Actually, It does come from most of the bands I've worked for. "That sounds
great, but when we put it in the CD changer with X, Y and The Z, it's not as
loud. We want it to be louder than X, Y and The Z. Can you do that?" I use a
number of metering systems including a Dorrough Loudness Monitor and I try
to keep the crest factor (peak to average ratio) at about 12 dB, it usually takes
around 6 dB peak reduction to achieve this with the Waves L1 (or L2) limiter
on top of some mild "riding" compression for moderately dynamic material. At
more than 6 dB of peak reduction I hear the limiter, so I go with multiband
compression to bring the level up from there. Anyway, I also get masters from
all the major mastering houses - some of them have 0 crest factor! But, a good
one can do it with a minimum of harshness. Harshness can also come from
cumulative bit depth truncations...
B a r r y S t r a m p - evil mastering engineer
--- In
motm@yahoogroups.com, "Brousseau, Paul E (Paul)" <noise@A...>
wrote:
> You've nailed it right on the head-- long durations of highly clipped and
compressed music is very taxing. The worst part is that you can't just turn it
down to eliminate the effect; it's still terribly taxing. My understanding is that
this isn't typically the fault or the band, but more often the record label
ordering the mastering engineers to make it LOUDER becasuse LOUDER IS
BETTER!!!! <ahem> This is a fairly recent trend, which is why your records
don't hurt, and live shows don't have evil mastering engineers.
>
> (And no, not all mastering engineers are evil.)
>
> I've read that Rush's latest CD (whatsitcalled-- afterburn something or
other?) falls prey to this unfortunate trend. From my own collection, I've
noticed that Madonna's "Music" is somewhat taxing. I can't recall others off
the top of my head.
>
> When it comes to this nasty habit, I'd rather listen to grinding, head-splitting,
noise puke, ala Merzbow or Aube... at least then I know what I'm getting into.
;)
>
> --PBr
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: gooboworks [mailto:andy@g...]
> Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2003 2:43 PM
> To: motm@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [motm] Re: w
>
> Maybe this is causing my aural fatigue. I will put on a CD, and
> after a bit, I will just stop it much to my relief. Now, I am not
> talking any kind of grinding, head-splitting, noise puke. It is any
> number of regular CD's. It is weird, and the best way to describe
> it is "my ears get tired". Does not happen on all CD's, does not
> happen with live music, does not happen with TV (lo-fi) music.
> There seems to be a level of subtle boringness I cannot clearly
> identify. When I stop the CD it goes away, and I am glad stopped
> the music.
>
> This did not happen with old analog vinyl records. This could also
> be natural aging going on, however if that was the case all music
> would sound like this.
>
> Well for now, I am going with the smoothing theory. I guess it is
> like removing all the bright colors from a painting, or the sparkly
> spices from food. The end result is bland and dull.