Submitted by DavePolich on Tue, 2007-02-06 17:24.

Been some talk about new product demos lately. Actually, a lot of talk.

First things first - what are you listening to?

Mastering engineers (professionals with amazing ears who make a living polishing up tracks for CD's) will tell you that 95% of the systems people listen to are utter crap. And they're right.

Bob Katz, in his book "Mastering Audio", even goes so far as to say that boomboxes, club systems, laptop speakers, and hyped up car stereos cannot seriously be included when evaluating audio quality. These systems are what he calls "extreme" as in extremely tilted in favor of certain frequencies. Or to put it in simpler words, they're either inefficient and distorted or too exaggerated in favor of things like bass.

We live in an increasingly lo-fidelity, noisy world. Particularly in city environments, where the amount of constant noise interferes with our ability to perceive audio that we actually want to listen to. In our cars, we are always travelling with a large amount of road, wind, and engine noise. So we do stupid things like turn up the bass and treble on our inefficient, distortion-plagued car stereos to compensate. Forgetting, of course, that the CD's we're listening to are already super loud and super bright and bass-heavy.

Our ears contain delicate sensory hairs and membranes that can only take so much of a beating before they just give up. We go to a club or concert, have some drinks, and start thinking it all sounds pretty good - thanks to the alcohol, we ignore the assault on our eardrums that the sound systems are pushing. Which just doubles the damage. Can you hear a kitten purring 20 feet away from you in a room while two people are talking? When you were 4 years old, you could. But let's face it, you've done some permanent damage to your hearing by now.

What CD's do you consistently listen to? Not the loudest ones. Loud can be perceived as being "better", but only briefly. After that, it's just fatiguing. The CD's you listen to are the ones with your favorite musical content.

Which brings me back to the subject of demos. If a product demo doesn't grab you, it's because the musical content didn't resonate with you. Not the audio quality - it can't be, unless you're listening to a 50,000 dollar audio mastering system in a balanced, quiet, acoustically correct room. Most of us aren't doing that. Most of us are listening to sound systems that exhibit distortion and either lack or exaggerate ranges of the audio spectrum.

Furthermore, what sounds "good" to you depends on your own musical taste. If you enjoy music that depends on exaggerated (and often lo-fidelity) production values, such as hip-hop, rap, and dance, then you just might prefer the sound of anything that is bass and treble heavy, and distorted and loud. In that case, my acoustic nylon guitar demo I recorded using the Motif XS isn't gonna float your boat. And you'll probably say "the XS doesn't sound good". Because you didn't hear what you wanted to hear. If your taste leans to classical and folk music, and I play you a hip-hop track I made with the Motif XS, then again, you're gonna say the XS doesn't sound good.

In either case, it isn't the Motif XS (or any combination of synths I used) that is the determining factor. It's the composition and production values I applied. And as they say, you can't please all the people all the time.

Asking how good something sounds is like asking how long is a piece of string. It's meaningless. Maybe you think your i-pod sounds good. I don't. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't be enjoying your i-Pod, or your car stereo, or the sound down at the club. There's a difference between what actually sounds good technically and what one enjoys listening to.

I worked once on an album with an engineer with platinum major label credits and fantastic ears. Whenever I asked him about what he thought about a certain aspect of the track we were working on, he'd either say "I like it" or "I don't like it". That to me is the most honest answer anyone could give.

Instruments don't sound either good or bad. They sound the way they sound. You either like it, or you don't. I think that's the best way to settle it.

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Well, I seriously hope

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 2007-02-20 06:45.

Well, I seriously hope everyone at Yamaha was using an $50,000 "mastering-grade" system while working on the XS, lest they not have a good enough reference to evaluate their engineering/sampling/voicing...! ;-) FWIW, I usually use high-end headphones for evaluating synths--of course this does can expose too much detail when listening to individual patches--e.g., aliasing that would not be of much consequence in part sitting back in a mix.

I think you're really talking about aesthetics here--a lot of synths have a certain sound to them that is "imposed" on all sounds--presumably down to the synth engine/"tone generator" itself (Kurzweil K2XXX synths IME always have a "certain" sound), the choice of samples and the voicing (e.g., I like Korg workstations, very "impressive" sounding, but perhaps a bit hard and "brittle" in excess doses; but in any case, the overall "Korg" sound seems to often apply to the acoustic instruments such as pianos etc.)

If there isn't a necessarily consistent aesthetic--for instance, I think the Yamaha "MegaVoice" guitars (in the ES/Tyros/PSR-3000) have a more "natural" aesthetic to them that may not be the case with all sounds in the ES--then of course if you're after synthetic sounds then acoustic guitar demos may not contain much useful information--but then again, it might suggest that you won't like those acoustic sounds on that workstation, or they are not suited to certain styles.

I don't think this "character" is just a matter of sound "balance," and it might be quite audible on a medicore or even downright bad system. (The other day I caught a bit of an (idiotic) "reality" TV show where some kids were playing drums to a "Jump" backing track, and it was obvious that the synth brass was NOT coming out of an Oberheim--or presumably any other decent synth for that type of sound--there was very little depth or "movement" to the sound--some would say it was "thin"--even though I happened to be listening through very poor quality internal TV speakers.)

IMO often the "character" of a synth does come across well in demos, sometimes flaws do as well. What demos inevitably can't show is the full potential of the synth for your own applications, be it in terms of the specific patches/presets demonstrated, or sounds that you could program yourself, etc.

(Consider, though, that not everyone online lives in a country/area where it's particulary convenient--if possible--to use a product in person before ordering.)

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I agree

Submitted by prokeysman on Fri, 2007-02-09 23:47.

That's why I don't listen to product demos. They will not help me at all. Playing the instrument and hearing it person means everything.

» reply

 

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 2007-02-06 20:13.

Dave,

Thanks for another insightful article. Now, where's that acoustic guitar XS demo of yours ;)

» reply

What are you listening to?

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 2007-02-06 19:37.

Dave, that's quite an excellent look at the demo situation. That's why I hate Guitar Center. Hate it. Two stores in my area, same thing. I can never go in there for five minutes without being blasted away by some idiot pounding out loud hacks within ten feet of my ears. It is absolute cacophony, a futile way to compare audio experiences. If I can find a synth with a decent sound playback system at GC, I consider it a good day. So I go there only to get an idea of feature sets, work process, etc., but not to demo sounds. It has to happen in my home studio with the door closed and my HR824s pumping. So my purchase of an XS will probably be based on a few minutes hands-on in GC to make sure of the display and feature set, then buy one online and trust again that I made the right choice.

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