Thread: And I thought Dynamics were a good thing...

Can you get them in the room with you and let them hear different amounts of compression in realtime?

Well, I've remastered it... We'll see how they like it this time.

I basically upped the levels of compression (mostly in the parallel compression area, but also some overall compression) and added some additional limiting. I'm not happy with the sound- I've never cut such a loud classical album.

That being said, I'm sure they'll love it- and if I don't keep my customers happy I don't have a business.

I've discussed at great length with them the issues of a loud album and they are quite insistant that they don't want to have to be "running for the volume knob." Since they are paying the bill, I do what they want... In the end, I can encourage the artistic integrity of the project, but it is their project and they are the ones paying the bill. If I always put the artistic purity of a project over the business, I'd be broke... (well, more broke than I currently am... :? :P )

We'll see what they think about this master.

--Ben

Hello FifthCircle. IMO I would handle levels this way:
I would manually move up the softest passages by phrases.
IE: Lets say that you have a phrase that leads to a mf (say peaks at -10). I would raise the whole phrase by 6or 7 db so it will peak at -3 db. That would be mf. Forte at -2 and fortissimo AND fortississimo at -1(maybe with a little compression and manual removal of short transient peaks).Even in the case that you have a long phrase that continuosly grows in volume there are many inner portions that you can manipulate for reducing the dynamic range without affecting the harmonic content. Volume would mostly raise in small steps rather than continuosly. I think what they are listening for is the relative change of amplitude within the musical phrases. I donīt think (and i hope) they can be able to tell if the mf that happened 2 minutes ago was almost as loud as the forte they hearing (by 2 db). This method has worked for me. Best regards for you all fine engineers. Javier

I am currently working on a project in "world music" The performer did all of his own recording. He did all the WRONG things during the recording phase but now wants me to pass the "magic wand" of mastering over the project and make everything ok. He is located in a far city and we are sending him refs at intervals. One of his biggest complaints is that "all the tunes should sound the same and be at the same level"

This, as you might imagine, has not been an easy CD to master since I am dealing with all kinds of problems plus an artist that wants his stuff LOUD but with "lots of dynamic range" When he first recorded this stuff it was done in all kinds of different venues and he also wants it all to sound like it was recorded in one venue complete with the same reverb and the same ambience. We have been working on this project since July. One of the tunes has a berimbau (an instrument that looks like a gourd with a bow sticking out one side) he has drilled a hole in one side and places a microphone inside the gourd. He bangs the instrument on his lap as he is singing. Problem is that the microphone is loose inside the gourd and when he bangs it on his lap the microphone produces some really nasty square Waves which are distorted. I had to go though and manually fix each occurance of the problem which took hours to do.

We are in the final stages of the mastering and he is determined that he wants all the songs at the same level and wants me to "compress them" so they will sound good to someone listening in their car and they will not have to adjust their volume control for the whole CD or if they are listening to his stuff on radio and he wants it to sound as loud as a rock tune that it played before his material. Some of the tunes are done on a solo thumb piano (mbira) and are very soft some are he and his partner singing Isreali folk songs and some are production numbers with lots of instruments and lots of level. One of his tunes starts out at about -22 dBFS and goes at the end to 0 dBFS. This is in the space of about 4 minutes of song. He wants the begining and ending to "sound the same"

I have done work for this artist in the past but all of his work up until now has been done by a professional recording engineer and the tracks were great to work with from the start. These a proving to be almost undoable.

This loudness race has to STOP and soon because it is ruining MUSIC.

MTCW