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Is Louder Better?
GoodNicsTken writes "Rip Rowan over at prorec.com did an
analysis of 5 different Rush CD's released from 1984 to 2002. The results show a definite trend in the recording/mastering style from each album. Rip contends that louder is not necessarily better as the record execs believe. The artist however, is often left with little choice in the matter."
Just like how DX-7s and putting huge amounts of reverb on your Linn drum machine were in vogue during the eighties, I think this phase will play itself out. Right now the recording style seems to be centered around, compress everything, auto-tune the vocals, and master it so every track, it feels like the guitars and drums are burrowing into your eardrums. This too may pass. And besides, if people get sick of the excessive mastering trends of today, the record companies can just go back to the master tapes and re-re-master everything, and get everyone to buy all new cds.
First of all, the article is dated September 2002, though that doesn't make the writer's concerns any less valid.
Second, this has been going on for almost twenty years, starting around the time digital tape decks (like Mitsubishi, Sony, 3M) gained wider currency in recording studios. Digital audio sounds really harsh when you push recording levels, as opposed to analog tape, which has a "softer" limit.
Rowan makes a very valid point: radio stations are notorious for compressing their feed, mostly to get the hottest signal within their transmitter's power limit. Television stations are even worse. I recall taking a road trip with my band in a rented van that didn't have a cassette player; we were at the mercy of every Top-40 station and all of them were playing Phil Collins's "Sussudio" every ten minutes. Some of the stations flattened the signal so much that we thought it was some sort of remix just for robots (the drum machine was at least twice as loud as the lead vocals).
Where I don't concur is Rowan's placing the blame for this on the labels. True, the A&R people are the ones who have right-of-refusal on the final mix, but you can't let engineers, producers, and the mastering lab off the hook. I've been on the other side of the glass and I know that I've been guilty of patching compressors into a channel to keep the kick drum at a managable level, make up for a singer's lax microphone discipline, or "punch up" the final mix. Note that I'm not blaming the musicians; they do whatever they have to in order to get the track on tape. If that means Joe Frontman is going to sway back and forth like Bill Gates at a deposition, so be it. It was my job to deal.
Finally, not to sound too much like a Luddite, but back in the analog days, there was a limit on the number of effects you could employ, the limit being the number of physical units present in your studio rack. Now, with ProTools or Cakewalk, your limits are RAM and CPU cycles, both of which are cheaper to expand than buying more compressors, limiters, gates, reverbs, etc.
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
I tend to have a theory that perhaps the Music Buying Public is starting to get tired of all these empty, manufactured pop bands that come out of Disney. That and a lot of the mainstream stuff that was based on the Seven Formulas To A Perfect High-Selling Pop Song (or whatever that was) (read: what 80% of the population buys, because 80% of the population buys it) has just become way too tired after 25 years. I think the music industry's own marketing is thier biggest problem.
/me gets off his soapbox and offers everyone else a try
That said, let me step on my soapbox for a sec..
As a music buff, a musician, and someone who's seen the musician's side of the music industry in nearly all its forms (garage, stage, touring, studio, etc)...
I will first say that getting music recorded is a fairly long-winded and convoluted process...
1) The sound you get out of the instrument's amp in the studio is not what you'll get on tape
2) In the mixing process, there is a great deal of EQ'ing, Compressing (this is what gives the LOUD), and various other things to get things to come together in a certain fashion. When all is said and done, the sound you had on tape before is now going to be totally different.
There are many many schools of thought on how best to master a recording. Some go for atmosphere, some go for candid honesty, some go for a super-polished sound, well, you get the picture.
However, the trend i'm seeing lately with a lot of old albums, is that they're getting remastered in a modern studio with the attempt at "Updating" them. I don't know if this is something rookies cut thier teeth on or something, but i've got a lot of horribly done CDs. I do realise that the difference of listening to stuff on my old, worn out vinyl or tapes as opposed to a CD will be fundamentally different just because of the analogue/digital conversion.
Sabbath albums that are gated so hard, that everything is muffled to hell, but the vocals are enough to spring THE ENTIRE MIX open and everything distorts.
Maiden albums where someone took the effort to attenuate the feedback from the guitars. This really blew me away. like "Dewd, Adrian Murray WANTED that there!"
I've got a few hendrix and yardbirds albums where everything was squashed into oblivion with a compressor/limiter (failed attempt at making something LOUD). Yes, the album is loud, but it doesn't *breathe*.
I've got a fleetwood mac album where everything sounds cold, thin and empty. Too much noise reduction. Noise reduction being my biggest beef.
IMHO, the bass guitar rattling the snare drum in an intro, the 60hz hum of the PA, all the delicious lil freaks of sound that come out of guitar amps..... to me, that's just as much a part of the music itself. I love the *noise*. My old vinyl was full of it.
When stuff gets too `polished' i think it loses too much of it's `soul' and becomes a little too mechanical. I don't expect everyone to agree with me on this, though, so to each thier own.
I think you were being funny, but I agree with you whole-heartedly. Wanna make a song sound REALLY frantic and driving? Have some bashing the hell out of a cowbell. It's great. I DO wish more bands would pick up on this.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
But isn't that the first guys point. Sure it would compress better, "better" here meaning smaller. But the compressed audio would sound even more shitty than the original. Theoretically a single high pitch or low pitch note.
So by mastering the CD the way they did maybe they were hoping it would still sound "good enough" from CD but so shitty as an MP3 as to make it worthless in that format. Unfortunately it seems it's worthless in any format.
I wouldn't think so. I'd think that by throwing the info away in advance, it'd compress better and sound closer to the "original" than if they'd put the right mix there in the first place.
I admit I'm not totally hip on audio compression to that level of detail, but when they're essentially throwing away sound by clipping it, then it's seems it'd be a heck of a lot easier to compress because there's less actual data there to compress.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
You hit it right on the head. The trend in radio lately has been to compress the hell out of the music they broadcast, and in turn, record companies have jumped on the bandwagon with CDs. Most music consumers think louder sounds better, and so that's what sells. It kind of makes sense even -- just listen to a recent mega-compressed track at a comfortable volume, then listen to a track from an old CD at the same volume. The older one sounds weaker, but only because it is softer. Adjust the volume again and it probably actually sounds better. But most consumers don't care enough to make that realization.
Back in the early 90s, a remastered CD was something that actually sounded much better than the initial digital transfer of a classic album. Nowadays, remasters accomplish two things: compressing the music until it's all one uniform LOUD volume, and lining the pockets of the record industry as die hard fans buy the same albums again.
Of course, this trend is not all bad. Not hearing soft sections of music in the car is a legitimate problem. I won't listen to classical music in the car because of this - I tend to stay within the rock genre because of this and only listen to classical and jazz in the quiet of home. It's too bad that record companies are now "solving" the problem by giving us this "one volume fits all" compression now. The ideal solution might be for car stereos to start including some sort of compression circuitry so that you can hear more of a tune over the road noise, but you get to hear it in its full dynamic glory at home. Heck, other things like TVs and DVD players could use this too. Sometimes a TV show or DVD will need some compression so I can hear the quiet parts but don't piss off the neighbors during the loud parts! Either that or maybe some sort of new audio format with two versions of each audio stream - normal and compressed. Of course we already have SACD and DVD Audio, yet another new format is just what we need...
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