Once an audio engineer develops their ear enough, they begin to notice things in the audio and the music that the general public never does.

Sibilance… that “SSSSsss” sound that whistles like a spike in your ear.

Hypercompression… that massively squashed “wall of sound” that eliminates all dynamics and makes everything loud as hell.

Tubby bottom-end on the kick drum, flabby bass tone with no definition, grainy sounding sample rate conversion.

It’s MADDENING… because you can never go back to just experiencing the music the way the audience does…

Well, guess what?

…same story as you develop your marketing chops.

You spot something in the sales copy or the offer and your mind says, “AHA!… I know what they’re doing there….”

“They’re using a big promise with specifics in the headline and here comes the social proof… Yep! I was right….”

Often the interpretation of that reaction is, “I hate that….”

Do you really? Hate that?

I don’t believe you do.

Now, don’t get me wrong – crap is crap.

But I’m often a bit amused when I see the pile on that typically develops in these conversations… with people who purport to
have a vested interest in selling things to others…

Inevitably folks begin rattling off all the “marketery” phrases, approaches, tactics, and strategies they can think of.

“I hate ______… As soon as I see that, I’m gone…”

The IM space is full of consumers who think they’re sellers.

And their protestations are more buying criterion than they are marketing philosophies.

You’re hearing sibilance. A tubby kick drum…

Why HATE that…?

I’d rather think about how I’d notch the mids, boost a few db at 4.5K to give it some “click”, then smack the bottom end
with a multiband compressor to tighten it up.

And… yeah. I HATE SSsssibilance too.

Thoughts?