Members Anderton Posted May 4, 2007 Members Share Posted May 4, 2007 I've been listening to a lot of music lately in playlists I've assembled, and the contrast between older music that wasn't hyper-mastered and newer ultra-squashed music is just so frickin' obvious. We've talked about the problems with all the maximizing BS that's going on these days, I know the subject has been done to death, but jeez...I really am starting to think that this, more than the lack of talent, more than the record industry's incompetence, is why CDs are tanking: THEY'RE ANNOYING TO LISTEN TO. Who wants to listen to something that causes ear fatigue instead of massaging your pleasure neurons? Like I said, this has been talked to death. So LET'S DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT: Independent artists, those who release your own CDs, JUST SAY NO to maximization. Leave some dynamics in your music, and if your mastering engineer insists on following the trend, tell him to go to hell -- and look elsewhere for someone to do the mastering. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members the stranger Posted May 4, 2007 Members Share Posted May 4, 2007 :thu: Wait a minute, what are we gonna argue about? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Spin Cycle Posted May 4, 2007 Members Share Posted May 4, 2007 :thu: Wait a minute, what are we gonna argue about? I LOVE maximization! Keep it up! Anyone that thinks that old "classic rock" bull{censored} is fun to listen to can burn in hell, damn hippies. Its just your nostalgia kicking in! Its not good! Ima go listen to Fallout Boy and laugh at you contemptible losers. ...just kidding. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members steveg Posted May 4, 2007 Members Share Posted May 4, 2007 Craig, Thank you, you are absolutely right about this. Let's start right here and right now with memebers of this forum- JUST SAY NO!!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members asdfjkl semi Posted May 4, 2007 Members Share Posted May 4, 2007 I think more dynamics = more better. Changes in volume levels make songs more interesting Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Anderton Posted May 4, 2007 Author Members Share Posted May 4, 2007 ...and more emotional, too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members alfonso Posted May 4, 2007 Members Share Posted May 4, 2007 It's funny how something that was thought to overcome the limitations of the vinyl has changed his nature so much once in the digital era. I think that the practice of oversquashing the music is a sub-product of the industrial trend to favor the crappy consumer audio. I absolutely agree with Craig, although there are differences in the genres, some of them are thought for a certain "overcompression" (the tragedy is that they make everything like that), but do you think that without an overcompression you would be able to hear something from a tiny crappy earplug while in the subway or through a medium quality car stereo? It's a bit the way western culture is taking, munch something all the time, swallow whatever, no quality but quantity, fast food, fast sex, fast music, fast relations... I consider my self a pretty technological guy and obsessed by music from the age of 3, but you won't find any mp3 player in my pockets, my cell is just a phone, I like to walk in the street playing music only in my brain and when I want to listen to something I like to sit on my sofa, have the proper lights and enjoy my nice old style stereo and a good recording. Obviously some stuff is banned from my ears. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Magpel Posted May 4, 2007 Members Share Posted May 4, 2007 I'm in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Billster Posted May 4, 2007 Members Share Posted May 4, 2007 You know where it hits me? In the car. I pop in a disc and try to set a volume that lets me hear the music, but also hear any declarations from the other people in the car should they feel like saying something. A bad disc is one that I can't seem to turn down to an appropriate background level. No matter what, the level is just annoying. And this phenomenon is happening even with contemporary jazz discs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Marc G Posted May 4, 2007 Members Share Posted May 4, 2007 I agree.....the over compressed mixes you get on album now adays are so seterile.... I was listening to "Video Killed the Radiostar" the other day on the radio and I was taken back by how dynamic that recording actualy was and how much better it sounded because of it.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Lee Knight Posted May 4, 2007 Moderators Share Posted May 4, 2007 Yep. It's now taken to such an extent that not only are the dynamics nil, but all of the transient info is gone resulting in an almost white noise. My daughter's 10, so it gives me a great excuse to buy discs to check out the production ideas from artists that wouldn't normally be on my radar. Yesterday I bought Avril Lavigne's latest. As I drove from Target I popped it in and... ...I have not heard anything as slammed as this. EVER. Usually I can still listen. All American Rejects, Fall Out Boy. Still sort of listenable. They're slammed but I can still hear what's in there. But this disc really is just white noise. As a result it sounds so small. Exactly the opposite of their intention. After 3 tunes I swapped it for Louis Armstrong.... ahh. Give me a kiss to build a dream on... Thank you Louis. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members UstadKhanAli Posted May 4, 2007 Members Share Posted May 4, 2007 As many of you know, my band already did this with our last mastering job, telling the ME to not squeeze our music to death and to let it breathe and have lots of dynamics. We sent it back three times before we felt satisfied that it wasn't squeezed. We want dynamics in our music. If a listener wants it louder, they have a volume knob. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members amplayer Posted May 4, 2007 Members Share Posted May 4, 2007 I still think the ultimate solution is to have high quality built-in compression and limiting in all car stereos and portable devices. That way, the user can decide how squashed they want it, and people who overcompress their music in the mastering stage will be punished because it will sound awful when played back on the device that compresses it again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Billster Posted May 4, 2007 Members Share Posted May 4, 2007 Yesterday I bought Avril Lavigne's latest. As I drove from Target I popped it in and... ...I have not heard anything as slammed as this. EVER. Except for the previous Avril Lavigne disc (that somebody gave me two copies of) which is unlistenable from a technical standpoint. I can't even tell if I like the songs or her voice. It is unlistenable from a technical standpoint. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members D Charles Posted May 4, 2007 Members Share Posted May 4, 2007 I thought country music was better about this until I got the last Kieth Urban CD. Ugggghhhhh, not good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted May 4, 2007 Members Share Posted May 4, 2007 I don't much care WHAT they do to the crappy music that passes for mainstream pop -- but DAMN! they need to just KEEP THEIR INCOMPETENT, SOUL-CRUSHING CLAWS OFF classic tracks. I'm SO FFFFing sick of popping some old favorite on from my subscription service only to be pinned back against my chair by a track that's three times louder than any thing else in my playlist and has the sonic qualities of a face on a balloon that is blown up so big it's about to pop, distorting that face beyond all recognition. In the worst of those cases I've "called out" the unknown ME responsible for the outrage in one of these boards in the (undoubtedly vain) hope that he will come across a mention of his "work" and be deeply shamed. But I know that ain't gonna happen. 'Cause these jerks OBVIOUSLY don't give two {censored}s about the music they're massacring. You know the legislation that helps preserve classic motion pictures? We need something like that to preserve the original master of classic music. I have no problem if they want to release jacked-up-distorted-harsh-grindy-crap "remasters" to the moronic philistines they appear to think make up the consumer base -- AS LONG AS THE ORIGINALS ARE STILL AVAILABLE somewhere. The penalty for violation should be public stoning... and I don't mean the Ray Charles "Let's Go Get Stoned" kind... These jerkoff so-called "mastering engineers" are a CANCER on our profession. They need to be excised and dropped in the medical waste receptacle like the virulent scum they are. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members brewgoodbeer Posted May 4, 2007 Members Share Posted May 4, 2007 Having spent quite a few years in the broadcasting industry, I started having this fight 30 years ago. The old "we need our signal to jump off the dial", and then it was "our signal needs to stop the seek control". The modulation is so compressed that the meter never moves. It is flat lined at 110% if they operate legally, and above if not. That was before digital. Now using compressed music files makes it all the more brittle. Then add to that, the fact that the incoming source material is maximized. Listen to the radio today, I last 10 seconds before I start to fatique and get a headache. Craig's suggestion is a good approach. Indie is where new trends start. Man it would be great to have music with dynamics and emotion again. You know the artist intended it that way. Life lesson #10 is too much of anything is not good. I remember when the Tom Scholtz's rockman first came out and every guitarist wanted to use that effect. However the box had terrible hum problems and most engineers said no to using it, and it held up. A different solution was found. Now the engineer would be fired and a new one would do it. Thus sacrificing the integrity of the music. Count me in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members HCarlH Posted May 4, 2007 Members Share Posted May 4, 2007 I still think the ultimate solution is to have high quality built-in compression and limiting in all car stereos and portable devices. That way, the user can decide how squashed they want it,..... THE MAN doesn't want you to have control...they want to be in control of what you hear and what is going to grab your intention so you will buy it. Bean counters have never cared about the music. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Anderton Posted May 4, 2007 Author Members Share Posted May 4, 2007 I still think the ultimate solution is to have high quality built-in compression and limiting in all car stereos and portable devices. That way, the user can decide how squashed they want it, and people who overcompress their music in the mastering stage will be punished because it will sound awful when played back on the device that compresses it again. This is something I proposed quite a while ago, but it never got any traction. So now I've set my sights lower and am just proposing that everyone in this forum who releases music starts a trend toward increased dynamics. I mastered a CD of a capella vocal music by a church quartet and it won Best CD of 2005 at the New Mexico Music Awards against all comers - rock, hop hop, country, etc. Although obviously 98% of the credit goes to the musicians and production, I would like to think the fact that it was listenable and not overly-squashed helped it out a lot. It's actually pleasant to listen to and doesn't hurt your ears Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Lancaster Posted May 4, 2007 Members Share Posted May 4, 2007 The irony..... Sound is getting worse by the year. I cant stand listening to hypersquished crap either.It seems every year the bar for sound quality is being lowered deliberately. We're going backwards. On my last CD, I went for level ,not insane white noise level, but strong level.I spent a lot of time running C4s, RenComps, L2s....the final mastered sound sure had some ooomph and level to it. So I went back and listened to it a month or so later when I could handle listening to it again. And I hated it. And it was nowhere near as crushed as some of the examples you guys have mentioned. So I remastered it completely, no cascading buss comps, no pass after pass of comps and limiters..... Just a pass or two of normal limiting and a tiny squeeze on a few tunes 2:1,3:1 tops. Now I love it, think it sounds the way it was intended to sound.Dynamics..it breathes, it gets louder and quieter and louder...imagine that! For the batch of stuff I'm working on now, people will have to reaquaint themselves with what the volume knob on their stereo does. It's not worth it. Overcompression is evil. Why destroy your own music? That's what the record industry is for apparently. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Lancaster Posted May 4, 2007 Members Share Posted May 4, 2007 Having spent quite a few years in the broadcasting industry, I started having this fight 30 years ago. The old "we need our signal to jump off the dial", and then it was "our signal needs to stop the seek control". The modulation is so compressed that the meter never moves. It is flat lined at 110% if they operate legally, and above if not. That was before digital. Now using compressed music files makes it all the more brittle. Then add to that, the fact that the incoming source material is maximized. Listen to the radio today, I last 10 seconds before I start to fatique and get a headache. There's a few local stations that seem to have all the world's compressors set to "kill". But if they play a song recorded 10 or more years ago, it sounds so much better than the new stuff it's insane. It's a huge difference. Then some current song comes in with it's hyped low end roar and that terrible hi end boost squashed to bits....yeah, about 10 seconds or so. It's not that I hate modern music, I just cant physically stand to listen to it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members dahkter Posted May 4, 2007 Members Share Posted May 4, 2007 I'm in, I can't bear to hear slammed music, give me bouncy lines any day! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CMS Author MikeRivers Posted May 4, 2007 CMS Author Share Posted May 4, 2007 Several years back when Bob Katz (Digital Domain Mastering) was looking for a slogan for a button to give away at an AES show booth, I suggested "Support amnesty for crest factors". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Prog Posted May 4, 2007 Members Share Posted May 4, 2007 Perhaps a good place to start is for current musicians to understand, and PLAY, with dynamics. Garbage in, garbage out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members dougb415 Posted May 4, 2007 Members Share Posted May 4, 2007 Perhaps a good place to start is for current musicians to understand, and PLAY, with dynamics.Garbage in, garbage out. I can just about imagine if America's "Horse With No Name" came out today - people would be complaining "I have to turn it up to hear it - what's up with that?" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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