Nowdays,we compress the shit out of everything
 

heres a nice artical about the over use of compression in today's industry-
everybody wants to be loud,who will the loudest? :)

http://mixonline.com/mag/audio_big_squeeze/

some wise words from bob catz,the mastering guru included :P

Ive been thinking the same for a while now, its getting silly :?

I dont like the sound of it at all :(

Re: Nowdays,we compress the shit out of everything
 

yup, there was a site loudnessrace.net but it seems to have dissapeared and there is this one as well http://www.airwindows.com/analysis/Dynamics.html

All seems a bit silly. If I want a cd louder i'll turn the volume up. Hell, I use replay gain on my mp3s so that the loudness of a track is compensated for. Utter madness compressing the fuck out of tracks so they are more "competitive".

Over compression in Mastering has been a pet-hate of mine for ages now.
At least it keeps mastering engineers in a job though. :?

Any of you heard Madonna's latest album? The material is ok...but when i played it on a high end hifi it sounded so hot and nasty that i dont actually get any listening pleasure from it. They used a Nord 3 and i can distinctly hear the filter distortion being used....trouble is....it doesnt sound nice on a hot recording....2/10 to be honest.

I dont particularly like todays recordings....i prefer the atmosphere of well produced 70's,80's and early 90's stuff....

DS

Agreed! Love the 70's vibe

hendrix rulez!

Re: Nowdays,we compress the shit out of everything
 

Precisely! Unfortunately, I think we are all caught in the same loop at the moment. - we want to keep our music dynamic, but in order to get it to compete with the other stuff out there, we must get it loud. Because to most of the people out there purchasing music - louder = better :?

I think it seems to be a pet hate of anyone I have met who is producer and been doing it for a while.

Strangely people who are new to it immediately want to squash the hell out of everything because its the fashion... then after a year or so seem to learn that is sound a hell of alot better o get a good mix and apply a bit of gentle levelling and smoothing :)

My real pet hate is that most post production all-in-one-instant-mastering plugins seem very orientated toward this squash the hell out of it approach and so they sound like shit, and still seem to sound like shit when you try and be gentle with them.

Im not keen on T Racks at all!
So many people "master" their music with this yet they havent a clue about mastering or suitable monitoring equipment\enviroment.

:roll:

My current favourite soft tool set is the MClass bits in Reason v3 - about the closest Ive found in software to good old hardware processors - sadly you cant route audio to them from outside Reason so they are only useful for stuff done entirely in Reason - Grrrrr :(

I am getting very tempted to give up using plugins for this and go back to hardware that I know...

This says it all:

Before:


Now:


:?

Personally i think it all started going wrong with Hip Hop music....and then slowly but surely....trance and Techno got on the bandwagon of loud, shitty recordings.

I particularly hate the sound of these sharp, cutting, heavily Eq'ed and compressed vocals we get nowadays. Sounds totally shiiittteee....

DS

hehe, nice one onkel :)
and people wonder why they can't turn their volume knob past .5 anymore.

Doc - just noticed in your synth collection JV2080 :)

If this is basically an update of the 1080 - can I refer you this thread? :)

http://www.sunesha.nu/virusforum/viewtopic.php?t=4931

DS,
Really dont appreciate that. Take that talk somewhere else.

reading the thread right now . . .

yeah, those damn uppity niggers bringing down the white man's music. How dare they? They should go back to picking cotton and shit.

This is the only rolleyes I can find that is big enough for your retardedness.

But thats what black people call it. They dont mind using those kind of words. Does a white person saying it have a different meaning then? I hadnt really thought of it till now....but maybe it does. Ill edit that post....

No offense meant by it...

DS

Hmm....I dont feel as strongly as that....

Why have you said this? What your saying right now is alot more offensive than what I wrote. I made the mistake of using a word that is commonly used amongst black communities.....im sorry for that. I didnt actually mean anything by it.

DS

I don't think I've ever heard hip-hop referred to as "nigger music" by a black person, only by southern state American KKK types. It sounds incredibly racist even if you didn't mean to be, which I accept.

My post was lampooning yours.

Also, back to the topic, I don't think it was hip-hop that started this and it certainly wasn't trance. I think it has been common on singles for a while, but whole albums being recorded hot has only happened since the mid 90s and I don't think you can point to any one genre for starting it.

Not sure what can of worms you opened before editing this post there DS, but I'm sorry I missed out on it. :D

Anyway, some of the earlier HipHop had great production. They used some of the best older gear people could get their hands on.

Fugg yeah, just stick on WuTang Clans 36 Chambers.... Fuggin awesome!!

Great thread here.We have been talking alot about this lately since we have been doing our mastering with the MD3.After the mastering Bounce we import into Wavlab to look at the peaks to make sure they are not cut off but still up to the highest point.