Sound Tech

Forehead throbbing, you take another sip of cold coffee and listen to your vocal FX bus in solo.  After spending 35 minutes on perfecting your automation points for the delay throw, you try 3 different 1176 vst’s (and the blue stripe of course).

Hours slip by as you’re fiddling away, notifications are pouring in from your other clients, urging you to post updates, but you’re on the tracking project of the EP you’re working on, re-bouncing all the vocal takes, with more compression on the way in. ‘That was the missing ingredient’ you say. ‘It was missing analog warmth’ you say.

Eventually, three days after the deadline, you’re finally able to upload and send a link to your client. It’s 01:25AM, but you “had to do what you had to do”

‘Sorry for the delay, mate. Let me know what you think!’ – Thanks, PJ

After your beauty sleep you wake to an email that reads;

‘’Hey man, it’s sounding PERFECT, except I would just like to re-do the vocals on that last song. I changed the lyrics and I THINK it’s much better now. Do you have time this week?’

Sigh.

‘’Who the hell is Mr. Pareto and what does he know about mix revisions or multiband compression?’’

In 1896, Waves wouldn’t release Andy Sneap presets for another 100+ years, but Vilfredo Pareto put out his first work;Cours d’économie politique. He showed that approximately 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population.

Later on, (still before any Lo-Fi plugins) The engineer and management consultant Joseph Moses Jurant would put out ‘The Quality Control Handbook’and got ‘Made In Japan’ big in Japan. (and everywhere else for that matter).

He coined the principle “The Law of the Vital Few”. He observed that by resolving atiny fractionof the problems you could greatly improvethe quality of a product.

The 80/20 rule

‘The Pareto principle’  states that roughly 80% of results come from only 20% of efforts or causes.

A study by Microsoft showed that 80% of a certain piece of software can be written in 20% of the total allocated time. Also, the hardest 20% of the code takes 80% of the time. If you’ve ever had to Melodyne a vocalist who ‘doesn’t want autotune’ on their voice, you’ve probably learned this the hard way.

“20 percent of the code has 80 percent of the errors. Find them, fix them!”^[said Lowell Arthur.

Mixing engineers, songwriters and producers alike are constantly pressured into improving and updating their styles and equipment. Buying plugins and investing time and money into education. Some even do blind shootouts of which A/D converters sound best when clipped for summing purposes.

The bar has been raised for productions, but paired with lowered budgets (and the perpetually diminishing standard of preparedness of the general bass player) audio professionals start to face a few problems when trying to squeeze what little time they have for lunch into the Kool Aid everyone so desperately wants.

Practising Pareto’s Principle in production

How do you find the balance? I mean, it’s not like you can just knock out 20% of your workload and expect the track to be 80% finished right? Something weird is going on here.

Short answer: BUILD TEMPLATES FOR YOUR DAW

Long answer: In the rule, it is a coincidence that 80% and 20% equal 100%. The 80-20 rule is a precept (or a principle). The input and output of a project represents different units, so the total percentage of inputs and outputs doesn’t necessarily have to equal 100%.

 

How can I practically benefit from applying the 80/20 rule to my workflow?

For example, an apprentice could try to identify what will create the most benefit for an upcoming session. Would it be

1. Remembering the staff engineer’s soy flat white (1 and a half sugar) before a voice-over session?
2. Discussing the impedance curve of a MESA cab vs an ENGL in a Facebook forum?

I hope the answer is obvious. Although, it does not imply that the apprentice should ignore these topics/understand the tools. But you get the point. (It’s B).

 

Define your wants < needs

Figure out how the difference between what you LIKE doing, and what it TAKES to get your next project over the finish line. If you want to A/B microphones on a kick drum for 3 days you might get the sound you want (maybe not).

Or you could pull up Slate Trigger. You could always change it later if you NEED to.

The Pareto’s Principle enforces the palpable concept that in life (and love), things are not evenly distributed. Keep reading for a 2500 word essay on the 10/90 gap.

Just kidding. I don’t have all day!

“If I simply do my best, I cannot complain even if I am taken to hell.” ― Shinichi Suzuki

1176  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1176_Peak_Limiter

Waves C4: https://bit.ly/34bKU1B

Mesa vs Engl sound example:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzFRJRD7aAY

A good intern: https://mobtownstudios.com/making-a-record/how-to-be-a-successful-recording-studio-intern/

 

References:

Gen, M.; Cheng, R. (2002), Genetic Algorithms and Engineering Optimization, New York: Wiley
Rooney, Paula (October 3, 2002), Microsoft’s CEO: 80–20 Rule Applies To Bugs, Not Just Features,
Pressman, Roger S. (2010). Software Engineering: A Practitioner’s Approach (7th ed.). Boston, Mass: McGraw-Hill, 2010. ISBN 978-0-07-337597-7.

https://www.collaboratiohelvetica.ch/blog/2019/8/27/the-pareto-principle-8020-rule
Pressman, Roger S. (2010). Software Engineering: A Practitioner’s Approach (7th ed.). Boston,

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/1/80-20-rule.asp
https://www.sixsigmadaily.com/remembering-joseph-juran-quality-improvement/
https://hbr.org/2012/05/the-unimportance-of-practicallyu