It’s often billed as music’s biggest night; however the 51st Grammy Awards show on CBS had the worst sound in the history of the show. It was so aggravating that I could not listen to it for more than 2 to 3 minutes at a time before I had to turn the channel in disgust. I’ve heard children’s recitals broadcast over cable access that had better sound quality. It was the worst sound in the history of the Grammy’s and somebody should be held accountable.

From the minute U2 started to perform it was obvious that a 12 year old must have been in charge of the audio feed. Every single performer, every announcer, both live and pre-recorded, every act, every artist, sounded like their audio was coming from a cheap microphone placed at the very back of a high school auditorium.

It was impossible to understand a word anybody said. Every musical performance was so over-drenched in the live reverb that not a single instrument or vocal performance could be identified. If it hadn’t been for the subtitles shown on the screen, I wouldn’t have had any idea what awards were being given out, much less the names of the nominees.

Wasn’t there anybody listening to the audio that was being sent out to the viewing public?

For a night that is truly a celebration of today’s best musical talent, it had all of the charm of a rookie sound engineer’s first gig working the mixer at the VFW Hall’s Karaoke night.

I understand the desire to mix some of the live room ambiance into the dry mix in order to capture the depth of the event; however it seems somebody forgot to put anything else through to the viewing audience other than the insanely deep reverberating sound coming from the theaters stage hand bathrooms. It was absolutely horrible.

For a production coming from The Recording Academy, I would have expected much more.

To quote their website “The GRAMMYs are the only peer-presented award to honor artistic achievement, technical proficiency and overall excellence in the recording industry, without regard to album sales or chart position.”

After hearing tonight’s lousy presentation, I believe the phrase “technical proficiency and overall excellence” should be struck from their documentation.

As a fellow member of the music industry, I am absolutely embarrassed for my colleagues who failed to deliver even the lowest form of audio quality from tonight’s performance.

Tonight, I believe CBS and the Recording Academy should bow their head in shame for disgracing the performances of every single one of tonight’s artists and presenters.