Hi All,
I was so happy to see this thread, i complain about this all the time to anyone who will listen. It strikes me as particularly amusing/sad that the big labels are likely still spending 100s of thousands of dollars for the recording (all recoupable, of course), and then squashing everything way past the point of reason in mixing/mastering. Totally ridiculous.
My bandmate brought over the new elvis costello cd the other day. While listening to a couple songs on my venerable sony boombox, it struck me as being very loud, so i popped a track onto the computer to have a look. The song was at -6 the entire time, audible distortion near the end. Why does it have to be that freakin' loud? Elvis isn't my favorite, but i recognize him as a real artist and a good songwriter...why does his record need to be smashed even more than a papa roach song i also have on the computer (that's at -8 the whole time and was pretty terrible to begin with, IMO, so who cares....)?
There was a post elsewhere about the new goo goo dolls cd, how they used a bunch of fancy stuff for recording...neves, api, pultechs, whatever, the poster was psyched to give it a listen and of course, once he put it on, was totally bummed as it was just crushed thru the limiter. why spend all that dough in a real studio with great equipment when you're just gonna destroy it in mastering?
Anyway, for the record, i have "smells like teen spirit" and "territorial pissings" on my computer as well, the average rms on both is around -15, which is WAY quieter than anything coming out on a major these days. and they're both certainly very compressed, when the chorus kicks in on "teen spirit" the rms meters barely go up at all, but at least there's some transients left in there, y'know? nevermind i think is a good reference because pretty much everyone agrees that's a "rockin album" (although i much prefer the sound of in utero....), so when i'm doing "mastering" for people and they're asking me to "make it louder", i can say "well, it's already louder than nevermind...." "really?!? ok, cool!" and their record comes out pretty unscathed. and will still sound good to them 5 years from now.
ok, thanks for letting me rant/ preach to the converted
-scott
