Why Consumers and Engineers Don't Get Along

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diamone
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Joined: Sat Aug 09, 2008 6:51 pm
Location: Silicon Valley

Why Consumers and Engineers Don't Get Along

Post: # 47550Unread post diamone
Sat Aug 12, 2017 7:48 pm

For whoever is still on e.g. Steve Hoffman forums or Audiokarma or Home Recording or BSNPubs or Tapeheads or any one of a dozen other similar consumer/fanboy oriented sites - there's a reason engineers get attacked on consumer sites - defend ourselves and then get thrown off their boards for doing so.

Science and Technology.

There are those of us who understand and/or use professional technology and then there's the people who just want it to sound good - like trying to explain your job in music to your mother's neighbor man - and just about as aggravating.

On the BSNPubs forum which has been the latest in a number of similar casualties - the old loud obnoxious and ignorant are revered by board admin (in this case a guy that was a radio DJ and sometime PD for 50 years - and nothing else - never graduated to production or engineering or multi-media or anything else - just endless topics about radio and why certain records were hits and certain other similar sounding ones weren't (zzzzzzzzzzz) and when they attack somebody else on the board who has science to back them up - they ``short themselves out'' ``go whine to the teacher'' or otherwise throw any number of baby tantrums.

This appears to be the case on just about every mens' hobby board I do or formerly belonged to including coins, trains, old toys airplanes, classic cars, you name it.

Those that cater to engineers and their trainees - like here - remain for the most part civil. The same holds true for boards that are made up almost exclusively of consumers and fanboys.

The problem is when you have a mix.

Generally - from a sociological viewpoint - anybody who has ever been to any type of even semi-pro electronics or vinyl etc swapmeet over the last 70 years knows what I'm talking about. The same holds true in the comic book etc world.

The engineers can't stand newbs and their million and one questions and the newbs can't tolerate the engineers with their terminally crabby obnoxious attitudes.

In the case of the BSN board - the same as all the other boards previously mentioned and plenty I haven't - people appear to be under the impression that it's going to be any different online vs having a printed newsletter or going to the swapmeet.

I joined over there in the first place at the express request of a now-famous stage-tape sync-stereo artist because I had a number of such tapes I was synching to make stereo for my own enjoyment. At that time the `Unconventional Stereo'' (a.k.a. Digitally Extracted Stereo, Digitally Created Stereo and Digitally Synched Stereo) all three used to be pretty much on an even keel.

Anymore - especially with the dumbing down of the science and programs that can allow anybody to even marginally extract elements out of a monaural performance and give a stereo-esque sound to it (to a consumer's ear anyway) has all but erased the stage-tape sync world - at least on their site.

And the ``coiner'' of ther tem - Chris Kissel - is another one of those like Steve Hoffman - only interested in being kowtowed to by the fanboys.

Pass.

I suggested the forum split off it's Unconventional Stereo section to separate sync artists from the spectral extraction people - and got royally trounced over it - with a further bunch of consumers and fanboys backing HIM up the same as on the Steve Hoffman forums and any one of a dozen other similar outlets.

Over the seven years I have been on their board - very little else other than Stage Tape Sync Stereo has piqued my interest - especially when consumers want engineering knowledge and have none of the science background to be able to understand it or even make use it when it's simplified.

And then they all get bent out of shape when you tell them to go to their local junior college and take some engineering and mechanical science so they can understand - and they throw a tantrum because they bought a $28 sound editing program on sale for $14.99 and complain that what they get out of it sounds like trash - and can't handle it when you tell them that the studios have multimillion dollar production suites and bachelors and even masters degrees in physics and computer science before they even set foot one in a studio.

And then the board admins - being none thereof - stomp on YOU - one of the lone candles of intelligent life - because you're ``offending'' their ``target demographic'' (consumers and fanboys).

I just wish every similar site was labeled like this one i.e. clearly not for people who ``fell over'' their Grandfather's General Instruments pivot-arm home recording lathe and some blanks and want to know how to record on it.

It would save a lot of people a lot of aggravation.

P.S. Tom Moulton warned me about mixing consumers and engineers way back in the winter when we were having phone conversations about stage tape sync stereo - and he told me that's one of a number of similar reasons why he left when he did.

Stan Ricker told me the same thing about professional musicians and professional engineers 25 years ago when I was interning with Len Horowitz and how hard he had to study and the kinds of dues he had to pay just to get taken seriously by the engineers of the day since he was primarily a musician.

Ten years before that I got told the same thing by a now-famous (and recently deceased) broadcasting engineer andbout the differences between them and the on-air ``talent'' (which as the joke goes - rarely has any).

I grew up moving around the world to different countries every 13 weeks whether I liked it or not (in my father's Air Force Radio Television Film and Recording Engineering job he had building facilities) where everybody got along and nobody had to tolerate consumers.

So if any of you are on any of those other boards and wonder why you get snubbed - now you know pass it on.
2 Kinds of Men/Records: Low Noise & Wide Range. LN is mod. fidelity, cheap, & easy. WR is High Fidelity & Abrasive to its' Environment. Remember that when you encounter a Grumpy Engineer. (:-D)

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