Mastering legend Bernie Grundman explains why the measurement crowd has it all wrong!


There's a great new interview with Bernie Grundman about the AJA UHQR where he relates that a component that a measures perfectly, but uses a lot of electronics in the signal path to get that result, sounds inferior to electronics that don't even measure flat, but have less in the pathway.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGLFTm6jMrY

I recently read one of these "reviews'' where they admit they mostly don't even listen, but just rely on measurements.  It was one of the most amateur reviews I had ever read, and now the we have one of the top trusted golden ears (one who actually creates the content) state that measurements don't indicate what something is going to sound like.

I'll take Bernie's perspective over an idiot with an analyzer touting cheap gear that measures well, just to make people feel superior about their (sometimes) midfi gear.

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the problem is that cheap gear does NOT measure well unless YOU measure it well

Measuring needed to be at least DOZEN of times before cutting ONCE. That's the golden rule of measures. 

This is a fantastic point!  Seems these gurus have been shown to measure the wrong thing on some occasions.   

I watched that interview last night - fascinating - great to see Bernie! 

Will watch interview in future.  Bernie has for decades been my go to mastering guru.  I've blindly picked off his mastering from new to me recordings.  I will scramble through the liner notes to confirm.  They just sound right.

He is proceeded by Rudy who had less sophisticated tools, yet maximized what he had producing his own legendary catalogue.