Archive for 2017

VIDEO: RECORDING, 1950s STYLE:

As “Yep,” the recording engineer/producer who wrote the bulk of the posts of the legendary “Why Do Your Recordings Sound Like Ass” thread at the Cockos Reaper DAW forum noted in 2008:

The explosion in prices for “vintage” and “boutique” gear was not driven by professional studios. Even before the home-studio boom, the arrival of cheap, high quality digital and better broadcast technologies made a whole lot of local recording and broadcast studios redundant. There was a small increase in inexpensive project studios, fueled by the rise of punk, hip-hop, and “indie” music, but for the most part, the emergence of the ADAT and Mackie mixers spelled the beginning of the end for mid-market commercial recording studios, and began to turn broadcast studios into cheap, commodity workplaces devoid of the old-school audio “engineers” (who actually wore lab coats in the old days of calibrating cutting lathes and using oscilloscopes to measure DC offset and so on).

The irony is that the explosion of cheap, high-quality digital fostered a massive cottage industry of extremely small home and project studios, that rapidly began to develop a keen interest in high-end studio gear. Even as broadcast and small commercial jingle studios and local TV stations (of which there were a LOT, back then) were dumping their clunky mixing consoles and old-fashioned ribbon mics and so on, there was a massive rise in layperson interest in high-end studio gear. As the price of entry has gotten lower and lower, interest in and demand for truly “pro quality” sound has increased exponentially, and superstition and reverential awe has grown up around anything that pre-exists the digital age.

Dean Amos, the owner of the studio located in Wickford, Essex, UK, in the above new Sound on Sound magazine video has taken that love of vintage tube-based gear and ‘50s-era ribbon microphones to its logical conclusion; he’s recreated the sort of studio that Elvis or Buddy Holly would have recorded in, around 1957 or so, right down to a three track reel-to-reel recorder. But unless you’ve got live performance chops in the neighborhood of either of those two artists, the mixture of vintage mics, pre-amps and compressors with modern-day editing and pitch correction software is likely to yield far better results. But it’s still an incredibly cool looking – and sounding – studio.

STUPID BIOGRAPHER TRICKS: Over at Ed Driscoll.com (now celebrating our 15th year on the Interwebs!) I have a review of the new biography of David Letterman by Jason Zinoman of the New York Times, who pulls one big punch in an otherwise surprisingly good bio. Zinoman leaves out the details of an infamous 2006 segment in which Bill O’Reilly was Letterman’s guest, and O’Reilly managed to get Letterman to drop the mask and reveal his inner punitive leftist with one simple question about Iraq.

PURPLE PEOPLE BEATERS ATTEMPT TO GIN-UP ANTI-AMAZON PROTEST: Muslims to March on Amazon Over Prayer Breaks:

The Service Employees International Union and three Muslim guards who work for Security Industry Specialists, the security contractor Amazon uses to guard its facility, accuse SIS, and by implication Amazon, of refusing to allow the guards space to pray five times daily, even though members of other religions are granted the privilege of using prayer rooms.

As Glenn wrote yesterday, “This does not make me feel worse about Amazon.”

(Classical reference in headline.)

LEARNING ABOUT ULCERS.

FLASHBACK, ONE YEAR AGO TODAY: The Smug Style In American Liberalism. “Finding comfort in the notion that their former allies were disdainful, hapless rubes, smug liberals created a culture animated by that contempt. The result is a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

It hasn’t gotten any less smug, despite crushing defeat. . . .

THE GOP HAS NOTHING TO COMPARE WITH THE DEMOCRATS’ DOMINANCE OF MAINSTREAM MEDIA: Where is the Republican Attack Machine on the Shutdown? “Democrats are always so much better at spinning their nonsense than Republicans are. They whine, attack, and rally the troops every time there’s a big battle to be fought, while Republicans think somehow people will come around to their point of view. And Democrats do it in an organized fashion guided by a well thought out, long-term plan that nevertheless seems spontaneous. Republicans focus solely on today’s news cycle and think they can win the PR war via President Trump’s tweets. The newest battle — the growing struggle over funding for the government, which runs out in a week — is a perfect example of this communications incompetence.”

IT’S COMPLICATED: China Tightens the Screws — on South Korea.

China is having a difficult time reconciling its economic need to act like a responsible grownup on the world stage, with its political desire to be a Communist-Nationalist hegemon.

FAKE NEWS? Old-school journalists ‘pissed’ about Gayle King’s vacation with Obamas:

Gayle King’s serious CBS colleagues had a lot to say about her recent yacht jaunt with former first couple Barack and Michelle Obama in Tahiti, and it wasn’t positive.

“The ‘Capital J’ journalists are pissed and raving mad that she was on a yacht with the Obamas over the weekend. The old-school people were talking about it. She shouldn’t be doing that. She’s an anchor of a news program that covers the White House. You’re held to a different standard. It’s one thing to be friendly. It’s another thing to go vacationing on a yacht,” a source told us of the backlash at CBS.

CBS is denying that there’s any rancor internally directed at King, which makes sense, considering that her colleague Charlie Rose pretended to have no clue about candidate Obama’s foreign policy stance on the eve of the 2008 presidential election, and last year sat with two of Obama’s speechwriters while all three laughed on air about the Big Lie of Obamacare — the over 36 times Obama told Americans, “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan.”

CBS Nightly News anchor and 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley once compared global warming skeptics to Holocaust deniers, and admitted recently to accepting at face value the Hillary campaign’s story and not investigating further the cause of her infamous collapse on September 11th last year.

John Dickerson, the host of Face the Nation and the “political director” for CBS, wrote an article for Slate in 2013 charmingly titled “Go for the Throat! Why if he wants to transform American politics, Obama must declare war on the Republican Party.” This was followed last year by his asking Obama, ‘Is honesty overrated as a presidential quality?’

And the boss of CBS’s news division is David Rhodes, the brother of Obama’s infamous former deputy national security advisor, Ben Rhodes.

Just think of them all as Democrat operatives with bylines and lavaliere microphones, and it all makes sense.

SPENGLER: Come to Me, My Mélenchony Baby. “In France, U.S. Conservatives Should Hope for Fillon.”

More:

Elsewhere in Europe, the alternative right has flopped. Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders polled lower than expected in last month’s Dutch elections. Germany’s Alternative fuer Deutschland is in chaos following the resignation of its chairman and lead candidate Frauke Petry, who was effectively forced out by the extreme right wing of her party.

But France is different. Many American conservatives are cheering for Le Pen. So are some elements of the French Establishment, who see the National Front leader as the country’s last hope to stop the creeping tide of Islam.

But if Le Pen is elected, I guarantee that her American admirers are not going to like the outcome.

Indeed.

OF COURSE THEY DID: Clinton Camp Instituted ‘Loyalty Scores’ Following 2008 Loss.

Clinton had two staffers “toil” to rate every Democrat members of Congress on a scale of one to seven — one being the most loyal — after she lost the Democratic nomination to Barack Obama in 2008. Her husband Bill Clinton then deliberately campaigned against the disloyal “sevens” in subsequent primary elections, and succeeded in getting some of them removed. Some of those who remained apparently took note, and were quick to endorse Hillary in 2016.

The idea of this person controlling the weaponized Executive Branch is beyond unnerving.