Mastering Techniques Required For Commercial Success?

[Plasmatopia]

I just recently bought an album by a local musician after seeing his live show that a friend of mine was involved in. It was a great show and I enjoyed the music which was a sort of blend of country, folk, bluegrass and rock elements. Very catchy stuff so I bought the album. Love the tunes and I would love to be spinning this thing non-stop for a couple weeks in the car, but...I just can't do it. I can't listen to more than 2 or 3 songs because there is too much distortion and sonic mush.

I loaded one of the worst offending tunes into Audacity to look at the waveform. There's no sign of clipping. The limiting (or whatever - it also sounded like it might be some sort of tape saturation effect) was actually done on each individual track. Even one of the mellower, more subdued tracks has this issue.

Anyway, yesterday I had band practice with my friend who was involved and she said that the original recordings she heard did not have this issue. She offered to let me have a copy of the earlier recordings and that would be cool, but much was changed later on (horn parts moved around, entirely different drum grooves, etc.) so I wouldn't really be hearing the same album.

When I mentioned one particular song that I thought was particularly bad in terms of distortion/compression she said that was the main one they were going to get behind to try to promote.

So my question is: what is the mechanism that provides a connection between "modern production/mastering techniques" and "success"? Is there someone somewhere actually saying "hey, this isn't limited to hell, it will never be a hit"?

For the guys who made this album, apparently there's a direct connection, but is that just the way things are now - this sort of thing is a requirement?

I'm pissed that another album I could have really immersed myself in from a musical standpoint has been ruined...I only paid $10, but I'd pay $10 more for a properly engineered copy. Or maybe just give me my money back...

[80s were ok]

thanks to "technology", any bozo thinks they are capable of "realeasing" "albums". It's a lousy trend.

[Mikhael]

A lot of people are still in this mode where they compress the poop out of everything, in order to make it as loud as possible. Plus, if they use something like the Alesis 3630 to compress it, chances are it'll be distorted (VERY narrow window of usefulness on that thing). It could be that, or someone didn't pay any attention to level matching on their recording system, or some idiot calling himself a "mastering engineer" didn't know (or care) what he was doing.

On FM radio, they compress the signal to get as much level as possible to the masses. It doesn't sound good, but if it's louder than the next station, they think it sounds "better". That started this whole @#$% compression war. Now, with digital transmission, it's not necessary, but the old habits persist (it wasn't needed then either, but quality wasn't their first consideration).

People aren't concerned with sound quality anymore. Mp3s are a testament to that. Instead of moving up to the next level of encoding (24-bit, 96KHz CDs), we've actually moved backwards. The masses don't care about quality; they care about convenience. To us, music is an event to pay attention to, and absorb fully. To most people, music is a background noise. It's the tonal of the times, to quote a book I read once.

[trurl]

Oh lord, is this a vast and depressing subject. The very short answer is that yes, there is pressure from the industry to have your record as loud or louder than anyone else's. There are good reasons why heavy brickwall limiting can actually make your record softer when it goes through radio compressors, but that's a different discussion. It's a huge mess but there is a chance as radio fades as a medium for all but the largest artists and internet downloads and radio take over it may all go away, because digital devices like iPods can normalize volume on the fly. It's just a damn shame when any independent artist has their music ruined as part of a war they aren't even a participant in.

If the problem isn't the mastering and limiting but more of an artistic decision when either mixing or mastering to get what someone thought was a tape saturated quasi-analog punch, or something, and just had garbage ears, well... maybe the horrible sound of modern music really has just become an aesthetic which is being embraced by kids out of ignorance, who knows. Maybe they're onto something. Music is supposed to sound like shit to your parents :D

[Scott Bails]

thanks to "technology", any bozo thinks they are capable of "realeasing" "albums". It's a lousy trend.

Why is it a lousy trend?

So there's a lot of music out there now. No one is forcing you to buy it, or even listen to it.

[Burble]

Why is it a lousy trend?
I read that to mean, in light of the OP, that it's a lousy trend because there's not the same professional standard in the production of a recording, therefore "any bozo" very often takes some very good music and makes a nearly unlistenable product because they have no concept of professional recording and mastering procedure.

Well. At least that's they way I feel about it. :)

[A. Scherze]

People aren't concerned with sound quality anymore. Mp3s are a testament to that. Instead of moving up to the next level of encoding (24-bit, 96KHz CDs), we've actually moved backwards.


Chillax, dude. This ain't news. The loudness wars have been ongoing since the '50s with 45s, AM radio, and jukeboxes.

And, while there was the rise of audiophile systems and albums in the '70s, it was also the period of cassettes and 8-tracks.
In fact, the year that the CD debuted ('84, I believe) was also the year where cassette sales (which were going up) passed album sales (which were going done).

Which would you rather have mp3s or cassettes?

BTW, some people believe that LPs are better than CDs. Of course, back in the day, some believed that going from 78 to 33-1/3 was a bad move.

[Baribrotzer]

I read that to mean, in light of the OP, that it's a lousy trend because there's not the same professional standard in the production of a recording, therefore "any bozo" very often takes some very good music and makes a nearly unlistenable product because they have no concept of professional recording and mastering procedure.But apparently, distorted and heavily limited recording is today's hot, hap'nin' sound. It's the sound that reaches the kids. So, far from amateurish incompetence, that is the sound of professionalism because it's the sound that allows one to BE a professional - to do it, get paid well for it, and make a full-time living at it.

Now why that is the case is another story. I don't know at all. Maybe it's like the extreme overuse of Auto-Tune - something that started out as a gimmick on one hit song, and became so popular that every song had to have it.

[Burble]

But apparently, distorted and heavily limited recording is today's hot, hap'nin' sound. It's the sound that reaches the kids.
Hi, John!

First, agreeing with your point, but second: Even using earmark sonic tools of the day, there are some people who can use them and make things sound, by contemporary standards, GREAT; and there are those that can use them and make things sound - er - "contemporary"; and some that can use them and still make everything sound amateurish and awful. It's kind of like the reverb standards of the '60s and then '80s - some people had the tools, but fewer knew how to use them correctly. To go back to the original reference, when "every Bozo" has the tools and can proliferate them at will, there's going to be a lot of recording mired in technology that is not totally understood or correctly employed.

[Mikhael]

Chillax, dude. This ain't news. The loudness wars have been ongoing since the '50s with 45s, AM radio, and jukeboxes.

And, while there was the rise of audiophile systems and albums in the '70s, it was also the period of cassettes and 8-tracks.
In fact, the year that the CD debuted ('84, I believe) was also the year where cassette sales (which were going up) passed album sales (which were going done).

Which would you rather have mp3s or cassettes?

BTW, some people believe that LPs are better than CDs. Of course, back in the day, some believed that going from 78 to 33-1/3 was a bad move.

"Chillax"? I wasn't talking about the loudness wars there. I was talking about the loss of interest in quality. Mp3s or cassettes? Neither. How about writing 24/96 to a disk instead, since the cost difference from a CD is negligible?

Let's not start the "high frequency filtering" vs. "phase distorted low frequency" LP/CD stuff here. That's a whole other discussion, one that's been debated ad nauseum, with no one changing anyone else's mind...

[A. Scherze]

I wasn't talking about the loudness wars there.

My bad. I must have misread what you wrote.


A lot of people are still in this mode where they compress the poop out of everything, in order to make it as loud as possible.

On FM radio, they compress the signal to get as much level as possible to the masses. It doesn't sound good, but if it's louder than the next station, they think it sounds "better". That started this whole @#$% compression war.

[Mikhael]

My bad. I must have misread what you wrote.

No you misquoted. You quoted the "people aren't concerned with sound quality... mp3s instead of 24/96" line, and I *wasn't* talking about the loudness wars there. There's no sense in being adversarial here; we're a weird mix of people, tastes, and experience as it is. Let's take advantage of it.

[sonic]

I read that to mean, in light of the OP, that it's a lousy trend because there's not the same professional standard in the production of a recording, therefore "any bozo" very often takes some very good music and makes a nearly unlistenable product because they have no concept of professional recording and mastering procedure.

Actually I hear a lot more well recorded amateur recordings than professional recordings these days. Major label artists may be forced to have their recordings compressed to death, but there is no such pressure on amateur artists and with home recording being so easy these days there are quite a lot of great sounding recordings out there on the likes of Bandcamp.

[Plasmatopia]

thanks to "technology", any bozo thinks they are capable of "realeasing" "albums". It's a lousy trend.

Well...that seems like a separate issue. I don't think the album I'm talking about is a case of "any bozo". These guys are good musicians and wrote some great tunes...a point which only increases my frustration. I want to be able to fully enjoy and absorb this music.

No, this was a case of knowledgeable, competent people systematically (perhaps even cynically) making sonic choices to meet a non-artistic and purely commercial end. And all their hard work suffers for it...which I think is sad because presumably the artistic end of things is why these guys are compelled to pursue this career in the first place.

[Plasmatopia]

A lot of people are still in this mode where they compress the poop out of everything, in order to make it as loud as possible. Plus, if they use something like the Alesis 3630 to compress it, chances are it'll be distorted (VERY narrow window of usefulness on that thing). It could be that, or someone didn't pay any attention to level matching on their recording system, or some idiot calling himself a "mastering engineer" didn't know (or care) what he was doing.

It IS very tempting to do, that's for sure. It's quick and easy and solves a problem that might eat up a lot of time if solved differently.



On FM radio, they compress the signal to get as much level as possible to the masses. It doesn't sound good, but if it's louder than the next station, they think it sounds "better". That started this whole @#$% compression war. Now, with digital transmission, it's not necessary, but the old habits persist (it wasn't needed then either, but quality wasn't their first consideration).

I just wish we could go back to just letting the radio station compress everything...



People aren't concerned with sound quality anymore. Mp3s are a testament to that. Instead of moving up to the next level of encoding (24-bit, 96KHz CDs), we've actually moved backwards. The masses don't care about quality; they care about convenience. To us, music is an event to pay attention to, and absorb fully. To most people, music is a background noise. It's the tonal of the times, to quote a book I read once.

Maybe it's a fad. In the video world marketing is focused on greater resolutions and gimmicks like 3D and it seems a lot of people are eating it up in their quest to have the next "big thing" required to stay on top of the cutting edge.

In the audio world hardware is sold based on convenience and mobility. Until huge amounts of storage become super cheap and massive Internet bandwidth become commonplace there will be a trend toward small files like MP3. In the meantime (until the marketing machines telling us all that we NEED higher resolutions and pristine sound get fired up and start proselytizing the masses with this message in order to sell the next wave of hardware) the rest of us that want at least halfway decent sound quality (and I'm FAR from having golden ears) may be in the minority.

[Plasmatopia]

It's just a damn shame when any independent artist has their music ruined as part of a war they aren't even a participant in.

God I love that! Sig worthy, IMO...

[Plasmatopia]

I wish there was a different way for these people to go about the process of releasing music where everyone could get what they want. For example, they could leave the CD alone and you could get nice uncompressed sound with a CD purchase, but maybe MP3/AAC digital copies (via Amazon, Apple, etc.) could have compression. And/or there could be a "single" version with nasty modern limiting techniques applied for radio play, etc.

[trurl]

No, this was a case of knowledgeable, competent people systematically (perhaps even cynically) making sonic choices to meet a non-artistic and purely commercial end.

That's the real question... do you know if the ind product sounds the way it does because they actually thought "This is great! Now it sounds like a real album" because they are now conditioned for that, or because as you initially surmised it's a feeling of "Well, if we don't do that to it no one will think it sounds like a finished album so we have to."

We had this happens with a friend a few years ago, maybe 2005. Young kid, brother of our singer at the time played guitar and went to Nashville with a Christian band. He brought has cd after they finished it and we played it in the studio. The first song started and was all squashed with no bass at all. We thought it was a special effect, and in a second it would open up and the real song and mix would kick in and we told him what a cool idea that was. He looked a little embarrassed and said, no, that was it, that was the sound of the album. This was recorded by well known people and the song eventually had minor chart success. It's just shocking. What I'll never know is if he had let us record and produce him the way we would have wanted, would the Christian rock industry have found the end product releasable....

[Plasmatopia]

That's the real question... do you know if the ind product sounds the way it does because they actually thought "This is great! Now it sounds like a real album" because they are now conditioned for that, or because as you initially surmised it's a feeling of "Well, if we don't do that to it no one will think it sounds like a finished album so we have to."

That's an interesting distinction...I'm not sure of the answer. The artist recently became one of my Facebook friends, but I'm not sure how to politely broach the subject...



We had this happens with a friend a few years ago, maybe 2005. Young kid, brother of our singer at the time played guitar and went to Nashville with a Christian band. He brought has cd after they finished it and we played it in the studio. The first song started and was all squashed with no bass at all. We thought it was a special effect, and in a second it would open up and the real song and mix would kick in and we told him what a cool idea that was. He looked a little embarrassed and said, no, that was it, that was the sound of the album. This was recorded by well known people and the song eventually had minor chart success. It's just shocking. What I'll never know is if he had let us record and produce him the way we would have wanted, would the Christian rock industry have found the end product releasable....

That's the experiment some are not prepared to take a chance on, apparently! :)

[Yodelgoat]

I think its cool that a musician is playing out is also peddling his CD's. I'm sorry that the quality isnt up to snuff, but you have to admire his attempts at offering his music. Its not like we need laws to regulate whether a recording meets a certain standard. If I were at the show I probably would have bought his CD too, and felt OK about it, despite the poor quality. It just means like you, I wouldnt listen to it as much. But that true of any CD. I have bought countless numbers of CD's by well known artists and wished things about it were different. Recording quality is only one facet of many things.

Years back a 70's band called Hobbit released a new CD called "all for the one" and the music and performances were really good, but the quality of the recording was horrendous. I actually used my own gear against the CD they sent me - exciter, eq, multiband compression etc.. and was able to ressurrect it and I reburned the CD. I now have a rather good copy - not perfect, but far better than the original. And I enjoy it. Not that I listen very often, its been a couple years.

We had been exchanging emails back and forth from time to time, so I emailed them a zipped MP3 of my ressurrected copy - and never heard from them again. Think that was a little arrogant on my part? (hehe!)

So, having pissed off established artists by assuming I'm better at this than they are, I'm prepared to accept artists for being bad at something - like having tin ears. Many people, I'm sure would say that of me too. They may be right. I consider my ears to be a moderate quality- and getting worse as the years progress.

[Plasmatopia]

Anyone interested in hearing the album that inspired this thread can stream it here:

http://www.americansongwriter.com/2013/02/album-stream-bow-thayer-and-perfect-trainwreck-eden/

[Mikhael]

So, having pissed off established artists by assuming I'm better at this than they are, I'm prepared to accept artists for being bad at something - like having tin ears. Many people, I'm sure would say that of me too. They may be right. I consider my ears to be a moderate quality- and getting worse as the years progress.

Unfortunately, the skills of recording, mixing, and mastering a product are one of the things that have started to get lost in our current-day world. One person doing all of this at home is not going to have the experience, equipment, or time to do everything just right. So we must expect some lapses in quality, especially from artists in our chosen genre; after all, it's not like there's a lot of money to be made from prog, and fame and fortune are not at the end of this rainbow.

Your best guess is to get all instruments/vocals as natural sounding as possible, and get a mix where you can hear everything, with the lead parts (vocal, solos, etc.) standing out just a bit. It's not easy to get to that point, although it's pretty easy to say it...

[Yodelgoat]

Your best guess is to get all instruments/vocals as natural sounding as possible, and get a mix where you can hear everything, with the lead parts (vocal, solos, etc.) standing out just a bit. It's not easy to get to that point, although it's pretty easy to say it...

From your mouth to Gods Ears...

Not that Prog has ever had a reputation for great production. I appreciate it when I can, but to expect it? Kiss of death, at least for the immedaite future. Some bands can get it riht - there are like seven of them, the rest, well, Bless their hearts, its a crap shoot - mostly crap, but I buy it anyway.

I dont mean the music, I mean, I have a high tolerance for less than perfect production when it comes to prog.

[bp]

One person doing all of this at home is not going to have the experience, equipment, or time to do everything just right.

It doesn't matter so much if the work is done "at home" when it comes to experience. Recording the basic tracks in a proper sounding space is very important as it understanding mic technique and having a solid engineering background. If a home space is treated properly and you have decent to high quality monitoring, it isn't difficult to do a professional job "at home". If the room you mix in has problems then those problem get very much in the way of the mix decisions that you make. If this is the case, do not master the mix yourself (you probably shouldn't anyway).

Mastering is the last chance for an objective ear to hear and fix problems that may exist in the mixing environment. Of course, you need to choose an excellent mastering engineer who had a good understanding of the genre of you music. Pop mastering guys will (more often than not) over compress/limit the master if the genre you do requires a vast dynamic range. I've seen too many CDs that have basic errors such as major DC offset problems or phase problems that make it to the final product.

In my case when doing the 1st Oblivion Sun CD, I did not wish to engineer or master. I wanted to be a player first and foremost. The band did not want to incur debt so I ended up wearing the multiple hats for that recording and the band members helped a good deal when it came to mixing. This should not be taken that I'm unhappy with the recording but it would have been more fun if I didn't have to deal with the extra responsibility. Time was fairly short then because we had a release date in mind. On the other hand, if I had just played, I'm sure that once I had a chance to listen from a distance I would still have wanted to change some things around. That is likely true for all the other band members as well.

Sorry for the long form perspective but when it comes to mastering it is best done with a separation from the recording process. Even with the finest gear, if you are too much inside a project it is very hard to do a better job at mastering (or mixing for that matter) than someone with a fresh viewpoint who has not heard the material before.

[sonic]

In my case when doing the 1st Oblivion Sun CD, I did not wish to engineer or master. I wanted to be a player first and foremost. The band did not want to incur debt so I ended up wearing the multiple hats for that recording and the band members helped a good deal when it came to mixing..
That's an excellent sounding recording! Congrats on a brilliant job!

[Yodelgoat]

Great points beep (interesting too!). I master myself, Mostly because no one else will without being paid. In most cases, Ive felt Ive done a better job than the person who was being paid to master - sometimes they just want their money, and even though its an independent ear, Sometimes its also an uncaring, independent ear. Since I'm cheap, its always about spending as little as possible. But then, I get what I pay for.

This is part of the reason I'm no longer interested in making music for profit. - I happen to really enjoy mastering. I've done it free for a few local bands that just want to improve their demos/Tapes (ok, that really dates me).

Most music produced today isn't commercial - what I mean is, most of it will never actually "make" money. It looks to me like we are eventually headed for an all volunteer music community. I recall that at least in some music circles, having a well polished product is considered a bad thing. We may see a day when well polished studio recordings simply no longer exist -either by lack of ability, or by choice.

[trurl]

Depends on the music. For rock and pop kids, maybe. But music for professional applications will still have to sound... professional :D And (darre I say) discerning listeners, like those of jazz, a lot of adult contemp type stuff and most prog will still have higher standards. The market will shrink though, of that there;s no doubt.

[bp]

The DIY model is somewhat necessary in today's world as many know. To sum up my earlier comments, the mastering engineer is not a place to try to save some money. He/She is the last opportunity for an objective ear to put the finishing touches on your recording. Finding someone who "gets" the music is extremely important. In dynamic music such as most prog, the loudness war mentality is going to hurt the final product, not help it.

When a ME uses limiting the more sparse elements (like verses) can get louder than the denser elements (like choruses). This kills the emotional impact of the bigger moments in a song. Experienced, quality MEs know to keep the dynamics between song sections intact when mastering. There are many however who just use a setting for a limiter or compressor across an entire song and I find that a recipe for failure unless the settings are very subtle to begin with.

If anyone is diving into mastering for the first time, feel free to drop me a message. I'm more than happy to offer some pointers and software suggestions.

Some things to look-up and study -

DC Offset
IIR vs. FIR EQ
Intersample peaks
LUFS, dBFS
dithering
sample rate conversion
codecs (lossy and lossless)


All the best,
bp

[WHORG]

1. Very careful use of EQ = I always cut and never boost.
2. Side chain compression
3. Breathing room in the sonic pallette - everything has its place
4. Mastering quality

[bp]

1. Very careful use of EQ = I always cut and never boost.


I generally follow that EQ technique as well. In some cases a boost can work but make certain that the headroom exists and that you are using a very high quality EQ, in the digital realm a FIR EQ is best due to the lack of ringing that IIR EQs tend to have. This also holds true for low and high pass filters. An IIR hpf with a steep slope will have a bump at the corner frequency that the FIR will not have if designed properly.

[Gongtopia]

"thanks to "technology", any bozo thinks they are capable of "realeasing" "albums". It's a lousy trend." is a true enough statement. There are a couple of big problems out there today:

1) Anyone with a MacBook & Garage Band can record an album. But have they done their homework and put in their time learning? Today's digital realm is almost too easy to work in, therefore, everybody is a recording artist. So there's a lot of crappy sounding recordings out there.

2) Back in the days of tape/4-track reel-to-reel/etc., you really had to learn what you were doing if you recorded at home, otherwise the result was even more unlistenable. So a lot of us who got a start back then, put in a lot of time actually learning how to make better sounding recordings. And because of tape hiss and the like, you had to plan your course of action and how you were going to lay tracks to get less noise. How many people today can say they edited tape with a splicing block and a razor blade? To get any sort of decent result, other than just playing into a cassette recorder, you had to know what you were doing.

3) I'm surprised today how many "musicians" really have no sense of music! They have not learned how to make music other than learning an instrument, and they have not developed an ear. Is it any wonder their "albums" sound like crap?

Now saying all that, I love digital and would not go back to tape, but I am thankful for my background and all that I learned working with tape, because I can apply that knowledge to make even better digital recordings.

[progmatist]

I also have past experience with multitrack tape recording. Given that experience, I find there's very little learning curve going from Sonar to Cubase to Protools, and the like. I don't approach them as individual programs, but rather from a multitrack recording perspective. In that respect, they're all very similar, despite having slightly different layouts.

[trurl]

Same here, went from 4-track Portastudio to 8-track 1/2" to ADAT while also working in "pro" studios on 2"... I think it makes a difference.

[Dean Watson]

Something I noticed about the new Steve Wilson 'Raven' recording. His previous work ( PT ) seemed to be limited to the max - ie: looking at a waveform of it, it was just like one solid band - no peaks, no valleys. But in his latest solo album there are lower level output sections ( ie: waveform is smaller ) but even in the quiet parts there are no valleys or peaks - ie: it's quieter, but everything is the same volume at that quieter level. I hope I'm describing this clearly. The CD sounds good, really good actually, just wondering how this might have been achieved? I've never seen this type of limiting before ....

[Mikhael]

Well, if you squash it, then draw volume envelopes, that's what you'd come up with. Whether that's actually what he DID or not, I have no clue...

[Dean Watson]

Mikhael, that's certainly what it appears like, but that seems rather primitive and simplistic. I really don't know.

[trurl]

Well also, if you individually limit the heck out of each instrument and then mix those together, that's what you'll get... they'll all go up and down with the overall dynamic of the music but within that it will all be sort of brick-wall and flat-lined. Doesn't sound like the way an Alan Parsons... er... project would typically turn out though. Odd.

[Plasmatopia]

You also have to remember to zoom in on the time axis somewhat to get a fair view of things. Zooming way out will sometimes give a false impression.

[fictionmusic]

Well, if you squash it, then draw volume envelopes, that's what you'd come up with. Whether that's actually what he DID or not, I have no clue...

yah just automate the master pair...I have seen stuff that doesn't sound like it looks (or rather sound like I imagine it would based on how it looks)...ears have to be the final judge regardless...

[Yodelgoat]

You also have to remember to zoom in on the time axis somewhat to get a fair view of things. Zooming way out will sometimes give a false impression.

Yes! especially on long songs. Zooming in you can see if it truly is squashed to death. a 20 minute song usually looks pretty bad when you see it zoomed all the way out, you have to compare 5 minute chunks to other 5 minute chunks in other material to really get a good perspective - plus it really isn't about what it looks like, its what it sounds like. attack and release times have a lot to do with how much "squash" you get in the music, versus a natural sound.

[Wilton Said...]

Interesting subject matter. I submitted my music for publicist consideration a few months back. Thankfully he thought the biggest problem was my visual aspect (CD covers, website) and not the music or my voice. However he did think the production sounded dated. To get an idea of what he was actually talking about, I checked out some of the bands he had represented in the past. Holy crap, talk about brick walled compression. Everything I listened to was compressed to the max, was quantized to the max and had a fair amount of auto tune. These recordings made Rush's Clockwork Angels sound like it had bounce and dynamics. They made anything by Dream Theater sound loose and sloppy. In short, the production made the music sound unnatural. Now I realize that the unit I record on is pretty dated, (an old stand alone Korg D1600 mkii) but it seems to do the job and I haven't heard any actual complaints about it. But in the end, I'd rather sound dated then crappy.

[Plasmatopia]

I ran a few tests lately with the TT Dynamic Range Meter that I found very interesting. ( http://www.dr.loudness-war.info/ )

I don't have a high-end audio system. The closest thing I have is probably my studio monitors (M-Audio BX8a's), but those have their problems (I had one die due to leaky capacitors and while the replacement basically works, it doesn't sound as good as the one where I pre-emptively replaced caps) and listening in my boxy little 12'x12' music room is far from ideal.

So I've found that I don't always pick up on which recordings actually have a nice amount of dynamic range -- I focus more on whether or not a recording has a nice clear mix where I can hear various instruments distinctly. And I can also tell when I get fatigued. Usually two or three songs and I can't take the "sizzle" any more.

But what was really eye-opening was using the TT Dynamic Range Meter to confirm what I was hearing...and surprisingly I didn't quite get the confirmation I was expecting.

I had noticed that Thank You Scientist's albums were heavily compressed. Most of the time every instrument seems as loud as all the others, but also I found them fatiguing. For the most part the music is so good I will press on and hear more of the album than I would normally subject myself to, but I just think it's a shame it sounds the way it does. The DR came out around 6 or 7.

I also checked the new Haken album. My feeling had been this was quite a bit clearer sounding (less clipping), and yes, I assumed it was more dynamic. But "The Mountain" scored similarly - about 6 or 7.

Then I tried The Flower Kings "Banks of Eden" which I don't find fatiguing at all, but assumed was in the same ball park as the Haken. This scored a DR of 7.

I was sort of scratching my head for a bit because I had mistakenly thought it was pure DR that was responsible for my listening fatigue. For those more tuned into dynamic range (those with better ears than myself) perhaps a low DR score is more problematic.

For me the difference was more often noticeable in the waveforms after I loaded the WAV files into Audacity. The Flower Kings never showed any signs of clipping (for me that means it's going to be on the more pleasant side), while the Thank You Scientist had a fair amount of clipping visible. What shocked me the most (and I still can't explain my reaction) is that the Haken was the worst in terms of visible clipping. I had not felt it was really fatiguing at all.

Perhaps that shows that with certain music my bias of simply liking the tunes is enough to make me overlook some negative points? Or maybe because it's "prog metal" I expect to be bashed around by distorted guitars and crash cymbals?

Anyway, I found the whole experience enlightening. More people should pay attention to this sort of thing. :)

[Plasmatopia]

I forgot to mention: The album that inspired this thread (Bow Thayer's "Eden") scored a DR of about 6 or 7. And a look at the waveforms didn't show any clipping. But it still sounds like fingernails on a chalkboard to me. So I think the clipping happened on individual instrument tracks and thus muddied the entire thing.

[Zeuhlmate]

Bob Katz - Sae Institute Paris, talks about mastering, analogue versus digital, now and then, vinyl, etc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCiNSSa2oT8