| For one thing, adding external DSP is rather redundant since the program material can be optimized for the peculiarities of the iPhone's DAC in firmware or software. For another, it's not true to say music is mastered for ideal studio conditions. It's typically mastered in ideal studio conditions but then it's also typically tried out in known inferior ones - for example, almost every recording studio used to have a pair of Yamaha NS-10 speakers, which were deliberately engineered to deliver crap home hifi performance, with the rule of thumb being 'if it sounds good on them, it'll sound good on anything.' Do a Google Image search on'recording studio' and you'll loads on these el-cheapo monitors sitting atop mixers that cost tens or even hundreds of times as much. Learn more here: http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep08/articles/yamahans10.ht... And even after using tools like that, the final test is (and has long been) to listen to the program material in a car, on a boombox, on a phone, or whatever - just like in film, the director doesn't usually sign off on the final product until after taking it to a screening theater or putting it in the DVD/bluray player at home, as appropriate. People who work in audio production are abundantly aware that music is listened to in very different environments from where it is created. This is something that is stressed in just about every mastering article/tutorial/book I have come across in 20 years as a sound engineer. We're also aware that the human brain tends to compensate for the effect of the listening environment on the signal. We even have a name for this phenomenon, which has been the subject of considerable academic study: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocktail_party_effect You're offering a product that does some dynamic signal processing based on a combination of the program material and the listening environment, that's fine and there's a market for it. By all means lay claim to some new secret sauce - as pointed out above, everyone else in this industry does. But spare me the spurious arguments about elitist engineers in their ivory tower studios who don't care about the plight of the average listener. |
To my earlier point - you're correct, what I meant is that its mastered in ideal studio conditions, but to a specific taste. The sound engineer usually has to make this call - do I want this to sound good on the radio and when streamed at 128 Kbps over Spotify to someones car? Or do I optimize for the discerning listener who is using his Hi Fi system at home?
And studio engineers definitely take people's listening abilities into account, but again are force to make some hard choices - most are aware that their hearing is usually better trained than the average consumer, and will shy away from including details that are very subtle in for pop music (i'm using this term broadly) for example.
We really believe that as portable sound systems start becoming cognizant of their environment and their users' habits, they'll be able to deliver audio that delights people - a lot of our initial testers have really liked the dynamic changes we provide in DSP. Even if they have the know-how to tweak their own music, changing settings on a mobile device every time their headphones, song or environment changes is a challenging affair and limited to simple EQ changes for the most part.
If you're interested in playing with an early version of our DSP and giving us some feedback, I would love to get your thoughts - shoot me an email (in my HN profile).