Everyone is talking about how horrible the compression fad is (yes... that's 10 different links).
Every mastering house has a rack full of limiters. compressors and exciters to make your songs as loud as humanly possible, and there's definitely a bit of mania to it. but...
I for one welcome our dynamics reducing overlords.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think we should squash every little clip of audio like a roach, there are definitely some things that deserve the high fidelity bestowed upon them by the audio gods - classical, folk, acoustic. Even indie rock can benefit from remaining in it's unadulterated form.
But in the age of surreal performances, artificial instruments, and the "Radio mix", I don't see a huge problem globing on the compression as just one more layer of distortion.
After all, if the end listeners like it, isn't that what we're really going for?
Even if that's not enough of an argument for you, the Mastering Engineer's job is to make your music sound as loud as possible without making it sound worse. After all it's a proven fact that the average person perceives a louder song as sounding better.
Of course you can argue that if you just turn it up, it sounds better without the compression, but I have personal experience that this is not necessarily the case...
Heavy, brick-wall limiting (compression on horse steroids), changes the tone of the music, not just the dynamics. After a lot of top 40 listening, many people grow familiar with this tone, and begin to expect it. Anything without that "hyper-squashed" tone doesn't sound professional to them.
I don't know about you, but I like to make a slick, professional first impression. Don't you?
edit: I would have left this as a comment but there are already about 30 comments, and I want to make sure people see it. So I learned 3 things today:
- Audiophiles hate compression as much as I thought they did.
- Sarcasm is in fact, dead on the internet ;)
- You really can get a bunch of blog traffic by pissing people off.
42 comments:
Are you serious?
Its NOT the mastering engineers JOB to make it sound as loud as possible.! If that were the case a monkey could do it. From your blog its quite obvious you have no idea what a mastering engineers job is. Try interviewing Steve Hoffman, a TRUE professional in mastering and he MAY be able to Educate you on WHY your blog is incorrect. Hopefully you are looking for constructive critisism!
You may as well comment about the technical specifics of neurosurgery, because chances you know just as little about that as you do about the mastering of music.
In fact listeners do NOT like it! That statement tells me that you are totally out of touch, that you really don't know what you're talking about.
In fact, those who don't know it's going on simply know that they're turning DOWN their radios more frequently, and those who do know about it simply know that whoever mastered this had his head up his arse and doesn't care at all about making good sounding records...
And...please add lots of treble along with that excessive compression to make it completely unlistenable.
Just because everyone else is doing it, doesnt make it right.
Sorry but I dont enjoy listening to CDs that distort and bang along at the same limited dynamic, track after track. Its dull dull dull.
I want drama and dynamics from my music, it gives it life. If I want it louder I can turn the volume up and still enjoy it. You dont have to make that choice for me.
Have some courage and produce some work that really lives and breathes and not cave in because it doesnt sound as loud as other 128kb tracks on the A&R mans iPod.
Please dont go for 'average' there is too much dross in the world already. Average is not a goal to aim for.
Always strive to make it the best you can. Take a listen to say Scot Walker's Tilt, that CD can make the hair on the back of your neck stand up with the contrasting dynamics on some tracks.
Velvet Revolver's loud compressed debut album doesnt have that effect.
Mastering engineers and people in the music business who share your point of view are the reason that I hardly buy any new CD's anymore. My money just goes somewhere else (often towards older, used CD's), and the music industry is wondering why CD sales are declining...
...and they still blame the evils of illegal download.
People may perceive that something sounds better at louder volumes, but does that mean you should adjust the volume for them? Don't you think a mastered recording that retains it's dynamics would sound better at a matched volume level than a recording that's been brick-walled?
What "rjstauber" said..
Heavy compression makes me turn it down, then off.... It's a shame that there seems to be a whole generation of engineers coming through that think the same as you..
Quality is going to hell.
Thanks moron.
I'll never buy anything with your name on it!
Increased use of compression and loud masterings are the single worst thing to happen to recorded music in the last 100 years. And you defend these practices? You, sir, are part of the problem rather than part of the solution. Please commence training in a different line of work.
Having you master an album is the same as having Mr. Magoo teach a driving class.
Yeah, I hate dynamics too!
Digital clipping on the other hand sounds awesome!
Don't forget treble and bass, crank those ALL THE WAY UP!
On an unrelated note... why do I keep getting these migraines?
Seriously, they thought digital reverb and those huge drums sounded 'more professional' in the 80's, now that sound is laughed at. Following trends is not always a good idea....
thanks for your blog. now I can take my class "Audio for Dummies" to the next step by showing them this. the first class was Loudness Wars on youtube. now they can see what not to do. :)
wow, you can't be serious. are you ?
Compression and brickwalling is nothing more than the destruction of information.
Let the end user set his volume knob where he wants it and leave the dynamics there.
one step forward, two steps back
You and your philosophy regarding brick wall limiting are ruining music. Congratulations. We're the end listeners, and we DO NOT LIKE IT. Maybe you should switch careers and make trash compactors. That would suit you perfectly.
Hmm doesnt it seem odd that all these articles and comments say that this practice of compression for loudness sake is bad?
I havent yet seen anything that supports this current trend of bad mastering.
I used to buy half a dozen CDs a month back in the 20th century, mainly new music too. However, as the years have gone on and the CDs have got louder and more monotonous and I have bought less and less new music. I have several new releases that have never been touched by a laser much past track 3. Others I cannot remember what the music was like, as it all sounded the same...bang bang bang bang bang.
I too now tend to buy and look for music that was mastered prior to 1998. 21st Century remasters are now also something I tend to avoid. LZ's Mothership is a perfect example here.
Bad mastering and a lack of guts to stand up to record execs is killing music.
I know what you mean by that 'professional' sound, but ironically you don't have to make it loud to get that.
That's all I'm gonna say...the agression here is making me want to leave the room.
Compression will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue with that; I'm right and I will be proved right. Steve Hoffman is more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first - the "Breath of Life" or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting the brickwall limiter knob that ruins it for me.
I am sure that this is tongue in cheek. It sounds too idiotic not to be.
The only good thing about the over compression trend is that I've gone back to buying most new releases on vinyl to avoid this unnecessary distruction of music. As someone who actually pays for their music, few new CDs make it into my collection nowadays.
Threee cheers for Steve Hoffman, Kevin Gray, Chris Bellman, Bernie Grundman and many more who continue to master music properly.
Hi Jim,
Just to put a little perspective on the majority of responses you've received.... They come from the Steve Hoffman Forums and this thread:
http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=153363&page=1
These are well intentioned, but not always mature music lovers and self-proclaimed audiophiles. To a good many of them "compression" is evil. However, just to keep it in perspective, the Steve Hoffman Forums are a great place to learn and converse about music. It is unfortunate that too much of the "cult" mentality, like the guy above with the "Jesus Follower" comments exist there. Also, while being a "watering hole" for “cult” followers of the Beatles, Beach Boys & Fleetwood Mac, etc., although there is certainly diversity in music discussed there. Keep in mind that a good many of these "golden ears" come more from the collective gist of Steve Hoffman's words rather than his own evaluations and judgments.
Many of those same “compression critics” have fawned over the sound of heavily compressed recordings from the 1950s onward not realizing that a good bit of that compression actually comes from the recording engineers and producers in the studio to get the 100 plus db dynamic range onto 60db dynamic range tape. This practice dates back to at least the 1950s.
With digital and 96db+ theoretical dynamic range, one might wonder ask..”why compress at all? “ The answer would be that unless we all listened to music in an absolutely silent room, compression is needed to be practical to listen to music in the context of everyday real world noise environments. What I think is being expressed is that when a mastering engineer puts on that final layer(s) of compression/maximization/EQ, they are adding to layers that have already been applied in the recording and mixdown process, and the total sum of all this may be too much of a compressed, processed sound. I think the call to the mastering engineer is to be sonically judicious and to not base their choices on just getting the loudest sound possible.
I am restating this from the second paragraph above:
....However, just to keep it in perspective, the Steve Hoffman Forums are a great place to learn and converse about music. It is unfortunate that too much of the "cult" mentality, like the guy above with the "Jesus Follower" comments exist there. Also, while being a "watering hole" for “cult” followers of the Beatles, Beach Boys & Fleetwood Mac, etc., there is certainly diversity in music discussed there. Keep in mind that a good many of the comments of those "golden ears" come more from the collective gist of Steve Hoffman's words rather than these folks own evaluations and judgments.
You are absolutely right! But, you should first have the mix engineer apply the Waves L2 Limiter to each individual track, then apply the Waves C4 multiband compressor , that way you can actively EQ and compress at the same time.
You as the mastering engineer should stive to obtain the same sound as a car stereo cranked to the max, and distorted... After all, that is what the average listener is used to0
You should have been the one to Master Led Zeppelin's Mother ship.
I'm sure you would have made a great name for yourself!!
Don't forget to scope out the Mid's before you compress, as you want the most sharp steril sound as possible!
Remeber, If there is more than o.5 db between the loudest and softest peak, you haven't done your job properly
Remember to use a Noise Reduction plugin set to -20db after applying compression.
Compression sucks imo. It ruins the dynamics of an artist's work. All that effort the artist and producer went to in the recording studio is butchered by idiotic mastering engineers. If compression is used by an artist in the studio then fair enough, but for a mastering engineer to come along after the work is completed and crumple the dynamics and hard limit it - that isnt talent.
Its engineers like you that are ruining the sound experience. Thanks a lot.
There is a good reason vinyl has become popular again. It's because today's CDs have been stomped on ans squished to the point where no one wants to buy them anymore.
Thanks for squishing the sound! Vinyl is much better now. And the big plus is that you can't ruin vinyl sound as bad as you can the CD in the mastering phase.
digg it
seriously, how retarded are you people? Welcome to the world of "sarcasm" a.k.a. the internet.
Compression is good, definitely, but only to a degree. It's gotten completely out of control with moderm pop and pop-punk and mainstream hip-hop and shit like that, its terrible. It's mainly because the average music listener is too dumb to know what decent compression sounds like - you should compress but you shouldn't crush anything like a roach - in the end, its also because the listeners are too goddamn lazy to adjust the volume dial - they want the artist to do it for them...that's a huge, undeniably big problem.
Shit...
Ok, I didn't read the last part, you got me on the sarcasm part.
And ryan, how dumb are you man? Sarcasm is hard as hell to detect on the internet sometimes, give people a break.
Compression is better used more sparingly, or for effect, by professionals only. Not to be used by people who like to dumb it down!
That being said, if everything were mastered the same, regardless of genera, we'd be even more pissed!
oh wait, i forgot, everyone uses Waves plugins!
Go read some info on S. Massey's site.
I dont think this blog was written originally with sarcasm in mind. I think it was genuine. The response has necessitated a retraction of sorts.
It's a start I guess. Thank you.
well if you look at the post... there are:
10 links that go off site that are anti-compression.
1 Neutral link about how people think something sounds better when it's louder.
And a link with the text, 'just turn it up' to another post I made a few days earlier on how you shouldn't turn it up. that you need to leave some headroom when you record.
I'll admit I have an odd personality but my friends (the only people I thought would end up reading this post anyway) pretty much all understood.
oh well.
Hello,
In my view, any recording should be able to display the dynamic range of the performance. So, if a band plays a track which goes from soft to loud (say, for example, Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen, or Led Zeppelin's Stairway to heaven), then I expect the quiet parts of the song to be quiet in relation to the loud parts.
Now it's well known that if you're listening to those tracks in a car on the motorway, you're unlikely to be able to appreciate the dynamic range because the noise floor of the listening acoustic is too high so radio broadcasters used compression (of a different nature but still there) to boost the signals for more uniformity - but this was always seen for what it was - a solution to a bad situation, never a solution for quality's sake.
Unfortunately, once you compress the dynamic range on the actual recording, the original (and therefore much nuance etc.) is lost to the listener forever (or until a more faithful mastering is made). For the vast majority of people who listen on their iPods, cheap imitation HiFis etc. this works well for them since it sounds louder (and better because they get detail they would not normally get). For the 10% of the community that listens critically (audiophiles and the like, myself included), it's awful because their highly resolving systems sound flat and undynamic thanks tot he undynamic recordig - and so they rail against it since they know they're missing out.
It's sad really, and with digital recordings one would think there should be a way of telling 'the system' to apply compression or not depending on the application (laptop speakers, low bandwidth transmission, audiohile), but nobody seems to wish to come out with another music format that actually improves the lot of all sadly.
In my Saturday role as a HiFi Specialist salesperson, this is a tragedy. Perhaps this is another reason why the specialist HiFi trade is in such severe decline?
Regards,
Frank.
I understand where you are coming from. I am an amateur engineer, using a room with no acoustic treatment, a 150 dollar condenser mic, and a broken-ass MBox2. I make rap beats, and I record rappers.
People... unless you are lucky enough to come across a really skilled/practiced musician, (my) chances of finding someone that knows how to use the microphone are almost non-existant. I have a 200$ compressor that, even though I haven't played with it much, still makes these goons sound 100 times better than if I just turned my gain down to avoid clipping. I have to make these people feel comfortable or they're not gonna come back, so I can't sit there and tell them everything I know about using their voice in front of the mic. They'd look at me like I just pissed on Tupac's grave.
I have to admit though, if I had a vocal booth, and a U87, I probably wouldn't need a ratio of 4:1.
Hell, maybe I have no idea what I'm talking about, but that's my 2cents.
I'm dumb? Considering I understood what he wrote and you didn't, I can't really trust your judgment here.
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