Within the past three years I have registered and become a
member of music listner forums(Steve Hoffman Forums) and professional audio forums(GearSlutz).
As such I have likely rubbed shoulders with engineers and managers who
are responsible for the production and delivery of much of the music we hear on
the radio or buy online or at stores.
Ever since bringing up what I considered to be the negative
effects of so-called remasters on sites such as GearSlutz and Steve Hoffman’s,
I’ve been hounded by the moderators of those sites, had my posts deleted, and
have received suspensions and other infractions. In the case of the largely listener-populated
Hoffman forums, less educated music fans are going to question “how could the
original possibly be better than the "remaster” in fidelity terms?
To be fair, the aim of my anti-loudness campaign was
originally misguided, on the Gearslutz side: at the
engineers(recording/mixing/mastering) themselves! Once I stood corrected there, and realized
that these people were just performing a service as requested, things kind of
cooled down.
But now, even in threads devoted to loudness, or regulation
of same, and remasters vs original, my contributions are being removed as “off
topic”! And most recently, just today, I was issued a warning from the Gearslutz Administrators about not posting things such as the link to this blog! Well, now you know what kind of organization they are: Not necessarily "pro-loudness", but definitely, denialist.
Why this censorship against discussion of trends directly
affecting the music industry? Plain
& simple: It’s a service business with money and reputations at stake. The engineers on those forums(some of which
serve as moderators , etc.) cannot afford to speak out against the very
processes they must engage in, even though they don’t like having to, to turn
out records that satisfy their clients(the artists, their producers, and the
record labels). And as far as the
listeners go, on sites like the Hoffman Music forums, I chalk it up largely to
just being misinformed. I hope this blog
helps those people out. J
It is important to realize that a site like GearSlutz is not
solely the denizen of engineers and other “techy” types – aspiring and
established musicians will also lurk there to read, as well as register there
to participate in the discourse. And
engineers know this. So, even if they do
agree with what I’m saying, registering that agreement in such a venue could be
toxic to their reputation with artists on there who might even be clients of
those same engineers!
Often they say things like, “Musical tastes change”, or
“What sounds good to you may not sound good to others”, in response to my
statements about how music from a specific genre sounded better 20-30 years ago
than current examples recently put out by artists. I know that they are just saying that to keep
up appearances, but they’d be free to really speak their minds if they came
over here!
Such “censorship of the truth” as I militantly call it, is
part of the very reason for this blog.
Test.
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