Comment by mrob
5 hours ago
Audio mastering is already automated to the level of a mediocre human:
https://github.com/sergree/matchering
(I haven't actually tried this, I just watched the linked Benn Jordan video.)
IMO, the ideal would be for all music to be supplied unmastered so the listener's playback software can apply this process to their own taste. Mastering is necessary for listening with garbage playback equipment (e.g. phone speakers) or noisy listening environments (e.g. cars, parties), but it makes things sound worse in good conditions. The best sounding music CDs I own are classical CDs on Telarc that have liner notes bragging about the complete lack of mastering.
> Mastering is necessary for listening with garbage playback equipment (e.g. phone speakers) or noisy listening environments (e.g. cars, parties), but it makes things sound worse in good conditions.
Eh? I listened to it on quite good nearfield gear, in a decent room, and the AI track linked above still sounds like it needs a good bit of help from a responsible adult to bring it up on this rig. :)
Good mastering helps everywhere -- on all systems. For instance: The sound of Steely Dan is pretty good on playback with about anything, I think, and that sound took a ton of work.
And while classical music is not my first preference, I do love me a good Telarc recording. I strongly suspect that the signal path that they use isn't necessarily quite as pure as they insist that it is. Everything is a tone control, including a microphone -- and money is money. They're not going to reschedule an orchestra to fix an untoward blip at 3KHz. They'll just fix it in post (hopefully, as minimally as possible) and send it.
But otherwise, I agree. The mastering process can be automated. Ultimately, it will be. And for sure, it will also be a customizable user preference.
Some of that work has already been in the bag for decades. Ford, for instance, has been using DSPs in their factory car audio systems to shape sounds in unconventional ways for over 30 years. This gives them a lot of knobs to turn, and to fix into constraints, to help shape a listener's chosen music to sound as good as it can on less-than-ideal built-down-to-price on-road audio systems.
Or at least: It sounds as good it can to a consensus of engineers, or of a focus group.
But the knobs exist. And they don't have to be fixed or constrained: They can (and will) be automatically twisted to suit a listener's preferences.
I'll try to make time to check out your link in a day or two.