[LAU] digital voodoo: master fader should be set at 0db

[Guillaume Meurisse]

There is a lot of mysthicism among sound engineers, guitarist or audio
manufacturers, especially when there is analog gear involved. Sometimes
there is a tiny justification behind this voodoo cult. But most of the
times it comes from a misinterpretation of technical matters. This
misinterpretation is conforted by an analogical reasoning. If it works
with A, then it works with B. It sounds logical but that's a false
reasoning. You can find a lot a smart peoples falling in this kind of
arguments. The internet is full of peoples who thinks they are right.

I read a lot of forum threads arguing about how 192kHz is better or how
vinyl is better than CD. You will find 3 kinds of people there. Peoples
who think they are right, peoples throwing their knwoledge to each
others face and peoples that just want to know the truth. But only a few
among them are actually right. As a computer programmer, i can fall in
any of this categories, but as a musician, i seriously dont care. Why
bother about 144dB of dynamics when recording with a 200$ microphone in
the same room of your noisy computer. 
Audio professionals dont want to ask themselves if any piece of gear is
better than the other or if analog is better than digital. They end up
buying expensive material to avoid spending time to question themselves.
That is the price of the tranquility of mind. They can spend time to
actually do their job. As a standard musician i dont want to spend too
much time arguing and i just want to play music.

There is a lot of TV commercial trying to sell you a wider and sharper
screen. It shows a tv screen and make it appears more sharp and wider
than your own, but your tv screen cant reproduce a bigger and sharper
screen but your brain fell for it. Because there is pshychology
involved. This is the same with audio. You can easily prove that a red
cable sounds better than a black one, even if it is unplugged.

The problem is that you dont always have the technical knowledge to keep
apart a real technical issue and a psychoacoustic process.
Audiophile manufacturers are well aware about that. Awkwardly, Sound
Engineers don't.
Further more most of the actual engineers studied using analog gear.
Most of what they been taught sint true anymore. They still use the same
methodology because they still hear the difference, even if there is
none.

You can spend your life time to understand how things realy works. Just
do what you think is best and anything else doesnt matter.

Guillaume Meurisse