Researchers Seek To End Amp Feedback, Jesus & Mary Chain Drummer Horrified
A new software exists that could eliminate feedback from live performances by automatically lowering the volume of a sound as soon as it threatens to jump into the red. The program hasn’t been released, as scientists are still working out the kinks, but the very idea of it is so anathematic to ex-Jesus & Mary Chain drummer John Moore that he’s already voiced his disgust.
Cleaning up music is not the idea, said Dr Joshua Reiss at the Centre for Digital Music at Queen Mary, University of London. “It can always be turned off,” he said. “The control is left up to the mixing engineer and the goal of the mixing engineer is to produce the best sound that replicates what the musician wants.” He says the software on the market now tends to distort the sound mix by turning down frequencies that look like they are about to cause feedback.
Reiss told New Scientist magazine that his software works differently. During the sound check the engineer identifies levels of various frequencies that will trigger feedback. During the gig if these frequencies approach their maximum then the software tweaks the master volume so that feedback never happens.
Responds Moore:
You have responded to those who have pointed out that your invention might perhaps over-sanitize the live musical experience, removing much of its raw impact and reduce it to little more than a live CD playback, that the device can always be switched off. But why switch it on in the first place? Live sound engineers are for the most part a good bunch, highly competent when sober, and trained to detect when things spill over and require a little tweak downwards. Some musicians actually intend to create feedback, either as a beautiful, unpredictable counterpoint to their more structured melodies or as a brutal weapon to pulverize the senses. Disarming them would be like Toto pulling back the curtain to reveal the Wizard of Oz as a snake oil salesman from Kansas. Hovering around the threshold of pain is where rock should be, and anybody that tells you different is an old duffer.
The only place I can see this working is at party conferences and garden fetes where the public address systems are invariably operated by well-intentioned bungling incompetents, but even so, the denture-rattling electronic howl has become a much loved part of our national soundscape and many, myself included, would protest its demise.
Can you imagine if hearing-loss activitists lobbied made the use of such a program mandatory? Sure, we all might not need hearing aids at 60, but…but…but “Sister Ray!”
Is this the end for feedback? New software aims to take the buzz and screech out of live music [The Guardian] Moore Confessions: Negative Feedback [Guadian Unlimite[d
