.
It is really a good analogy to equate it to eyesight.
I need to have fairly strong cheaters to read the phone book. It isn't as if without them the phone book disappears or the printing on the page is invisible to me, I can see it, it just is fuzzy and a chore to see. Glasses make my eyes young again.

Also, given hearing aid technology over the past 40 years where and audiologist can analyze your hearing and specially fit hearing aids that correct the specific frequencies you are missing, hearing loss a can be corrected.

A friend of mine who was a publisher had hearing aids. I would take some of my mixes to him and he could hear the intricacies in the music quite well and would point out things like "I like the way you put that in there" which the first few times he did that I was amazed that hearing aids did that much for him.

So, the short answer is yes. I think they are in most cases hearing it all.
Also consider that hearing loss begins quite young, especially in our noise ridden society. So in reality chances are well more than half the public are hearing music the way they do.

 

Good post. I used EQ units that plugged into the tape monitor outs and ins on nearly every system I had and tweaked the EQ how I liked it even when I was young.

 

If only this thread could have been started about a month ago whilst Doug Sax was still alive....AFAIK he was still quite active at the Mastering Lab until shortly before his recent death at age 78. I recall reading an interview with him from relatively recently where he'd told of remastering an album he'd done the original mastering on over 20 years before, and after documenting his equipment's settings just happened to find the original notes of the settings he'd arrived at all those years earlier. And they were virtually the same, one to the other.

 

I think he just was...

 

I have no problem with the age of a mastering engineer based on some very nice recordings I have that were done by guys in their 50s & 60s.

Lately though, I am very wary of band members or artists getting involved with the mastering process.........

 

Funny but I have a funny story about one of the first sessions I ever attended at Studio West in San Diego.

I was there for a tracking session, when I heard a high frequency pitch. I decided to mention it and unfortunately nobody else could hear it. I was sure that I heard it, so we decided to investigate it.

We shut down everything in the audio chain and it was still there. Finally somebody decoded to turn off the CCTV video monitor which showed the front door. Sure enough, that was it. Nobody else could hear it, but they could all hear the frequency ramp up and down as the monitor was turned on and off.

Nobody there ever questioned anything I claimed to hear from that day on.

 

I have been a rock and roll musician all my life, I love loud music. I have also been a bird watcher all my life. Lots of bird watchers hear a bird before they see it. I have a friend who is as old as me (60s) and is also a bird watcher. He has never listened to loud music. We go out bird watching and he hears so many birds that I never hear. Really high pitched ones. So not everyone looses their hearing in old age. I sure did, I wear hearing aids and I still can't hear them.

 

Giles Martin can't hear when something's out of tune, out of sync or running too fast so I'm not sure it's an age thing.

 

I think part of the equation is, yes, they've lost hearing, but they also know where and how much to compensate. Not to mention I'm sure they all have help.

 

I think the science is not entirely clear on the impact of age-related (as opposed to noise related) factors on our hearing. Some librarians may go their entire lives never mowing the lawn, driving a motorcycle, visiting a factory, walking a city street or even having a loud conversation, much less listening to loud music. Thus, their hearing may be solely dependent on age-related factors, the impact of which appears to vary significantly among individuals. The 60 year old librarian who bikes to work might have better hearing than the 40 year old who has been taking public transportation 2 hours a day for 20+ years.

.

 

Another option would be to train dogs to listen to the higher frequencies and bark when a mastering is too "trebly" or "hot". Of course, I know that bats have much better hearing than dogs (over 200 kHz as I recall!), but seriously, who wants a bat's opinion?

 

Very good posting, Doug. I'm 52 myself, and I recently went to a webpage with a rising sine tone. I couldn't hear above 13 kHz or so. Yet, when visiting another page with a white noise test, I could actually detect a change in coloration of the noise when comparing a sample with 22 kHz upper limit, and one with 20 kHz upper limit. That confirms that frequencies we normally don't hear per se will affect the audible spectrum. And the harmonics of instruments will affect the perceived timbre even though the harmonics are outside of the hearing range.

 

I'm not so sure that 'hearing music' necessarily has something to do with age, or the ears for that matter. It's a talent for details, in the brain/heart, like a poet, you see/hear what others can't because they don't have what it takes. Well...

 

It takes some talent to get it right, I guess. Regardless of hearing range.

 

I would think so. There are some that are more reputable than others. It's about feel. I wonder if even George Martin was deaf on one ear? I think I've read it if I remember correctly.

 

I don't know, but I think he would have managed in spite of that I don't sweat too much over my 13 kHz upper limit, because there isn't very much above it anyway that I want to hear. As one guy said somewhere, if something is "bright", it mostly concerns the region around 3 kHz, and that's well within my hearing range.