An untrained human ear, rarely can tell the difference between good and bad audio. Before I started working in radio and purchasing sound cards for over $1,000, I really didn’t think too much about the processing required to produce high quality audio in a computer. If you never had Wagu beef or a particular cut of a kosher steak, you may never appreciate this type of meat if you’ve only had steak frites your entire life.
So is the same with good audio, once you’re exposed to the processing of a $1500 Orban card, you’ll never hear music the same. The audio you listen to in your car stereo which is broadcasted over the air (OTA) is heavily processed by expensive audio processors. These processors enhance the sonic quality of the audio in various ways from frequency and tone adjustment to amplification, EQ and compression. In short, the audio that leaves the station sounds incredible. However, depending on your home or car stereo, you may or may not reap the benefits. The point is in order to know good audio vs bad audio, you need to be exposed to both.
Lots of people have listened to bad audio their entire lives. Bad audio is music on a cheap car stereo, cheap airplane headphones, music on your TV speakers, most ceiling speakers and audio recorded in a large room with lots of echo or reverb. Good audio is music you hear in a recording studio treated acoustically so every high and low frequency across the spectrum is audible . Bad audio usually contains wide ranges of random noise, which are the sounds that you don’t really want to hear like the wind blowing, power line humming or some fire trucks in the background. Bad audio always contains a certain amount of annoying “room noise” which is the white noise inherent in many locations such as fluorescent light sources, refrigerators, anything with a motor or even pipes carrying water/fluids. A omni-directional mic will pickup every sort of sound you don’t want to hear, which is why cardioid mics, or mics with specific pickup patterns, are much better for recording audio. Once your ears get used to hearing the various peaks (dynamic range), wider frequency range and zero artifacts/distortion associated with good audio, you’ll never go back to appreciating or accepting bad audio again. You’ll notice room noise in bad audio recordings or when the audio lacks depth or sonic range.
Another characteristic of bad audio is distortion. Distortion can be defined in a variety of technical ways, but in a nutshell, it’s when audio that’s reproduced or transmitted loses it’s original state or is compromised. The most common form of distortion is “clipping”, which is when audio is over amplified beyond the threshold the electronic circuits and/or speakers can handle. Most people can detect and correct audio that’s distorted because more than often it’s very noticeable. However, there are some cases when producing or recording audio, a microphone pre-amp could drive a mic too “high” making the signal “hot”, but not bad enough to be noticeable. This is very common with people who are novices at audio production because often they don’t realize certain equipment like mics, are rated to operate at specific levels or gains, which if not adhered too, can cause problems down the road. The worst thing that can happen to a producer during a session is you think your levels are good based on the mixer knobs, only to listen back to the recording to discover it’s distorted and you have to record everything over.
In conclusion, in today’s world, many people have become content creators, producing a variety of digital media from podcasts to streaming YouTube channels. In all of this, many of them do not have the trained ears to distinguish between good and bad audio. With the wealth of information (like this article) and the tools available online today, I sincerely hope every content creator takes the time to learn what good audio really is and maintains a high level of production for their content. This will help foster a environment where consumers get high quality content that’s worth paying for, and not a digital universe filled with “junk”.
