"Let's consult an acknowledged expert, a recording engineer who is probably a pre-eminent authority in the entire world, and see what his views are.

He says:    "There's so many gizmos in the studio you can't trust anything you hear anymore."   He doesn't sound as if he welcomes this development, to put it mildly.

And who is this authority?   It's you, DDT, earlier in the thread"

Yeah, but Ron...you sort of cut off the part where I refer specifically to vocal alteration. I was referring to singers who require electronic alteration to sound awesome. The music industry is so image driven that they don't care what the person sounds like as long as he or she has the right look. They can artificially craft a voice or other musical skill-set to that person and then hype the shit out of him or her after the fact. Milli Vanilli was a perfect example. Beyonce lip-syncing at Obama's inauguration or Rihanna lip-syncing at all her shows because she's dancing around too much onstage to sing at the same time is lying. What has that to do with using a synth or a drum machine?

I mean if you use a drum machine and then tell everybody that they are hearing you actually playing the drums and that it's not a drum machine then you're lying. Period. But if you make no such claim then when who cares?