How much of a CD's sound is due to the production, how much is due to the mastering?

Very good point, they don't even pretend to cater to their own customers, it's terrible. Yeah, if people don't care about sound, then why are the shelling out hard earned money for the CD when they can get an MP3 of the thing (in advance) for free?

Honestly, if the quality is going to drop to this level, then a high bitrate download is more than enough. I know I don't need a clearer copy of a bad mastering.

Wouldn't it be very easy for record companies to make available flat transfers as downloads? That way we would have more of a choice?

 

WHile I am no fan of brickwalled music, it's not true that the 50's and 60's provided us with "audiophile recordings". Go throw on Wilson Pickett's Land Of 1000 Dances. It's so distorted it sounds like they ran it thru a Big Muff! A lot of Motown/Stax/Atlantic stuff is loud to the point of overdriven.

As I mentioned in another thread.....rock and roll was made for dancing to, not sitting in the sweet spot. It's only us mental cases that think otherwise.

 

Yes, dancing on the backs of those who are responsible for brickwalling.

 

As I said....I don't like the fact that cd's sound like crap, but I try to enjoy the music first. I just grow tired of some of the romantic theories that in rock's heyday the music was produced for people to sit in a chair with their speakers perfectly set up in a room with expensive anti-reflective baffles. It was made to be played out of ONE speaker in a Buick.

 

Good point. I am much more forgiving of older recordings. However, with the new stuff, there is simply no excuse. In classical recordings, I have seen some incredible advances in recording technology that have actually led to an improvement in sound.

 

George P, you might find the thread below interesting, along these same lines. I understand where you're coming from, since I have the new Accelerate as well. I still wonder how much is done in production vs. mastering, and I guess Steve answered that. This is one of the first (of many, I'm sure) threads that I read on this topic here:

http://stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=103890

 

I think record companies should make 24 bits unprocessed files available for download, so audiophiles would be able to listen to the original mix, and eventually make their own master, maybe that would stop people being frustrated by Cds sound quality.

That would be great to have a choice...

 

Indeed!

 

Thanks for that link!

 

In my experience maybe about 5% (maybe less) of a CD's sound is from mastering. I refuse to use a mastering engineer who tries to remix my records. I like the more hands off approach like Steve does.

Then there's the heavy handed guys like Peter Mew, Bob Norberg, Jon Astley, etc... They can completely change the way a record sounds. Just listen to how Bob Norberg crippled some brilliant mixes on the remaster of Huey Lewis' Sports.

Even so, there's just waaaaaay too much emphasis put on mastering here. Most of the time when people complain about the mastering it's something that was done during mixing (like with those Genesis remixes) yet people still want to blame the mastering guy and not the mix engineer.

 

Not really. Like I said, they were most effective when used for classical recordings where there was little processing of individual mics or tracks and just gentle overall compression.

The premise is that gentle compression rather than peak limiting was used on these types of classical recordings to slightly reduce the dynamic range so that they could fit on a slab of vinyl. In theory, if one could come up with the recripocal function to the compression used for this purpose it could be possible to restore the dynamics of the recording. Of course IMO these things never worked well enough to merit their use for a variety of reasons.

Once again, this would be gentle processing and wouldn't really change the sound of the instruments. At least that wasn't the goal here.

Btw, this type of processing happend all the time, though most of us probably don't realize it. Both DBX and Dolby A processing which were used quite a bit in pop recording history use compression on recording and reciprocal expansion on playback. This is called companding. Granted this is an oversimplification of these processes, but I'm just trying to make a point that many consider it possible to undo some effects of compression.

 

Maybe it was an unauthorized bootleg?

 

Gosh, in my day I used to hear 'lets fix it in the mix'. Now it looks like it's morphed to 'lets fix it in the mastering'.

Well there are several major problems with this approach. First it's nearly impossible to fix most production deficiencies after the fact, and secondly it makes the mastering engineer a producer.

The mastering process used to be considered almost clinical by many. It always seemed odd that there were huge production budgets, but then they handed off the master to somebody who was not involved in the production and hoped for the best. IMO, the production team should be involved with every facet up to and including evaluating test pressings. If things are not to their liking they should try again until they are satisfied. The costs involved with mastering and remastering are nil compared to the costs of production.

Unfortunately this was not always the case for a variety of reasons. Usually the cited reasons were time and laziness. Many engineers were tired of the project and relieved to have the mixes completed. Other times, labels were in a hurry to get the product out and didn't see the value in spending the extra time to make sure the mastering was approved by the producer.

That said, many folks chose their mastering engineers because they liked their 'sound', much like they chose their producer. One can argue that a mastering engineer should not add a 'sonic signature' to the product but just try to present what's on the master in the best light. I know I used to like to use Johnny Golden at Kendun because all his cuts seemed to have a similar sound which I liked quite a bit at the time.


I have one quick story which illistrates some of this. Back in 1978 I was involved with a Maureen McGovern album and mastered it with Stan Ricker. After comparing our test cut with our competition (same song by different artist) it was determined that our piano intro needed to be raised in volume, since the competion had a much louder intro.

Well the obvious solution was to remix. The problems is that the producer refused to do it. They had spent many months recording the record and wanted nothing more to do with it. My job was to go back to Stan and try to raise the intro during remastering. Well if anybody here has ever been involved with half speed mastering they would realize that this was nearly an impossible task. The result was a total mess and ultimately the record was not released.

 

I have to disagree with that. I don't think that an REM song like "What's the Frequency Kenneth?" has a "beautiful, natural sound"? It sounds massively compressed and manipulated to me. Certainly it sounds nothing like the open and natural sound you get from James Taylor (as mentioned elsewhere in the thread). I like REM, but I would hesitate to use them as a textbook case of natural sound.

Derek

 

That brings up another point... Do you expect every album to be audiophile quality?

 

I guess the overall sound of Accelerate could be compared with the sound of Monster, which incorporated more distortion in the guitar sound. I haven't seen a waveform comparison; I guess Monster was made pre-loudness wars?

The "beautiful natural sound", with arpeggiated chords or acoustic guitars minus much distortion, I would equate more to their early IRS material. These are different sounds the band is deliberately going for in production (certainly the amount of distortion coming out of Peter's amp). Albums with distorted guitars have been recorded without excessive digital compression, however, right? I guess the original question is how much is attributable to the production phase and how much in the mastering phase? When Stan Ricker mastered the vinyl on Accelerate, how much leeway did he have?

 

The only difference is they were done with an older style mix. I can do an ear bleeding mix on an analog console using all vintage gear and then do a natural sounding mix completely in the box just using plug ins.

Modern mixes just have more compression using faster release times. That's all. In the last five year plug ins have gotten to the point of nearly perfect emulation.

Most of the guys mixing modern rock records are still using 90% analog gear on an analog console. It's just a different style. Still, compressing every track and then smashing the stereo buss with a VCA type compressor at 10:1 with a fast release will give you the same sound whether it's analog or digital processing.

 

I got news for you - you may still be disappointed with the end result. 24 bits or "unprocessed" doesn't mean anything if the mix sounds like **** to begin with. Plenty of modern mix engineers (and the artists/producers approving the mix) have damaged a mix, or even raw tracks, long before the project goes into mastering.

 

It sounds like one, but no, I bought it in the store.

 

P.S. The LP may be a hair more relaxed, but not by much. It's a loud record that doesn't sound so great. Now I miss the good ol' days of compressed CD's that still had a nice tonal balance.

 

I often become a little angry when I hear good music, especially if it was ok on cd before, ruined by someone being "creative" with the mixing and mastering.

 

Here's Jacknife Lee's explanation (of his work on Accelerate):

Jacknife Lee Interview

 

No, I don't expect every album to be audiophile quality. This is why some people have EQs and other processors and we all have volume controls. I know that currently popular pop-country singer/songwriter Taylor Swift's CD sounds nothing compared to Gordon Lightfoot's "Sit Down Young Stranger/If You Could Read My Mind" album and that is due to the production done at the time these were recorded. Amy Grant's "Heart In Motion" album also sounds nothing compared to her "Age To Age" album due to the production techniques at the time they were recorded.

 

Thanks very much for that. Sounds like Mr. Lee didn't hear the final product.

Tendency towards loud? From the waveforms I saw of this album, this album could not be louder.