Maiden not mastering their new album!

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GreenDank

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Is this crazy or what! Iron Maiden is not going to be mastering their latest CD. I've never heard of such an occurance. Does this happen often with "big" releases?

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Producer Kevin Shirley (IRON MAIDEN, DREAM THEATER) has posted the following message on his official web site:

Spoke to 'Arry [IRON MAIDEN bassist Steve Harris] on Friday, who has decided against mastering the IRON MAIDEN album, and I'm quite pleased about that, although I did like the mastering job we did in [New York City]. It means that you will get to hear the new album exactly as it sounded in the studio, no added EQ, compression, analog widening, etc., and I must say, I am pretty happy with the end result. I think some tracks could use a smidge more top end, and others a bump of bottom — but I know 'Arry well enough now to know how wary of outsiders he is, and I fully expected he may have done that, so I made sure I was happy with the results when I printed the mixes in the studio. So, that'll fire you guys on the BB's right up, no doubt! :)
 
Maybe they are not going through a ME and just doing a basic mastering themselves. I can see them trying to preserve the rawness of the mix, but I cannot see them releasing "RAW" mixes for the final CD.
 
Isn't mastering, at it's most basic form, just getting the music onto a CD and setting the markers? So, unless this is getting released on 2 inch tape or a harddrive or something, it has to be mastered, right?

Still, cool to hear that they're just letting the mixes be as far as sonics go.
 
Fishmed_Returns said:
Maybe they are not going through a ME and just doing a basic mastering themselves. I can see them trying to preserve the rawness of the mix, but I cannot see them releasing "RAW" mixes for the final CD.
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Have you ever heard a major label mix right off the board and onto CDR? It sounds damn finished, and plenty loud. I've got a few laying around... Maybe I'll post a few seconds, but probably not since I could get my head handed to me if I do that. :p
 
This makes me want to hear the new Maiden. I once heard a pro mix pre and post master. I actually preferred the pre master. But I wasn't listening on my Ipod ;)
 
Maybe they are trying to sell their albums to home recorders too :D

you all fell for it :p

J/K i dont know.... :confused:
 
Does this mean I can used my cracked waves bundle and finally become a mastering engineer, like I've always dreamed? :)
 
Chibi Nappa said:
Isn't mastering, at it's most basic form, just getting the music onto a CD and setting the markers? So, unless this is getting released on 2 inch tape or a harddrive or something, it has to be mastered, right?

Still, cool to hear that they're just letting the mixes be as far as sonics go.
Click to expand...
YES!!! As so many people forget it seems, mastering in its basic form is taking a collection of mixes and bringing them to their final "form" before replication.

If the decision is to do little or nothing to change the sound, there's nothing wrong with that.
 
So, out of curiosity, I thought I'd dig this thread out and see if any one has any post- release reactions to the sound of the record. What do you gys think; was it a mistake to limit the amount of post- production processing or does the record sound good on it's own without it?
 
My first reaction was: wow the snare sounds bad. Then there was that kind of "CLICK" about 20 seconds later. Then there was the missing high end, kinda "low fi" overall sound.

There is a difference between "do not correct mistakes, do not make it sound better" and "do not compress it"

this is only what my unexperimented ears think tough
 
Is this really a matter of error or perception though? Could it be that we have become so accustomed to hearing things that are over processed that we no longer accept a naturel sound as being reasonable or preferred? Is it live or Memorex; is the processing better for the recordings or are we just comfortable with it?
 
scrubs said:
Does this mean I can used my cracked waves bundle and finally become a mastering engineer, like I've always dreamed? :)
Click to expand...
Er.... well.... no.
 
I like the sound of the new album. It sounds very organic and real to me.
 
This has been discussed at length in the mastering forum at Gearslutz, from memory, one poster there is fairly "close" to Maiden.

:cool:
 
scrubs said:
Does this mean I can used my cracked waves bundle and finally become a mastering engineer, like I've always dreamed? :)
Click to expand...

Yes! That is exactly what it means. I will be using my cracked TRacks. :D
 
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