4 Commonly Misused Pieces of Audio Advice 7/20/16, 4:52 PM

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4 Commonly Misused Pieces
of Audio Advice
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By Matthew Weiss on 01/22/2016 · Advice

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PRODUCTS Learning is an ongoing process. In the competitive field of

audio engineering, failing to continue to learn and grow is a
career death sentence. Unfortunately, there are
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certain pieces of advice we tend to throw around that, while
well-intended, only hinder our own progress.

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These mantras are repeated so often we sometimes say
them without any consideration. This leads us down those
roads — you know – the ones that are paved with good
intentions.

Here are four misused pieces of advice that we really need

to stop doling out.

1. Just Use Your Ears!

What it’s intended to mean: The ultimate barometer
for how something sounds is … well … how it sounds. It’s
important not to let things like meters, or the fact that a
knob is turned up all the way, or maybe the fact that there
are no knobs turned at all, influence our objective listening.
Yes, maybe we added 20 dB of low end to the vocal — that
is probably a mistake in most cases — but if it sounds good,
then so be it!

How we misuse it: It seems whenever discussing a

technique someone inevitably comes along and says “Just
Use Your Ears!” Assuredly thinking they are giving out some

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4 Commonly Misused Pieces of Audio Advice 7/20/16, 4:52 PM

ground-breaking coin of wisdom.

Example: Here’s some techniques for compressing and

reshaping a bass guitar. Eight Facebook comments later:
“The best technique for compressing a bass is to use your
ears!” STOP THAT.

Of all the pieces of asinine advice this one has got to be the
worst.

We all use our ears. Most people have been using their
ears their whole lives. And most people can’t mix records.

I’ve tried to reshape my bass guitar by smell and I can tell

you ears are absolutely the way to go.

But that has nothing to do with technique. Our ears will tell
us if a technique is working or not, not what the techniques
are.

2. You Can’t Polish a Turd

What it’s intended to mean: It’s important to get things
done right at the source. The better things are at the
beginning, the better they will ultimately come out at the
end. And if something is absolutely garbage coming in, all
the clean up in the world won’t save it.

How we misuse it: This phrase has become the theme

song for passing the buck. The reality is recordings are
seldom perfect. It’s rare that every musician is super solid
every day. It’s rarer that we have the perfect instruments
with the perfect player in a perfect room with a perfect mic
collection and everything just goes perfect. It’s vastly more
common that mistakes are made and printed, one of the
band members is maybe not 100% practiced on the song,
there’s too much bleed in a mic — whatever. It’s our jobs to
identify problems and do our best to fix them. Will some
things be totally salvageable? No. Does that mean we
shouldn’t polish it up? No.

3. It’s The Ear, Not The Gear

What it’s intended to mean: The skill of the craftsman is

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vastly more important than the tool.

How we misuse it: The craftsman is going to have a hell of

a hard time building a house with a rubber hammer.
Without irony, we use this advice to essentially negate the
advice about turd polishing. The fact is, we still use stuff like
mics and preamps and EQs to get music recorded. So while
it’s true that our skill will trump our gear there’s still going to
be a quality gap between a $90 mic plugged directly into an
interface and a $9,000 mic running through a $4,000
preamp. The intention of this advice is to say we don’t need
a million dollar setup to get million dollar results — not to
use the cheapest pieces of crap you can find and expect a
big budget sound.

4. There Are No Rules!

What it’s intended to mean: Music is art, and what makes
art good or not isn’t dependent on any strict factors. There
isn’t one goal that we are always working towards when
producing music. Experimentation is key!

How we misuse it: There are no rules … therefore, we don’t

need to know what we’re doing! Sorry to burst that bubble,
but not having rules doesn’t mean there aren’t accepted
principles. And while no one is required to adhere to any
principles, being aware of them really helps!

Also worth noting: in addition to the aesthetic principles

that define various genres, there are also technical rules
that do exist. Things like phase, headroom, pickup patterns
… basically anything revolving around the concept of reality.

Conclusion
If we use this advice correctly it means we rely on getting
the best we can given the resources at our disposal. We
experiment with the results, and use our ears and
judgement as the ultimate barometer of what’s working and
what’s not. We make solutions, not excuses.

If we use this advice incorrectly it means we do whatever

we want without having to invest the time to do it well, or
the money to do it right. And if it doesn’t work out, it’s only

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4 Commonly Misused Pieces of Audio Advice 7/20/16, 4:52 PM

because someone else messed up or people just aren’t

seeing our vision.

Have you heard any pieces of sage wisdom recently being

used in absolutely the wrong way? I’d love to hear about it
in that good old comment section below!

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MATTHEW WEISS

Matthew Weiss is a Grammy nominated and Spellemann

Award winning audio engineer from Philadelphia. Matthew
has mixed songs for Snoop, Sonny Digital, Gorilla Zoe, Uri
Caine, Dizzee Rascal, Arrested Development, 9th Wonder,
!llmind & more. Get in touch: Weiss-Sound.com.

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Ryan Gardner • 7 days ago

Here's one I've heard. "At the end of the day, all that matters
is what's coming out of the two speaker." Fair enough BUT
what goes into 'what's coming out' is more complicated
than listening to Tom Petty on your way home from work.
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4 Commonly Misused Pieces of Audio Advice 7/20/16, 4:52 PM

Frank Converse • 3 months ago

What a load of scattershot advice. Doubtful you've ever had
a hit record. Too elementary and obvious.
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Jeffrey Gerards • 5 months ago

I've always enjoyed the phrase, "fake it till you make it." I
feel like this happens so often in the audio production world
and it's pretty amusing to watch people try to do this and
ending up with their foot in their mouth. No one is perfect
and no one knows everything. Be honest about what you
don't know. Most people, unless they are assholes, are more
that willing to share their knowledge with an eager mind.
3△ ▽ • Reply • Share ›

Richard Lodge • 5 months ago

Excellent piece... All these expressions seem to be used by
people in order to mystify the creative process and really
great to see someone calling bullshit on that. Thanks
Matthew.

shameless blog plug: www.tapestelltales.com

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Xavier Sheppard • 5 months ago

Its a weird process you have to go through when behind the
mixer. At one point the final project IS a product and the
financial success and acceptability of it is how in the end
you need to evaluate it. But during the creation process you
need to keep it as far back in your mind as possible. If you
use your EQ's and compressors the same way every time
then your not listening to what your turd is telling you.
I always Keep in mind "what needs to be heard to get the
tone/feel right with the message."
I find a lot of people forget that your job behind the board is
not to make it sound good; thats the preformers job :p but to
pick out what needs to be heard to make the message
effective. I like leaving in mistakes and unbalancing away
from the commercial sound during creation and put on the
money hat at the end of the day. Usually when the entire
group is focused on have the song "make sense" other then
"sound good" you end up with a lot more to work with
already half way there if you can keep focused on what your
trying to accomplish with the song.
From there you keep the rules in mind (you gotta make sure
your "music math" adds up. but a good song can always
break through a bad recording, just have to play to the
strengths your given and not trying to make it fit anything,
but effective in its use none the less :p
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Sayan B • 5 months ago

About the polishing a turd point, I agree.
There are certain things, though, that need to be polished,
and number one on my list would be vocals.
This is a resource that I use regularly. These people are good
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4 Commonly Misused Pieces of Audio Advice 7/20/16, 4:52 PM

This is a resource that I use regularly. These people are good

and their services are cheap - a combination that is pretty
much a rarity in this field. Do feel free to get in touch with
them if you have any vocal tuning requirements.
http://www.pro-vocal-tuning.co...
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No Qualms • 6 months ago

Actually you can polish a turd. Watched them do it on
Mythbusters !
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Chris_Vandeviver • 6 months ago

I love this piece, specifically: "We all use our ears. Most
people have been using their ears their whole lives. And
most people can’t mix records."

The other title for the article could be "The Help You Won't
Receive From Gearslutz in Four Sentences".
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Gregory Wilson-Copp • 6 months ago

The old classic "Analogue is better than digital!"
I think you mean "Analogue is different from digital!"
AND
"You get what you pay for!"
The amount of terrible mixes I've heard from reputable
producers in top line studios because they were working for
a band that couldn't afford for them to care one tiny bit
about their mixes once they were out the door. Affording the
time is way way more important than affording the studio.
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Matthew Weiss > Gregory Wilson-Copp

• 6 months ago
TRUE THAT.
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Bonzo Wrokks • 6 months ago

Great article, i was once mixing a track for a friend and could
not convince him that it wasn't possible to have two
separate sub basslines playing at the same time. He kept
using the 'there are no rules' and 'it sounds good to me'
excuses till i finally caved in and let him keep his murky
unintelligible mess.
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Matthew Weiss > Bonzo Wrokks • 6 months ago

I mean... technically you CAN. I have yet to hear it

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