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In Reply to: Anybody read "The Death of Dynamic Range" webpage? posted by darkmoebius on November 22, 2006 at 21:20:31:
Most old rock CD's sound like crap because of compression and NOT using the full dynamic range of the CD. The trick is to use the full dynamic range without compressing and without clipping. There are a few studios out there that are effective in doing this, as well as some remasterers, such as highdeftapetransfers.com, but they are the exception, not the rule. Most stuff is mastered to sound good on boom-boxes and cheap car-stereos.
Follow Ups:
The "trick" as you call it is really skill, experience, and a matter of taste. A good mixing tech can use compression judiciously the way that you might put salt on a really nice steak. A little bit of salt can compliment a fine cut of meat but pouring the entire salt shaker all over it would surely ruin it. A mastering engineer might work the same way, using EQ and compression in a complimentary fassion to produce excellent results. They are not all out to win the loudness race. I also think that he can only do so much with what he is given. Believe it or not, the most influential part of how the record is going to sound really has to do with how well the band performs into the medium. Performance is the biggest piece of the pie, then comes mixing and mastering.
I also think that part of the problem is that there are so many tools available to Joe recordist and he does not really know how to restrain himself when he uses them. "Hey, I bought all of these compressors and processors, so I'm going to use them!" I think anyone with a home recording studio knows what I'm talking about.Of course there is the loudness race itself which is a real bummer. The topic has already been beaten to death on the internet but it is fair to say that there's a certain amount of insecurity if your record doesn't sound as loud as the next guy's. This applies to LPs as well as CDs because we are talking about the way tracks are layed down, mixed, and produced as a final master. It's hard to convince the end user to just turn the volume control up when we live in a world of instant gratification. I'm not really sure why that happened.
To make a long story short, I just want to disagree with the notion that you should never use a compressor, a limiter, or an EQ when you make a recording. The "trick" is in knowing how to use the tools to achieve the best results.
Happy Thanksgiving!
QE
Certainly, the experience and skill of the recording engineer has a lot to do with the results, but IMO a live sound just cannot come from equalization and compression. The best recording in my collection are from the late 50's and 60's before Dolby noise reduction and when they used only a few mic's. Just like a good reproduced sound cannot come from playback equalization and room correction. For playback, I always recommend my customers FIRST do the room treatments and speaker placement after selecting a very neutral speaker, and only after this can they think about electronic room correction. Never equalization. Likewise, the recording engineer needs to take care of mic selection, room treatments, mic-ing, record levels etc..
In the 50s and 60s, before the advent of compressors, manual gain riding had to be used to pack the dynamics of real-life into the limited range of the distribution medium (and face it, of the average living room).
And then of course there were the soft-compression characteristics of tube microphone preamps and of magnetic tape.
bring bac k dynamic range
.......they didn't do multi-tracking and overdubs like we do today. They had a few mics in the room and very few tracks of tape running in real time. And for that reason alone the musicians were expected to perform well into the recording medium of their day. That's exactly what I meant about "performance" accounting for most of how the record is going to sound. The same concept still applies today, even though we have 96 tracks of Pro Tools and we think we can "fix it in the mix".We can use tools like EQ, reverb, and compressors in the recording process to enhance the multitrack experience. For example, some guys really know how to play the bass into a compressor and get fantastic results. It's an extension of their instrument and it's how they get their sound. That's why I don't think it's fair to say that all compression is bad, or all processing ruins the dynamic range.
Of course none of my comments are directed at controling a home playback system. I have absolutely no experience trying to integrate electronic room correction or digital EQ into my home stereo. I think I would get confused trying to decide how to make all my records sound better with such tools.
You know what's interesting? I have had a number of recording engineers come into my suite at CES each year, and I know some of them now. They usually tell me that even the most popular modern performers (I wont mention them here) sound terrible in the studio and they are forced into lots of tricks in the mixing room to make the tracks sound decent. Really the problem is no talent...I also had an engineer bring a raw track (unmixed) on CD-R from his studio to rip and play on my system. It was all tracks just thrown together on a single track. Sounded terrible. Totally unlistenable.
nt.
I was mostly referring to current releases of the last 5 years or so.Most stuff is mastered to sound good on boom-boxes and cheap car-stereos.
Sadly, this is actually true. I worked at Geffen Records(Guns N' Roses, Peter Gabriel, Nirvana, Aerosmith, etc) for 6 years during the early 90's. Two of the biggest A&R reps in all rock & roll used to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars mixing and mastering releases(Sterling Sound) and then make many final decisions based on how they sounded in their cars.
This sounds ridiculous(and is), but in the business of Pop or Rock music, the first place people are going to hear most new releases is on the radio. And most of that is done in the car.
To tell the truth, most of those guy's hearing was ruined decades before when they used to go to clubs every night looking for new acts. Or, the monster rock tours of the 70's.
Interesting. And I wonder if in earlier decades (60's through early 80's) people bought albums to play on home stereos so the recording companies mastered them for home play. As home stereos were replaced by boomboxes, Walkmans, and now "portable music players" the need to master recordings for home play has all but disappeared (from a marketing standpoint.)
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