Loudness War: @Androdgynous_Cow_Herd, I challenge you to a thread!
I submit that "Audio Engineer" is a parasitic non-profession that should be eradicated. Along with PPI claim agents, ambulance chasers and telephone sanitsers (ok maybe telephone sanitisers could be necessary for the time being). And that "Mastering" of audio tracks should be banned (for reasons unrelated to slavery)
See: previous off-topic discussion
Ideally, every audio track sold should include all source recordings (mic inputs etc), using software at the listener's end to do the mixing and DSP, with a text-based settings file for the suggested "master" which the listener can change according to his/her tastes or mood.
More practically, I think that mixing of audio source material in a non-linear way (such as compressors or limiters designed to maximise "loudness" of the overall track, and "side-chains" designed to maximise or flatten the loudness of a subset of the sources) should be banned.
While I appreciate that for some it may be an artistic effect, it is also (mathematically) a one-way transformation, a bit like one of Damien Hurst's bisected cows. OK from one angle, grotesque from another.
Therefore, I ask that recording artists please supply us with the living cow, and we can chop it in half with a chainsaw ourselves if we choose. Stop paying quack "audio engineers" to butcher it before we can even hear it moo.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
