I’m glad that talent shows like the X Factor are gone from our screens. Not because I have some misplaced snobbery about how someone should be discovered. It’s more to do with the fact that the auditions were at times cruel and humiliating. Like F1 racing, some people watched just for the crash, or in the case of X Factor, the person with no talent to give us a cheap laugh for a few minutes as they sang out of tune.
Why bring this up? It’s simple, ask the average member of the public to spot someone singing out of tune and it’s likely they will. Ask the same people to identify a movie mixed in Atmos and it’s unlikely they can. Most Apple Music users won’t know the tracks they are listening to now have Spatial Audio turned on as the default.
Why Bother?
Does this mean we are all wasting our time?
Not at all. I don’t subscribe to the philosophy that if they average consumers only watch stuff on iPhones then why shoot using a £10K camera? Or if they only listen on the phone speaker why not use some cheap old microphone. People have been watching TV on less than ideal devices for years, but even back in the day, the investment in broadcast studio equipment and the training was considerable.
A million dollar movie streamed at 4K often has artefacts, easily seen in dark scenes containing a lot of black. This has nothing to do with the master file delivered to the streaming services or the specification of the TV, it’s due to the compression of the signal to deliver it over the internet. This varies depending on a number of factors. However, if the aim is to deliver the content without it buffering and spoiling the viewing experience, then reducing the bitrate to ensure QoE (Quality of Experience) is an easy solution.
Those who argue that ‘if the consumer doesn’t care then why should we?’ conflate two things; working to the highest possible quality and production standards, which is always best practise, with the behaviour of the average consumer. This argument could be made in any walk of life. Why have a sterile milk production facility if someone is going to drink it out of a dirty glass? Having consumers that don’t care isn’t a reason for us not to.
The average person doesn’t know what side the hi-hat should be on, let alone what a hi-hat is. They don’t know a plate reverb from a hall. They don’t know and frankly they don’t care about most of the stuff the professional audio community find ourselves discussing on social media, forums and on sites like this.
Ask the average person leaving a movie theatre if they noticed that the movie was mixed in Atmos is the wrong question, I’ll get to the reason why shortly.
It’s All About The Story
So if the average person doesn’t notice or care then why bother? Fact is the end users do care and notice, but not about the things we do, this is why we need to direct our artistic efforts to the most important thing… the story.
Be it a gig, TV show, or movie, this is what the average consumer notices. “I can’t hear the dialogue on this TV show.” Or, “The music is too distracting on this movie.” Or, “They are singing out of tune.”
Like a wine stain on a wedding dress, it’s easy to notice things when they are wrong.
Many of us would have watched Glastonbury last week. Imagine Elton John was in the middle of one of his greatest hits and the drummer decided to do a huge drum solo. Or the guitarist played in the wrong key and too loud. Most would have noticed that. The band has one job on that stage, to play so well that no one notices, that nothing distracts from the message of the song. Put simply, it’s not about them.
Creating The Magic
My current car has a great feature. When I walk up to it with my keys in my pocket it unlocks without me having to do anything. I love it and think it’s magic. Someone once corrected me on saying something technical was magic and pointed out to me it was science. I like the Arthur C. Clarke quote, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”
We live in an amazing time to create content, AI can now clean up audio, Atmos can put pictures into an audible space to match the scene. AutoTune can help correct vocal which may have some pitch issues. Before you get all sniffy and suggest AutoTune is just for kids who can’t sing, then it’s used on some of the greatest singers of our time, even if we don’t know it.
The technology we have is there to serve the narrative, to make things possible using the power of modern digital audio that are like magic. As I often say, some of our best work is invisible to the average person. It was used to ensure there were no distractions from the message.
Any technology has the same potential pitfalls, be that Atmos or AutoTune, this happens when it serves the operator rather than the story, when as the saying goes; “the tail is wagging the dog.” It’s tempting to have a guitar solo zooming around the room, or dialogue panning in all sorts of places… just because we can.
For those of us given the opportunity of working on great music, movies, or TV, we are there to serve the greater good, the story. It’s for both us and the technology to stay out of the way. Service and serving seem to be such an unfashionable term in life today, and yet isn’t this exactly what we are here to do?
Will the average person notice the movie was in Atmos, or the vocal has AutoTune on it? If we’ve done our job right then no, and that’s the greatest compliment we can get!