Burning_October Posted March 16, 2009 Share Posted March 16, 2009 The thing that actually upsets me about this is that if Muse had asked for it to be mixed raw, Costey would've done it. Have you heard his work on The Red Album? Lots of dynamic range. Also, why do labels think that compression sells anything? Weezer's Pork and Beans and (I believe) The Foo Fighters' The Pretender were both very raw, dynamic recordings, and they both spent a LOT of time at #1. Heck, Pork and Beans spent over 11 weeks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phill Posted March 17, 2009 Share Posted March 17, 2009 Yeah, hopefully. Maybe they'll mix it themselves. Also, I want them to record analog. Sounds SOOO much better than digital. God I hope they don't record digital. For some reason digital just irks me. It doesn't sound...raw enuf I guess would b a word for it. We'd be waiting a very long time if the album was recorded completely with analogue gear, onto tape. And the mixing and mastering would take even longer I imagine... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Burning_October Posted March 17, 2009 Share Posted March 17, 2009 We'd be waiting a very long time if the album was recorded completely with analogue gear, onto tape. And the mixing and mastering would take even longer I imagine... Yeah, I doubt that they would, but it would be nice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clunge Posted March 17, 2009 Share Posted March 17, 2009 We'd be waiting a very long time if the album was recorded completely with analogue gear, onto tape. And the mixing and mastering would take even longer I imagine... The Raconteurs still claim to do that, and even if they don't, they get a fantastically rich sound out of their gear both in the studio and live regardless . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChrisirhC Posted March 17, 2009 Share Posted March 17, 2009 analawg is teh warm n creamy tonez so i spend all my munneh on it. Digital ftw Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brian KEEEEM Posted March 17, 2009 Share Posted March 17, 2009 Haha, Showbiz was the best mixed album imo. I forget his name, but, the man who produced the album used analog equipment, you can see an interview of muse in RAK studios, where they filmed it, on youtube. Correct me if im wrong, haha. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
haze015 Posted March 17, 2009 Share Posted March 17, 2009 Yeah, hopefully. Maybe they'll mix it themselves. Also, I want them to record analog. Sounds SOOO much better than digital. Basically, in engineer speak that means "I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about, but I want to look clever" How does tracking in Pro Tools undermine the all analogue signal path going into it? BH&R sounds messy because it tries to sound 'analogue' Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Burning_October Posted March 18, 2009 Share Posted March 18, 2009 All I know is that the analogue recordings i've heard sound far more warm and raw then the digital. It may just be the production style that they happened to use, I don't know. Also, I read somewhere that when you push the volume of an analogue recording it just causes some nice distortion, but when you do the same with digital it just clips. May be wrong. In any case, I just want them to mix it properly. Get Rich Costey to mix it again, but this time say "Rich, mix it raw and dynamic!". He'll do it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChrisirhC Posted March 18, 2009 Share Posted March 18, 2009 Also, I read somewhere that when you push the volume of an analogue recording it just causes some nice distortion, but when you do the same with digital it just clips. Yes, but the digital recordings will not clip (there's a lot of attention piad so that they don't), if it clips on the recording it's take 2 etc until it's done right. When the mix is sent to Warner they will send it to a mastering engineer who will balance it sonically then finally crank it with limiters ''or else!'' Not many mastering engineers IF ANY want to do this....but they answer to labels who are in competition with other rock bands, whose CDs are loud. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Burning_October Posted March 18, 2009 Share Posted March 18, 2009 CD's do clip. I've heard CD's clip, just listen to Californication, theres horrible clipping there. Or, if there isn't, then the band felt the need to add random annoying distortion sounds at various points during the songs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChrisirhC Posted March 18, 2009 Share Posted March 18, 2009 CD's do clip. I've heard CD's clip, just listen to Californication, theres horrible clipping there. Or, if there isn't, then the band felt the need to add random annoying distortion sounds at various points during the songs. But it shouldn't That's what I meant.... Death Magnetic comes to mind too. They won the loudness wars, their prize was a bucket load of complaints from pissed off fans. Sometimes I don't mind it, like on Hoodoo on BHR the vocals can be heard crackling a bit.....2:05 or so. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Burning_October Posted March 18, 2009 Share Posted March 18, 2009 Yeah, they shouldn't, but they do, that's why I think that they should record analog. Why risk clipping when you can just record in to tape? Also, I always thought that the Hoodoo vocal cracking was a production decisions. Some kind of vocal effect. Whatever it is, it really adds to the song, makes the vocal kind of softer and smokier and gives the whole thing the mystical effect, in my opinion. I just wanted to ask, is the compression why there's almost no bass in BHaR? I mean, listening to Origin, the bass was one of the things that really hooked me in. Really nice riffs, and some great bass/guitar interplay on songs like Hyper Music and Citizen Erased. On BHaR, though, theres nothing there, really. Which sucks because songs like SMBH and Exo-Politics REALLY could've used some nice bass work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
haze015 Posted March 18, 2009 Share Posted March 18, 2009 All I know is that the analogue recordings i've heard sound far more warm and raw then the digital. It may just be the production style that they happened to use, I don't know. Also, I read somewhere that when you push the volume of an analogue recording it just causes some nice distortion, but when you do the same with digital it just clips. May be wrong. In any case, I just want them to mix it properly. Get Rich Costey to mix it again, but this time say "Rich, mix it raw and dynamic!". He'll do it. It's more in the production style than whether you track to tape or a DAW. The whole analogue = warm and 'raw' and digital = cold, sterile and harsh is simply old wives tales. There are some incredible records being made today just using computers and dreadful ones with purely analogue (Like the last White Stripes one). Also there are great sounding albums that have been mastered to be loud! How BH&R sounds is nothing to do with analogue or digital, just some bad decisions made when it came to mastering and trying to sound 'warm' and ended up with a muddy record. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dramatic Hammer Posted March 18, 2009 Share Posted March 18, 2009 CD's do clip. I've heard CD's clip, just listen to Californication, theres horrible clipping there. Or, if there isn't, then the band felt the need to add random annoying distortion sounds at various points during the songs. Yes that's during the mastering process, not tracking or mixing. It has NOTHING to do with the recording medium. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trippynet Posted March 26, 2009 Share Posted March 26, 2009 The difference you notice is that the likes of vinyl simply can't clip as harshly as CDs can. This is due to the movement of the needle which will always slightly round the edges of a square wave produced by clipping. A CD meanwhile will faithfully reproduce the full harshness of the square wave. Don't get me wrong, a recording like BHAR will still sound pretty nasty if transferred directly to vinyl without being remastered, but it won't have quite the harsh edge that the CD version has, even though it will still distort badly. This harshness only mainly applies to clipped recordings mind you. If you take music that's mastered properly and play it back on CD and vinyl, you'll struggle to notice the difference and both recordings can sound nice and warm. As for BHAR, it clips and it clips badly. Sorry to all those who say otherwise, but you're wrong. Bung "Map Of The Problematique" into a wave editor, run an analysis on it and you find over 130,000 clipped samples on the left channel alone. That's nearly 2% of the entire song being samples that are just pegged at the noise ceiling of 0dB. Run further analysis with Audacity and there's tons of areas with consecutive clipped samples. The largest run I could find was 47 samples in a row that are all pegged at 0dB. That's horrendous, and it also rubbishes any claims that this track is just compressed/limited without being clipped. Zoom in with a wave editor and almost every single drum beat consists of a huge, clipped square wave. The end result of this is that the sound quality of BHAR is frankly appalling. It's just a flat wall of hyper-compressed, heavily limited and badly clipped noise from start to finish. As a big Muse fan who owns pretty much all of the previous albums including several vinyl singles as well, it really annoys me to see how this album has just been utterly ruined due to destructive mastering. And as a result, I haven't bought it. And I won't buy it until someone decides to actually master it properly with the intention of making it sound like good music instead of loud, squashed static. As a final point, the whole loudness war exists because the record labels think it increases sales. However, as loudness has consistently risen over the last decade or so, music sales have steadily fallen. A person with half a brain might look at this and think that ultra loud, squashed, distorted and fatiguing CDs don't result in better sales. The music industry though obviously doesn't have a brain between them. Despite the steadily falling sales, the music labels are too stupid to look at how they're deliberately ruining the stuff they're producing and maybe think that it's a contributing factor to their demise. Meanwhile, potentially fantastic albums like BHAR are caught in the crossfire and ruined as a result. Sad really. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nimpo46 Posted March 26, 2009 Share Posted March 26, 2009 And as a result, I haven't bought it. And I won't buy it until someone decides to actually master it properly with the intention of making it sound like good music instead of loud, squashed static. Stupid, unless you actually just don't care about having the songs. Anyway, it would be nice if someone remastered BHaR... I'd like to compare the two and inevitably enjoy the 'quieter' one more. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChrisirhC Posted March 26, 2009 Share Posted March 26, 2009 Meh, just print the Mix onto CD and tbh I wouldn't really care Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trippynet Posted March 26, 2009 Share Posted March 26, 2009 Stupid, unless you actually just don't care about having the songs. Not at all. If people just buy the stuff anyway, the music industry will keep on squashing, distorting and destroying recordings as they think it makes good business sense. The only way to stand any chance of stopping the whole ridiculous practice is to hit them in the pocket by refusing to buy the CDs. I would have bought BHaR, but I'm not doing - simply because of the dreadful sound quality on the CD. I have acquired a version of it by other means and I can't listen to more than a few songs without having to switch it off due to how flat, harsh and fatiguing it sounds. If I had actually bought it, I would have returned it to HMV or wherever for a refund. Meanwhile, if I want to support Muse (and I do because they're one of my favourite bands), I'll do it instead by seeing them live. That way, the band still gets money out of me and their label doesn't. As for the next album, well! It all depends on how its done really. I'm being realistic here as all modern CDs are mercilessly over compressed unfortunately, but if the new CD tones things down a little so that I can enjoy the album without my ears bleeding, I'll buy it! BHaR manages dynamic ranges of only around 4dB-5dB per song in some cases (the dynamic range of music from the early 90s was about 12-14dB). OOS in comparison hovers more around the 7dB-8dB area and yet isn't all that much quieter. However by having a bit more headroom, the music sounds a lot better as a result. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
haze015 Posted March 27, 2009 Share Posted March 27, 2009 OOS in comparison hovers more around the 7dB-8dB area and yet isn't all that much quieter. However by having a bit more headroom, the music sounds a lot better as a result. Eh? OOS is still hitting 0.00 a large percent of the time, probably just as much as BH&R. The real difference between them is one was mastered well, the other wasn't, not the overall RMS as that's pretty much identical. Anything with brickwall limiting or compression will show up in those sorts of programs as 'clipping' as compression and distortion do a similar thing to the sound wave, but one is merely controlling the volume while one is physically changing the wave by introducing harmonics (aka distortion). So use your ears, not your eyes, which sometimes is unfortunately rarely the case when it comes to the 'Loudness War', something that apparently has only happened over the last 10 years and vinyl is clearly better despite one of the reasons 33rpm LP's became so popular over 45rpm singles was that despite the theory, they sounded better because the volume wasn't unnecessarily cranked up like it would be on the singles. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nimpo46 Posted March 27, 2009 Share Posted March 27, 2009 Not at all. If people just buy the stuff anyway, the music industry will keep on squashing, distorting and destroying recordings as they think it makes good business sense. The only way to stand any chance of stopping the whole ridiculous practice is to hit them in the pocket by refusing to buy the CDs. I would have bought BHaR, but I'm not doing - simply because of the dreadful sound quality on the CD. I have acquired a version of it by other means and I can't listen to more than a few songs without having to switch it off due to how flat, harsh and fatiguing it sounds. If I had actually bought it, I would have returned it to HMV or wherever for a refund. Meanwhile, if I want to support Muse (and I do because they're one of my favourite bands), I'll do it instead by seeing them live. That way, the band still gets money out of me and their label doesn't. As for the next album, well! It all depends on how its done really. I'm being realistic here as all modern CDs are mercilessly over compressed unfortunately, but if the new CD tones things down a little so that I can enjoy the album without my ears bleeding, I'll buy it! BHaR manages dynamic ranges of only around 4dB-5dB per song in some cases (the dynamic range of music from the early 90s was about 12-14dB). OOS in comparison hovers more around the 7dB-8dB area and yet isn't all that much quieter. However by having a bit more headroom, the music sounds a lot better as a result. well if you don't like the music that's one thing otherwise i say you're being a bit over the top Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trippynet Posted March 27, 2009 Share Posted March 27, 2009 Eh? OOS is still hitting 0.00 a large percent of the time, probably just as much as BH&R. The real difference between them is one was mastered well, the other wasn't, not the overall RMS as that's pretty much identical. You're quite right that OOS does hit 0dB, but not as badly as BHAR does. There's a dynamic range tool you can grab from http://www.PleasurizeMusic.com which looks at the peak and average volume levels from various sections of a song before giving you a value for the dynamic range of that song. Despite hitting 0dB in plenty of places and being compressed and limited, OOS has been handled less severely than BHAR. In fact, have a picture. This is from Bliss: Look back at the first post in this thread and compare Bliss to MotP. Bliss is treated for loudness and is still a fairly big wall of noise, but the slightly increased dynamics and lower clipping levels are very obvious. As for ears, I do use them. Here's a comparison. Stick on "Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana. Note the punch and clarity of the drums - even during the loud and heavy sections of the song. Then stick on MotP, fast forward to about 2:35 and listen to the drums there. It sounds like someone in the background beating a damp cushion with a tent peg. Zoom in on the waveforms and the reason why becomes obvious. This is a bass drum kick from MotP: Meanwhile, here's one from Smells Like Teen Spirit To my ears, the difference in quality between the two songs is as obvious as it is when you pull them into a wave editor and examine the butchery that's been applied to MotP. End result: SLTS sounds powerful and dynamic, MotP sounds squashed, distorted and wimpy. Which is bloody annoying as I love Muse and don't want them to sound squashed and flat like this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
haze015 Posted March 27, 2009 Share Posted March 27, 2009 I thought OOS was more compressed than that, it always seemed just as loud as Absolution and BH&R. And I already know all this shit, just find the whole Loudness War thing boring now because what has been forgotten is that a shit sounding album is a shit sounding album regardless of how much compression is used, until you start hearing the compressors 'pumping', they actually aren't doing as much damage as some people like to make out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trippynet Posted March 27, 2009 Share Posted March 27, 2009 You're right. It's the limiting that squashes all the drum hits down and the clipping which really spoils the sound the most. In comparison, compression is the least destructive of the loudness techniques used. All of it though is pointless. It has no effect at all on radio broadcasts of songs as radio stations apply their own compression anyway. All it really does is ruin what should otherwise be a fantastic sounding album. Here's hoping that the whole practise gets toned down a bit for Muse's next album. I'd really like it to be listenable as I can only cope with 2 or 3 songs from BHAR before having to stick something else on due to the harshness of the sound. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChrisirhC Posted March 27, 2009 Share Posted March 27, 2009 Well radios can't really do much about it, Radio 1 plays absolute crap anyway, but the quieter songs have to be as loud as the dance tunes. Otherwise the volume will drop way down from track to track Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
haze015 Posted March 28, 2009 Share Posted March 28, 2009 You're right. It's the limiting that squashes all the drum hits down and the clipping which really spoils the sound the most. In comparison, compression is the least destructive of the loudness techniques used. All of it though is pointless. It has no effect at all on radio broadcasts of songs as radio stations apply their own compression anyway. All it really does is ruin what should otherwise be a fantastic sounding album. Here's hoping that the whole practise gets toned down a bit for Muse's next album. I'd really like it to be listenable as I can only cope with 2 or 3 songs from BHAR before having to stick something else on due to the harshness of the sound. I don't find BH&R harsh, just muddy, but don't worry, I'm in the same boat as you, just more of an open mind as overall mastering can sound good, just not alll the time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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