[HN Gopher] The neuroscientist formerly known as Prince's audio ...
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The neuroscientist formerly known as Prince's audio engineer
Author : sohkamyung
Score : 80 points
Date : 2024-03-14 13:57 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| vr46 wrote:
| Love Susan Rogers, and the Prince albums she engineered or worked
| from are standout-brilliant, from Purple Rain to Sign O The
| Times, but good gracious me are they sonically pretty terrible. I
| didn't expect much from the 2020 Sign O The Times remaster, and
| wasn't disappointed: there's not much there to begin with. I
| mean, fine, it shows just how strong the music was, and you can
| argue that Prince was too busy to care about sound quality.
| Indeed he figured that the songs themselves would override those
| issues, and was correct. Whatever Susan did to help those
| sessions aside from recording the stuff, it was probably amazing.
|
| But when you compare that album against the live rehearsals, a
| few weeks after recording was completed, you are left somewhat
| wanting.
|
| Live Rehearsals #1: https://www.mixcloud.com/moontroll/prince-
| sign-o-the-times-r...
|
| Susan Rogers has always been an interesting person to listen to,
| hopefully I'll get a chance to read her book.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| This is always an interesting point of discussion as well
| because 'sonically pretty terrible' is still somewhat
| subjective even from an audio engineering standpoint.
|
| If the artist has got the sound they want, the producer has the
| sound they want (who was also Prince for these records) and the
| songs are incredibly successful and well loved, it's very
| difficult to argue that they're sonically terrible.
|
| In fact, you could argue that any 'improvements' would be
| ultimately reductive overall. These are incredibly distinctive
| sounding records.
| ibern wrote:
| Couldn't agree more. You can't really speak about sonics in
| absolutist terms. Even so-called audiophiles can't agree on
| ideal sonics - is it a hyperclean recording with zero
| distortion and incredible dynamic range on CD, or is it the
| sound of tubes and tape on vinyl?
| vr46 wrote:
| Yeah, fair point, it's subjective but here it's a case of
| different things being important to different people. The
| album - SOTT in this instance - sounds the way it does and
| I've been listening to it for 37 years and wouldn't want it
| any other way, but it still evokes a feeling of
| dissatisfaction compared to other recording unearthed from
| the same era amidst the evidence that Prince just didn't care
| enough because he was too desperate to get the music out, and
| that attitude never really changed much until he died. It
| just wasn't a priority, but then other engineers came along,
| I mean, just one album later, and just captured more of him
| and his work.
|
| A lot of stuff he didn't really care about that much actually
| made a massive difference to his work - Laura LiPuma's
| artwork, graphics, visuals and designs were all hugely
| important to those albums - and when he went off on his own
| years later, those things fell off a cliff and the art was
| worse for it.
|
| As brilliant as he was, there were a bunch of things he
| really wasn't great at and other people very much improved
| his output.
|
| As for sonics, I feel that all those albums he made with
| Susan Rogers have a low ceiling for getting the most out of
| them - i.e. they don't sound any better on a PS50K system
| than they do on a PS100 system - and if that was an artistic
| goal, I'd give up arguing, but because he outsourced caring
| about that to others, it feels like we missed out a bit. But
| we will never know, and that's ok too.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _...Prince just didn 't care enough because he was too
| desperate to get the music out, and that attitude never
| really changed much until he died._
|
| As a huge early-/mid-career Prince fan, this is a
| surprising take. Prince was famous for his meticulous
| attention to detail and perfectionism in the recording
| studio. The lore is that "Purple Rain" (the song) went
| through 91 mixes before Prince was satisfied.
| racl101 wrote:
| I thought he was known for not being a perfectionist.
| Like he recorded so much unique music that is currently
| unreleased and literally sits in a vault.
| acuozzo wrote:
| I suppose this depends on how perfectionism is defined;
| where the barrier lies.
|
| If a perfectionist is concerned _only_ with perfection at
| release time, then lots of imperfect unreleased material
| can exist. Prince is likely an example of this case.
|
| If, on the other hand, perfectionism is applied to every
| step of the artistic process, then I'd reckon that very
| few imperfect unreleased materials are likely to exist.
| Steely Dan are a good example of this case.
| vr46 wrote:
| Susan Rogers on Prince:
|
| "It's really important. I think that's a really important
| question. People have asked me, or they've prefaced
| questions by saying, "Prince was known to be a
| perfectionist." I always have to correct them. He was not
| a perfectionist. He wouldn't have had that output if he's
| been a perfectionist. What he was was a virtuoso player
| and a genius with melody, a genius with rhythm, a genius
| at writing songs. It just poured out of him - he couldn't
| wait on perfection. The important thing was to have the
| sound serve the ideas, not the other way around. Working
| quickly was fine with him and only a beginning engineer
| would have no bad habits to break. Only a beginner would
| be willing to go that fast."
| CharlesW wrote:
| Love that, thanks!
| vr46 wrote:
| She's mentioned elsewhere about messing up and them
| leaving it in too - like the Forever In My Life vocal was
| an error I think, but how good does that sound!
| ideamotor wrote:
| Somewhat is an understatement. I haven't heard the rehearsals
| on the link (thanks) but i've heard a lot of live stuff (then
| and later) and it makes the recordings sound very thin and
| compressed. I think part of that was just The Times, so to
| speak; but it's a minor travesty one of the best runs in pop
| music history (prince's controversy to lovesexy) overlapped
| with those production trends.
| racl101 wrote:
| > Love Susan Rogers, and the Prince albums she engineered or
| worked from are standout-brilliant, from Purple Rain to Sign O
| The Times, but good gracious me are they sonically pretty
| terrible.
|
| Can you explain to a layperson like me what that means? Cause
| they sound like two opposing statements. Namely: the albums she
| engineered were brilliant but they were sonically terrible?
| vr46 wrote:
| Well, several people in the thread have pointed out how
| subjective my original point was, so fair enough, but on this
| particular point, the brilliance is in the songwriting,
| arrangements and performance. They're amazing, even in their
| imperfections.
|
| I mean, nobody really cares that Prince's drumming is all
| over the shop in The Cross, it doesn't matter, the
| performance is incredible.
|
| But I think the recording is pretty flat and dull, and I've
| heard it at a Classic Album Sundays event on a high-end
| stereo and there wasn't anything that stereo could dig out
| that I hadn't already heard. And I then bought the remaster
| in 2020, same same. But in a way, maybe it just proves that
| album has always been perfect in every way and I should stop
| giving a shit about the recording.
| elmomle wrote:
| My impression has been that they were experimenting sonically,
| looking for new sounds. Sometimes the result seems flat and
| dull to our ears 37 years later, and sometimes absolute
| brilliance emerged (viz: The Ballad of Dorothy Parker). But the
| result was always something quite distinct from the sonic
| landscape of its time, and it had a huge impact on music
| production that followed. For example, it's hard to overstate
| the influence of the mid-80s Prince albums on the entire genre
| of New Jack Swing.
| vr46 wrote:
| It was definitely a highly-experimental time, pulling old
| tapes and recordings in too, and the result was flat and dull
| to me on a high-end Walkman even at the time, because I had
| cut-glass quality recordings from folks like Quincy Jones to
| compare with. But it was an amazing album and would be even
| if it was recorded on a Sony Walkman. As for New Jack Swing,
| Jam and Lewis were from The Time, right?
| jdietrich wrote:
| Mixing decisions have to be understood in context.
|
| The live rehearsal recording might sound warmer and more
| natural on a decent pair of headphones, but it'd sound like
| complete mush on AM radio. The very sparse, crisp mixes of the
| 80s can sound harsh and synthetic to a modern listener, but
| they sound superb on a cassette boombox.
|
| Most pop mix engineers habitually toggle between a high quality
| monitoring system and a "grot box" speaker (often in mono) with
| good transient response but very limited frequency range. They
| understand that their job isn't to produce a mix that sounds
| good in the studio, but a compromise mix that sounds as good as
| possible across a wide range of low-fidelity playback systems.
|
| Modern mixes tend to be more neutral because of the general
| improvement in playback fidelity. Still, a competent pop mix
| engineer is giving a great deal of thought to how well a mix
| will work in a noisy restaurant or through the built-in
| speakers on a TV. They're thinking about people listening in
| the car or listening through one earbud.
| williamcotton wrote:
| Yamaha NS10s are still the go-to "shitty stereo system"
| monitors found in most studios. Bounces listened to in cars
| and on phones are a basic mixing practice these days as well.
| vr46 wrote:
| Sure, but the mix is not the recording, and it's the masters
| that are the bone of contention here.
|
| And we have hundreds of contemporary albums that were all
| designed to be heard on all the same equipment, in 1987 alone
| we had Terence Trent D'Arby's debut, Pet Shop Boys' Actually,
| Fleetwood Mac's Tango in the Night, Whitney Houston's second
| album, Guns 'n Roses' Appetite for Destruction, U2's Joshua
| Tree, so I don't buy this argument that albums were mixed for
| these compromises all the time. All of those albums sound
| fantastic.
|
| The fundamental recordings of those Prince albums seem to be
| sub-par, although that has not been helped by some of the
| mastering of original CDs or cassettes. I originally had it
| on tape, but then did buy the CD, years later bought a newer
| CD and then bought the Super Deluxe. No big differences!
| phycodurus wrote:
| Interview with Susan Rogers:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Iv__walYL4
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