Presence speakers - What do you think?

[Sir Terrence the Terrible]

I only started your quote or this would be a book...

I'll get right to the point...

Let me ask you a question...

If all engineers follow the same standard, then why do a great many of my CD's sound like crap and a few others sound fantastic?

CD's are a 2 channel medium, and there are no standards for mixing 2 channel sources. There are standards for mixing multichannel music and soundtracks.

I've gotten to the point that I rarely buy CD's any more because more often than not, I end up throwing them in a drawer. I love the music, but I hate the recording of it.

Why is that?

Ever heard of something called the loudness wars? If not, read up

Loudness war - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I've asked you this before and you ignored me.

Maybe it is because you are mixing two things together that are quite different.

Don't blame it on my equipment. I've had a number of systems ranging in the tens of thousands of dollars and a crappy CD is a crappy CD no matter what. I've heard many people complain about the quality of many recordings so I am not alone in this quagmire.

If you recording engineers adhere to the same science, the same principles and the same standards, why are my draws full of coasters?

See above

This goes for movies too.

If you want to hear complaints about the quality of your work (not personally, but in general) listen to the end users.

Why do you think I participate on sites like this, Bluray.com, and Hidefdigest? To listen to the end users.

You and your like can go through life patting yourselves on the back for a job well done, but that means nothing when the person buying your product thinks its garbage. Fortunately, most people don't have good audio systems or the complaints would overwhelm the industry.

More BS. Steven, your bowels should be empty by now. I am an active participant on the largest HT site on the web(Bluray.com). Almost everyone knows I am a sound designer and mixer for a major Hollywood studio, and I don't hear that our mixes are garbage. Perhaps you should go get those bat ears of yours checked.

You do not know the quality of most people systems, you have not heard them. There is a weakness in your arguments, and this is why you rely heavily on hyperbole, assumptions, and misinformation as a basis of your comments.

Although limited, it's the good recordings that keep me hanging on.

I have a lot of very good jazz and classical recordings in my collection. I don't really buy anything else, at least not in the last several years.

While I'm asking questions...

As you well know, if the monitors that you mix on are sonically colored, anything you do will sound colored on speakers that are more accurate in the home.

How do you know the monitors I mix on are colored? More assumptions? Do you know what monitors I use for mixing?

I would assume that you would want the most accurate speakers possible in the studio. Why don't home audio systems use the same speakers as you do in the studio? Or... Why don't studios use high quality home speakers as their reference. I do know that some do, but why don't all studios use them.

You don't even know what kind of speakers we use in the studio, and you have never heard the ones we use, so you cannot make this ignorant statement without that information.

Addendum:

BTW, I looked up what it takes to be an audio engineer and found that you can do it in as little as 4 weeks, longer if you stretch the courses out. The only requirement is a high school education.

It took me 2 years of college just to get into the meat of real engineering courses at a university. It seems to me that audio engineering is more like real estate or truck driving school.

Well anyway, I have to rethink your credentials... I thought I was talking to someone else.

Steven, you are a complete idiot plain and simple. I went to the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts (the same film school that Spielberg,Walter Murch, Ron Howard,Jon Landau,George Lucas,Joe Johnston went to). You are totally stupid if you think you can learn what I learned in college in 4 weeks.

Your level of ignorance seems to have no bounds. I almost prefer to mix it up with RGA and Pixel. Even with their limited education on sound, they are far far ahead of you.

Just exactly what do you engineer, BS bins?