UncleBob58 wrote: I think that the comparison is very valid.

On it's own it is valid but I don't think it's valid as it pertains to the original post. I think the thread got away from that a bit. Production values were different in the past but in relation to the question posed, I don't think the problem was the production...Instead I think it was more of a style thing. That's all I really meant.

BTW - ELP, Yes, Genesis...3 of my top five. :D

OR....
I'm sort of with Clowd to the extent that Abbey Road is not powerful compared to what he's listening to at the moment.
Maybe powerful is not the right word.
Abbey Road IS powerful, Maybe it's not AGGRESSIVE.
BUT...
At the time that Abbey Road came out, that was the best The Beatles ever sounded. Pretty much everything before that pales by comparison. (audio wise) So we were all very excited to actually hear these guys play with such clarity.

NOW....
that was 40 years ago!! AND 8 TRACKS!! With all the progress in technology we can make more powerful/aggressive recordings for sure, But if you were to re-record any of those songs from the Abbey Road album, I don't think you'll get that much of a better sound.
Which either means that in 40 years we've not advanced as much as we think,- Or, 40 years ago they just got it right.

- Yet another analogy-
We can make some pretty awesome movies these days with Special fx etc. But it you go back and look at some old classic B&W movies, (Cassablanca etc) The clarity and lighting is absolutely stunning. Yes, it's somewhat bland compared to todays blockbusters, but compare that to something like Shindlers List and the quality isn't that much different.
What does that say for roughly 60 years of movie progress?

Now do you start to see?

...

I don´t remember if Kurt Cobain said this or the Sex Pistols or whoever, but I always thought this was a great frase: "God lives in the TV".
I totally get what Clowd says, I was stuck in that shell for quite a while. The only way to break free is to listen to a whole lot of music, from every age, outdated back to the 50s if you can, and really LISTEN to what was recorded, thinking about how they did it and what were they trying to express in that moment. Then listen to the emo-screamo-metal-post harcore-post punk-whatever they call themselves- bands just for a bit, hear those drums, go to your closest guitar center and try out a gretsch catalina or a pdp drumkit (that´s what´s mostly sold) and compare. What new band´s drumkit sounds like the one you tried in Guitar center?, you´ll see that the answer is NONE.
Today´s trends is to trigger, replace and overeq-compress EVERYTHING, including guitars and vocals. So nothing sounds real anymore, those outdated recordings (specially in the 80s and early 90s) sound like great live performances, ´cause that´s what producers looked for those days.
Today where one step away from killing acoustic micing and analog synth in everything, maybe tomorrow´s bands will only play with ezdrummer, reason and guitar rig and that´ll be the trend.
I totally cured myself with Nirvana´s In Utero album. I hated it at first, then I started to imagine what they were looking for at the time and I realized that it was Kurt´s way of making HIS art, whatever went on in HIS mind and soul, and it was a masterpiece, one of the greatest albums ever made, just like the old Bob Marley recordings or The Cure´s or the Black Album.
Music and recording is a form of art. Today´s trends take the art out of music.
And that brings me back to the frase "God lives in the TV", as long as the media only shows overcompressed and unreal emoshit and hip hop, the trend will stay and many other folks will stay Clouded like Clowd. Save yourselves from today´s trends while you can, get away from Mesa Boogie sounds just for a bit and listen to a Marshall JC900 4100 model just for a bit, or a tube Soldano. Get away froms ezdrummer and listen to a DW Collectors Series for just a sec, Put away your Ibanez, LTD or Schecter crap and take a Gibson Les Paul Custom and listen to a great guitar sound. You´ll learn a bunch that way.

Today´s trends take the art out of music.

8-)

+1

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 :D )

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:

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 :roll:

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

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!

LISTEN to that BASS! :shock:

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...

TVPostSound wrote:

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 :roll:

I'm glad someone caught it...

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... 8-)

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.

Cucco wrote: [quote=TVPostSound]

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 :roll:

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....

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

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.

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

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.

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??

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.

Dave....
I love you man!
(Platonically speaking.)

If we do nothing else here, lets at LEAST educate the young uns and give them the ability to grow some taste and knowledge that THEY can hand down someday...............................

Its the only way it really does go around.

............................... :D group hug :D ...............................................

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.

I just listened to this, and ya know what? At 55 years of age, I preferred the less dynamic example over the original. It just seemed to have more energy. Maybe I've been brainwashed by FM radio these last 2 decades.

yeah, I was sort of following Mr. Cloud's thought process until that Radio Shack Mic comment. There must be something seriously wrong with his monitoring setup.

As far as the loudness war. That one's been raging since the 50's. It's not new, we just do it differently now in the 21st century.
Back in the last century, Labels wanted their songs to stand out when they were played on Juke Boxes. But there's a limit to how loud you can print to vinyl. However, if you lower the bass and treble just a tad and boost the mids, Bingo, you can push up the volume just a bit more than your competitor. yes, the fidelity suffers, but it cuts though a room full of kids.
Some things never change.

But really Mr. Cloud, are you saying that you can't tell the sonic difference between a single mic non professional setup and a multi mic studio recording?

I'm not surprised at your answer. Where this example fails is in comparing the two at similar amplitudes.

If you were to listen to the "original" example at a significantly louder amplitude where the fade in resembled that of the newer/compressed-to-within-an-inch-of-its-life mix, you would have probably preferred the original.

To the human ear, louder almost always equates to better (to a certain point, of course.) Of course, louder with more dynamic punch trumps simply loud any day.

This is why the volume knob is so important. You can make the track loud, but it still retains its dynamic impact whereas if you simply have it loud all the time, it can never, regardless of the volume knob setting, have any dynamic impact. It's loud, loud and loud - those are your three choices.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Edit -
This comment was directed specifically at AwedOne's post 2 up from mine...Natural squeezed in between as I was typing.

Davedog wrote: 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.

I'm not flinging insults and I'm not even pretending that I understand. I DON'T understand, and that's why I posted this in the first place.

I am listening to the Beatles right now.

I understand that it was the sixties. I understand that they were doing the best they could at the time. I'm not saying the Beatles should have had a metal producer, and I'm not saying that my radio shack recordings were of comparable quality. I said that they REMINDED me of it. They had similar qualities. They both sound distant to me (I know you disagree. sorry.) The bass drum and toms, and the bass guitar for that matter, sound flat. The snare sounds alright.

I'm not saying these things in a negative or insulting way. OBVIOUSLY the Beatles got their musical message across properly, or we wouldn't even be having this discussion right now. Like I said, I'm not trying to take anything away from them. All I really want here is to know why the music I like is so fucking badly recorded, in your opinion.

Clowd wrote: All I really want here is to know why the music I like is so fucking badly recorded, in your opinion.

Clowd -

I'm going to sum this up for you as best as I can. Listen to this one point - it will answer your question.

The music examples you linked to on the site earlier do not actually sound like the musicians sound in real life.

Yes, they may sound like that on a stage with those 20 kilowatt stacks, but that's because they are all processed to hell (and in many cases working to backing tracks anyway).

The Beatles recordings sound like the Beatles sounded when they played.

If you don't hear this, then the problem lies in your ears and your understanding of music. This is not an insult, just a fact.

Music, in reality, played by musicians with real instruments has dynamic range. Singers have dynamic range; guitars have dynamic range; drums have dynamic range. In the examples you posted, they do not.

If you can't trust your ears (and I suspect you cannot), sit in front of a drummer on a trap set and hold an SPL meter next to you. You'll see that, even Bobo the primate drummer has a good 30-40dB of dynamic range.

In the examples you posted, there's about 8dB of dynamic range.

That's a pretty darned big difference.

What you're describing as "distant" is actually what the instruments sound like. What you're saying is "big," "present" and "up-front" are unrealistic interpretations of instruments that are incapable of doing what they're portrayed as doing on your recordings. It's that simple.

Cucco wrote:

I'm not surprised at your answer. Where this example fails is in comparing the two at similar amplitudes.

If you were to listen to the "original" example at a significantly louder amplitude where the fade in resembled that of the newer/compressed-to-within-an-inch-of-its-life mix, you would have probably preferred the original.

Actually, at the end of the video clip the volume of the original is raised to the level of the overprocessed wave. I'm saying I still preferred the overprocess wave. Like I said, my brain has been soaked, washed, rinsed and dried. :D

Actually, this whole discussion seems IMHO, to be a comparison of apples to oranges. They're both nourising food for the system, but they activate different sets of taste buds. I really can't quantitatively say which is better. I like the apple, when I'm hungry for the taste of an apple, likewise with the orange.

I love the dynamic range of Beethoven's 4th symphony when I'm in that mood. I also like, when I'm in the mood, to have my senses assuated by old Nirvana and Pearl Jam. then again, sometimes I'll stick on the cans and take in the full dynamic range of Yes's "Close to the Edge".

You state that you don't go to rock concerts anymore because of the loudness. Loudness is nothing new. I went to a Quicksilver Messenger Service show at a small venue when I was 15, and the SPL must have been 120+.
I got physically ill (nausea, dissyness) after about 10 minutes. but since you made that statement, and we know that your preferred client is in the acoustic / classical genre, I can surmise that you don't listen to a lot of the music the original poster refers to. That doesn't make you any less an expert on sound recording, but it seems to me that conversation between the two of you on this subject would be as polarized as the conversation my dad and I had about my Nejru jacket and beads in 1967.

AwedOne wrote: but since you made that statement, and we know that your preferred client is in the acoustic / classical genre, I can surmise that you don't listen to a lot of the music the original poster refers to. That doesn't make you any less an expert on sound recording, but it seems to me that conversation between the two of you on this subject would be as polarized as the conversation my dad and I had about my Nejru jacket and beads in 1967.

You'd be surprised. Just because I specialize in recording classical music and that I'm a classical musician, doesn't mean I don't have eclectic tastes in music.

Granted, I'm not a huge fan of speed and death metal, I do have a varied taste in music. I'm loving my new Radiohead (In Rainbows) as well as Bush (which surprised another poster elsewhere on these boards), Smashing Pumpkins, and I've even been known to throw on some SR-71, Prodigy, Rob Zombie and Nine Inch Nails.

I personally believe that to be a complete musician, one must embrace all aspects of sound and music and understand what it is about those sounds that appeal to the listener.

Beyond that, I just like to listen to anything and everything. Music to me is a drug. I will listen to just about anything. Including Miley Cyrus, Ashley Tisdale, DMX or just about anything else. My iPod is probably the most eclectic mix of wierdness you've ever seen. (I'm loving the new British Explosion! I just picked up a bunch of Lily Allen and the Streets! I don't care much for Amy Winehouse though - but that's mainly because she's absolutely FUGLY!)

I havent said...even once...that the music you listen to was recorded badly. In fact it takes a certain amount of skill to get it to sound like it does consistantly over an entire record.

This isnt bad, its just not ALL. Which is what you seem to be saying.

Theres a crapper full of other music out there which isnt limited to the ceiling.

This discussion should be about why most records these days has that brickwall limiting to it and that this is all the record companies seem to be enamoured with. Its not just metal, but its most of everything.

I have no idea which Beatles you were listening to and its not important. BUT your reactions to it leave me with the feeling that you arent speaking any kind of language about what you're hearing that co-incides with what I and most of the others on here know. Pauls bass is flat? As in hes using flatwound strings and it doesnt sound like a piano on steroids flat? Or its literally outoftuneflat?

Maybe its the space between the notes that you dont understand. Thats the reality of dynamics. Music isnt all about slamming a pick into a guitar string as fast as possible with a pink-noise generator set on kill engaged to it. I'm not saying that this ISNT music, but what it doesnt have is soul or movement or inspiration.

When you listen to something that doesnt automatically make you stare at the ground while slinging your hair back and forth in a zombiesque dance, do you understand the relationship of the notes working with and against themselves ? Do you not see how the downward movement of a bass line opens up the top end of the other instruments perking right along with the vocal line? Counter movement and counter melody uniting to form something that an individual part cannot possibly state alone.....

In contrast we have the typical metal passage. A riff played by a single instrument against a furious assault of the same note or simple two-tone chordal structure played by everything else. Simple....yes...effective...yes...earth-shattering....uh, no.....And really, at those speeds its about all you can do in order to have semblance of something other than mud.... Okay. That works for me. But only for a while. Then it gets boring like every country-life song on the radio. Played by the same band BTW.

Same-o same-o and its the business that tells us that this is what we must do in order to succeed. To get airtime. To have backing for sales. To have a promotional package.

And heres this glut of metalheads who pride themselves on being outside the law being sucked into the machine like a helium balloon in a fan factory.

You want reality? Take what you know. Learn MORE stuff to add to it. Your record doesnt have to sound like all those putzes out there . Ya wanna be different? Do it. But learn something about melody and timing and dynamics.

My guess is, most of your favorite bigtime bands know a shitload about this stuff....More than you think.

well the old beatles, like the first like two albums or so, even the beatles werent happy with the bass tone they were getting. it wasnt punchy enough for them. SO! the engineer of the beatles at the time ( i believe it was geoff emerick) had one of the abbey road electrical engineers reversed a loud speaker to be a microphone which turned out pretty good and i believe was used on the revolver record or the record after....im not sure.

im gettin old.

There were several reasons for this change and several reasons why it had not hppened until then.

(Clowd, pay attention)

It is true that the bass until Revolver suffered somewhat in clarity. The principle reason for this was the stringent standards at EMI when cutting the records on the lathe. Too much bass caused the records to physically skip the needle out of the groove and there was a set of parameters that NO ONE crossed. Until 1966 and the recording of Revolver. Norman Smith had left as the Beatles Balance Engineer and Geoff Emerick had been chosen to replace him.
Down in the Lab, an engineer had come up with the ATOC (automatic transient overload control) and it allowed the lathe to cut and boost bass where needed in the mastering process.

This is also where Paul began to track the bass separately from the drums (remember now, 4 tracks only) and it gave Geoff the ability to further refine the bass as a separate entity not dependant on another instrument with similar qualities (ie: drums).

As a point in fact. Ken Townsend came up with the idea of using one of the studio speakers as a mic for the bass. As a result there were only two tracks recorded like this simply because it picked up the bass like crazy, but also everything else in the building. The only two tracks it was used on were Paperback Writer and Rain. Which as a coincidence were two of the finest sounding bass tracks they ever did.

They started using it on the kick drum but when the management found out about it they made them stop and reprimanded them for 'improper use of equipment'.

My three year old can brickwall a Kik drum track.

OK, Dave said it.

Lack of soul, emotion, depth...

A bunch of tracks brickwalled have no depth.

Here's a different approach:

Which were more realistic:
The Special FX in the original three Star Wars movies, or the new cut and paste CGI ones?

What looked better on 'film':
The original group of X-wing fighters going up against the death star, or the copy and pasted clone army (and stupid spinning CGI Yoda) in the new ones?

What's a more realistic vision of spaceflight:
2001 A Space Odyssey, or Armageddon starring Bruce Willis and one of the worst songs Aerosmith every wrote?

What simply sounds louder the more you turn it up, and which makes your speakers sound like they're about to fry from square wave overload:
Glass Onion (or anything, really) by The Beatles, or any song ever recorded by Fallout Boy?

Of course, that's also about the time he started using the Ric in the studio instead of the Hofner, right? The Hofner is a pretty "woofy" bass no matter how you amplify or record it. Still it has a cool sound, even if Clowd and his generation will never know what it was like to hear "I Saw Her Standing There" come over an AM radio with a 2 inch speaker for the first time. (Paul did kow how to write a song that a bass player could sing while playing a cool bass line - even if he did all of his best bass playing on John's songs.)

Don't worry Clowd. I'm not dumping on you. I can remember the first time I heard a Charlie Christian record. I couldn't figure out what all the fuss was about. It's like the say about Shakespeare - every other line is a cliche.

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

I actually wrote a paper 2 years ago, on the origins of the Loudness Wars. (yeah I know, my university ROCKS)

My investigations showed that it was in fact radio that started everything, with early forms of multi-band compression and eventually the Orban. This was about a decade earlier than the 70's rock bands. What happened after, is that bands saw that when a louder song was played on the radio, it sounded COOLER. This in turn gave the whole idea of the "11" switch, while producers were telling engineers to make it louder so it would be louder on the radio, inherently making the whole track "stand out" and seem better.

I'm not saying it's one person's fault this all started. It started because louder was cooler and had a better ROI (return on investment). What I'm saying is, it's the "suits" fault for pushing it TODAY, and the artists who always know better than the person doing their job.

The fact is, this is a society thing at the moment, where it seems people have given up on quality in exchange for convenience. (is it ironic that most of the better digital gear was made in the late 80's?) What happened to the Minidisc, DAT tapes, Magneto-Optical drives? One of the first reverbs made for the general studio owner, is still considered to be one of the best... Instead of looking for ways to replace the high quality of the CD, were looking for ways to compress it and fit it directly into your ear canal, no matter what the cost at the hands of quality.

My point is, no one is really looking for high quality, so no one really cares for that distortion that only a handful of people on the planet can hear. As long as it's LOUD!!! This makes my generation, and the younger generations "immune" to this sound, as we've been hearing it their whole life on the radio. And when faced with a recording that has no punch, isn't pumping and doesn't sound like nails on a chalkboard, it sounds dull, unexciting and just ridiculous.

That's how I observe it, from the front lines... :D

mark_van_j wrote: [quote=AwedOne]Blame first the artists, then the businessmen who new a good thing when they saw it.

...I'm not saying it's one person's fault this all started. It started because louder was cooler and had a better ROI (return on investment). What I'm saying is, it's the "suits" fault for pushing it TODAY, and the artists who always know better than the person doing their job.

The fact is, this is a society thing at the moment, where it seems people have given up on quality in exchange for convenience.....
I think it's a lot more complicated that that. After all, the point of this whole thread is to discuss the fact that someone perceived what you and I think is quality as a lack of quality. People don't think they are giving up quality when they buy heavily limited music. They think the limited music is better. And it's not just the consumers. Pick a dozen posts in the mastering forum at random and you'll hear about more about plenty of artists who want to set the limiter on "crush." If the artists and the consumers are in agreement, why would the suits disagree?

But I think we're talking specifically about the Abbey Road Album. This one it quite different than anything that came before, especially where drums are concerned.
So If Cloud is listening to the earlier stuff, I'm still with him on that. The drums were usually quite burried and the bass suffers etc.
But even other albums released around the same time or after Abbey Road didn't have 'that sound'.
It's probably not until a year or two later that we get Zeppelin and [gasp] Disco where we start getting more up front drums.
And it's probably not until we get to 2" tape that we start to see the next big improvement in clarity.
And to be fair, Clouds original post was specifically about the Abbey Road Kick drum, so lets all turn the album over and listen to the drum solo one more time.
I still say the kick is just about as good there as anything since. (I also think the floor tom has some special magical 3D quality to it.) I can't really hear the floor tom on Clouds ref music.
But as someone pointed out, it's two different animals. (or fruit) Even in Clouds music clips, the quality of the music is different for each one. In which case the 'As I Lay Dying' example has (IMO) a better drum sound than the others.

Davedog wrote:

I have no idea which Beatles you were listening to and its not important. BUT your reactions to it leave me with the feeling that you arent speaking any kind of language about what you're hearing that co-incides with what I and most of the others on here know. Pauls bass is flat? As in hes using flatwound strings and it doesnt sound like a piano on steroids flat? Or its literally outoftuneflat?

Maybe its the space between the notes that you dont understand. Thats the reality of dynamics. Music isnt all about slamming a pick into a guitar string as fast as possible with a pink-noise generator set on kill engaged to it. I'm not saying that this ISNT music, but what it doesnt have is soul or movement or inspiration.

When you listen to something that doesnt automatically make you stare at the ground while slinging your hair back and forth in a zombiesque dance, do you understand the relationship of the notes working with and against themselves ? Do you not see how the downward movement of a bass line opens up the top end of the other instruments perking right along with the vocal line? Counter movement and counter melody uniting to form something that an individual part cannot possibly state alone.....

In contrast we have the typical metal passage. A riff played by a single instrument against a furious assault of the same note or simple two-tone chordal structure played by everything else. Simple....yes...effective...yes...earth-shattering....uh, no.....And really, at those speeds its about all you can do in order to have semblance of something other than mud.... Okay. That works for me. But only for a while. Then it gets boring like every country-life song on the radio. Played by the same band BTW.

Same-o same-o and its the business that tells us that this is what we must do in order to succeed. To get airtime. To have backing for sales. To have a promotional package.

And heres this glut of metalheads who pride themselves on being outside the law being sucked into the machine like a helium balloon in a fan factory.

You want reality? Take what you know. Learn MORE stuff to add to it. Your record doesnt have to sound like all those putzes out there . Ya wanna be different? Do it. But learn something about melody and timing and dynamics.

My guess is, most of your favorite bigtime bands know a shitload about this stuff....More than you think.

As for the bass, I guess I mean that it's not very bright. Like... it's just kinda dull, to me.

Anyway, about the rest, you are right. I don't know what I'm talking about. I wish I did. Any cool music I ever write is by accident, I have never been able to write something "on purpose" persay. I stumble upon something I like while jamming and then I build upon it.

Davedog wrote: My guess is, most of your favorite bigtime bands know a shitload about this stuff....More than you think.

I bet you are right. Where do I go to learn about it?

I think it all boils down to the fact that at one point in time effects were meant to be tools in the recording process. Recording was supposed to capture the music as if the band were in your living room playing.

More and more, effects have become an intrinsic part of the recording process. Recorded music has lost all sense of naturalness. Guitars sound so unlike guitars. Drums are totally unnatural sounding. They don't ring. Their sound doesn't resonate at all. People have grown accustomed to over processed instruments.

It's sad because I listen to some of my cd's from one artist and you can hear how the recording process has changed from one cd to the next. Specifically: I'm a huge Di Meola, Di Lucia, McLaughlin fan. Passion Grace and Fire sounds incredible. Lots of space and huge dynamics. You have to crank it to appreciate all the nuances. Then the reforming of the trio in the late nineties came and I have to turn it down because my ears don't get a rest. It's just full boar in your face. It's painful to listen to. the music is great, but I can't stand to listen to more than one song at a time.

Hello. I feel that the answer to your question, and I think most of the people here would agree with me, is that the old style of recording / production was made to sound as close as possible to the band actually being in the room with you. This is called "real sound". The drummers kick coming out of your speakers would sound like the drummers kick was right in front of you in the room.

Todays production is more based on enhancement. Stereo widening, multiband compression, and other things are used to make mixes sound enhanced on all systems (even cheap ones).

It may even interest you to know that the actual speakers are made differently now. Before, they were designed to sound good in the average listeners home... now they are deigned with enhancements to make them sound better in a retail environment. This is obviously done to get the sale, but where does that leave the consumer when he / she gets them home?

I like modern production too, I just do not like it for every single record that comes out. It makes every band sound the same to me. Every snare sounds the same, every distorted guitar track. They all seem to be going for this same opinion of "perfection" that just leaves no room for new and groundbreaking sounds. Even the indie stuff is doing this now, which is a major disappointment to me. I very much enjoyed the work of Belle & Sebastian and part of that was the dynamic of the recording. Since "Dear Catastrophe Waitress", they've had big budget production and in my opinion, it just doesn't work as well for such a dynamic band who use a lot of crescendo's and dynamic playing in general.

I do agree with you on the subject of metal though. I think for most metal bands out now, to sound natural would take away that illusion that every instrument is blasting loud. But that doesn't mean I don't like the production on Maiden's first 2 records, it's just a different era now.

Yes, producers are making the tracks louder and louder so their song will stand out from the others when it gets airplay.

Also, the older stuff was mastered for vinyl which is a more dynamic and expressive format. The stuff now is mastered for CD.

Sorry about the rant, but if you would really like to understand what is so special about that older type of production, get a natural sounding cd (Ben Kweller's 'On My Way' is a great example of a new artist with a natural sound), and sit in the sweet spot with your eyes closed and imagine the band is playing in the room you're in.

Anyone else with me on this? :)

BrianaW wrote: ...
Also, the older stuff was mastered for vinyl which is a more dynamic and expressive format. The stuff now is mastered for CD. ...

sorry
had to pick up on that
not quite right

16 bit 44.1 should have more dynamic range than vinyl
and should have more freq response than vinyl too

It is true to say that material is mastered for the medium AND for the method that it will be played/SOLD via

MP3 on a set of earbuds is vastly different to A BIG$$$ hifi system with outrageous headroom

People still chase hi class recordings that retain dynamic range in the Classical and Jazz and Jazz/fusion world
... this is vastly different to the mainstream pop world.

We can also be influenced by our era.
I tend to like the late 60's 70's feel
Jethro Tull , Thin Lizzy and early ACDC.

and I do appreciate the modern SMASH when done well
my MP3 player and car stereo has GreenDay perminantly locked into it

I am still amazed at the Beatles and Tull for their recordings on 4 and 8 track .....
not a plug-in or cut and paste in sight
:roll:
now what does bounce mean