Flaming recording!

Now that the project is underway, Dave and I have been beavering away with our initial research. One of the things that I've been finding out more about is what people think engineering and recording are, as well as what they are not. Web forums can be a very useful source of primary material on what people think about a subject but they can also quickly become fractious places. In 2010 an article was published in the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society called "Recording Electric Guitar—The Science and the Myth"and it caused quite a stir on the journal's web forum. In fact that 'stir' became more like a flame war at times. It's an interesting read because it's an argument about some of the things that a sound recordist does, and the decisions they make, whilst going about their work. I'll leave you to see what you make of it:

https://secure.aes.org/forum/pubs/journal/?ID=17

A slightly less flame-ridden but still-a-little-spiky discussion appears on the 'talk page' for the Wikipedia entry on 'Audio Engineering':

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Audio_engineering

One of the things that occurs with heated debate is that it very quickly becomes polarising, we rush to identify with one 'side' or the other. This is useful in one sense, because we very quickly become aware of  where we are positioned (in black and white terms at least) in a debate, but not at all useful in other ways because it stops us cooperating with, and understanding, other points of view.

I'd be really interested to hear people's thoughts on the issues raised in the above discussions but, in the interests of fire safety, please be nice :-)