Because a giant square wave NEVER sounds as good as a normal feather duster wave. It's not what it looks like that matters, you're right. But when it looks like that, it's going to sound like crap no matter how you parse the argument.
It's like saying, who cares what the lines on the seismograph look like, as long as there isn't an earthquake. Well, if the seismograph is drawing squarewaves, there's an earthquake.
Sure it is. It's like fashon, it goes in cycles. in the 80's everybody though that synth rock was both the present and future; electronics and electronic sound was here to say so you'd better get used to it. Now you listen to Flock of Seagulls or The Tubes and it sounds so incredibly dated. No, the next fashon came from Seattle, and instead of using synths and space suits and hair gel, it was about a guy who needed a shave wearing a dirty flannel shirt and playing an acoustic guitar.
Engineers are rebelling and fighting the square wave, word is getting out, and the bleeding edge producers are already starting to re-discover texture and dynamics in some of the leading edge mixes. The pendulum is starting to swing. It's s slow swing, but it's coming. In another 5-10 years we will be listening back at the square waves of the turn of the century, and they will sound just as dated as the second Tears for Fears album.
G.
I don't totally agree, actually. Yes, a lot of the time people get the square waveforms out of either inexperience or going for the wrong goal (loud vs. quality) but there's nothing to say that the visual presence of your waveform will have ANY bearing on what it sounds like.
The thing is, I don't TOTALLY disagree with anything your saying here... but I just wanted to make it clear that just because it looks a certain way doesn't even mean it will have a certain sound to it. Personally, I get fairly hot mixes straight out of Logic, without even thinking about needing to "make it louder". I've fallen under the same "visual mixing" trap that a lot of people are in at one time, and honestly, I went right back to what I'm doing now, as everything went from sounding fairly lush, rich, and polished, to cold, unmusical, and boring. It's just my mixing style. I get the best results using a lot of saturation and distortion.
Sure, if you're trying to join a fashion, or something like that..how fucking stupid is that! But, that's not the ONLY reason one would have really hot mixes. Sometimes it just sounds good that way for the project. For my primary band, "square wave" mixes accomplish the overall emotion and energy very nicely...which would be very much lost had I mixed with large amounts of dynamics (note: except for the parts that are supposed to be more groove oriented, or sound that way) In other words, I'm not shooting for being "loud" at all, just ends up being that way, being that I use a lot of saturation and distortion in the mixes of that project (mostly everything except for kick and snare are smashed fairly liberally) That's the difference... I made a conscious decision that in order to get the aural and textural result that would best convey the feeling of the music, I would break the rules of mixing quite liberally.
And let me repeat, I've had some other industry people comment that they were glad that I "wasn't falling into the loudness war trap" and they loved how dynamic my mixes were and not just one big square wave... lol... this is referring to the mixes of the project in which are very "square wave" visually... maybe not so much aurally... (what is it I always say about mixing with the arrangement?
way more effective than mixing with any plugins or outboard gear when you can do it.) I've had the odd experience my entire time doing audio (about 13 years now) of industry people militantly criticizing my techniques, but at the same time, the very same people praising my results. In my short stint in "audio school" I would be told every way possible how my methods were "wrong" but then I would win awards for best mix, with the exact same people behind it. So what does that tell you? Well, it tells me, that it's "popular" to assume that doing something a certain way will automatically make it sound like shit, but it tells me that this is just BS. THere are a million ways to do something like record and mix a song, and NOTHING is incorrect, as long as you get a great result.
It's just that this argument annoys me a slight bit because it spreads the misinformation that the way your waveform looks is either "good" or "bad' It's neither... If you're mixing for vinyl things like this are much more important, but the appearance of the waveform is entirely useless as long as it sounds good... it could look like Dick Cheney shooting his mother in the face and it wouldn't matter worth even one shit, let alone two.
Have you ever considered that maybe the militantly anti loud mix idea is ALSO quite fashionable this day and age?
Just a thought.
