I wrote the following a couple of years ago when I first started this blog and had far fewer readers than now, so I thought it might be a good candidate for a repost with the necessary updates.
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I
got to thinking about the many changes that came about in the recording
business during the 2000's recently - some of it good, some of it
bad, most of it significant. Here are what I consider to be the 12 major
changes to recording in the 2000's, in no particular order.
1) Pro Tools Standardization - As the decade started,
Pro Tools
was already creeping into the major studios, but every year since it
has become more and more entrenched as the standard audio capture
format for any professional application. Sure, there are a lot of other
great DAWs, but none of them have the traction of Pro Tools. In any
professional situation, from music to radio to film and television post,
this is the DAW that you're going to have to use as we move into 2012 -
until something better comes along (no, I don't have a clue what that might be).
2) The Downfall of Commercial Studios - When I moved to Los
Angeles in 1980, there were more than 250 "24 track" commercial studios
in town. Many of them were multi-room facilities and they all were
teaming with business. As we move into 2012, there are fewer commercial
studios than ever before thanks to cuts in recording budgets, the ease
of setting up a home studio, and the fact that studio rates have
remained about the same since the 80's while overhead has risen
dramatically.
One of the sad byproducts of this is the fact that the apprentice system
that existed and taught so many great engineers has pretty much fallen
by the wayside. With only a few commercial studios left, it's only the
lucky few that get to sit behind a great engineer and learn something
new every day. That's good for me since more people buy my
books, but it's not a great thing for the industry at large.
3) The Rise of Software and Fall of Hardware - Once upon a time,
every studio needed a pretty good amount of outboard gear to be able to
record and, especially, mix a record. It would be nothing for a studio
to spend in excess of $100k for outboard EQ's, compressors, effects
devices and reverbs that they absolutely needed to have in order to
attract independent engineers and producers and make a competitive
record. During the 2000's we saw a shift away from outboard hardware
boxes to software plugins that do the same thing, only cheaper and
easier. At the beginning of the decade, most pro engineers complained
about "the sound" of plugins that emulated their favorite outboard
device, and for the most part, they were right. Plugins didn't quite measure
up. Now that major computer horsepower is so inexpensive and programmers
are better at what they do, the difference in sound quality between the
plugin and the real thing is no longer an issue even with the
old-schoolers.
One of the big reasons why software plugs have caught on is price. Why buy a rack of
Neve
1073's at $2500 a piece when you can buy a
Universal Audio UAD card that can give you a
hundred of them for half the price of just one? Sure, you don't get the
mic preamp and and you can't track with them, but if you don't record
more than a couple channels at a time anyway, it's hardly a problem.
Even in live sound there's been a shift as the industry changes to a
digital signal path. There'll always be a market for outboard gear,
especially for tracking, but the days of large expenditures for hardware
are over.
4) The Fall Of Rental Companies - It used to be that
renting gear was one of the secret cash-cows of the business. Every town
had at least one major rental company (New York, LA and Nashville had 4
or 5) and many engineers and producers made extra dough on their
projects by renting their pricier gear back as an extra. Thanks to the
rise in software plugins, the need for that expensive hardware has
dropped drastically. And even when it is rented, the length of the
sessions have decreased to such a degree that what used to be a three or
four week rental might now take only three or four days. As a result, a
lot of the major rental companies have either gone under or cut back
drastically, the minor ones don't exist anymore, and it's rare that an
engineer will even think about renting the gear back to a project as
he's just thankful for the job.
5) Mixing In The Box (Who Needs A Recording Console?) - As the
2000's came around the corner, you would never even consider doing a
project without a recording console, and for sure, you'd never open a
studio unless you had a
Neve,
SSL,
API or the like.
Today, vintage recording consoles that regularly went for $250k plus
and didn't depreciate much can now be had for $50k or less with the
seller feeling extremely pleased that he even found a buyer. With so
little tracking with live musicians being done these days (see
Loop-based Music) and the increased power of the DAW, why buy a
recording console at all?
DAW's offer so many features these days that a competent engineer can
make a great sounding record in a way that couldn't be done in 2000. The
sound is good, the plug-ins are great and plentiful, the automation and
recall are better than on any console, you're no longer limited to a
certain size control room by the size of a desk, and inexpensive
controllers are plentiful. It's no wonder that even the old-schoolers
have finally acquiesced to "mixing in the box."
6) Less Money Going Around - As everyone knows, CD sales are way, way down and as a
result, so are recording budgets. Where once a $100k budget was
considered bottom of the barrel and budgets for even non-superstar acts
were beyond $500k, we now live in a world of $40 and 50k budgets or less. No
money - no big studio, no rentals, no hardware purchases. It's all tied
together. Superstar acts still get a blank check, but there are fewer
and fewer of them. The future of the recording budget is here -
get used to $40k or less.
7) Sample and Loop-based Music - Once upon a time, all music started with real musicians tracked live. That all changed during the 2000's. Programs like
Acid and
Ableton Live made
it easy to make some great music without ever seeing a real musician.
Loop libraries gave you access to just about every kind of sound and
mood that you could think of, and samples of every type of instrument
became more realistic. Suddenly, you didn't need a studio, you didn't
need a tracking room, you didn't need a player - all you needed was a
laptop, some software and a set of headphones. Television and film
composers no longer needed an orchestra, keyboard players could record
great guitar and bass parts without the players, and no one needed a
drummer if you had
BFD, Steven Slate Drums, or a similar program. It changed the music world, although not so much for the better, I'm afraid.
8) The Rise of Alternative Markets - Some markets thrived since 2000. The church market became a saviour for many audio gear
companies as churches installed bigger and better sound systems,
recorded their services and even broadcast them on television or the
web. The sound system install market flourished as commercial building
projects popped up everywhere. While this was truly a bright spot for
many companies in recent years, the recession brought these markets
to a resounding halt. Market saturation may mean that the worse may be yet to come, unfortunately.
9) The Rise of the Home Studio - It's now possible to have a studio on your laptop that's much more powerful than anything
The Beatles ever
had to work with for less than a thousand dollars. Home recording is
within reach of anyone that wants to do it, and everybody does. This has
been both good and bad. It's brought about
Music 3.0,
where an artist is no longer bound by the marketing, distribution and
sales system of the record labels, but the filter that the label
provided and the help of the many professionals along the way had it's
advantages too. Just because you have your own studio doesn't mean you
know how to use it. As a result, we have fewer real professionals than
ever before who are making less money than ever before - and more and
more people making their own music at home. It hasn't resulted in better
music so far.
10) The Influx of Chinese Gear - Audio and music gear is better
than ever before on average. It's really difficult to find what would be
considered a "bad" piece of gear these days (I remember the old
Kent
guitars with the bowed necks when I was growing up - those were bad),
and it's cheaper than ever as well, all thanks to those hard-working
Chinese/Vietnamese/Cambodian near slave-laborers. Just about every gear company does the same
thing these days - design the piece here, manufacture it in Asia, and
sell it as cheaply as possible against a dozen other manufacturers with
the same product and idea. The problem is that while all the gear is
good, not much of it is really great. That's why we have more boutique
gear manufacturers than ever. I wonder how they all survive?
11) The Failure of the Hi-Res Formats - In the beginning of the
2000's, the great hope for the industry and audio pros alike was the
hi-res
SACD and
DVD-A formats. The trouble was, the public looked at
these formats and yawned. It's difficult to hear hi-quality audio when
your sound system is worse than what you could find in the typical
college dorm room in 1970. Bad presentation, bad marketing, and no
consumer interest all equal format death.
12) Change in Consumer Buying Habits - We all know this one. CD
sales down, digital sales up, piracy still high, not as much money coming in. It's the reason for
most of the items on this list and is covered every day on my
Music 3.0 blog.
If this sounds like I'm complaining, you misread my intentions. I'm just noting how the music/recording business is evolving. In fact, I'm excited by the future, something I'll expound on later this week.
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Mixing with headphones has always been an iffy situation. While it can be done, the mixer runs the risk of missing on the low-end component of the mix since the phones are so close to your hears. It's not how much of the world listens to music, so you end up constantly comparing your mix on speakers anyway. All this might change with the introduction of Waves NX however.
