[ProAudio] Dolby A with no tones (was 4-channel program distribution format(s))

[Bob Katz]

Well. They should have come to me for mastering :-)

Bob

My iPhone made me write this. Quotes only below this line. Nothing more to see here. 
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> On Jan 25, 2023, at 5:14 PM, Jim Brown via ProAudio <proaudio at bach.pgm.com> wrote:
> 
> On 1/25/2023 1:16 PM, Scott Dorsey via ProAudio wrote:
>> all you can do is use your ears.
> 
> Something that we ought to be doing a LOT more than most of us do.
> 
> A year or so ago, I bought a 2-CD set called "Sonny Rollins in Holland," which consists of a studio session and two poorly recorded live sets, all from May '67. The studio set sounds fine, the live sets CRIED OUT for extensive EQ to make them listenable. Clearly, the mastering engineer was either deaf or never listened to the material, just punched record and called it a day.
> 
> This is NOT uncommon -- I listen to a lot of jazz, some of it live, some of it from studio sessions, and the quality is all over the place. Even in well recorded material, acoustic design of control rooms and EQ of monitoring systems colors EQ judgements when mixing and mastering. I do all my serious listening on Sennheiser HD650 cans and a CD player running from my computer through a Mackie interface. A year ago, I added a small Yamaha mixer with midrange, 100 Hz and 10 kHz shelf EQ to make stuff like this listenable. Yes, I could have done a parametric and headphone amp, but my wife wouldn't have tolerated them in the living room.)  For those two Rollins live sets, I had to crank the low shelf all the way up, the high shelf more than halfway, and the midrange several dB down. It didn't turn a pig's ear into a silk purse, but both sets sounded a LOT better.
> 
> The goal of mastering stuff like this should not be a perfect 1:1 copy of what's on the tape, but rather getting as close as practical to what was happening in the studio or on the stage.
> 
> Jim Brown
> 
> 
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