How ‘LOUD’ is your band’s new cd? Interesting Mastering article
Here’s a link to a very interesting article about cd-mastering and the overall trend towards GETTIN’ LOUD in the age of the ipod-shuffle, courtesy of Chicago Mastering Service.
Maybe I’ll do a little analysis of some Tangleweed wav-forms one of these days, to see how we compare with My Bloody Valentine, Radiohead, Nirvana and The Stooges in the FILL THE BOX wars.
Mike Hagler at Kingsize mastered our first two cd’s, and will most likely do the same on #3 (which we’re recording with him presently).
Special thanks to my friend Adam Yoffe at Prize Beagle Studios for turning me onto this article. Adam is recording my friends Milk At Midnight, with whom I play a bit of banjo in a gorgeously loud rock setting. Look for another banjo track on their upcoming cd.
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Scott–
Thanks for posting this. There are a fair number of recently-released CDs that are unlistenable because of the overuse of compression. The Buzzcocks put out a self-titled CD in 2003 that has no dynamic range whatsoever.
If you’re going to do a wave-form analysis, I’d love to see what one of those old Bob Thiele-produced jazz records of the 1960s looks like compared to a contemporary pop CD. The lack of dynamic range is brutal and numbing. It’s thoroughly unmusical. But I suspect that it has everything to do with the download market and the predominance of a lossy compression algorithm in the primary download format.
Having sat with Mike as we mastered both of our CDs, I’m pleased that we’ve preserved a very natural dynamic range that’s appropriate for our music. They’re pretty far from the giant black rectangles you see in the article.
Comment by Kenneth Rainey — 12/5/2007 @ 2:43 pm