mastering is killing music
i am remastering some of the clouds…it should be finished in a couple of days
so be ready to re-download them…sorry for the waste of band…
this is why
from my blog salamaundra:
I (finally) start to be tired of this music that sound loud…and louder.
I mean…enough is enough!…let’s stop the loudness war.
the heavy use of multiband compression and brickwall limiters is killing the dynamic range…and the music.
many ppl in the music industry regard the mastering as even more important than the mixing and the recording itself.
especially record labels…they know that spending a relative small amount of money in a “good” mastering studio can transform a dodgy sounding album is a blasting hit….that will sound loud even out of the computer speakers and those crap headphones…well…true..a good mastering can really do that…
but an exagerated mastering can also kill the music…and the listener…
it’s the same for the images…all is glossy nowadays…and saturated…
I am honestly very unhappy with the mastering that mr Dave Black did for my album “viceversa” for example…too compressed…too much bass…
and I had enough of all this wobbly trend…from Tipper (his Wobble Factor is TOO LOUD!!) to blasted dubstep.
INFACT…MUSIC THAT SOUNDS TOO LOUD IS LIKE WRITING ONLY IN CAPITAL LETTERS…
or like somebody screaming all the time….
I have mastered many of the tracks of the cloudcycle project…I am not a pro masterer and I don’t have pro gear and I am not sitting in an acustic treated room…but I reckon that I can do a decent job with my software (since we can’t afford to pay for a mastering session)…not as loud but loud enough…
but now I realized that I pushed the level of some tunes too much…trying to be loud as the trend…
so after a lot of reading (and listening)…I decided to remaster them…at a lower level…with little compression and very little limiting…so they don’t look like bricks anymore…infact…greg was right.
this are few links about the loudness war:
loudness wars (wikipedia)
The Loudness War Analyzed (on musicmachinery)
loudness wars (on stereosubversion)
dynamic range foundation – an organization defending the dynamic range, they release also a free plug in to check the dynamic range.
turn me up – another organization defending the dynamic range
justice for audio
Posted in updates
Bro – give me a call asap would you? x
The revolution starts here. Save the sound!
Hhmmm intresting, we have to remember that to the untrained ear louder is better,,,sad as it is this is the truth,, what we need to do is find the right balance between loudness and dynamics. i have also thought some masting has been too loud recently,,,listen to the space pirates album on bom shanka, this album is 2db louder than anything else i have got,,some people loved the mastering saying it was ‘pumping’ and ‘blasting’ but when listening in the studio you can feel the dynamics are gone. the tracks don’t ‘breath’, so what do we do? destroy our equipment and go back to amiga’s? no we must get the mastering right. one of the things i always found is listening to cass’s masters (wierdmasters–most uk trance labels use him) is that the total peak volume is lower than most other mastered tracks but it sounds louder,,,,well whats he doing? getting it right thats what. like what the man on the tightrope said “its all a question of balance!”