I got my money back from itunes store for tracks 12 & 13 on the Searching For The Hows & Whys album. The static just broke up into long gaps of silence.
After 2 months they still haven't loaded a replacement for track 13 'Better Things'.
I noticed a few gliches of static during his live performance as well; I was taken by surprise as he had live backing available on stage at the time.
they could've had so much better for their album, but instead it sounds kinda weird in places. Like the synths were just tacked on top and not given much thought in the mix, and the drums are quite weak, don't like the snare sound.
That foo fighters one, in your honour, just sounds too busy for my liking too.
Hugh Padgham who produced all the Genesis and Phil Collins stuff. But seriously, are you telling me the drums, especially the snare, don't sound kind of lame? A snare is meant to push through the mix and sound kind of snappy, wheras on the IWACS album it just sort of sits there, sounding as if its being hit really lamely. Just my opinion though...
Producers and engineers who believe that pro tools, compression and autotune are the 3 most important recording studio essentials should be taken outside and shot in the soul for crimes against music.
because it contains a lot of natural space. Whilst a pop-rock song will tend to be a fatiguing chug of endless guitars, an R&B song will be Bass-silence-bass-silence mixed with snare-silence-snare-silence etc so there's still a lot of room to manouvre within it. And the fact that they aren't always trying to mimic "real" instruments mean they have a a bit more artistic licence
You could also say that R&B/hip hop producers are more interested in sound, and so use compression in a more pleasing way. Rock bands just compress like n00bs
overdoing anything in the studio is badness. A bit of compression here and there is good, obviously. Putting it on the master track of every popular song of the last 10 years and squeezing everything's life out of the radio is like plopping a jobbie into my earhole.
if so, i was just suggesting that a lot of the over compressed stuff on the radio is produced in that way because so many of the biggest selling singles are things such as we have come to expect from timbalaand and the neptunes..this sort of song responds better to the plastic, overly compressed production method because it is often a ver minimal arrangment, just beats, synth, vocal etc... it is the idiots in other genres who belive this approach is transeferable that are the problem.
But yeah, i completely understand why these things are used and i know why music is recorded the way it is. It just all sounds absolutely soulless, samey and horrific to my ears, especially coming out of a car stereo (the only time i ever have the radio on).
It's probably the number one reason why i listen to so much 60s and 70s stuff. When records sounded AMAZING.
gets a lot of stick, but it's just a standardised set of I/O and a hard disk recording system, so not necessarily anything to do with overproduction.
The same with compression. Compression *is* one of the most important studio essentials, it's the thought that every song needs to sound as loud as possible when it's played on the radio as an essential goal of production that's at fault there.
It's the reliance on it that is the problem. The basic fact that wrong takes and downright bad musicianship can be "fixed" is almost sickening.
Compression is not essential in the slightest. Used sparingly, it's obviously a fantastic tool to have at your disposal, but definitely not something that makes music better. In most cases, it makes it worse. The idea that songs "need to sound as loud as possible" (as you put it) on the radio is what ruins popular music and sucks the life out of it.
And you're completely missing my point. Go and listen to Pet Sounds or something. Compression = good. Thinking it is, in any way, an "essential" tool in the creation of music = bad.
on Pet Sounds were no doubt compressed in exactly the same way vocals have been compressed since compressors have been used. A quick google check confirms this. Most channel strips have them built in. Compressors have got a bad name from th fact that they've been abused recently, but they're still a fairly essential tool in removing unwanted dynamics of a singer moving their head around whilst singing, or getting a whispered vocal audiable.
not every piece of music, though, and as you kind of implied, different kinds of music require different approaches to compression. Most tracks don't need a big 5 band ultrasquash on the stereo mix that mainstream pop and rock gets subjected to, but there's a lot more pumping house around than there was in 1983.
The production of chart/radio music has been about whatever trashy, quick fix technique will get it noticed over everything else being played with as little creative effort as possible for years before everything got crunched under 5 band EQ units. Trashy pop is trashy pop and the production values of crap PWL singles were much worse than the overcompressed modern equivelant.
The Pro tools fixing wrong takes thing has been going on since the 60s, it's just that it was done by splicing the tape of the correct bits of various takes, rather than the quick way of cutting and pasting it digitally. Unless you mean autotune, in which case I suspect that's rarely used in the kinds of things the people on here listen to.
It's not that these methods are all completely wrong and is what makes music sound bad ALL OF THE TIME, it's the fact that, with computers and the ever-growing ease that they bring, a lot of engineers will now OVERUSE them, to the point where the music they are producing sounds worse than if they got the band to either tune up, play it again or just generally be an all round better band or performer.
I'm saying that a really, really good producer/engineer who records proper musicians will have a wildly different list of studio essentials than one who makes "hits".
But yeah, i'm confusing even myself now. Let's stop this :(
I was sharing a car with a couple of colleagues recently. We got into the habbit of playing one song each off our ipods in rotation on our journey.
When my friend who liked chart style stuff on played her song it completely filed the car with sound. When I or my other friend put our more 'alternative' stuff on it sounded very very weedy at the same volume (and of course the pop picker would complain if we turned the volume up for our stuff).
this is exactly why producers do it. Who wants their song to sound quiet and weedy after what's just been played?
You can notice it when tuning into different radio stations, as well, as they apply heavy compression to the signal going out, too. Radio 1 and commercial radio sounds markedly different to Radio 2 and 6 Music.
I think the problem is that 'radio pop' is mixed to be noticeable even when played as a background, in cars, during conversations etc.
'alternative' stuff is not morally superior, but without the worry of radio play is mixed to be listened to by someone who has actually decided to listen to an album and can appreciate shifts in dynamics, it doesn't have to do the same job of screaming for your attention with every beat.
"Producers and engineers who believe that pro tools, compression and autotune are the 3 most important recording studio essentials should be taken outside and shot in the soul for crimes against music."
I was listening to some early Lou Barlow the other day. He made lo-fi in the 90's sound so beautifully fragile and stark, even when it was powerful and abrasive. Times New Viking, on the other hand, just make my brains hurt by completely over doing it :(
i just don't like the way that they have submerged the whole thing it. it's completely indiscriminate. obv it's an attempt to sound raw and lofi and like it was recorded super cheaply etc but it just sounds as if they're trying to compensate for a lack of ideas.
I dont think it is in anyway a continuation of lofi lineage.
Lofi is making the best you can with little means. TNV is trying to sound bad.
and authentic distortion? On old analogue equiptment when the volume goes too high you get tape saturation, an it distorts in a pleasing way.
Im no expert and am sure TNV probably did record using tape but then had it mastered in an extreme and modern way to boost the quiet bits and horribly mangle the loud bits. Its not the lofi way and sounds horrible. Shame as they are a great band.
there's never going to be a consensus on any band on here, nor should there be.
Personally I think that they aren't in any way required to continue any lo-fi heritage. Yes, they use distoriton differently to other bands, but surely innovation can be a good thing?
its not really innovation it is a mainstream technique they have pushed to an extreme and makes it sound like its playing through a mobile phone. I could be completely wrong, i'd like to hear the vinyl version to see if it is the cd mastering or whether they do geniunely sound that bad
im not really sure how theyre trying to sound bad, all these comments like 'unecessarily badly recorded' are bit weird, i like how it sounds, id imagine they probably do as well
"Its not the lofi way"
this is kinda lame, what is the 'lofi way', if youre gonna take this purists route why is it that so many pioneers of the 'lofi' way think theyre so great
recording the best you can on a really low budget, so there is a lot of tape hiss, distortion if levels are set too high, mistakes are left in. The imperfections are often part of its charm.
TNV is different, to me sounds like something that has been recorded in a lo-fi way then mastered so badly that the whole recording is too loud, so the quiet bits are loud and the loud bits get clipped resulting in harsh blarring and distortion. I like distortion, I like it when people push tape too far and it saturates and distorts, this is different it is a modern artifical technique that sounds grating and harsh and isnt how lofi people did it.
When I said unnecessarily bad and trying to sound bad I meant it, it is clearly intentional and am certain it would sound infinately better if they just mastered it better
so what? a lot of the guys who were involved in 'lofi' first time round are involved in some way in and around TNV and related bands, they dont care, why do you (or anyone else who is bothered by it) this purists idea of what lofi means is boring
i get what you meant about it sounding 'bad', the point im making is that it doesnt (at least to me) and i dont really see why people would want it to sound any different than it does, the fuzz is part of the songs
all 3 albums sound like this, the sound is probably something they decided on when they didnt have a record deal or whatever, im glad they havent abandoned it just yet, a lot of the older bands who did that got pretty boring pretty quick
by saying they are continuing in the lofi tradition and paying homage etc. and im just pointing out their approach is very different from lofi it is a method used by the biggest bands in the world they have just pushed it to an extreme.
I actually like them alot but think their music would sound infinately better if it was mastered properly and think anyone who could compare the two side by side would agree, I think it is an objective fact that music compressed until the point practically the whole wave is clipped sounds bad.
I have nothing against fuzzy sounding records but this can be achieved in otherways, overdriving analogue recordings produces natural compresion and distortion that sounds great, rather than mastering of cds to make it sound like a cheese grater to the ear
lofi is a relatively meaningless thing, fair enough i have no real idea who or what youre talking about in terms of people defending them like that, also what youre talking about in terms of paying homage to previous bands isnt restricted to the production rly.
having read interviews with them ive seen the band say they 'like how it sounds' and 'dont know why it needs to be more of a statement than that' which i think is fair enough. you have 100s of songs out there that sound the same as each other and TNV are that bit louder and fuzzier and it sounds cool. i dont think theres anything objectively wrong about it, you could make the songs sound cleaner but, so what, i dont really know what thatd improve
the overriding point is, fair enough its not your bag but that doesnt mean there's anything inherently wrong with it
if they and people like it that is fine but it seems abit strange. Listening to their album at normal volume through ear phones is actually uncomfortable and causes ear fatigue, they could have made could sound just as fuzzy without it having this effect if they wanted and it would be alot more pleasurable to listen to.
where the peaks and troughs are pretty much at the same level, but the peaks would be at the same level as normally produced stuff. So it is actually forcing you to listen to it at quieter volume than normal because it 'sounds' louder when infact it isnt
Music is more enjoyable loud and by producing it in a way it sound so harsh you have to turn it down to bellow normal level it is robbing people of listening pleasure.
I am all for loud bits being loud but quiet bits shouldnt be loud.
If it was produced properly you could play it as loud as you want
so theyre deliberately doing something which sounds different
again, so what? they arent the only band doing this, why is it 'bad' if the band want it to sound like that and people like it. whats wrong with doing something which sounds different
its not robbing me of any listening pleasure, i like it, i cant imagine im the only one, idk whether id like it cleaned up, maybe i would who knows
'produced properly'/'normal level'/'normally produced' - okay, you dont like how it sounds, because it doesnt conform to certain ways of how you want a record to sound, that fair enough, whatever, i dont have any issue with that
what i do have issue with is the suggestion there's something intrinisically wrong with what theyre doing, if you dont like it you dont like it, thats cool, i do, its not like there's a malicious 'we're gonna turn people deaf with this record'...
which is great but to me this is the equivelent of someone saying they prefer to listen to music through their built in laptop speakers rather than a stereo, I would find it hard to believe and I would raise an eyebrow. I still like their records but it is inspite of the production rather than because of it.
I do think there is something wrong with what they are doing, it is contrived and gimmicky, and they have taken to an extreme a style of production that is having a permanant adverse affect on music production.
Don't think there actually was any production on there though.
The Smiths - The Smiths - songs sound much better when redone, just a big sludge.
REM - Up - could have been an awesome album but some of the songs just sound too weak, for example 'Walk Unafraid' is brilliant when performed live, but doesn't sound that great on the album.
get a hold of the Troy Tate sessions and the production will go up in your estimation, as rough as the finished product sounds, the original attempt to record it sounds even harsher, albeit they are nothing more than demos really.
i really dont like metallica but the sound of that album is just terrible, particularly the drums, isnt it? maybe im wrong. id like a metallica fan's view
good call. i was going to mention a weekend in the city which he produced, u2's last album and editors as well. pray that your favourite band never get into bed with jackknife lee
I wasn't expecting too much from it when I heard he was involved as he made Bloc Party not as good and had been involved with some worrying names U2, Snow Patrol, etc but the REM album is actually pretty good.
Not great songs, but still not helped by the production.
It's difficult to understand what they were going for - it's the guy who did Muse innit? So maybe arena sized odd-rock? My theory on that album is they wanted to ram it with stuff like 'Pioneer' and 'Lighthouse' but either ran out of time or inclination and filled it with underwritten Interpol-by-numbers stuff instead, which wasn't suited at all by the BIG, bass ignoring, production.
than production, but 'bryter later'. i love nick drake's guitar playing, its some of my favourite acoustic work ever. so what did they do? slather it with an orchestra, making it completely inaudible. now pink moon, on the other hand...
you know, album that got me into radiohead who became fav band 4lyf and all that stuff, but it just sounds really not very good, I don't think. You can't hear jonny's guitar enough at points and it gets a bit too rythmy and I don't like the drum sound.
Also, any song by pendulum.
Oh you're doing drum and bass but faster and louder, are you? Is there any way in which you could make that more obvious for me?
I'm always really dissapointed, they are all over the top and theres no rhythm or continuity, leaving me listening to records from 1983 to hear something well produced with good sound levels. And always preferring the demos or live versions.
albums which are let down by poor production despite having marvellous songs on them.
"I Want To Tell You" from Revolver. It just sounds, to me anyway, very out of synch, the piano sounds out of tune. It just sounds horrible to my ear. Good tune though!
Wonderful songs almost completely ruined by horrific tinny 80s production. The synths sound dire. I'm talking pre-remaster, wouldn't know about the 5.1 gubbins.
Thankfully Stop Making Sense has superior live versions of most of the songs.
it's a cliche of course but it just sounds waay too polished. live he sounds really organic and totally natural but the record just completely fails to capture that imo.
having said that the songs themselves are still really great.
That's kind of the point, though, the loudness and in your face-ness. It's a genre of music that's supposed to be compressed to within an inch of its life.
im going to get some flack for this but I find Mr Albimi guilty for a lot of whats bad about this album, its so rough and unpolished and so unsympathetic to the band, it sounds like a very rough demo.
Now I know the album wouldn't be great without Mr Albini but The Stooges deserved something better than this.
Now I beleive on Raw Power, Iggy produced it originally but the record company insisted Mr Bowie remix it. So I am not sure which one botched it up.
It has some of Metallicas best songs, but I find it near-impossible to sit through. If the stories are true, I cant believe that a band would jeopardise their best
record (even Metallica) because they disliked a particular band member.
is The Destruction Of Small Ideas. Terrible how a self-righteous little stunt from a band made an album with huge amounts of potential almost unlistenable.
In fact those two albums were perfect examples of what could be achieved in terms of dynamics - they were delicate when they needed to be, or they could rip your eyebrows off with volume.
The third album, by contrast, is in a lot of situations, literally inaudible. It's no good rebelling if no-one can hear you.
NOT because what he does is actively bad, more the principle behind it. He just makes thin, sub motown records that pinch their best moves from better guys. Some things on wander through 'borrowing' straight into pastiche-ville.
By Terror Twilight Pavement genuinely had no real inspiration, admittedly made much more obvious my Nigel Godrich's rampant overproduction (mind you still like Spit On A Stranger...), but Brighten The Corners could have been a great record, if it was recorded in the same way as Crooked Rain.
most 80's music (those horrible drums with fuck loads of reverb on make alot of potentially great music unlistenable)
Burn Piano Island Burn - it just sounds so sloppy.
JoFo - the songs are awesome, but it lacks clarity - still my favourite british debut of the year though.
But quite frankly, the fact that it sounds like one of the most thrilling, dirty, noisy and downright fucking rocking mess ever put to record is down to the production as well? I know it's loud as hell, but everything somehow works.
Either way, they cleaned it up, and their last two albums were great production jobs.
no one's mentioned Puzzle by Biffy. Heard Whose Got A Match live a year before it came out - all Mclusky-esque rumbling bass and great vocal harmonies - then on the album it's a bouncy pop song. Cheers, Ggggggggggfuckoffgggarth.
And despite it being a classic, Raw Power has HORRIBLE production. When the lead lines on Search and Destroy come in they're about five times louder than the vocals / anything else.
hideously compressed to the point that the more rocking songs on 'mellon collie' are quieter and tinnier than the mellow ones - 'Jellybelly' being the worst culprit.
Seeing MBV live confirms the album fails in capturing the ferocity of the material. The drums sound pretttttty bad. Hopefully the re-master will sort it.
is when the dynamic range of a sound wave is flattened, boosting the quietbits and lowering the loud bits so the overall volume is of a similar level. Recording to tape naturally compresses things slighly. Using a compression pedal on a guitar will do it.
Recently it refers to mastering for cd's, they have an upper volume limit, record producers seem to think the louder a cd the more it will stand out so they boost the quiet bits louder, the loud bits can't get any higher because they have reached the ceiling of vloume limit for cd and this means the top of the sound wave basically gets chopped of resulting in harsh sounding music.
Over compressing a song can totally strip it of its dynamics, therefore its overall impact. Modern mastering techniques are heading towards making stuff as loud as possible to get stuff noticed on the radio, which is frankly crap. Listen to an older record, such as the Pixies surfer rosa, and whilst the actual volume of the CD is lower than modern records, if you turn it up the dynamics are much more exciting and, well, REAL.
Loads of interesting articles floating around on the net about it all that are worth checking out.
Mastering engineers use and abuse compressors so the top of the sound wave *doesn't* get distorted and chopped off, at least not in a noticable way.
Compression basically reduces the volume of sounds over a set volume level. That has lots of different applications. If you set a slight reduction of sounds over a relatively low level, it has the effect of smoothing out the volume differences in the sound. Most vocals you'll ever hear put onto record will have this kind of compression applied, as the singer is likely to move around, and on a non-compressed signal, you'll get subtle changes in volume, so it gets compressed to take out the fact that the volume dips and increases for no particular reason. You'll also have compressors on the vocals at every live gig, so the singer can move around a bit, and it doesn't matter if they sing from 2cm away from the microphone or from a foot away, it all comes out at around the same volume. Which is what you want.
The abuse the most people are talking about is loudness maximizing. You can make a song louder if you reduce the volume of the loudest parts. On a normal, uncompressed recording, your soundwave will have a thin, dense bit around the middle, which is most of the music, and every so often, a peak, which is usually the bass drum hit, that's much louder (in peak terms, it doesn't necessarily sound louder) than everything up. If you try to make the main music too loud, you'll also push the bass drum peak so it goes past the level at which it distorts. Your music will sound plenty loud, but the bass drum will sound like it's going through a distortion pedal. So engineers use a compressor to reduce the volume level of that peak, meaning they can turn up the overall level of everything without the bass drum distorting. The thick, dense bit of the soundwave, that was quite narrow, now fills up the waveform display.
can be used in other ways, though, both as an effect and as something transparent that makes things sound better, and when not abused for loudness maximising purposes, is pretty much a studio essential as fundamental as EQ. You can use it to make music pump along with the bassline, to de-ess vocals (when a microphone is naturally more sensitive to the harder consonants, which make them sound unnaturally loud), to make a full mix sound more coherant, rather than a load of seperate parts playing together, to emphasise the transient of a sound (making drums, for example, sound snappier) or to de-emphasise the transient of a sound (to dull the initial impact of a drum hit or guitar strum).
You won't walk into any studio that doesn't have lot of compressors
Sleater Kinney - not sure if its intended but I downloaded it in advance and thought I had a rubbish copy - bought the LP and its the same scratchy sound (drums in Modern Girl are a particular example)
Has anyone apart from me & DanTHW ever heard The Stapler? They are one of TNV's ohio noisey lofi contempories and there lo-fi sounds honest and though a lot of their songs probably aren't as good as TNV at least you can listen to it without getting a sore brain.
Surprising since the previous one was so well done. Guess they were going for a 'back to basics' approach (see also St Anger) and just ended up with a muddy mess.
and therapyrock is right! Iggy's remaster is too heavy. It sounds all distorted. Someone like Butch Vig oughta just fix that great record once and for all!
Stever Albini? I don't pay mind to star producers- there's only been one star producer and that's George Martin- the other so-called star producers are good at their jobs is all. Actually Beck is good and Trent Reznor, T-Bone Burnette.
The stuff I've heard
off Black Kids album is horrible
either that
or Get Cape Wear Cape Fly
you are so right
I got my money back from itunes store for tracks 12 & 13 on the Searching For The Hows & Whys album. The static just broke up into long gaps of silence.
After 2 months they still haven't loaded a replacement for track 13 'Better Things'.
I noticed a few gliches of static during his live performance as well; I was taken by surprise as he had live backing available on stage at the time.
I thought this
Muddy shite it is.
IWACS
they could've had so much better for their album, but instead it sounds kinda weird in places. Like the synths were just tacked on top and not given much thought in the mix, and the drums are quite weak, don't like the snare sound.
That foo fighters one, in your honour, just sounds too busy for my liking too.
Drums are weak?
Do you know who produced that album?
Yes...
Hugh Padgham who produced all the Genesis and Phil Collins stuff. But seriously, are you telling me the drums, especially the snare, don't sound kind of lame? A snare is meant to push through the mix and sound kind of snappy, wheras on the IWACS album it just sort of sits there, sounding as if its being hit really lamely. Just my opinion though...
Probably because
it's been compressed to buggery during the mastering process.
oh yes, the blackkids one is horrid.
good call
Every single piece of music in the charts
Producers and engineers who believe that pro tools, compression and autotune are the 3 most important recording studio essentials should be taken outside and shot in the soul for crimes against music.
competing the pre-eminence of chart RnB?
which can arguably, stand such treatments die to lack of instruments/dynamics?
or just cocks.
both probably
*due
^a lot of this
"rock" bands who overcompress/autotune are the real baddies
I have no idea what you just said
R&B music can afford to overcompress
because it contains a lot of natural space. Whilst a pop-rock song will tend to be a fatiguing chug of endless guitars, an R&B song will be Bass-silence-bass-silence mixed with snare-silence-snare-silence etc so there's still a lot of room to manouvre within it. And the fact that they aren't always trying to mimic "real" instruments mean they have a a bit more artistic licence
You could also say that R&B/hip hop producers are more interested in sound, and so use compression in a more pleasing way. Rock bands just compress like n00bs
or, put another way lol ^
Oh right
Well, you said "overcompress" and didn't mean it in a bad way, so... aye, ok.
well..
"use a lot of compression so it removes any sense of dynamism or realism in the sound"
that's bad with instruments/constant noise, but if there is a lot of space then it can work just fine.
Yeah totally
overdoing anything in the studio is badness. A bit of compression here and there is good, obviously. Putting it on the master track of every popular song of the last 10 years and squeezing everything's life out of the radio is like plopping a jobbie into my earhole.
me?
if so, i was just suggesting that a lot of the over compressed stuff on the radio is produced in that way because so many of the biggest selling singles are things such as we have come to expect from timbalaand and the neptunes..this sort of song responds better to the plastic, overly compressed production method because it is often a ver minimal arrangment, just beats, synth, vocal etc... it is the idiots in other genres who belive this approach is transeferable that are the problem.
if you didn't mean me, sorry for the waffle.
Sorry, i just didn't understand your wording
But yeah, i completely understand why these things are used and i know why music is recorded the way it is. It just all sounds absolutely soulless, samey and horrific to my ears, especially coming out of a car stereo (the only time i ever have the radio on).
It's probably the number one reason why i listen to so much 60s and 70s stuff. When records sounded AMAZING.
yeah, i think my sentiment was overcompressed to honest...
completely agree
- all records produced in this way sound 'soulless'
- some records produced in this way sound both 'soulless' AND 'airless', which is bloody worse.
"Soulless"
That term completely nails it. The majority of music these days is so over-produced; it's hard to believe that real instruments were even used.
what's the problem with that?
are non 'real' instruments not as important as 'real' instruments?
the studio itself, is the best instrument any musician could ever ask for.
Pro-tools...
gets a lot of stick, but it's just a standardised set of I/O and a hard disk recording system, so not necessarily anything to do with overproduction.
The same with compression. Compression *is* one of the most important studio essentials, it's the thought that every song needs to sound as loud as possible when it's played on the radio as an essential goal of production that's at fault there.
Not the program itself
It's the reliance on it that is the problem. The basic fact that wrong takes and downright bad musicianship can be "fixed" is almost sickening.
Compression is not essential in the slightest. Used sparingly, it's obviously a fantastic tool to have at your disposal, but definitely not something that makes music better. In most cases, it makes it worse. The idea that songs "need to sound as loud as possible" (as you put it) on the radio is what ruins popular music and sucks the life out of it.
Compression...
is fairly essential when recording vocals, though.
Is it?
I thought a microphone, a voice and a tape machine were the only essentials?
Yeah...
but you'll not get a usable vocal without it, as every time the singer moves about, the volume will change. You generally don't want this.
We listen to VERY different music
And you're completely missing my point. Go and listen to Pet Sounds or something. Compression = good. Thinking it is, in any way, an "essential" tool in the creation of music = bad.
The vocals...
on Pet Sounds were no doubt compressed in exactly the same way vocals have been compressed since compressors have been used. A quick google check confirms this. Most channel strips have them built in. Compressors have got a bad name from th fact that they've been abused recently, but they're still a fairly essential tool in removing unwanted dynamics of a singer moving their head around whilst singing, or getting a whispered vocal audiable.
Of course they were
But, again, you're missing my point!
Before my head explodes
This is pretty much my point...
http://tinyurl.com/5z72a8
That's...
not every piece of music, though, and as you kind of implied, different kinds of music require different approaches to compression. Most tracks don't need a big 5 band ultrasquash on the stereo mix that mainstream pop and rock gets subjected to, but there's a lot more pumping house around than there was in 1983.
I only complained
about the production of most popular radio/chart bands ^
That's all i was talking about, not all types of music. I think we've got kinda mixed up along the way :)
Thing is...
The production of chart/radio music has been about whatever trashy, quick fix technique will get it noticed over everything else being played with as little creative effort as possible for years before everything got crunched under 5 band EQ units. Trashy pop is trashy pop and the production values of crap PWL singles were much worse than the overcompressed modern equivelant.
I meant
5 band compressor units. Clearly.
Re this point
Tape machine has natural compression. That's why you use em. Lolz/
Also...
The Pro tools fixing wrong takes thing has been going on since the 60s, it's just that it was done by splicing the tape of the correct bits of various takes, rather than the quick way of cutting and pasting it digitally. Unless you mean autotune, in which case I suspect that's rarely used in the kinds of things the people on here listen to.
Again
It's not that these methods are all completely wrong and is what makes music sound bad ALL OF THE TIME, it's the fact that, with computers and the ever-growing ease that they bring, a lot of engineers will now OVERUSE them, to the point where the music they are producing sounds worse than if they got the band to either tune up, play it again or just generally be an all round better band or performer.
I'm saying that a really, really good producer/engineer who records proper musicians will have a wildly different list of studio essentials than one who makes "hits".
But yeah, i'm confusing even myself now. Let's stop this :(
Compression - a tale of woe
I was sharing a car with a couple of colleagues recently. We got into the habbit of playing one song each off our ipods in rotation on our journey.
When my friend who liked chart style stuff on played her song it completely filed the car with sound. When I or my other friend put our more 'alternative' stuff on it sounded very very weedy at the same volume (and of course the pop picker would complain if we turned the volume up for our stuff).
Yeah...
this is exactly why producers do it. Who wants their song to sound quiet and weedy after what's just been played?
You can notice it when tuning into different radio stations, as well, as they apply heavy compression to the signal going out, too. Radio 1 and commercial radio sounds markedly different to Radio 2 and 6 Music.
I bet the music you chose was better though
Funny that :)
too damn right it was
I think the problem is that 'radio pop' is mixed to be noticeable even when played as a background, in cars, during conversations etc.
'alternative' stuff is not morally superior, but without the worry of radio play is mixed to be listened to by someone who has actually decided to listen to an album and can appreciate shifts in dynamics, it doesn't have to do the same job of screaming for your attention with every beat.
AMEN!
"Producers and engineers who believe that pro tools, compression and autotune are the 3 most important recording studio essentials should be taken outside and shot in the soul for crimes against music."
Couldn't have said it better myself.
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Californication
Flaming Lips - At War With The Mystics
^Good call on the Lips
Wrong side of overproduced.
I would have hated Californication even witout the production though.
*did a CTRL+F for californication*
Times New Viking
"yeah, but they're supposed to sound like that"
wicked
I agree
I was listening to some early Lou Barlow the other day. He made lo-fi in the 90's sound so beautifully fragile and stark, even when it was powerful and abrasive. Times New Viking, on the other hand, just make my brains hurt by completely over doing it :(
i listened to the TNV album
on mini transportable speakers earlier
it made it sound even more tinny, i actually got a headache after 3 songs.
I love them
But they hurt me.
i really enjoyed them live
because it sound more RAWK and less FUZZZZ
Aw i missed them
I enjoy watching their live videos on youtube though, more than listening to their records... which is just plain weird :)
yeah..
times new viking i really dislike. i love a lot of lo-fi music but with them it's so obviously fake and unimaginative. i think they should grow up.
how is distortion 'fake'?
As opposed to what 'authentic' distortion? I like the TNV sound myself.
well that's fair enough,
i just don't like the way that they have submerged the whole thing it. it's completely indiscriminate. obv it's an attempt to sound raw and lofi and like it was recorded super cheaply etc but it just sounds as if they're trying to compensate for a lack of ideas.
I think TNV is so unnecessarily badly recorded
I dont think it is in anyway a continuation of lofi lineage.
Lofi is making the best you can with little means. TNV is trying to sound bad.
and authentic distortion? On old analogue equiptment when the volume goes too high you get tape saturation, an it distorts in a pleasing way.
Im no expert and am sure TNV probably did record using tape but then had it mastered in an extreme and modern way to boost the quiet bits and horribly mangle the loud bits. Its not the lofi way and sounds horrible. Shame as they are a great band.
Fair enough if you don't like it
there's never going to be a consensus on any band on here, nor should there be.
Personally I think that they aren't in any way required to continue any lo-fi heritage. Yes, they use distoriton differently to other bands, but surely innovation can be a good thing?
but they are always presented as a continuation of lofi
its not really innovation it is a mainstream technique they have pushed to an extreme and makes it sound like its playing through a mobile phone. I could be completely wrong, i'd like to hear the vinyl version to see if it is the cd mastering or whether they do geniunely sound that bad
idk
im not really sure how theyre trying to sound bad, all these comments like 'unecessarily badly recorded' are bit weird, i like how it sounds, id imagine they probably do as well
"Its not the lofi way"
this is kinda lame, what is the 'lofi way', if youre gonna take this purists route why is it that so many pioneers of the 'lofi' way think theyre so great
lofi is generally
recording the best you can on a really low budget, so there is a lot of tape hiss, distortion if levels are set too high, mistakes are left in. The imperfections are often part of its charm.
TNV is different, to me sounds like something that has been recorded in a lo-fi way then mastered so badly that the whole recording is too loud, so the quiet bits are loud and the loud bits get clipped resulting in harsh blarring and distortion. I like distortion, I like it when people push tape too far and it saturates and distorts, this is different it is a modern artifical technique that sounds grating and harsh and isnt how lofi people did it.
When I said unnecessarily bad and trying to sound bad I meant it, it is clearly intentional and am certain it would sound infinately better if they just mastered it better
"isnt how lofi people did it"
so what? a lot of the guys who were involved in 'lofi' first time round are involved in some way in and around TNV and related bands, they dont care, why do you (or anyone else who is bothered by it) this purists idea of what lofi means is boring
i get what you meant about it sounding 'bad', the point im making is that it doesnt (at least to me) and i dont really see why people would want it to sound any different than it does, the fuzz is part of the songs
all 3 albums sound like this, the sound is probably something they decided on when they didnt have a record deal or whatever, im glad they havent abandoned it just yet, a lot of the older bands who did that got pretty boring pretty quick
"The imperfections are often part of its charm"
couldnt agree more...
I only bring up the lofi thing because people often defend them
by saying they are continuing in the lofi tradition and paying homage etc. and im just pointing out their approach is very different from lofi it is a method used by the biggest bands in the world they have just pushed it to an extreme.
I actually like them alot but think their music would sound infinately better if it was mastered properly and think anyone who could compare the two side by side would agree, I think it is an objective fact that music compressed until the point practically the whole wave is clipped sounds bad.
I have nothing against fuzzy sounding records but this can be achieved in otherways, overdriving analogue recordings produces natural compresion and distortion that sounds great, rather than mastering of cds to make it sound like a cheese grater to the ear
what i guess im trying to say is
lofi is a relatively meaningless thing, fair enough i have no real idea who or what youre talking about in terms of people defending them like that, also what youre talking about in terms of paying homage to previous bands isnt restricted to the production rly.
having read interviews with them ive seen the band say they 'like how it sounds' and 'dont know why it needs to be more of a statement than that' which i think is fair enough. you have 100s of songs out there that sound the same as each other and TNV are that bit louder and fuzzier and it sounds cool. i dont think theres anything objectively wrong about it, you could make the songs sound cleaner but, so what, i dont really know what thatd improve
the overriding point is, fair enough its not your bag but that doesnt mean there's anything inherently wrong with it
it is a definitive example of bad production
if they and people like it that is fine but it seems abit strange. Listening to their album at normal volume through ear phones is actually uncomfortable and causes ear fatigue, they could have made could sound just as fuzzy without it having this effect if they wanted and it would be alot more pleasurable to listen to.
my response to this
"Listening to their album at normal volume through ear phones is actually uncomfortable and causes ear fatigue"
was to turn the volume down a bit...
i guess we're never gonna agree on what makes good or bad production though, so huh, lets wrestle
it is a solid block of sound
where the peaks and troughs are pretty much at the same level, but the peaks would be at the same level as normally produced stuff. So it is actually forcing you to listen to it at quieter volume than normal because it 'sounds' louder when infact it isnt
Music is more enjoyable loud and by producing it in a way it sound so harsh you have to turn it down to bellow normal level it is robbing people of listening pleasure.
I am all for loud bits being loud but quiet bits shouldnt be loud.
If it was produced properly you could play it as loud as you want
okay
so theyre deliberately doing something which sounds different
again, so what? they arent the only band doing this, why is it 'bad' if the band want it to sound like that and people like it. whats wrong with doing something which sounds different
its not robbing me of any listening pleasure, i like it, i cant imagine im the only one, idk whether id like it cleaned up, maybe i would who knows
'produced properly'/'normal level'/'normally produced' - okay, you dont like how it sounds, because it doesnt conform to certain ways of how you want a record to sound, that fair enough, whatever, i dont have any issue with that
what i do have issue with is the suggestion there's something intrinisically wrong with what theyre doing, if you dont like it you dont like it, thats cool, i do, its not like there's a malicious 'we're gonna turn people deaf with this record'...
anyway, i dunno, here's an interview i read
http://www.donewaiting.com/2008/01/25/an-interview-with-times-new-viking-an-intervention-to-societal-apathy/#more-4431
people have subjective opinions
which is great but to me this is the equivelent of someone saying they prefer to listen to music through their built in laptop speakers rather than a stereo, I would find it hard to believe and I would raise an eyebrow. I still like their records but it is inspite of the production rather than because of it.
I do think there is something wrong with what they are doing, it is contrived and gimmicky, and they have taken to an extreme a style of production that is having a permanant adverse affect on music production.
youre such an old man douchebag
Yeah
stick to Richard Clayderman granddad!
hey I love Richie C.
NOT!
More of a James Last fan eh
Trail of Dead...
Everything after Madonna was horrible.
The Libertines - Up the Bracket
Don't think there actually was any production on there though.
The Smiths - The Smiths - songs sound much better when redone, just a big sludge.
REM - Up - could have been an awesome album but some of the songs just sound too weak, for example 'Walk Unafraid' is brilliant when performed live, but doesn't sound that great on the album.
the smiths
seconded, brutal production
Brutal, Yes, but it could have been worse
get a hold of the Troy Tate sessions and the production will go up in your estimation, as rough as the finished product sounds, the original attempt to record it sounds even harsher, albeit they are nothing more than demos really.
I can't help but think a scuzzied up Do You Like Rock Music? (BSP)
would have drastically improved things...that and a different album title.
Megadeth remasters of albums
sound wimpy, pathetic and muffled. Some of the worst remastering production jobs I have ever heard.
st anger, surely?
i really dont like metallica but the sound of that album is just terrible, particularly the drums, isnt it? maybe im wrong. id like a metallica fan's view
^This^
I heard they didn't EQ the drums FFS.
Metallica
I'd go for them, too.
The drums sound like they were recorded in my wardrobe on my phone.
Also, didn't they turn the bass on And Justice For All right down, just because they liked picking on Jason Newstead?
Probably. It's fucking inaudible.
That last Tapes 'n Tapes album
and anything that Jacknife Lee has touched.
jackknife lee
good call. i was going to mention a weekend in the city which he produced, u2's last album and editors as well. pray that your favourite band never get into bed with jackknife lee
My favourite band
is R.E.M. I prayed hard, but it happened anyway.
Surprisingly he did a pretty good job on REM - Accelerate though
I wasn't expecting too much from it when I heard he was involved as he made Bloc Party not as good and had been involved with some worrying names U2, Snow Patrol, etc but the REM album is actually pretty good.
the newest Times New Viking and Meneguar records
sound like they were recorded on a mobile phone/single broken microphone.
however it makes me feel better about my home recordings.
I actually think
the new Meneguar album sounds really amazing. Really soft, beautiful lo-fi, like the old days :)
parts of it do when there are a few layers going on
but parts do sound like someone recording a drum kit on a mobile phone
thats one of the things which make TNV so amazingly addictive
lo-fi shouldn't be as good as it is
OLTA
Not great songs, but still not helped by the production.
It's difficult to understand what they were going for - it's the guy who did Muse innit? So maybe arena sized odd-rock? My theory on that album is they wanted to ram it with stuff like 'Pioneer' and 'Lighthouse' but either ran out of time or inclination and filled it with underwritten Interpol-by-numbers stuff instead, which wasn't suited at all by the BIG, bass ignoring, production.
spose its more to do with arrangement
than production, but 'bryter later'. i love nick drake's guitar playing, its some of my favourite acoustic work ever. so what did they do? slather it with an orchestra, making it completely inaudible. now pink moon, on the other hand...
Yeah, that's production
The producer came in and tried to make Nick Drake more sellable by over-doing it. He failed :)
except
the orchestral work is absolutely wonderful
^ this
Tell me 'Northern Sky' would sound better done in a Pink-Moon-style and you're lying.
I really don't like the sound of The Bends
you know, album that got me into radiohead who became fav band 4lyf and all that stuff, but it just sounds really not very good, I don't think. You can't hear jonny's guitar enough at points and it gets a bit too rythmy and I don't like the drum sound.
Also, any song by pendulum.
Oh you're doing drum and bass but faster and louder, are you? Is there any way in which you could make that more obvious for me?
The answer is no. There is no other way.
I hate the production on The Bends
I never listen to it because of that.
all albums recorded in the last three years
I'm always really dissapointed, they are all over the top and theres no rhythm or continuity, leaving me listening to records from 1983 to hear something well produced with good sound levels. And always preferring the demos or live versions.
albums which are let down by poor production despite having marvellous songs on them.
The Thermals - TBTBTM
</3
i LOVE the production on that album
Then YOU LOSE
Yeah
Sounds pretty fucking great to me.
I realise it's not all lo-fi and scrappy and blah blah, but I don't care, it's great.
I like No Culture Icons too y'know
Likewise
It's very listenable.. kind of stripped down but still chunky enough.
For me, it's
"I Want To Tell You" from Revolver. It just sounds, to me anyway, very out of synch, the piano sounds out of tune. It just sounds horrible to my ear. Good tune though!
Metallica
St. Anger.
End of thread!
Talking Heads - Speaking in Tongues
Wonderful songs almost completely ruined by horrific tinny 80s production. The synths sound dire. I'm talking pre-remaster, wouldn't know about the 5.1 gubbins.
Thankfully Stop Making Sense has superior live versions of most of the songs.
5.1
A massive improvement. I actually listen to it now, whereas the original mastering... Horrible
recently..
the production on the Johnny Flynn album sucked. such a shame really.
did it? in what way, have heard a couple of people say this...
well,
it's a cliche of course but it just sounds waay too polished. live he sounds really organic and totally natural but the record just completely fails to capture that imo.
having said that the songs themselves are still really great.
REM
Fables Of The Reconstruction. Sounds like it was recorded in a cardboard box.
^True
It's a poor production job and the band were never happy with it. But it is a fucking awesome album.
I thought reckoning was worse
great songs, sound like crap...
Justice - Cross
I love the album, but it's just incredibly loud, I get a headache after listening for just a few minutes.
At War with the Mystics was definitely a pain as well.
Icky Thump and Easy Tiger were way too over-produced.
There's a lot more that I'm too lazy to list.
Why are producers so intent on ruining music nowadays anyway?
Re: Justice...
That's kind of the point, though, the loudness and in your face-ness. It's a genre of music that's supposed to be compressed to within an inch of its life.
I love
the production on 'The Body, The Blood, The Machine'. The production on 'Antics' sucks. Also, 'Stoned and Dethroned' by The Jesus and Mary Chain.
Dog Man Star
That's some bad production, right there.
The first Drugstore album (the band hated it).
haven't heard DMS for a while
but what's wrong with it? I don't remember thinking it was badly produced back in the 90s when I was listening to it daily.
The Stooges - Raw Power
completely ruins the album
nothing can ruin Raw Power
ok, ruin is taking it a bit far
its a fucking brilliant album.
apart from Iggy's remaster
The Stooges - The Weirdness
im going to get some flack for this but I find Mr Albimi guilty for a lot of whats bad about this album, its so rough and unpolished and so unsympathetic to the band, it sounds like a very rough demo.
Now I know the album wouldn't be great without Mr Albini but The Stooges deserved something better than this.
Now I beleive on Raw Power, Iggy produced it originally but the record company insisted Mr Bowie remix it. So I am not sure which one botched it up.
Thank goodness Funhouse is perfect
And Justice For All?
It has some of Metallicas best songs, but I find it near-impossible to sit through. If the stories are true, I cant believe that a band would jeopardise their best
record (even Metallica) because they disliked a particular band member.
'Modern Girl' by Sleater-Kinney
that melodica sounds so fucking INCORRECT.
i SWEAR i have a mis-pressing.
It's a harmonica.
That song just annoys me!
Shame, as the rest of the album is ace.
Not sure why it still troubles me 12 years on, but
Great Things by Echobelly - I swear there's an amazing song beneath all the sludge. This kind of production is what killed Britpop, probably
Yeah, christ.
I remember that shit, them and Sleeper were the worst. Just sucked any emotion or even clarity out of it. Horrible.
Only one that springs to mind
is The Destruction Of Small Ideas. Terrible how a self-righteous little stunt from a band made an album with huge amounts of potential almost unlistenable.
Not A Fan
but when my brother got St.Anger by Metallica i almost died laughing at the pots and pans drum sounds
this
^^^^
im afraid........
and los campesinos! debut as well. just no punch to it really. not that it needs alot, just lacking something
^ this
it sounds so... weedy.
just because the producer's in Broken Social Scene it doesn't make him good.
shush
he's right up there^
where?
sorry mr. los campesinos! man but your record sounds shit. bye! xx
Except
y'know, they don't.
i think the production could be better
but im not saying i dont like the album. its still on quite constant rotation in the car! promise!
FFS!
We don't like the overcompressed modern sound and yet we piss all over 65dos for rebelling against it.
I think it sounds fab
Well it's not as if the first two albums suffered from bad production
In fact those two albums were perfect examples of what could be achieved in terms of dynamics - they were delicate when they needed to be, or they could rip your eyebrows off with volume.
The third album, by contrast, is in a lot of situations, literally inaudible. It's no good rebelling if no-one can hear you.
i love the production
it's one of my favourite albums.
I propose Mark Ronson
NOT because what he does is actively bad, more the principle behind it. He just makes thin, sub motown records that pinch their best moves from better guys. Some things on wander through 'borrowing' straight into pastiche-ville.
Brighten The Corners
By Terror Twilight Pavement genuinely had no real inspiration, admittedly made much more obvious my Nigel Godrich's rampant overproduction (mind you still like Spit On A Stranger...), but Brighten The Corners could have been a great record, if it was recorded in the same way as Crooked Rain.
I think it sounds great
it's a really warm and bright sounding LP. It suits the songs, there's not a great deal of fuzzy guitar compared to the earlier albums.
here's my list:
most 80's music (those horrible drums with fuck loads of reverb on make alot of potentially great music unlistenable)
Burn Piano Island Burn - it just sounds so sloppy.
JoFo - the songs are awesome, but it lacks clarity - still my favourite british debut of the year though.
....
Wolfsane - 'Live Fast, Die Fast' - Produced by Rick Rubin.
Officially the worst drum sound EVER
You've heard St Anger right?
even worse than
St Anger!
I sort of accept your point on BPIB
But quite frankly, the fact that it sounds like one of the most thrilling, dirty, noisy and downright fucking rocking mess ever put to record is down to the production as well? I know it's loud as hell, but everything somehow works.
Either way, they cleaned it up, and their last two albums were great production jobs.
I preferred the sound of BPIB
to Young Machetes, which I thought was a bit too compressed and hard on the ears- it's another record I find hard to listen to all the way through.
Isn't Blood Brothers' stuff supposed to sound sloppy?
It kind of fits with their aesthetic doesn't it?
Forward, Russia's second album
Wouldn't mind being able to hear the guitar like
TWEEZ
by The Slints.
Surprised that
no one's mentioned Puzzle by Biffy. Heard Whose Got A Match live a year before it came out - all Mclusky-esque rumbling bass and great vocal harmonies - then on the album it's a bouncy pop song. Cheers, Ggggggggggfuckoffgggarth.
And despite it being a classic, Raw Power has HORRIBLE production. When the lead lines on Search and Destroy come in they're about five times louder than the vocals / anything else.
That's part of the charm about Raw Power
daydream nation
i can't believe no one's mentioned that.
it sounds awful. the production on sister is way better.
isnt anything,
pet sounds, the smiths
agree with The Smiths' first album
and most of the original Bowie produced Raw Power by The Stooges
also Warehouse: Songs and Stories by Hüsker Dü - the drums in particular sound terrible, like they're made out of tupperware
SMASHING PUMPKINS
hideously compressed to the point that the more rocking songs on 'mellon collie' are quieter and tinnier than the mellow ones - 'Jellybelly' being the worst culprit.
^^
The new one too, especially "Starz," is loltastic
Agreed on Isn't Anything
Seeing MBV live confirms the album fails in capturing the ferocity of the material. The drums sound pretttttty bad. Hopefully the re-master will sort it.
'Songs About Fucking' by Big Black.
the production
on both libertines albums is fucking shocking
can someone please explain to me what compreesion is?
I want to understand what they were banging on about up there ^^^
it has a few meanings I think
is when the dynamic range of a sound wave is flattened, boosting the quietbits and lowering the loud bits so the overall volume is of a similar level. Recording to tape naturally compresses things slighly. Using a compression pedal on a guitar will do it.
Recently it refers to mastering for cd's, they have an upper volume limit, record producers seem to think the louder a cd the more it will stand out so they boost the quiet bits louder, the loud bits can't get any higher because they have reached the ceiling of vloume limit for cd and this means the top of the sound wave basically gets chopped of resulting in harsh sounding music.
I think I could be wrong though
^bang on
guv! Good explaination.
Over compressing a song can totally strip it of its dynamics, therefore its overall impact. Modern mastering techniques are heading towards making stuff as loud as possible to get stuff noticed on the radio, which is frankly crap. Listen to an older record, such as the Pixies surfer rosa, and whilst the actual volume of the CD is lower than modern records, if you turn it up the dynamics are much more exciting and, well, REAL.
Loads of interesting articles floating around on the net about it all that are worth checking out.
Ish.
Mastering engineers use and abuse compressors so the top of the sound wave *doesn't* get distorted and chopped off, at least not in a noticable way.
Compression basically reduces the volume of sounds over a set volume level. That has lots of different applications. If you set a slight reduction of sounds over a relatively low level, it has the effect of smoothing out the volume differences in the sound. Most vocals you'll ever hear put onto record will have this kind of compression applied, as the singer is likely to move around, and on a non-compressed signal, you'll get subtle changes in volume, so it gets compressed to take out the fact that the volume dips and increases for no particular reason. You'll also have compressors on the vocals at every live gig, so the singer can move around a bit, and it doesn't matter if they sing from 2cm away from the microphone or from a foot away, it all comes out at around the same volume. Which is what you want.
The abuse the most people are talking about is loudness maximizing. You can make a song louder if you reduce the volume of the loudest parts. On a normal, uncompressed recording, your soundwave will have a thin, dense bit around the middle, which is most of the music, and every so often, a peak, which is usually the bass drum hit, that's much louder (in peak terms, it doesn't necessarily sound louder) than everything up. If you try to make the main music too loud, you'll also push the bass drum peak so it goes past the level at which it distorts. Your music will sound plenty loud, but the bass drum will sound like it's going through a distortion pedal. So engineers use a compressor to reduce the volume level of that peak, meaning they can turn up the overall level of everything without the bass drum distorting. The thick, dense bit of the soundwave, that was quite narrow, now fills up the waveform display.
Compression...
can be used in other ways, though, both as an effect and as something transparent that makes things sound better, and when not abused for loudness maximising purposes, is pretty much a studio essential as fundamental as EQ. You can use it to make music pump along with the bassline, to de-ess vocals (when a microphone is naturally more sensitive to the harder consonants, which make them sound unnaturally loud), to make a full mix sound more coherant, rather than a load of seperate parts playing together, to emphasise the transient of a sound (making drums, for example, sound snappier) or to de-emphasise the transient of a sound (to dull the initial impact of a drum hit or guitar strum).
You won't walk into any studio that doesn't have lot of compressors
Songs about Fucking sounds a lot better on vinyl
Tis true. The CD version sounds like someone rustling celophene into your speakers.
The Woods
Sleater Kinney - not sure if its intended but I downloaded it in advance and thought I had a rubbish copy - bought the LP and its the same scratchy sound (drums in Modern Girl are a particular example)
loads
all the bloody Smiths records to start with!
Kiss - Hotter Than Hell
A Weekend in the City
I quite liked Silent Alarm but the follow-up was a terrible mess. Jacknife Lee strikes again
some of the early belle and sebastian EPs
especially "a century of fakers". great songs, terrible production.
I totally agree with the TNV points!
Has anyone apart from me & DanTHW ever heard The Stapler? They are one of TNV's ohio noisey lofi contempories and there lo-fi sounds honest and though a lot of their songs probably aren't as good as TNV at least you can listen to it without getting a sore brain.
Surprised that CYHSY
'Some Loud Thunder' hasn't had a mention. Pretty sure some will agree, but I actually like it.
I love the sound on that album
it fits the songs perfectly. Superb production.
ive heard the stapler
"Recorded and Produced by Jared Phillips of Times New Viking"
ida thought the only difference is that the TNV record is louder, they both sound as fuzzy as each other to me, unsurprisingly
Re: Libertines
First album the production is shoddy, yes, but in a really great, scuzzy, completely of the time sort of way.
Second album, I agree. It tries to do the same as UTB but I don't think the songs are right for it and it just sounds too...empty
^
bang on
the dears
gang of losers.
brilliant album, horrid production.
I Have nothing to contribute >_>
Other than to post this
http://www.stylusmagazine.com/articles/weekly_article/imperfect-sound-forever.htm
^Yes
Surprising since the previous one was so well done. Guess they were going for a 'back to basics' approach (see also St Anger) and just ended up with a muddy mess.
David Bowie's production IS the worst of all time
theseabass is right!
and therapyrock is right! Iggy's remaster is too heavy. It sounds all distorted. Someone like Butch Vig oughta just fix that great record once and for all!
^ whoops, I'm talkin bout "Raw Power" up here.
: )
Butch Vig?
BUTCH MOTHERFUCKING VIG?
fuck off
Hehe
there's a funny Butch Vig making of Nevermind video on youtube.
I know I jusr threw butch vig out there, Well somebody capable
Stever Albini? I don't pay mind to star producers- there's only been one star producer and that's George Martin- the other so-called star producers are good at their jobs is all. Actually Beck is good and Trent Reznor, T-Bone Burnette.
Nah, Raw Power's production might be flawed, but that's why it's so good
It's completely in your face.
the destruction of small ideas
'the woods' by sleater kinney
is fucking awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwful.
it's mixed way too loud as well
I fucking hate it when they do that.
I don't think the production is awful actually.
better than being mixed too quiet
See: Young Team.
Burying this at the bottom
because apparently everyone and their mum disagrees with me but I think At War With The Mystics sounds grreat.
And I have no problem with the Black Kids album. It's a big, dumb, smutty pop record so it sounds bright and poppy as fuck. Works for me.
And I like TNV. Just fuck the lot of you, basically.
production makes the woods