Quote: “If the music dynamic range is compressed during mixing, such information is lost forever. there is no way you can revert that back.”
I’m pleased to read some of the excellent observations in this thread.
It’s complicated, but naturally occurring dynamics, harmonic transients, attack and release are a huge part of what makes music, musical.
Take those away and the sausage of sonance one is left with, makes for an ear wearying, brain fatiguing, processed lump, that ultimately stops people spending hard earnt money on recorded music.
If sounds really great at first though…
For several seconds.
Quote: “this is what I encountered, not only songs, even internet radio ... and I hate it ....”
The death of dynamic range.
I understand record company executives give a track an average of seven seconds when deciding what to release. Louder, sounds better, at first.
Digital devices mean tracks from differing sources are commonly lifted from their albums and placed on a carousel alongside other tracks, resulting in commonplace “normalisation” for consistency.
They have been compressing lots of classical albums for a considerable time now, and the amount of editing is unbelievable.
A friend complained that at his mastering stage he had to perform 1,000 edits on 60 minutes of classical music.
It’s because critics harshly draw comparisons between the latest releases and find fault, if they can.
The trouble is, the true spontaneous life and soul of a captured performance is thereby lost.
Some may find this link is enlightening.
http://ozzgod.com/dynamicrange/death.html
Quote: “Especially don’t care about what the meters do, if it sounds good to you it sounds good.”
At one point, the late Tom Dowd at Atlantic Records became convinced his engineers were being more influenced by what the meters told their eyes, instead of truly listening and hearing what their ears were trying to tell them.
He had all the meters on their Large Format Recording Console painted over with black paint, to force everybody working there to use and rely solely upon their ears.
Lots of truly great stories about Tom could be told. His daughter Dana is a lovely person.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSEIjZQ … rJVLRM3Gz9
Quote: “The meters can guide someone who is producing, but later on it doesn’t make sense to judge the song but it’s metering behavior.”
A very experienced old pal, had a completely new act he was recording, in his studio.
They were amazed at how much attention he paid to the meters on his Large Format Recording Console.
Imprudently, they made some ill-advised, provocative comments regarding this mesmerising production habit, and because of that, he set them a bold challenge.
“I’ll leave the studio for 20 minutes (it was a residential studio), and you can set up whatever mics you like, with whatever instrument’s you like and put screens across the studio window so I can’t see what you’ve done. We’ll switch off the amplifier for the monitors, and I’ll record you, unable to hear a thing, just watching the meters. alone”
He came back, not knowing which mic was used on which instrument, nor which instrument was on which channel.
They used the talkback to communicate, got some levels and played their song which he recorded.
It was mixed perfectly, with every sound source, exactly at an ideal level.
They kept their thoughts and comments to themselves after that!
Quote: “The strange thing is: due to “Loudness Normalization” the new remasters do not sound louder than the original recordings, they just sound less impactful.”
This may be of interest.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ