Audiophiles don’t use their equipment to listen to your music. Audiophiles use your music to listen to their equipment.
―
quote of the day
February 23, 2024 by 6 Comments
sustaining trends in audio land, 2024 edition
February 10, 2024 by 3 Comments
This year’s edition is all about the one and only megatrend: AI and all its facets. Plus a brief commentary on a wannabe trend.
AI: Tools in audio production
As mentioned earlier, the current trend of emulating effect devices with deep learning seems less exciting in the AI context, as it is just yet another form of effect sampling where we might see little innovation. Much more exciting and promising is the impact on areas such as composition, mixing and mastering and first tools have already arrived in this area. We’ve seen little groundbreaking innovation in digital audio workstations in recent years. With the advent of this new technology, however, an exciting new prospect is emerging, one that is essentially about DAWs becoming copilots.
AI: Business opportunities
The DAW example shows how profound the changes can be, affecting not only the adaptation of the tools, but the companies and their businesses themselves. In much the same way that the Internet has penetrated every aspect of our lives, this technology is shaping not just production itself, but a market and a business as a whole. For example, traditional gatekeepers may disappear because they are no longer needed to create, edit and distribute things, but the market may also be flooded with mediocre content. To some extent we can already see this happening in the music industry, and the emergence of AI will just be an accelerator for all of this.
AI: Visions for content creators and creatives
But in the light of such a huge impact, what might a vision look like for content creators and creatives? From a pure market perspective, creativity is interchangeable wherever content is mass-produced in the same way. The only raison d’être is the uniqueness and novelty of the work and its presentation. And it is precisely this that will become more and more important the more arbitrary and interchangeable (AI based) content gets produced. So basically you should avoid sameness and be unique. Or give a shit about all that and be creative just for the sake of it and your very own fulfilment.
Multichannel Audio: Not a sustaining trend
Despite the impressive efforts of some of the big players to make everyone believe that this is the next big thing, there is simply no way around it: It is completely irrelevant to consumers given their current music consumption habits. It is relevant to (home) cinema and events, but nothing more.
quote of the day
January 22, 2024 by 3 Comments
Inspiration comes first. You come next. The audience comes last.
―
quote of the day
January 11, 2024 by 5 Comments
Music can be like a box of mood pills that we can use to treat ourselves.
―
sustaining trends in audio land, 2023 edition
February 17, 2023 by 4 Comments
So, the year 2023 is slowly getting underway – time to take another look at the sustaining trends in audio land. Two of the 2022 themes have already been further confirmed and manifested – so let’s take a quick look. A third topic, however, has developed at an incredible speed and in an unbelievable way, to the surprise of all of us. But one thing at a time.
The (over-) saturated audio plugin market
A continuing trend towards market consolidation was to be expected as a result of a constantly oversaturated market, and indeed last year saw a whole series of merger and acquisition activities as well as new alliances. Involved in such activities were brands such as Slate Digital, Sonnox, Focusrite, Brainworx, Plugin Alliance, NI, iZotope and many more.
This is something quite normal in saturated markets and not a bad thing per se, but we might worry about a lack of innovation and diversity as a result. Alongside this, we will continue to see many companies late to the party offering “me too” products and retro brands gilding their HW brands with yesterday’s SW technology. The smarter companies will continue their efforts to successfully establish leading business platforms.
The future of HW DSP as a plugin platform
Since the HW DSP market has not succeeded in creating such a competitive (plug-in) business platform, we are currently witnessing the decline of this domain and in the long run everything will be offered natively. Last year, we’ve seen some late movers also starting such transformations, e.g. UA.
The emergence of AI in audio production
Of course, this was not only predictable but also announced, but no one had ever expected the extent and speed of its emergence over the past year. This applies first and foremost to its appearance in general, but also its impact to the whole music domain in particular. This impact will be immense and dramatic, affecting not only tools and work processes, but also music culture and its economy. The effects will be very, very profound, similar to the way the internet entered all areas of our lives.
The current trend of emulating effect devices with deep learning seems less exciting in this context, as it is just yet another form of effect sampling where we might see little innovation. Much more exciting will be the impact on areas such as composition, mixing and mastering, but also music distribution and value creation in general. But that will be the subject of another detailed article in this Blog.
We live in exciting times.
Stay tuned!
now that we’ve reinvented 8-bit audio – what’s next?
November 29, 2022 by 10 Comments
Gone are the days when choosing the right noise shaping for dithering was a headache and we were still dreaming of Hires Audio as the glorious upcoming consumer format. In the end, it was more important to us to make everything brutally loud. As if it could otherwise be overheard in all the streaming mush: Radio and advertising have led the way, after all, and in the realm of asocial media, the cry for attention is naturally even louder. A pleasant sound, transient-rich and detailed? Forget it! The pitiful remainder of dynamics could now be packaged in 8-bit, lossless. That’s how it looks. The other day I saw a report about audiophiles who still and tirelessly spare neither expense nor effort to optimize the sound at home down to the smallest detail, which seemed unintentionally comical in this context. But it seems just as anachronistic today to spend such an immense technical effort for an inferior production performance. How can this be justified? Surely any stock EQ, a decent multiband compressor and limiter should suffice. In the attached video, the evolution of EDM is outlined in fast forward from the 80s to 2020. Regardless of the qualities of the codecs, this shows very impressively the decline in technical production quality over the years and the side effects of the increase in loudness. Now that we have successfully ruined audio quality, the question remains: What’s next?
the history of Cubase
November 8, 2022 by 8 Comments
When Cubase 3.0 came out in 1996 and introduced VST for the first time with all its new and fascinating possibilities, that was the point where I decided to get more involved in music production and set up a small (home) recording studio. VST was the basis for all this and how I imagined a modern (computer based) studio production. What a revolution that was. Watching this video today brings up a lot of nostalgic feelings …
sustaining trends in audio land, 2022 edition
March 7, 2022 by 4 Comments
Forecasts are difficult, especially when they concern the future – Mark Twain
In last years edition about sustaining trends in audio land I’ve covered pretty much everything from mobile and modular, DAW and DAW-less up to retro outboard and ITB production trends. From my point of view, all points made so far are still valid. However, I’ve neglected one or another topic which I’ll now just add here to that list.
The emergence of AI in audio production
What we can currently see already in the market is the ermergence of some clever mixing tools aiming to solve very specific mixing tasks, e.g. resonance smoothing and spectral balancing. Tools like that might be based on deep learning or other smart and sophisticated algorithms. There is no such common/strict “AI” definition and we will see an increasing use of the “AI” badge even only for the marketing claim to be superior.
Some other markets are ahead in this area, so it might be a good idea to just look into them. For example, AI applications in the digital photography domain are already ranging from smart assistance during taking a photo itself up to complete automated post processing. There is AI eye/face detection in-camera, skin retouching, sky replacement and even complete picture development. Available for all kinds of devices, assisted or fully automated and in all shades of quality and pricing.
Such technology not only shapes the production itself but a market and business as a whole. For example, traditional gate keepers might disappear because they are no longer necessary to create, edit and distribute things but also the market might get flooded with mediocre content. To some extend we can see this already in the audio domain and the emergence of AI within our production will just be an accelerator for all that.
The future of audio mastering
Audio Mastering demands shifted slightly over the recent years already. We’ve seen new requirements coming from streaming services, the album concept has become less relevant and there was (and still is) a strong demand for an increased loudness target. Also, the CD has been loosing relevance but Vinyl is back and has become a sustaining trend again, surprisingly. Currently Dolby Atmos gains some momentum, but the actual consumer market acceptance remains to be proven. I would not place my bet on that since this has way more implications (from a consumer point of view) than just introducing UHD as a new display standard.
Concerning the technical production, a complete ITB shift – as we’ve seen it in the mixing domain – has not been completed yet but the new digital possibilities like dynamic equalizing or full spectrum balancing are slowly adopted. All in all, audio mastering slowly evolves along the ever changing demands but remains surprisingly stable, sustaining as a business and this will probably continue for the next (few) years.
Social Media, your constant source of misinformation
How To Make Vocals Sound Analog? Using Clippers For Clean Transparent Loudness. Am I on drugs now? No, I’ve just entered the twisted realm of social media. The place where noobs advice you pro mixing tips and the reviews are paid. Everyone is an engineer here but its sooo entertaining. Only purpose: Attention. Currency: Clicks&Subs. Tiktok surpassed YT regarding reach. Content half-life measured in hours. That DISLIKE button is gone. THERE IS NO HOPE.
The (over-) saturated audio plugin market and the future of DSP
Over the years, a vast variety of vendors and products has been flooded the audio plugin market, offering literally hundreds of options to choose from. While this appears to be a good thing at first glance (increaed competition leads to lower retail prices) this has indeed a number of implications to look at. The issues we should be concerned the most about are the lack of innovation and the drop in quality. We will continue to see a lot of “me too” products as well as retro brands gilding their HW brands with yesterday SW tech.
Also, we can expect a trend of market consolidation which might appear in different shapes. Traditionally, this is about mergers and aquisitions but today its way more prominently about successfully establishing a leading business platform. And this is why HW DSP will be dead on the long run becuse those vendors just failed in creating competitive business platforms. Other players stepped in here already.
Variety Of Sound 
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