XI year old Autechre Album Released: Exai (WARP234)

[xox]

Yes but they're very precise, or better to say precise enough for critical listening and any little deviations in freq response (as you said ''tinkered with in the mid-bass range'' and not that sharp highs...but never the less very precise and clean) can be easily alleviated with additional critical listening. We're talking here in cost/benefit terms and that's why I bought the AudioTechnicas, half the price and better IMO. Although the Sennheisers are open-back design with very good spacial feel the AudioTechincas (closed-to-semi-open design) are good enough in that department for my needs.

 

BTW...What's that new Ae everybody talking about?!

 

 

 

.

hd650 and dt 880 are listening headphones, not monitors. do pro audio people produce/mix/master stuff on headphones that are slightly eq'ed to begin with ?

 

Not sure what are you talking about but... By ''not monitors'' i guess you mean not the closed-back design? If so for mixing/mastering doesn't matter much except for 'spatial' analyzing, but you have speakers to reference with anyway.

As for freq response these phones are ideal for mixing/mastering. They're not EQed (not perceived as...), or not as much.

Freq response of 'flat' headphones differs from freq response of 'flat' speakers but they both do perceive to sound 'flat'.

The main thing is to 'know' your headphones/speakers inside-out, in other words => how many critical listening

(not any kind listening) hours you have with them.

If you need answer from a real pro go to the gearslutz.com forum and see what professionals think about specific model. Nice place to learn lot of stuff about music production, if you don't know that already...but i can say what i know too.

the bolded part is what i meant, because hd650 are definitely tinkered with in the mid-bass range.

 

there's a quote from hd650 manual that hints at the fact that they're not ideal for mixing/mastering work:

>>>>

"With the HD 650, Sennheiser has followed the changes in the listening habits of music-lovers and the way in which they experience sound. In spite of all purism and the highest demands on precise sound reproduction, a slight change in listening behaviour is detectable. Today many music-lovers want to feel the sound more instead of plainly analysing it. The HD 650 now captivates your senses where you used to be a mere observer. It allows total submersion into an ocean of music and lets you completely forget your surroundings.
Come and enjoy this unique listening experience!

 

Edited January 31, 2013 by xox

[sysyphus]

come on exai

warp give me a friday present

Edited January 31, 2013 by sysyphus

[sweepstakes]

I'm not arguing with the fact that people get genuine emotional resonance from it... but are any actual music producers here in any way impressed by his sound?

I'm no professional but I dabble in it and I'm definitely impressed with it. And yeah, it's all about emotional and aesthetic resonance which Oversteps was lacking for me.

 

Also not any kind of Zomby fan, just don't get it

[xox]

Hahaha...sooooo true!

 

cool so he admits he 'smudges it completely' the same facade all modern electronic shit 'abstract' producers do because they don't have real sound design skills so they have to absolutely soak the music and entire mixdown in shitty effects. Welcome to 2013 guys. At least when you're going to 'smudge' something , do it in an interesting way, not just turn all the dithering effects up to 11.

 

[awepittance]

 

whatever autechre are doing in these new clips it just puts so many other electronic producers to shame. IT's soaked in a lot of processing and various effects sooooo much better than all these half-assed musicians who just put everything through record crackle filter or bandpass or sonic decimator or fake tape hiss filter. AE wins again. (fuck actress)

Why the hate towards Actress? The last days I've been listening his three albums on Spotify repeatedly and I really like what I'm hearing. It's definitely a style on its own. Sounds fresh. Why comparing it to AE btw? I don't really see the connection.

the connection is that Actress is wrongly described as being unique and original when Autechre knocks so many dicks out of their mouths its not even funny in terms of truly carving their own path instead of being a mashup of other previously existing avant-electronic producers (on RIP i hear Coil, basic channel, aphex and autechre influences blatantly being recycled)

 

the only 'original' points Actress gets is using all these blatant influences to a 'bedroom hyper compressed 4 track recorder' retro fetishized modern sound that kids love these days. Not terribly original at all, and since the music is so basic and unevolving it actually is shocking to me how excited people are about the music.

 

*crosses fingers he drops in this thread to face his reckoning*

Edited January 31, 2013 by Awepittance

[Vilwx]

 

I've said it before and I will say it again. R.I.P. > Oversteps.

 

ouch,

major picard face palm on this one. Maybe if Autechre put the whole

album througjh Ableton side chain and shitty crackle filter i wouldnt be

so picard right now

 

 

 

super duper feeling deco Loc right now. Bladerunnerlores, tuinorizn, T ess xi are superduper too... deco Loc has the sickest vocal sample

 

can't wait to hear it! what kinda vocal is it? talking or completely insane or wha?

the first one (there's two) sounds like some fucked up male choir, but it kind of sounds like an RnB phrasing. It's ducking to the kick drum. The other is a hip hop sounding one. one word, but you can't tell what it is obviously.

 

first one could be a vocal synthesis pad tho

I assume sidechain compression and ducking are basically the same thing?

[xox]

Yes.

 

 

I assume sidechain compression and ducking are basically the same thing?

[awepittance]

 

 

I've said it before and I will say it again. R.I.P. > Oversteps.

 

ouch,

major picard face palm on this one. Maybe if Autechre put the whole

album througjh Ableton side chain and shitty crackle filter i wouldnt be

so picard right now

 

 

 

super duper feeling deco Loc right now. Bladerunnerlores, tuinorizn, T ess xi are superduper too... deco Loc has the sickest vocal sample

can't wait to hear it! what kinda vocal is it? talking or completely insane or wha?

the first one (there's two) sounds like some fucked up male choir, but it kind of sounds like an RnB phrasing. It's ducking to the kick drum. The other is a hip hop sounding one. one word, but you can't tell what it is obviously.

 

first one could be a vocal synthesis pad tho

I assume sidechain compression and ducking are basically the same thing?

 

 

sort of, ducking is used more as like those shitty chav sounding Dubstep DJ hosts who talk waaay too fucking much while a tune is playing and the music gets really silent whenever they utter a syllable from their crooked teeth mouths.

 

side chaining has traditionally been used in music production to eliminate the competing frequency dynamics, usually of a kick drum with a bassline. The kick will 'push' out of the way the bass line tone for the moment the drum hits. More recently though it's been used and popularized as a pumping and breathing rhythmic effect, where someone like Flying lotus will use a pad sound or voice sample thats being constantly ducked as part of a rhythm in the song. It's always been a round, but in the last 7 years or so people have taken it to the utter extreme. Andy Stott is another good example of making an entire sound based around side chaining

[sweepstakes]

truly carving their own path instead of being a mashup of other previously existing avant-electronic producers (on RIP i hear Coil, basic channel, aphex and autechre influences blatantly being recycled)

 

Huh? I have definitely heard all those influences on recent Autechre as well.

 

 

[Guest disoriental express]

The thing to me with artists like Actress is that the music constantly reminds you that it's just some dude fucking around with bullshit in his room.

 

I'd rather just do that myself instead of listen to someone else do it.

 

ae seldom give me that sensation.

Edited January 31, 2013 by disoriental express

[Guest]

boner is kill

[awepittance]

you've heard the influences peppered in there, but it doesnt completely define their sound. In the case of actress, you can pin down each track as being very similar all around to each of the influences ive described. One song sounds like a Coil track straight off Unnatural history, one song sounds like a Selected Ambient Works 2 song, one song sounds like an older AE remix, one song sounds like a basic channel 12", etc.

but ill cut them some slack in the sense that AE in the past were taking cues from Aphex, sometimes a little too strongly. Maybe eventually in a decade or so Actress will become truly avant garde himself

Edited February 1, 2013 by Awepittance

[Soloman Tump]

I remember when this thread were back in double figure page numbers, and we were all anticipating 100 pages being the big finale.

 

Back when Pixelives were waiting for his promo to arrive in the post.

Back before Obel was a moderator.

Back when we just found out the track lengths and all communally jizzed over bladelores being so long....

Trying to find QR codes in the artwork.

Loads of stuff happened back then.

 

Pages 101 - 196 is basically just shit whining and frustrated fanboys fapping into cups and whinging that nobody has leaked this fucker yet.

 

 

 

Sean/Rob/Plz

 

[eugene]

production skills are not a necessary requirement for making good music

[xox]

Autechre is Autechre because we can easily distinguish real leak from a fake one ¨¨ FULL STOP

[baph]

 

The first time Ae sounds better on headphones. Those samples sounds perfect (having in mind compression and everything) on my AudioTechnica ATH-M50 phones...even better than on PMC TB2A speakers and that's really rare, not sure if it's a good thing but it's rare.

 

I almost 100% certain they have one of these phones:

 

- Sennheiser HD 650

- Beyerdynamic DT 880

- AudioTechnica ATH-M50

 

Yes, statistically these phones are the most used in pro audio world but...not everybody likes them.

 

Although ATH-M50 are closed-back design, DT 880 semi-open and HD 650 open design they all have very similar freq response...almost identical. The use of reverb makes me believe they use canes with closed-back design, maybe even Beyerdynamic DT770.

 

 

edit: people are weird

 

hd650 and dt 880 are listening headphones, not monitors. do pro audio people produce/mix/master stuff on headphones that are slightly eq'ed to begin with ?

 

I have the hd650s and I personally don't think they sound all that much like the dt 880s that I've heard, but for that matter, there are a number of variations of that Beyerdynamic headphone and people swear that they all sound different.

 

Autechre usually sounds good on the hd650s to me. I don't think the samples sound perfect, though. They sound like what they are, low-bitrate samples.

 

The 650s are natural sounding for listening, but they definitely aren't dead flat studio monitors (nor are they intended to be). I've heard of a few pros who use them as references, but not exclusively, and not at the initial mixing/mastering stages.

 

With all respect to xox, I think ye might be stretching a bit much here.

Edited January 31, 2013 by baph

[sweepstakes]

Hm, I am just not hearing it. I just found R.I.P. more interesting and enjoyable on many levels. I know I'm in the minority.

 

Keep in mind 2 things:

1) until Oversteps I was a huge Ae fanboy

2) I did not bring up Actress, I am just getting sick of people trashing him and then exalting what Ae have made lately.

[blos]

I think on this forum it is a given that Ae > any field of artists you want to compare them to. Loving the best, doesn't prevent enjoying the rest, unless the rest start to pretend they are in the same league.

[Guest grue]

their quality control has slipped....potentially.

 

i think this is a good point. i like both quaristice and oversteps, but i think they are both a bit mediocre for autechre and the main problem was editing. if they had left off the worst 3-5 tracks from each, the albums would have been much improved (and the same is not true for any of their other albums). this actually makes me a little uncertain about the double-album idea, which is sad because otherwise it's great news

 

hopefully my worries are unfounded; a double-album of top quality autechre would be a dream come true

[Guest disoriental express]

I remember when this thread were back in double figure page numbers, and we were all anticipating 100 pages being the big finale.

 

Back when Pixelives were waiting for his promo to arrive in the post.

Back before Obel was a moderator.

Back when we just found out the track lengths and all communally jizzed over bladelores being so long....

Trying to find QR codes in the artwork.

Loads of stuff happened back then.

 

Pages 101 - 196 is basically just shit whining and frustrated fanboys fapping into cups and whinging that nobody has leaked this fucker yet.

 

 

 

Sean/Rob/Plz

 

those were the day.

[Guest Aserinsky]

 

I've said it before and I will say it again. R.I.P. > Oversteps.

 

ouch, major picard face palm on this one. Maybe if Autechre put the whole album througjh Ableton side chain and shitty crackle filter i wouldnt be so picard right now

 

I think you have Actress all wrong dude. Just take a listen to the remix of see on see he released for free on Twitter a while back. I can assure you there's so much to more to him than sidechain and crackle filter. And because I'm so nice, I've attached it to this post rather than make you Google it.

 

see on see (Actress Remix).mp3

[Guest disoriental express]

lol, what a masterpiece.

Edited January 31, 2013 by disoriental express

[sweepstakes]

lol.

It's weird being on the other side of the rabid fanboy divide.

Not as fun, actually.

[awepittance]

re: Aserinsky

LOLLOLOL, your sarcasm made my day so hard, holy shit wtf

edit : thats a fake track made by you right? if so great job, holy shit still laughing

Edited January 31, 2013 by Awepittance

[blos]

 

their quality control has slipped....potentially.

 

i think this is a good point. i like both quaristice and oversteps, but i think they are both a bit mediocre for autechre and the main problem was editing. if they had left off the worst 3-5 tracks from each, the albums would have been much improved (and the same is not true for any of their other albums). this actually makes me a little uncertain about the double-album idea, which is sad because otherwise it's great news

 

hopefully my worries are unfounded; a double-album of top quality autechre would be a dream come true

But - Quadrange was my favourite part of the Quaristice experience, and of all the stuff released then, it was easily the most indulgent and disposable. There are tracks I dislike on all their releases - granted, a few more than usual on Oversteps and Quari, but given the sheer variety of their invention that's a small price to pay.