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Comment by CuriouslyC | Hacker News Reader

The irony of this is that a lot of the sound engineering stuff isn't a thing anymore for recorded music - the producers won. If you mic properly and choose a space with the right acoustics you can achieve almost anything with walkthrough GUIs using a DAW and some plugins.

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Now I'm confused.

Isn't the "DAW and some plugins" part actually the core of sound engineering nowadays?

They are, but the engineering aspect is greatly diminished, which is why these days in music everybody is a producer and audio engineers are more likely to work events or film/tv.

> audio engineers are more likely to work events or film/tv.

or in the creation of sample libraries.

Mics? Chances are (unless you're a vocalist) you can either DI straight into a plugin or use a VSTi to just midi program a sampled version of your instrument both performed and engineered to a higher standard than you can reach.

While I've certainly done everything in software, there are a lot of genres (such as metal) where micing is a part of the sound. If you listen to metalcore vs a lot of metal, you can hear it.

I would disagree on that, as a hobbyist metal guitarist myself, software like Neural DSP, Bogren etc has made such strides in amp modelling that you can get the same sounds in the box. There are a number of releases I've heard where you simply cannot tell the difference, arguably nor should you bother trying, they sound fantastic.

A lot of amp modeling software allows you to place the mic virtually in different positions because it affects the sound. I think when using a Kemper to profile an amp, it models the microphone + amplifier

The cabinet and speaker are also modeled, and in some ways those are more important than the amp:

https://youtu.be/-eeC1XyZxYs

I own a copy of bias fx, but I still feel that the nuances of mic positioning and acoustics can give an organic feel easily, much like how good musicians swing beats in an aesthetic way that beat swing plugins don't quite live up to in most cases.

Not everyone has a high opinion of bias fx in comparison to some other modelled amp and cab sims. So that sample size of 1 may not be representative of the current state of the art.

Love their GUIs though!

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