The Misinformation Revolution
We’ve all experienced the information revolution produced by modern communications. Unfortunately the same technology has spawned a misinformation revolution of equal magnitude. Pat Brown
Words in blue are from Bill Thompson.
But by and large magazines like dB, Recording Engineer/Producer, and Polyphony/Electronic Musician and Mix provided a wealth of accurate and useful information.
HI Bill, I would add Audio Magazine to the past tense list, if nothing else because of Dick Heyser’s loudspeaker reviews. However, in an issue in the late 70s they published an article about how to calculate how loud one’s hi-fi system could go. An example: loudspeaker rated SPL @ 1/W & 1 m = 88 dB; rated amplifier power = 100 W; calculated maximum SPL (average, not peak) one should get = 108 dB in the living room. I called them and talked to the editor (you could actually do that back then). I said the calculation and in fact the whole article ignored peak-to-average ratios and therefore the results are quite unrealistic for a user. He said he stood by the article. I said cancel my subscription.
There were two major shifts that changed all that (my opinion only). First, with the introduction of truly cost effective (read cheap) gear the audience changed dramatically. Prior to the Adat and the Mackie 1604….
While these kinds products were part of it, here is what my sense of this shift is (as a both a participant and observer since the early 50s) that the magazines have certainly echoed. Disclaimer (with thanks to Dan Lynch): First, let me say that I realize there are things wrong with my brain. Look! there’s a chicken! But, I digress….
I think this all started earlier in the mid 60s to mid/late 70s with the huge increase in the hi-fi market spurred by the influx of low cost off-shore products. These de-throned most of the small but still venerated companies that ruled the market. As well, the small retail audio stores that also dominated this market succumbed to the up-and-coming box store phenomena (= non-expert salesmen). The MI, PA, and recording markets also hugely expanded with the music revolution of the 60s/70s. This large increase in demand meant that the low costs of mass produced consumer technology became viable in the MI, semi-pro and pro markets (like Mackie as you noted). These mass product companies courted unknowledgable, pro-audio wanna-bees because…well….that was the market. During those times, there was (and still is) considerable crossover, both equipment and people-wise, between consumer, MI, semi-professional, and professional. Of course, all of these markets have continued to expand.
Then there were the marketing departments that got so out of control with their junk science that the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) finally had to step in, albeit with a limited scope. Unfortunately, regarding this point, the damage was done. Much of the junk science in the advertisements and echoed in some magazine and press articles had become a part of the technical knowledge base that has continued and been expanded to this day.
A big part in all of this is that component audio systems were and are complex SYSTEMS assembled from a bunch of often incompatible products manufactured by different parties. Unlike most other widely available but complex technologies (e.g. computers), the growing audio industry lacked any standards, official, formal, or otherwise. The mish-mash of levels, impedance, connectors, grounding, signal configurations (e.g. bal/unbal) and you name it is the evidence. This did not and has not enhanced proper application of the technology, those applications growing in types and sizes. Without any scientific backbone to the industry and with little but word-of-mouth as the primary educational tool (magazine ads and articles included), the misinformation about audio technology has been perpetuated and expanded.
The other shift, of course, is the Internet.
I don’t see this so much as a shift. Rather it has simply given many more individuals a voice in promulgating their audio misinformation; a greatly expanded word-of-mouth. However, in one sense it is a shift in replacing the magazines as a source of information and leading to the wider spread of information from such e-magazine articles as prompted this thread. The problem is there are no widely accepted leaders, authorities, or widely accepted and readily available, credible facts to counteract most of this. (Of course, this phenomena is not limited to the subject of audio.)
The most important element in all of this is that outside of computers, audio systems have been by far the most common and complex systems put together by your average Joe in the last 60 years. Most other systems we deal with hands-on as individuals have come as complete systems created by industries with a solid engineering backbone, like ones car. A component audio system was and is very much like building a car from scratch. GM has a cadre of real engineers, regulations, standards, experience, education, and a huge body of science behind creating its car systems. However, it is the consumer, the band, the small studio owner, the contractor, the consultant, etc. that each function as a General Motors in creating an audio system.
Unlike GM where the results for a car design are fairly easy to quantify, the results for an audio system are far more nebulous and subjective and certainly not standardized. In line with this and only until recently there had been little serious R & D money devoted to audio systems, only to the various pieces, pretty much in isolation, that made up the systems.
Speaking of complex technologies, the rising acoustics industry became a victim to all of this with its own brands of junk science (egg cartons for isolation, wood is good, EQ the room, anyone?), not to mention the invalid but populist Avery Fisher Hall effect – acoustics is at best a hit or miss “science.”
So, in the span of maybe 15 years the audio industry hugely expanded in breadth and depth. Pieces of technology were put in the hands of likely orders of magnitude more more people with little formal structure of any kind as to the proper creation of systems from these disparate pieces. The was no structural education (SynAudCon certainly excepted), equipment standards, nor industry regulation. All this was a perfect storm as it were, aided by the hugely expanding technology in many industries.
That’s how I see the stage, or shift, set for what we have today in audio, which the magazines have echoed. What started as a cottage/garage consumer audio industry heavily influenced and helped drive a large expansion of the MI, semiprofessional, and professional audio industry. Unfortunately the knowledge was still rooted, source and content-wise, in those cottages and garages. I cannot think of another industry based on as complex a technology where the misinformation is as rampant and/or ingrained both in the common knowledge base and the products. Well…then again there is the “political industry” 🙂
Unfortunately (and ironically), the audio industry today is like Avery Fisher Hall in that it was created with fundamental flaws. Like the hall has proven so far, fixing fundamental problems, such as the junk science in the common audio knowledge base, will be extremely difficult at best.
There any number of self-appointed and otherwise annointed audio/acoustics experts, but relatively few evidence a proper knowledge of the subjects needed to be one. In my own career in both consulting and manufacturing I found the number of subjects I could put to good use at one time or another times were numerous. I was fortunate to have various levels of formal education in these subjects which included: physics, math, gemoetry, electronics, chemistry, biolology, theatre, music, architecture, psychology, mechanics, economics, literature, philosophy, religion, geology, and cattle farming (actually used this twice for audio – my education in it was on-the-job training – don’t ask – all I’ll say is that my primary tools was a shovel…however, the Deere 4020 was more fun…I mentioned the problematic brain, right?).
I thus totally agree with Bill Whitlock’s comment: “It often feels like an uphill battle to educate in a world of marketing deception and self-appointed experts.”
Chuck McGregor