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Originally Posted by dobyblue
First of all, great post and thanks for sharing so much.
Being a producer yourself, don't you think that Crash is also completely bloated and over-produced as far as levels go? It's well beyond CD's 96dB limit and as such is flooded with clipping. Even Let You Down has some clippiing on it.
Too Much - http://img395.imageshack.us/img395/5...omuchwaver.jpg |
But that's a problem in the mastering, not the mix. Not enough mastering engineers take the Bob Katz approach, he's admitted to sometimes needing to do absolutely nothing to the songs once he gets them. Jensen however, while good in his own right and very suited for the '90s aesthetics, played with the EQ too much and downward compressed [at least to my ear]. But that was also the accepted '90s aesthetic of sound on releases. Remember in the '80s and '90s the labels wanted things geared more towards FM transmission. With every record that comes out, compare it with a record of similar genre from 5 - 10 - or even 15 years ago and you'll the subtle changes in aesthetics [at least all of you audiophiles will]. I love Crash for the production, not the mastering. There's a huge difference.
To me R2T is a great record, but it feels unfinished. I've never really been able to place what it is about the record that feels undone to me, but then again I haven't pulled it out in years. The mix sort of feels like they found a level for each instrument and left it at that for the entirety of the songs. Maybe one day when I get some free time, I'll play around with R2T for my own personal fun.
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I don't know why some people praise Ted Jensen for his "loudnessizing" (http://www.gearslutz.com/board/high-...nessizing.html) because I think he's ruined more music than he hasn't...and Bob Ludwig did a thousand times better job with Guns N' Roses new album than Jensen did with Crash.
I don't know, I think Crash sounds almost as bad as Everyday on a good stereo. Stand Up was better mastered, even if the quality of the material was rubbish. Wouldn't Lillywhite have compared the clipped hot mastered versions to the unclipped, uncompressed 24-bit or analog masters he was working on and said "try again"?
I would love to see Peter Gabriel master DMB. Maybe they could record at Real World straight to DSD and give us a DMB SACD?
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A lot of people thinking of clipping as an automatic bad thing. Because of the connotation, a lot of mixing engineers will make sure things are well below the red light when the mix is done. But when it goes to the mastering engineer, part of their job is volume. So then they often have to go a tad overboard to bring it up to a decent level with the compression. It's a weird cycle. Open just about any song straight from a cd in protools and play it. It will be clipping in the meters, but you likely aren't going to hear it clip. It's a long arguement that I really straddle the fence on. Because I see both sides.
The loudness war ... I'm not sure where I stand on it. Remember, the less than .01% of the population that understand the differences that dynamics bring aren't enough to make anybody a success. The loudness thing has been going on as an industry norm since Phil Spector in the '60s [around the Dancing In The Streets single]. It's a proven element. There are ways of compensating, but it takes a certain skill. I unfortunately don't have that skill (yet). Katz certainly does have it.