On Fri, 11 Mar 2016 05:16:00 -0600, Brent Busby wrote: >it would be nice if there was some quantifiable way to look at what >the mix and mastering engineer has done and actually see it Hi Brent, take a look at painted colors in the way Josef Albers did by his "Interaction of Color". Take a look at the same blue square on a green and orange background. Assumed software should give each colour an unique sinus frequency, you could hear three different sinus tones. One for the green, one for the orange and one for the blue, but for the brain the blue that is equal on the green and on the red background, seems to be two different shades of blue. This might also be the case of the impression of two mixed sinus tones, but your understanding of the painted colors wont become more objective by listening to the sound. There is nothing crucial for the overall effect you could analyse by objective, measurable values. That's why there is not one valid color theory, there are several color theories and even if only one valid color theory would exist, it can't give an ultimate answer to overall effects of complex paintings, in combination with different compositions of similar paintings, let alone for comparison of completely different paintings from different cultures. If a sound analysis done by software of Arnold Böcklin's different versions of his "Isle of the Dead" would provide you different tone combinations, it would be harder to determine the impression of the painting by the sound, then by taking a look at the paintings. A painter needs to learn how color and composition interacts and an audio engineer needs to learn how sound color and composition interacts. Spectral analyses of sound files e.g. could be helpful to ensure that e.g. two mixes that should sound equal, since one file just is a digital copy of the other, are really equal. Assumed the digital copy should have failed regarding a software bug, you might see two definitively different color impressions. A spectral analysis can't show you, what impression the audio mix does cause to a listener and how to change the impression to e.g. sound warmer and I doubt that any other visualisation of sound could be used to get "some quantifiable way to look at what the mix and mastering engineer has done". What you want is similar to want to get software, to analyse a recording of an opera and to generate sheets of music, that are equal to the sheets of music, with all the comments the conductor of that recording had in mind. Regards, Ralf _______________________________________________ Linux-audio-user mailing list Linux-audio-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user
