Audio, music, baseball (New York Yankees) and girls are pretty much all I think about and not necessarily in that order. Well, not really girls since I’m married, but something like it. Believe me, I’m not trying to imply that I’m shallow…OK, I’m a superficial scum, so sue me, but they do all go together, although maybe not in this article. So, just for expediency, if I forget about the girls, it leaves audio, music and baseball. That brings to mind the steroid scandal of 2007, and boy does that upset me! Not because of the obvious reasons, such as drug use or that George Mitchell is the director of the Boston Red Sox and not one Red Sox player was named in his report. Nope. The cause of my distress is that the steroid scandal makes me think of politics, technology and ethics, and that gets in the way of my important thoughts about audio, music, baseball and girls (or in my case, my wife).
New technology in a competitive world is the means that gives us the advantage over our business rivals, while at the same time, it can be a double-edge sword that works against us as well as it does for us. I’m sure that most of us have a story or two regarding a show or production where the technology of the production was state of the art, and yet the show was less than brilliant due to operator inadequacy or possibly a technical glitch, such as a software malfunction in the digital console that locked out the engineer.
The older guys — and if you’re not one yet, you will be if you stay in the business long enough — argue that there isn’t any digital console that can replace a top line analogue board. The younger engineers grasp the new technology in a heartbeat and don’t even question the viability of the new formats, as the old technology becomes a vague memory of days gone by. While the more seasoned engineers claim to need only an SM58 and their own voice to ring out a system, many of the newer technicians require a laptop and a software program to determine the errant frequencies that they cannot discern due to their reliance upon the latest technology.
While technological advances are tools to be used to enhance the capability of human performance and endeavor, this same boon to mankind is, in many instances, often misused and abused. I refer mostly to those tools that are developed benignly, but are then employed for military and destruc-tive ends. Although atomic energy is the first thing that comes to mind, the various shades of misused and abused just about covers the gamut of most technologies. But advancement will not be deterred, and despite any Orwellian misgivings — regardless of the religious naysayers — techno-logical progress marches on and sweeps all of us up in its path.
It is difficult to imagine how any of us ever succeeded in a world without cell phones and mobile Internet access, but now it’s a mainstay of our op-erations, and those without the latest technology cannot keep up with those that do possess the tools. The competition is stiff and the demand is high to provide the latest technologies and to provide it immediately. If we, as audio providers, should falter in the least way, some Internet search engine will be able to lead a prospective buyer in the right direction, but away from us, which means a loss of revenue.
Technology begets new technology, and it seems that the more we have, the more we need. We adapt old technologies to accommodate the newer innovations and just as we think we have it all together, we have to update once again. Although basic principles and practices remain the same, the new and improved tools that we have at our disposal are designed to facilitate our actions and improve our overall output and earning capacity. An editing job in the studio that once took three hours may only take one hour with one of the new digital cut and paste programs available. We can model sounds and make an SM57 sound like a Neumann U87. As of a few years ago, we were obligated to write down all our settings after a sound check, and now all we need to do is upload our mix from a card and we are ready to go.
If I let my mind wander (as it is wont to do) to the next generation of digital enhancement, I would say that soon there will be a speaker system ca-pable of ringing itself out to any given room with just the push of a button. No need for an engineer to concern themselves with frequencies, bal-ancing the different fields, adjusting the angles of the speakers, setting delays, etc. One push of a button and the computer goes to work and the sys-tem gets optimum coverage and frequency response. How about a console that is capable of mixing any band without an engineer? The console will have a software program consisting of samples of every imaginable instrument and will take the input from the stage and process it for each instrument. The console will also process and auto tune each vocal, and since a “mix” is just a mathematical relationship between instruments, it will mix as well. Sure, there will be problems in the beginning, but in time the bugs will get worked out and the next wave of engineers will find it archaic to have to manually mix a band or ring out a system.
Technology is a great boon to mankind, and with each new technological step forward there is always the old guy doubting the veracity and staying power of the new machine. This is nothing new and progress has always been met with resistance from those of an earlier time. The application of electric light was questioned by those used to the reliability of gas and oil and, when first built, automobiles were a novelty and looked upon as a contraption that would never replace the horse. Speaking of cars, I still know people who think driving an automatic transmission is not really driv-ing, but a form of cheating. There, I said it, “cheating,” and that brings me back to baseball, which then brings me back to audio, music and girls. But, as stated earlier, it’s best if I leave the girls out of this.
We live in a culture of cheating, and we learn to rationalize it if we feel it’s beneficial to our health or our pocketbooks. Ethically, can we say that auto-tuning a vocal in concert is cheating? Is playing backing tracks of Pro Tools a form of cheating? Is lip-syncing in concert cheating? How about sampling? I know, you’re thinking that this is technology and it’s very different from taking steroids or HGH, but we live in a culture that pushes amphetamines (in the form of Ritalin and the like) on kids so that they can focus and perform better and — if they do get better grades — is that cheating? Maybe there should be an asterisk next to every child conceived by a father taking Viagra, or possibly an asterisk next to any singer that gets a vitamin B shot before a concert to help them perform. An asterisk should be placed next to any song, poem or story that might have been written under the influence, especially if the song goes to number one or wins a Grammy. For that matter, special effects in film are cheating. Photoshop is cheating. Birth control is cheating, and when stem cell research is fully developed, there will be even more cheating going on, guaran-teed!
Regardless of the preferred cheating method, the technology is still just the tool to be used by the operator. Hell, you could give George Mitchell a boatload of steroids or HGH and he still won’t hit towering home runs or win Cy Young awards. For that matter, given the best technology, he probably couldn’t auto-tune a vocal either.
