Levels in Recording

[tonepub]

Tube60,

You give the recording industry WAY to much credit.

No, they are NOT setting their levels too low. No they are not mic-ing things from incorrect distances. No, they are not trying to compensate for the limitations of their recording gear (because their gear today is about as astoundingly high-res as you can imagine!)

They are, on purpose and with malice aforethought, running EVERYTHING through a series of compressors and limiters, for several reasons. First of all, highly compressed recordings sound better on cheap gear like car stereos and portable devices. Second, highly compressed recordings make for better background noise, and the sad fact is most people today don't really want to listen to MUSIC, they want melodic and pleasant "soundtracks" for their daily activities that do not demand attention, participation, or intellectual interaction. And third, such highly compressed music actually causes certain brain-wave states, which are EXACTLY the opposite states you get from listening to live music--compressed music, no matter what type or genre, creates a leveled mood, a depressed ability for discernment, and an overall feeling of placidness. Compressed music is essentially psychoacoustic valium. Well, at least, for anyone who doesn't expect their recorded music to actually sound like REAL music. It's actually a quite brilliantly subtle form of social control and mass brainwashing. It's cheaper than drugs, and people actually pay the establishment for the privaledge of being exposed to the technology that is taking away their ability to experience a wide range of emotion. Brilliant, really...

Don;t believe me? Listen to the latest pop CD for a few hours--you can actually feel the IQ points draining out of your ears. Listen to the latest rap release for a day or two--you can actually sense your concern and humanitarian sensibilities evaporating like a cup of gin and juice sitting on the hood of a '64 in August. OR just go to a record store and attempt to hold a conversation with any of the staff. Most are incapable of forming thoughts longer than a lyric line, and this is mostly due, I believe, to their long-term exposure to popular media.

For audiophiles, such mangled recordings actually can create near manic responses--perhaps it will be the audiophiles of the world that will lead the next great revolution against the New World Order and their mind-control media.

So aside from all your conspiracy theories, how many recording or mastering engineers do you know in person? All the one's I've met that work for major labels ARE musicians.

What you fail to understand is that in most cases the band signs off on the recording. If the musician that's making the music, doesn't or can't hear the diff (or has blown out their hearing from playing live) the music suffers.

After talking to quite a few major musicians, they tend to fall into two camps: The ones that really care about how their music sounds on a recording and the ones that only see a CD as something to either get airplay or bring people in to see them at a live show.

Again, none of this is the big world domination plan that you'd like it to be.

I'm amazed at how many good sounding records/CD's are still being made.

 

[User211]

Dreamer - you might find this interesting. It's a "real" levels in recording post of some acoustic guitar playing i.e. there is NO saturation on it or at least minimal. You should be able to analyse it in a sequencer quite easily to confirm that is the case. The files to download are still available.

http://www.martinloganowners.com/forum/showthread.php?t=7616

Anyway, limitations aside, if recordings were as bad as perhaps you think they are, why would we all bother? We wouldn't, is the simple answer.

 

[Dreamer]

So aside from all your conspiracy theories, how many recording or mastering engineers do you know in person? All the one's I've met that work for major labels ARE musicians.

This is just an irrelevant point. The making of music, and the recording of music are two VERY different endevours--the first is primarily creative, supported by technical skill, where as the second is primarily technical supported by a smattering of creativity. As an artist, I find it insulting and offensive that any technician would think they know better than I do what my art should sound or look like, and I would hope that professional musicians would feel the same.

Perhaps many musicians these days WANT their music to be heavily compressed, grossly processed with all sorts of digital effects, distortion, and artificial "soundsataging". Perhaps they WANT their music to sound like it was pieced together from 64 tracks of individual performances patched together in a laboratory rather than a musical performance made by interacting humans. I can't say what the intent of many modern musicians is--but I can offer my opinion as to what many recordings SOUND like, and to me, a lot of recordings sound like they are being produced by people who have no concern that the music sounds "real"...

It's possible to make multi-track recordings that are engaging, entertaining, and musically pleasant. The Beatles, Pink Floyd, heck, even a lot of Classical is recorded multi-track these days. But I think one of the major differences with "classic" rock recordings like the Beatles or Floyd (when held up against a lot of contemporary stuff today) is that the musicians WERE the engineers, and they had an intensely intimate hand in the final sound of their music. Division of labor and technical specialization has infiltrated and contaminated the music industry today to such an extent that in "union" studios, it is actually a fineable offense for a musician to touch a board. How do you think David Gilmore or John Lennon would feel about that sort of restriction?...

What you fail to understand is that in most cases the band signs off on the recording. If the musician that's making the music, doesn't or can't hear the diff (or has blown out their hearing from playing live) the music suffers.

Again, I go back to my "division of labor" argument. Many modern musicians havent the faintest clue as to what goes into (or more appropriately, what DOESN'T go into) a quality recording, and so they are at the mercy of the specialists--recording engineers. If it were merely a matter of cost effectiveness and getting a recording from the studio to the air, why would engineers need tens of thousands of dollars worth of compressors, effects, and EQ gear, and wny would they spend time crushing dynamic ranges, rolling off highs and boosting lows, and otherwise molesting the signal?

 

[OldMonolith]

Thanks for the comments SamBob! Very nice for you to take the time to write all that!

As a long term broadcast engineer, I also can straddle the fence and see a bit of why recordings get done they way they do and yet how much better a select few sound! The material coming in today is almost universally squashed beyond belief! You get some life for the first part of the intro and then most the rest of the song is smashed to a flat line! It sounds horrible as it comes in the door, it can't be better going out. My broadcast "chain" is about 10 feet of all AES/EBU. Never goes through a conversion at all. It certainly is capable of delivering pretty good performance, but what comes through the door and what the public wants is what gets delivered.

Maybe that's why I spend so much money on the high end labels and known artists, looking for audio that sounds like life! You can find some, but it sure seems few and far between!

I also agree about how one of the biggest lacking area's is the ability to get that, for lack of a better way to say it, the "loudness" of the real event. I don't personally believe it's answer is just power though. I think it's in the timing and low level detail to a large degree. I think that's a big part of why we find the stat's to be more real!

A couple weeks ago, I had to set up and take note when one of the jocks picked up an acoustic guitar he had as his desk and started strumming out a song. Wow...when you're setting a couple feet and away and hear the attack, the beautiful harmonics of the string and the liveness of the sound coming from the guitar body, you quickly get reminded of how far we have to go in getting "real" sound out of our reproduction systems.

OldMonolith

 

[DTB300]

As an artist, I find it insulting and offensive that any technician would think they know better than I do what my art should sound or look like, and I would hope that professional musicians would feel the same.

This is quite an assumption that professional musicians would ultimately care about the final quality more than an engineer/technician. I imagine some musicians do want excellent sound based on some of the great releases, but some are more interested in what sells copies by using compression, best MP3 sound or portables, etc. They want the sound that sells their records.

Perhaps many musicians these days WANT their music to be heavily compressed, grossly processed with all sorts of digital effects, distortion, and artificial "soundsataging". Perhaps they WANT their music to sound like it was pieced together from 64 tracks of individual performances patched together in a laboratory rather than a musical performance made by interacting humans. I can't say what the intent of many modern musicians is--but I can offer my opinion as to what many recordings SOUND like, and to me, a lot of recordings sound like they are being produced by people who have no concern that the music sounds "real"...

Like all of us YOU have an opinion on how a recording sounds. But beyond that you have no clue who was ultimately responsible for the final product - the engineers or the artist. It is purely a guess and a terrible assumption.

The latest Spyro Gyra used some compression in their album (not as much as we hear about being used), but I felt it took the release down a notch in quality, compared to previous releases of theirs. I found out (cannot remember where) that the band wanted to use compressions for the product they wanted to release.

Division of labor and technical specialization has infiltrated and contaminated the music industry today to such an extent that in "union" studios, it is actually a fineable offense for a musician to touch a board. How do you think David Gilmore or John Lennon would feel about that sort of restriction?...

Wow...now we are getting into Division of Labor????.......Earth calling......anyone home?

If this is REALLY true, then based on your other statements, it is the Musician who is RESPSONSIBLE for their music and they should not allow bad releases to happen. Leave the label, do whatever is necessary - that is if they truly care.

But with the trend for portable, MP3, streaming audio as the norm, the audiophile crowd is the low man/woman on the pole in regards to release concerns - sales, sales, sales.

 

[User211]

A couple weeks ago, I had to set up and take note when one of the jocks picked up an acoustic guitar he had as his desk and started strumming out a song. Wow...when you're setting a couple feet and away and hear the attack, the beautiful harmonics of the string and the liveness of the sound coming from the guitar body, you quickly get reminded of how far we have to go in getting "real" sound out of our reproduction systems.

Well, I pick one up all the time (every day) and play it. And I think that recording posted above (see my last post) is amazing. I can actually hear far more from the recording than I can from the instrument by jacking the volume a tad over normal replay levels. Whilst it sounds larger than life through a pair of Ascents, I think the sound/attack/tone of the instrument is very well portrayed and preserved.

This isn't imagination or wishful thinking as far as I am concerned. It is just plain fact. I also think (know) a good analogue open reel at high tape speed would do a better job still.

The tech is there to do a great job. And furthermore it has been for the past 30-40 years.

I think single instruments recorded by themselves can be played back really quite realistcally. And vocals. Things just start getting harder to do when a number of different instruments get put into the mix. Realistic replay then becomes a much, much harder job.