I'm friends with an engineer who had won five or six Grammys, is a child-prodigy violinist (that is, he's an artist and an engineer), and designs his own electronics and speakers. When he was a pup engineer, I would hire him to make repairs in my Futterman amps.
He says that he engineers for neutrality. He knows that there is infinite variability on the consumer playback end and it his his job to simply make sure that the signal he is giving them is the most faithful electronic reproduction of the music that can be made. What the consumer does with that signal is his or her business.
Thats one perspective. Another opposite one is the Byrds engineer who famously would give a mono demo to the late night/early morning DJ to play while he drove around LA at four in the morning with the windows open and the AM car radio turned up all the way to hear what people were hearing and then make necessary tweaks.
I have thousands of LPs, almost all of them pressed between the late 50s to the late 80s. Altec 604C duplexes were ubiquitous in recording studios at the time. That's why I use them: to hear as much as possible what the engineer heard and had in mind when (s)he was mastering the disc.
Cheers - ML
He says that he engineers for neutrality. He knows that there is infinite variability on the consumer playback end and it his his job to simply make sure that the signal he is giving them is the most faithful electronic reproduction of the music that can be made. What the consumer does with that signal is his or her business.
Thats one perspective. Another opposite one is the Byrds engineer who famously would give a mono demo to the late night/early morning DJ to play while he drove around LA at four in the morning with the windows open and the AM car radio turned up all the way to hear what people were hearing and then make necessary tweaks.
I have thousands of LPs, almost all of them pressed between the late 50s to the late 80s. Altec 604C duplexes were ubiquitous in recording studios at the time. That's why I use them: to hear as much as possible what the engineer heard and had in mind when (s)he was mastering the disc.
Cheers - ML