Murder, mastering, and mayhem

[mdlbear]

From this post by eleccham comes a link to this article in The Times titled "Why music really is getting louder". Basically it's about the current practice of mastering music so damned loud that it clips.

The article has a few inaccuracies: for example, it confuses the kind of dynamic range compression done at mastering time with the kind of data compression done by codecs like MP3. But the fact remains, a lot of popular music these days is compressed to within a fraction of an inch of its life, destroying any dynamic range it might originally have had.

Fortunately, I don't listen to that kind of music, nor do I intend to subject my listeners to it. I do a minimum of compression on my CD tracks, and I do it by hand in Audacity using the Envelope tool. That lets me bring down the notes where I whack a chord too hard, or the verses where I lean to close to the mic, or the spots where I pop a "P", without affecting the overall dynamic range of the music.

Not that I have a whole lot of dynamic range when I'm singing. The main challenge in the final phases of the mixing will be making sure that the songs where it's just me and the guitar don't have me sounding louder than the ones where I have backup. That will require overriding the standard normalization parameters for just those songs during the build, so as not to maximize their volume.

I've also decided not to throw money at Oasis to have my CD professionally mastered. Maybe next time, if I can find an engineer I can trust who's local and who has done folk music before. For the moment I think I can do fairly well in Audacity, which also gives me the opportunity to correct my problems at the track level before they get mixed down.

Comments

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I've been reading about the dynamic range problem myself. I wonder if part of the issue may be that people are listening to music in more noisy environments than before. I've noticed that a lot of the music I like I just can't enjoy in the car, or in the gym, because the quiet parts get drowned out by the noise around me--and if I turn it up so I can hear the quiet parts, the loud parts hurt my ears. Maybe the elimination of dynamic range in recording is an attempt to produce music that can be listened to in noisy environments?

[mdlbear]

That's a lot of it -- radio stations have been adding compression for years, car stereos boost bass frequencies, and iTunes applies some kind of extra EQ as well. But it's possible to mix a folk/filk CD so that most of it's audible in a car on the freeway -- that's one of the ways I test my mix. (That's a trick I learned from billroper, by the way.)

You can't listen to classical music in the car -- it just doesn't work.

Classical music in a car

[smalltowndad.livejournal.com]

Or mini van, which is my vehicle of choice.

I suppose it depends on how low your standards can be set.

In my case, I generally listen to Minnesota Public Radio, part of PBS when driving. The dynamic range of classical music being what it is, I lose the subtleties of the music, and all of the more pianissimo parts. (Parts of Tannhäuser disappear.)

I listen anyway, since

* MNPR seems to have better quality control over what it airs than the pop music stations around here

* I'm one of those people who prefer ordered sounds to road noise

* My standards can be set very low if it means having access to some of the best musical ideas of the last few centuries

[smalltowndad.livejournal.com]

Thanks for giving a non-professional a look inside a soundmeister's world.

Re: Classical music in a car

[mdlbear]

I keep my car radio tuned to the local PBS station, too; unfortunately it broadcasts very little music.

A good classical radio station will do a certain amount of dynamic-range compression on its signal; if your car has a CD player you may find a difference between the radio version and the CD. (On the other hand, your car's CD player may be doing some processing on its own -- I know mine does, which is why it's easier for me to hear excessive bass in the car than at home.)

[mdlbear]

You're welcome. I'm not a pro, either -- I'm learning this stuff as I go along.