Reference Songs

rayc said:
actually sitting down & playing an acoustic instrument for a bit can be useful too - AFTER some peace.
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Yes! It makes me feel good to play my ac. guitar after struggling with electro garbage... real wood, real sound, real man. It takes me back to the original core of music and recording.
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
Some of the very best stuff I ever heard comes from DVD movie soundtracks. I'm not prepared to necessarily say it's because of the DVD format itself so much as I think it's often just one generation less of re-mastering or gets a different mastering treatment than the CD does.
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I'd bet it's the dynamic range.

I think of a recording like a packing a suitcase. You can only fit so much in it before you have to start playing tetris. For some reason, when I'm listening to movie audio, The suitcase seems a lot bigger .

As for reference listening, the only reference point I use is my own mix with everything at unity. I don't A/B against other people's music...it...just....doesn't work. With my mix at unity, I have a 'from' point. The 'to' point is already in my head. The job is to translate it.
 
its really cool just to see everyone's responses...when i was involved in audio as a professional i did use reference listening...if nothing else just to give me perspective on whether i was reaching the clarity i wanted to reach or to give my ears a break. i'd often listen to thelonious monk, even though i never did any mastering with jazz. i think its one of those things that just comes down to preference about reference?
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
I have to admit that the whole concept of "reference listening" is one that never made much sense to me.

G.
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I think its more for inspiration than anything else.

Growing up through middle and high school (which for me, isn't that long ago ;) ), I'd listen to different albums and be impressed by different sounds. "Ooo, I love Ringo's drum sound on Abbey Road." "Oooo, I love Pete Townshend's acoustic guitar sound on Who's Next." Etc. etc. Rather than mimic it, I would be inspired to make something similar but still my own sound.

When I finally bought studio loudspeakers in late 07, I would playback albums whose sound I loved and figured out why they sounded so good. I'd be like "okay, the bass is this loud, and sits in this region," "the drums are pretty punchy here, how can I get that?" etc. etc. I don't explicitly copy albums per say, I just take things I like, fiddle with recording techniques, compression, and EQ, and in the meantime actually learned how to use these devices and effects in my quest to get something similar. That way, I had the knowledge to use the tools I have to get a sound that I liked.
 
I have a reference disc that I use for evaluating/calibrating sound systems, monitors, control rooms...any time I need to hear some material that I'm really familiar with so I can tell what the whole playback chain is doing to a known source. I've been using these same 5 tunes for over a dozen years (finally got around to burning a single CD-R of them about 5 years ago so I didn't have to keep carrying a bunch of discs with me...maybe by next decade I'll have them ripped onto a USB stick, just in time for amorphous solid-state plasma memory to be the norm for everyone else in the industry).

They are:

- "The Infernal Dance of King Kashchei" from Igor Stravinsky's Firebird Suite, performed by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Robert Shaw conducting (Telarc Records).

- "People" by King Crimson, from the album THRAK

- "So What" by Miles Davis, from Kind Of Blue

- "Airhead" by Thomas Dolby, from Aliens Ate My Buick

- "Outshined" by Soundgarden, from Badmotorfinger


But for ear cleansing I absolutely endorse complete silence, or distant environmental sounds at least. Recorded music is the last thing I want to hear to reset my bearings.
 
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