⭐ Merited by JayJuanGee (1)
[various jbreher comments]
The rest can be summed up as (a) jbreher continues to do his usual Faketoshi apologia whilst denying it, (b) he lacks reading comprehension skills, and (c) he is correct on one point: I have no experience whatsoever with popular music. I do not produce it. I do not even listen to it! Not all music is pop.hahahahahaha
I recall at one point, recently, you, nullius, had proclaimed that Phantom of the Opera was "pop" music and not worthy of a listen, and then at one point some random peep from the interwebs (perhaps yours truly?) suggested that you might try listening to such music, and thereafter you became a Phantom of the Opera fanastic.
Indeed (perhaps I must thank you?). And I have become unaccountably fond of that boat-scene song from TPhOTO. (Not a typo. The ph in phantom is a digraph and should be abbreviated accordingly, as also seen in Ph.D.)
Beyond that, I illegally thumbed my nose at RIAA lawyers and obtained some of Sarah Brightmans so-called classical crossover albums. I am not much of an opera aficionado, and twould be ghastly gauche for me to pretend; but I pulled up some handy recordings of a famous primadonna whom I like, and did a voice-to-voice shootout on transparent speakers with a flat frequency response from 20Hz22kHz. I matched levels as closely as I could.
My first thought was that Miss Brightmans recording engineer should be shot. Dynamic range compression produces for me an effect as irritating as the proverbial fingernails on the chalkboard! The sound is just lifelessly blaring, numb, monotonicflatly loud and nothing elsea big block of audible assault on the senses.
Fortunately, it is a problem that does not exist in classical recordings: Discriminating listeners would form a violent lynch party, not only complain about DRC on the Internet. But it seems to be accepted in classical crossover.
After I adjusted myself to the artistic disorientation inflicted by abject lack of dynamic range, my second thought was that Miss Brightmans recording engineer should be impaled, then burnt at the stake. Her voice is drowned in the instrumentals, and this is clearly done at the mix. I had to skip around a bit, and search for parts where I could actually hear her. Unfortunately, this did not salvage her voice from the horribly artificial-sounding effects of a recording engineer who apparently fancied himself to be some kind of an artist. What a delusion. But at least I could hear hersort of.
Thereupon I concluded that Miss Brightmans voice is as alluring as she is generally, but it lacks power. It sounds good on its own. Stacked up against the voice of a real primadonna, it suddenly seems thin and weak.
Obviously, for a fair comparison, I selected climactic fortissimo passages of the primadonna: Thanks to her idiotic recording engineer, poor Miss Brightman just sounds loud all the time.
Miss Brightman does have an extraordinary pitch range. For that reason, I made sure that my primadonna, albeit technically a soprano, is one who, when desired, can drop all the way down pretty much to contralto.
Alas, this comparison is terribly unfair to Miss Brightman. I suspect that she could have done much better, if her vocal artistry had not been scammed by her recording engineer. He is an acoustical liar!
It is sad. Though that said...
Miss Brightman wins for cover art.
Point is that any of us interweb peeps could change some aspects of our preferences, and why not give dee bear a chance? (not that he deserves one.)
Perhapsif he forswears Faketoshi, bigblockerism, and dynamic range compression! Moreover, although blockchain transparency is a bad thing, audio reproduction transparency is good. As a production professional, he must go the extra mile to ensure that artists and listeners dont get scammed with overprocessed, artificial, gimmicky blocks of big noise.