Production Values Today...Compared to Yesterday

Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 8:55 pm

Here's my 2 cents. I think it's simply a matter of what you're accustomed to hearing. You need to know what each song's strengths are. For example when you talk of "good production" that can mean anything from arrangements and tracking to mixing and mastering. If you're talking about the recording process, you still ask yourself "what for"? Bass response? Clarity? Stereo image? Are you listening on a PA? High end stereo? Home stereo? Headphones?

Here's how I categorize my "test material"

Live PA:

Depending on the gig, I want to hear at least one song of the same genre. Let's divide this into Pop, Rock, Jazz or Acoustic. This will give me a feeling for the PA, the room sound and basically get me accustomed to what the material should sound like in there.

Studio

Again, something similar to what the genre is, but in this case it will most likely not be something I pick out, but something the artist brings in and says "we want to sound like that" or "we want that kick sound". If a band says they want to sound like As I Lay Dying, then so be it. It's neither harder or easier to do that style of production, than a Beatles style. It's just one of the roads you can go down. (I'm not going to talk about the band's sound or gear, that's not the point)

The point is, you have to pick a recording that helps you make a critical decision on an aspect of a song.

If I was buying a high end audio system, I would probably bring some Beatles or even string quartet material, to see how well it reproduces "realism". If I close my eyes, it should feel like they're right in front of me.

You wouldn't get that from a metal band, unless you blasted it and imagined you were at their concert. (there's nothing wrong with that either)

If I had a live PA, the Beatles won't help me much, because that's not what I'm looking for. I would want to hear what the limitations of the subs are, how flat is the bass, how soft or harsh the high end is, and how accurate the mids are. Those are 3 different things, that would require 3 different genres of music. For bass I tend to refer to either Prodigy, Chemical Brothers or other electronic music. For high end, I have some seriously trebly stuff by Amon Tobin, and mids would probably be something guitar heavy Unearth or early Slipknot. If I'm focusing on drums, Deftones is how I roll, if I'm focusing on vocals, it'll probably be some Justin Timberlake. If I'm focusing on abience and reverb, I whip out some Sting.

Again, it all depends on what your focus is. The bands I mention ALL have great production! If you're into metal (as I was, and still am), Unearth, Deftones, Korn, Metallica (from Black to Reload), Killswitch Engage, Fall Out Boy and to some extent A Perfect Circle; are all bands you should check out for their production.

Asides from metal, definitely the last Prodigy album is made up of 'brickwalls' but still sounds great. Paul Anka's "Rock Swings" just blew me away (Al Schmidt at his best), the obvious Sting, Massive Attack, Sade even Counting Crows. (early stuff was mostly recorded live and sounds AMAZING) Also E.S. Posthumus for modern classical and definitely Sara K. and Allan Taylor for their acoustic stuff. (crazy sounds acoustic guitars and basses... got it off a B&W audiophile recordings compilation CD Very Happy

)

Anyways, sorry for the long post, I sometimes get carried away. Hope this help you understand a bit more of how some people think about production and sound. Wink

Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 9:59 pm

Quote:

Find a recording of Ravel's Bolero. It should be cheap where ever you find it. Load it into your DAW and put a limiter on it with a threshold of -55dBFS and your output at -.1dBFS and adjust your volume to taste.

Blasphemy

Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 11:55 pm

how about the white stripes or wolfmother? what do you think of them?

Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2008 3:16 am

Crankitup wrote:

how about the white stripes or wolfmother? what do you think of them?

Don't forget Mark Ronson, Arctic Monkeys (used an actual vintage Abbey Road board to mix the record on) and most of all Candie Payne!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ml8rrQ6-w58

LISTEN to that BASS! Shocked

Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2008 3:23 pm

Just thinking about song dynamics/constant loudness reminds me of the first time I loaded up one of Blink 182's songs in my audio program.
Save for a few seconds of fade at the end, it was as close to a solid green rectangle as I've ever seen. Just looking at the waveform for "Pathetic". No fades, nothing. Clips within a second of starting.

And then, by contrast, a recording of Highland Cathedral from somewhere, which barely hit the halfway mark in the wave display.
That was one of the songs that I ended up normalising to -1 or so, mainly because it was just too quiet to be audible.
But hell if would I compress it/anything to be a green blob.
Taking a recording of our band, I think it sounds OK for a live recording, has a few dynamics and has received praise.

Sad state of affairs when the guys with the knowhow know what not to do but the guys with the money tell them to do it...

Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2008 3:36 pm

TVPostSound wrote:

Quote:

Find a recording of Ravel's Bolero. It should be cheap where ever you find it. Load it into your DAW and put a limiter on it with a threshold of -55dBFS and your output at -.1dBFS and adjust your volume to taste.

Blasphemy

I'm glad someone caught it...

Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2008 5:00 pm

Codemonkey wrote:

Sad state of affairs when the guys with the knowhow know what not to do but the guys with the money tell them to do it...

Well said... Thumbs Up

Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2008 5:04 pm

Today I used an L2 for the first time.
Kinda felt like dancing with the devil.
on one hand I knew i was using the same peace of equipment that has ruined modern music and makes me have to turn down commercials. on the other hand, since it has an ultra fast attack and release time I was able to get my track louder by compressing it less.

Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2008 6:44 pm

Cucco wrote:

TVPostSound wrote:

Quote:

Find a recording of Ravel's Bolero. It should be cheap where ever you find it. Load it into your DAW and put a limiter on it with a threshold of -55dBFS and your output at -.1dBFS and adjust your volume to taste.

Blasphemy

I'm glad someone caught it...

Caught and released. In my church you can subject Bolero to any type of torture and it's not considered a sin. Now Bo Derek....

Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2008 7:28 pm

Clowd wrote:

I see what you are saying, and I'm not trying to be ignorant, but I _LIKE_ overproduced and compressed to hell... and apparently a lot of other people do too or else it wouldn't have become the standard to the point where I have grown up with it so much that it has become what I compare myself and other bands to, right?

Well, the music industry sales figures have been plummeting during that same time frame. I don't think thats a coincidence. Apparently not that many people think its all that great.

You have to remember, when the Beatles ruled the charts, artists and people interested in the art were running labels and were interested in making good art. For the last 20 years at least corporations looking to make shareholders wealthy have run the industry. All they know how to do is copy whatever is selling the most today. Unfortunately incest as a business model is doomed from the start and you are seeing the result of it.

You simply cannot point to what is popular and say that must be the right way. Its a short sighted view that misses the big picture. After all people can't buy the record the label doesn't release because it isn't just like all the other records

Posted: Thu Jan 31, 2008 3:16 pm

I'd like to take a moment to put up a possible defense for the guys in the black suits. Not that I'm one of them, or would want to be but...

It seems the overidingly popular opinion of why tracks are brickwalled these days is a loudness war initiated by the non-artistic "suits" upstairs to get their product noticed above all the others. That is what it may well have become by 2008, but I'd like to offer another theory for the origins of these "loudness wars" that puts the blame squarely on the shoulders of the artists themselves.

Ever since before the lead singer of the Knightsmen coughed up a lung screaming "Let's give it to 'em, right now!", rock and roll artists' mission has been to challenge and shock the listener. In the early days, this was done first thru sexual inuendo, then thru the use of "dirty words". When the listening audience finally got sophisticated enough not to be shocked by this, artists need another was to complete their mission.

First punk, then glam, then Alice and his snakes, etc. etc., but showbiz schtick wasn't getting the job done. Then in the late 80's and early 90's bands began to hit on something. Suck them into listening intently with a mellow acoustic intro then blast 'em with an all out ear assault at the mythical "11"volume.

When this turned out to be successful, it only became natural for the ear assaults to become more frequent and longer in duration until they just naturally evolved into the solid brick of waveform we have today.

Blame first the artists, then the businessmen who new a good thing when they saw it.

Posted: Thu Jan 31, 2008 3:44 pm

Wow, I've gotten a lot more input than I thought I would have. Thanks guys!

I had another though I wanted to interject, I was going back through my memory trying to figure out where this came from, and it hit me.

Old school (abbey road, etc) recordings remind me of the recordings I used to try to make of my band with one radio shack microphone. You could hear everything sure enough, but it was awful. It was weak, it sounded distant, it was awful. Embarrassing even. I wanted to have the major label sound, so I strived to achieve it, getting further and further away from the radio shack one microphone recording, which was synonymous with old school recordings to me at the time.

Not that it changes where the super-compressed sound came from, or who's fault it was, but I just figured I'd throw that out there... because it's things like that, that keep the trend going. Not that I think it's bad thing... I still don't see where you guys are coming from. I don't see how it takes the heart and soul out of music. I don't use sound replacement nor do I know anyone who does. I don't use guitar rig or whatever else. I still play and record everything the genuine way... I just want it to actually sound good after.

/shrug

Posted: Thu Jan 31, 2008 4:03 pm

I know this has been posted before somewhere on this forum but it really does show how the loudness wars is a detriment to the quality of recordings.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ

Posted: Thu Jan 31, 2008 4:13 pm

I don't understand why you keep equating older tracks with "distant."

This makes no sense to me what so ever. I'll agree that some of the Beetles stuff can sound distant at some points, but would you say the same of Queen, AC/DC, Billy Idol, Aerosmith (prior to Armageddon), White Stripes, Eagles, etc..?

It sounds realistic. In other words, the drums sound like drums. The voice sounds like a voice.

Perhaps it's the medium in which you listen. Have you ever listened to a band live that didn't have the crap processed out of them on stage (no giant stacks of 20,000 watt towers with subs all over the place...)? Have you ever listened to a band that didn't turn their amp up to 11? Or a band whose drummer isn't a primate with a grudge against his kit and his colleagues' ears?

In other words, have you ever listened to the music and not the sound? Have you ever listened to the sound of the music, not the sound of the amplifiers and the compression?

I went to only a few rock concerts in my youth because I became disillusioned very quickly. I saw the Cure, INXS and Huey Lewis (and several others) and remember LOVING the shows! Then I saw U2 live and remember just hearing LOUD, LOUD, LOUD...this was in 1997 or 1998. It's only gotten worse since then.

Have you ever listened??

Posted: Thu Jan 31, 2008 6:16 pm

I have NEVER experienced this "distant" sound on ANY recordings of the Beatles or for that matter any of the acts from that time.

To suggest that the Beatles recordings are anywhere near the fidelity of a radio shack mic recording of some prepubescent band is complete ignorance.

One thing it does suggest to me is you, MrClowd, have never heard a really decent stereo or anything of really high fidelity. Earbuds on an iPod do NOT count as high-fidelity.

The beauty and purity of recordings made in the sixties and seventies cannot be denied, even by a generation of need-it-now, impatient, gimmegimme, egoists always assuming that the world is down on them, cracksmokin, doomists, bent on the destruction of the very business they pray will feed them for life.

sorry.

The depth of field, the width and separation of the instruments still retaining a 'glue' if you will that brings it all together as one, is the ultimate goal even now and one that was achieved over and over and over throughout the rise of recorded music.

You do realize, dont you, that the studio, Abbey Road, was one of the finest in the world at that time, as well as now, that only the highest end recording gear and knowledgeable engineers were used and hired to reproduce ANY kind of music from there....let alone the Beatles... That they and several other places, Olympic, The Record Plant, to name a couple, were completely cutting edge in their keeping up with the release of modern recording gear as well as inventing techniques which you attempt to use today to create your wall-of-noise.

You owe a complete debt to recording pioneers like Phil Spector for creating the wall-of-sound.

My advice to you is to spend some serious time finding out about where things came from and how they directly relate to you and what you're trying to accomplish rather sit on the sidelines yelling insults and flinging opinions based in nothing at things you dont understand.

I'll tell you this. I may not be of your generation and I may not be a metalhead dude, but I can sure-as-fuck record your stuff at a much higher level than you can imagine as well as hundreds of 'other' styles of music, and do it without an opinion about the music other than what needs to be done to reproduce it with quality.

If you need to hear brickwall limited music to get your cookie thats great.

To assume that all else is 'old and not very good' without a basis for what your hearing and without an understanding of the process is pathetic.

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