September 18, 2003

post recording

Via Greg McIlvaine's studio blog, here's an interesting article on the drawbacks of the growing trend of ever increasingly loud CD mastering.

And speaking of studio blogging, Ken Layne has been at it as well, documenting the recording of his album. Check it out.

As for my studio blogging, I've finally succumbed to the fog of mixing and mastering and haven't been able to formulate a coherent thought on it. Thoroughly confused. In most ways, and all the ways that really matter, the album is essentially irrevocably past the point of no return, that is, even if something major needs to be changed, that's just tough. Pretty much, anyway, though some sonic tweaking, shuffling the sequence, and even the wholesale deletion of entire tracks, are theoretically still on the table. Unless we want to upset the entire program and schedule. But somehow, refraining from articulating it dulls the pain. Oh, there it goes. Ouch. I haven't heard the master yet (though I hear it's nice) but I'm not sure my fragile constitution can take it to be perfectly honest. Fate is a river, hope is a paddle, etc. Another report will be forthcoming if I ever regain my composure.

Posted by Dr. Frank at September 18, 2003 05:49 PM | TrackBack
Comments

I have a suggestion, one that might be idiotic, but...

Maybe, if you have access to earlier versions of some of the songs, demos, whatever, you could listen to those for a while, and get your ears used to *them,* see if you can almost forget what the latest versions sound like.

Then, when you listen to the final mastered product, it'll sound... superfresh? Like, to the point where you'll say to yourself, "Damn, self! We *made* this superfine recording?!? Wow!"

I dunno.

Just remember, when you're sequencing, to make tracks 2, 4, and 8 the hit singles. I think that's the rule...

Posted by: geoff at September 18, 2003 07:16 PM

That's a great article on mastering, btw.

Posted by: JB at September 18, 2003 10:21 PM

also follow a somewhat consistent (yet not consistent enough for me to not use the word "somewhat") mtx rule and try to make track one the song you plan to start off the set with on this next tour.
Chach

Posted by: chach at September 19, 2003 04:12 AM

alcohol influenced post:

Jesus Frank, you make it sound like you're in misery at this point rather than excited about the new MTX beast about to be unleashed upon the public. Cheer up chum! Hate is a wonderful thing unless it's yourself that you're hating and your music is a piece of yourself, no? Don't worry at least everyone that posts on your Blog will buy your album, oh and the 2 or 3 hundred other kids I see wandering around the Van's warped shows with MTX T-shirts too.. :)

Posted by: Channon at September 19, 2003 05:26 AM

Channon, that's what recording an album is: misery-spiced jubilation, self-loathing delusions of grandeur. I'm not miserable, though. I usually crash pretty severely after an album is finished (Alcatraz nearly finished me off.) That's happening a bit now, to be honest, but I do like the album. Blog-wise, the frustration is being unable to find the words to describe the funny feeling of freedom/remorse/trepidation that comes when the whole thing is finally out of your hands. Another strange phenom: as so often, that freedom/remorse/trepidation theme has been prefigured a bit in the content, and as so often, for some reason that always comes as a complete surprise.

Part me dreams of freezing and inhabiting that stage where everything is potential and full of infinite promise rather than actual. I like that stage. Many people go to graduate school for that reason.

You should hear this thing, though. Sonically, it really knocks me flat. Emotionally, it "works. I think. It's early days to tell for sure.

Posted by: Dr. Frank at September 19, 2003 04:42 PM

On the topic of increasingly loud CD mastering, if you watch a playback of "Revenge is Sweet..." on a VU meter, it rarely dips below 0db (the tip-top of the meter) for the entirety of the album.

This is, in part, the reason why a lot of ears prefer the sound of vinyl. There's a lot more headroom for signals on an analog recording, and therefore a lot more room for the music to breathe. Also, transient response is much faster on analog, which makes for smoother sounding percussion. However, digitally recorded albums that go to vinyl get the worst of both worlds -- squashed transients and dynamic range during recording, and a playback format that reveals it all.

Posted by: Brent Elliott at September 19, 2003 08:27 PM

I can completely understand the nervousness of the pending final product. You're lucky though... at least you have some control over how the album is going to sound since you've been recording for awhile. When I was waiting for our songs to be mixed, it was complete terror since i hardly new the guy mixing it and, unfortunately, had already gotten to see the way he worked in the studio. But it wasn't so bad, it turned out as good as all the recording's I had made in my garage...

I'm looking forward to hearing it and I wanted to tell you that I really enjoyed the little album you gave to me. I think "Jill" is my favorite.

Posted by: Amy 80 at September 21, 2003 08:50 AM

Yeah, Brent, I've been looking at various CDs in Cool Pro Edit and this is simply an abomination beyond words. They've been completely trashing all mixdowns since the mid-90s. The article is 100% on the money.

I put in "I'm Like Yeah, But She's All No" and there are no transients for the loud sections whatsoever.

The sad thing is, the CD format isn't that bad. They don't have to do this to them. I'm no vinyl elitist, I prefer the mobility of CDs, but this trend is pure evil.

Posted by: JB at September 29, 2003 01:54 AM

I just listened to the "Alt. Is Here to Stay" 7" last weekend and it was LOUD.
Contrary to the article, I perceived LOUD = RAWKKKK!
Ditto for the Andrew WK CD.
Party hard!

Posted by: rp at September 29, 2003 08:23 PM

rp: many people probably agree with you, but that's likely because they've never done A-B comparisons of the same song, mastered differently (Cool Edit Pro really rocks for this). If you simply crank up the sound on a CD that was normalized as opposed to hard limited you get loudness AND dynamics.

I went back and looked at/listened to "New Girlfriend" which wasn't hard limited and there's no comparison. This sucker pops. You don't get the wall of distortion bzzzzzzzzzzzzzz sound of later CDs.

It's just strange. The artist, producer, recording engineer, and mixing engineer put in the effort to produce the best sounding mix possible. And then, wham -- it's trashed in one fell swoop.

Sorry if this is boring anyone, I take senseless criminality like this way too personally.

Posted by: JB at October 2, 2003 12:14 AM