An Ecological Approach to Distortion in Mixing Audio:Is Distortion an Expected, Rather than an Unwanted Artefact?

Digital recording technology dramatically dropped the price of recording technologies obtaining much better laboratory performance metrics than analogue recording technology. However, in use, early digital systems were found to impart “cold” recordings. This perceived requirement for analogue warmth led plugin developers to use emulation technologies to re-introduce non-linearities that were once unwanted. Using a reductive ecological approach, this research interrogates recording industry professionals and laypeople using an anonymous survey of blind listening tests. Multiple songs will be mixed twice—one version mixed with whatever levels of distortion the mix engineer felt appropriate and one version with all intentionally added distortion removed and meticulously gain matched. The analysis of the data from this survey revealed that in most cases, the mix with distortion was preferred over the reduced distortion mix, and a reductive ecological approach is a viable method for detecting subtle differences in audio mixes.