I’ve recently got back on the exercise horse after a hiatus of a few months. As it’s now winter, I decided to rejoin my local gym and use their treadmill rather than try and battle the cold, dark, wet mornings. One alternative could have been to buy my own treadmill. However, a good friend of mine described it as an expensive clothes horse. So the gym it is. They have an easy cancellation policy that doesn’t tie you in until you die, so I can use it until the Spring, then get back out on the streets and run.

When you run 5K on a treadmill, it can be easy for boredom to set in. I use my AirPods and listen to playlists from Apple Music to hear what all the kids are listening to this week. However, I’ve become increasingly distracted by something. The treadmills number around 20 units, all sitting side-by-side facing a long mirrored wall. As the wall is about 50 metres long, using one mirror to cover the space would be almost impossible, if not cost-prohibitive. So the full height mirrors are divided into about 50 sections of a meter each. However, the join between each mirror sits smack bang in the centre of your sightline when running, so you run looking at a join and not one mirror. I thought it might be just the luck of the draw when it came to how the maths worked out when putting that many treadmills along the wall, but no, it’s worse. Every single treadmill has exactly the same view.

It seems like a silly thing to get bent out of shape about, but now it really annoys me. It annoys me because someone who designed and set up the gym didn’t think to place the treadmills, so they are centred on each mirror. It’s perfectly possible, I’ve checked; there’s enough space to move them all down the room a little to give all of us using them an uninterrupted view.

The fact is, no one paid attention to that small detail.

This weekend I watched a video from the team at Mix with the Masters featuring Timbaland, Jaycen Joshua, and Dave Pensado producing a track at Studios La Fabrique. The video shows them going over the same section of a song repeatedly until they think it’s right. It’s a great video showing the attention to detail many producers put into their tracks.

Will anyone listening to that track notice? Some won’t; in fact, I’ll put money on many people not noticing the care and attention to detail used. However, just like the treadmills and mirrors not lining up to give a better aesthetic and user experience for those using my gym, someone will notice the attention put into that track.

We hear a common argument used these days, which goes something like, “why bother making a great mix if it’s just going to be heard on earbuds as an MP3?” Or, “why bother doing such an amazing job of the movie sound when most people will watch it on a TV or iPhone?”

We care about details because someone will notice, and even more importantly, someone will care. We don’t care about details for the masses; we care about them for the few who still care about craft and about excellence.

We care because if we stop and think, all we have to do is appeal to the weakest link in the chain, then we effectively become the weakest link. Our job is to set standards and keep to them, and our mission is to raise the industry to new breathtaking heights.

There are too many things trying to industrialise audio production right now to reduce it to mediocrity. Be it download services suggesting that music is like tins of beans that you pile high and sell cheap. Or the quality of our discourse, as I mentioned in a recent article, where skill is maligned, and stupidity elevated.

You see, as soon as we allow the mediocre to take hold, then anyone can do it. If details don’t matter and everything we do can be reduced to an algorithm, we are done. Details matter because it is those very details that separate the artisan from industrialist. Details matter because more of our listeners and viewers care about them than we give credit.

I recall some years ago being told why doing things right matters. The answer was simple: your customers might not know you’ve cut corners to deliver, but you will. Taking pride in one’s work is still a noble cause and certainly one worth fighting for.

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