Think louder is better? Think again.

Chris Organic

Chris Organic

Mongolian FishSlap dancer
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http://www.prorec.com/prorec/articles.nsf/articles/8A133F52D0FD71AB86256C2E005DAF1C

Its all there basically. But in fact I'm so sick of everyone trying to be louder than everyone else (a trend which I may have started accidently in the trance scene, cos I attended every master/ cut to vynil for my label, and really pushed the engineers to do some really agressive compression and other production to make each cut loud as possible!) that I'm now reversing the trend and getting the sweetness back in the music. But I digress.... the point is that loud does not = better[/url]
 
CAN YOU READ ALL OF MY WHITE NIOSE
OR HAVE YOU GIVEN UP YET.
I'd like to know what Rush thoght of the production on their cd. The waves look pretty munched up.
 
psyfi said:
I'd like to know what Rush thoght of the production on their cd. The waves look pretty munched up.
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I heard this recently and its actually painful to listen to, even quiet. Because there's no dynamic left, it gets boring really quick and you just stop paying attention. It sounds like it was put through something cheap and nasty like t-racks by someone with no ears at all....
 
Yeah and there's that whole 'over-mastered' sound (think astrix/alien project) which is incredibly tiring on the ears. Initially it sounds loud and 'shiny' but after a while it just starts to grate. It's like the arms race. If their record sounds like that then mine must too! Louder! LOUDERRR!
 
Actually, this problem goes back to the Presto album back in early 90's (or was it '89) - it was physically painful to listen to on the 'phones.
 
thats an interesting and informative article.. merci monsieur organeek..

It has occured to me for quite a while now, that a lot more emphasis has been placed on "production" in trance than actual content. Dont get me wrong, there is plenty of wicked and varied psy that i love and have utmost respect for, BUT "PRODUCTION" HAS DEFINITELY BECOME THE KEY WORD. *please excuse my capitals i didnt mean to compress on you!*

"have you heard the latest xxxx album? such good production..."

ok it is clear and sounds expensive but the music is shit.

"production" i thought, was the composition and calculation of balance of everything in a piece of music.
But this climate of production perfection makes people think (fear?) about the end product of the music before they have even started a track! i know a man who thinks that without an access virus c, there is no possible way he can make decent trance.... it is out of hand man..

i really appreciate the advancement of the quality of all sound. it means that the music works better on a wider range of systems, is more effectively transmitted to the listener, and sounds better altogether. but the trend , as this article says, is towards overproduction.

like everything else, what sounds good relies on a huge number of factors as well as youre own persaonal idea and taste. i apologise if this is negative but in an underground scene, it is up to us to avoid the bullshit and you got to make the best of what you got (ie: if you dont have access to fusion powered analogue valve compression systems and proton based 2000 band graphic equalisers- try not to worry too much and keep on with your track!)
;)
 
formiga, they're not calling you The Psy-Trance Prophet for nothing. You clearly have spoken the truth, and put it as well as I could have if i'd been bothered to go into a lengthy discussion about it all.

And alot of people don't realise, as long as they compose a decent track- bearing in mind to not rip-off anyone's basslines too blatantly, or use pathetically recycled riffs and melodies- and get all the sounds nicely balanced, nothing too loud, and do a basically good eq job, there's so much that can be done in the mastering. And if the production isnt all that, I'm much more up for bringing a well written track into my studio to produce, than releasing a 'finished' overcompresed pile of Orang-Utang's kaka.

These days I'm always having to ask artists to provide me with pre-masters of tracks cos they send me these overcompressed, and over processed 'finished' versions that usually are unuseable for mastering. Ok, I'm a mastering engineer so I'm very fussy in that department, but still poeple are focussing on that too much, and not as you say, thinking about the composition a bit more.

A bit more? ALOT MORE! Remember to write something everyone! Compose instead of recycling, and spare us all from drowning in a sea of re-hashed Goa riffs.................. PLEASE.
 
formiga said:
i know a man who thinks that without an access virus c, there is no possible way he can make decent trance.... it is out of hand man..
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Which is quite funny, 'cos the Virus C is essentially a softsynth... OK, to be fair it's a *very good* softsynth run through nice DSPs, but still essentially a softsynth nonetheless.

I guess we're in a situation now where producers want to get their stuff played out even if it hasn't got a release, and that leads to a lot of self-mastering, with attendant over-compression problems. I know full well that I'm not all that good at it, but I have to try to squeeze extra volume out of the track if I want my friends to even contemplate playing it, and so the vicious circle starts.

J.
 
Loud is good, you can get things really loud by mixing things right, compressing individual parts right, using buss compression...etc.
If you get a badly mixed track and try to get it very loud by limiting the fuck out of it, off course its gonna sound shit and all the punch is gonna go away.
But you can get really loud mixes that do sound very punchy without using excessive limiting in the mastering.
This is dance music, you wanna get the most of a P.A. when playing out...people want to feel air molecules puching their bodies and driving their feet, not sit in the middle of the dancefloor and have a chat.

Peace out.
 
A bit more? ALOT MORE! Remember to write something everyone! Compose instead of recycling, and spare us all from drowning in a sea of re-hashed Goa riffs.................. PLEASE.
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Oh how very well said, my good man :!:

Surely the key here is Dynamic Range...
Loud bits should be loud, and quiter bits should be quieter, with a noticable difference between the two, no?
 
I read this article a few months ago, and I to Rip, I say - "Bravo!". My band actually went into the mastering process with this article fresh in mind, and while the end result may not be something that will make your ears bleed within 5 seconds of Track 1, I feel like we captured something that is foreign to the music industry right now - dyNAMics. Especially when you're making music that's very "detail-oriented", squashing the living BeJeebus out of the signal at the final stage more or less destroys any possibility of mood, IMO. :no:
 
Hey Chris!

Thanks for the positive feedback! I'll need to check with the other bandmates (we _may_ have promised exclusivity to someone else on that particular track), but I, for one, would be honored if you remixed us!

I'm PM u soon once I find out...

:jump:
 
I compress the shit out of everything, several times each.

And then I do it again just in case I missed a bit.

So nerr.

The reason that Rush album sounds shit has nothing to do with the mastering. Its shit because its Rush
 
Hey Ott,

Just got my copy of Blumenkraft last week - masterfully done! :wow:

That said - I'm gonna have to respectfully disagree with you on this one. First... IMO, Rush was brilliant when they were at the top of their game (granted, that was 25+ years ago). Even if you can't stand the music, you can easily pinpoint difference in production quality between an album like Power Windows, and the new one. On the older CDs, bits 12 through 16 actually have a value of ZERO from time to time, even _during_ a track! Not so with the new album.

I also think the end product suffers more when there are acoustic instruments (specifically, distorted guitar) in the arrangements, when taking the "compress the fnarg out of it" approach. Distorted guitars, in particular, have a signal high in even-harmonics to begin with. Compress that signal enough, and you wind up with a sine wave.
 
Empathy said:
Distorted guitars, in particular, have a signal high in even-harmonics to begin with. Compress that signal enough, and you wind up with a sine wave.
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:? Come again?
By compressing the signal you end up with a more even (in level, not the amount of even overtones) harmonic spectrum since you bring all the loud harmonics down and bring all the low harmonics up. Nothing to do with filtering the signal to the point where you end up with only one frequency in the spectrum.
I think you're getting comfused a little bit.


Peace.
 
Actually, I'm not confused at all... although I should clarify that what I'm talking about (as does the article that started this discussion) is peak limiting, not compression.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about:

http://www.geofex.com/effxfaq/distn101.htm

When you reduce the dynamic range of a signal using peak limiting, any clipping (i.e., samples that fall out of range) that occurs will absolutely affect the tonal quality of the original waveform. Take a look at the original article, specifically the "What price volume?" section, for an example of what I'm talking about.
 
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