Seattle Music
I was born in Seattle, I grew up in Seattle, I'm personally devoid of anything resembling musical talent and I wish that weren't the case. I enjoy listening talented others make music.
I have a background that involves both a lot of exposure to live music (which I enjoy) and to technicalities involved in recorded music. I know what unmangled music sounds like.
When I was young, when I'd go to live music it generally was loud and sounded good. There is a place on Aurora and 155th known as Parkers that used to be a road house, and used to have a real nice setup and some great acts. It has since gotten destroyed into a Sports Bar and then re-destroyed into a Casino, not the place it was.
It used to have a nice stage with a central area in front for dancing and then raised areas on either side for dining and drinking. You could go in and have a really nice meal while listening to great music at the same time.
The sound there was loud but clean, the bass solid and robust, the percussion crisp, they had an excellent in-house sound system.
At the venues I go to now, the sound is crap. Generally no bass below about 80 hz or highs above 10 Khz, and the music is clipped and compressed to death.
You've got these damned noise laws that say you can't exceed a certain decibel level at a certain distance, and that's a weighted measurement because of the non-linear characteristics of the human ear.
Combined that with the fact that many people attending these venues want it to be loud and some of the sound characteristics of music and there just is know way you can have clean sound that you can actually hear.
You see music tends to have peaks that are about 20 decibels or more above the average levels. You perceive the loudness based upon the average levels but the peaks are necessary for music to sound natural, for the brassiness of the horns to have that characteristic or for the cymbals to have their characteristic sound.
So to make the music sound louder, the peaks are "clipped off". That allows you to raise the average power to close to what the peaks would have been, about 20 decibels more, without increasing the levels reading on some dick weeds sound pressure level meter.
Then human hearing falls off pretty rapidly below 80 Hz and above 10 Khz, so it takes a lot of energy in these area for us to hear it loudly, thus eliminating these frequencies can allow that audio power to be used in the spectrum we do hear loud increasing the apparent loudness without increasing Mr. Dick Weed's sound pressure level meter reading.
Seattle has killed the commercial viability for many artists to make music a living in Seattle. The limit of 10pm for all ages shows and the inability of many artists to draw enough of an over-21 crowd for commercial viability. The noise ordinances make the performances sound like crap relative to what they should sound like. The noise ordinances make it all but impossible for bands to find a place to practice.
I would like to see Seattle return to the music friendly city I grew up in.
I have a background that involves both a lot of exposure to live music (which I enjoy) and to technicalities involved in recorded music. I know what unmangled music sounds like.
When I was young, when I'd go to live music it generally was loud and sounded good. There is a place on Aurora and 155th known as Parkers that used to be a road house, and used to have a real nice setup and some great acts. It has since gotten destroyed into a Sports Bar and then re-destroyed into a Casino, not the place it was.
It used to have a nice stage with a central area in front for dancing and then raised areas on either side for dining and drinking. You could go in and have a really nice meal while listening to great music at the same time.
The sound there was loud but clean, the bass solid and robust, the percussion crisp, they had an excellent in-house sound system.
At the venues I go to now, the sound is crap. Generally no bass below about 80 hz or highs above 10 Khz, and the music is clipped and compressed to death.
You've got these damned noise laws that say you can't exceed a certain decibel level at a certain distance, and that's a weighted measurement because of the non-linear characteristics of the human ear.
Combined that with the fact that many people attending these venues want it to be loud and some of the sound characteristics of music and there just is know way you can have clean sound that you can actually hear.
You see music tends to have peaks that are about 20 decibels or more above the average levels. You perceive the loudness based upon the average levels but the peaks are necessary for music to sound natural, for the brassiness of the horns to have that characteristic or for the cymbals to have their characteristic sound.
So to make the music sound louder, the peaks are "clipped off". That allows you to raise the average power to close to what the peaks would have been, about 20 decibels more, without increasing the levels reading on some dick weeds sound pressure level meter.
Then human hearing falls off pretty rapidly below 80 Hz and above 10 Khz, so it takes a lot of energy in these area for us to hear it loudly, thus eliminating these frequencies can allow that audio power to be used in the spectrum we do hear loud increasing the apparent loudness without increasing Mr. Dick Weed's sound pressure level meter reading.
Seattle has killed the commercial viability for many artists to make music a living in Seattle. The limit of 10pm for all ages shows and the inability of many artists to draw enough of an over-21 crowd for commercial viability. The noise ordinances make the performances sound like crap relative to what they should sound like. The noise ordinances make it all but impossible for bands to find a place to practice.
I would like to see Seattle return to the music friendly city I grew up in.
posted by Nanook at 9:21 PM
0 comments
links to this post
