(mastering) EQ curves of todays music

[bkkornaker]

is it just me or does it seem like alot of todays rock music was mastered a bit on the "middy" side?

Im going through my iTunes playlist, and im noticing anything that was produced in the 2000-2006 era, was mastered a bit on the "glassy" high end side of things, like they used some 10k in the EQ while mastering.

But mostly stuff that was produced after 2007, especially in 2008 and 2009....seems like the 10k high end was left alone, and some mids (900-1.5k) area was boosted slightly.

is this a new trend?

 

[NL5]

Louder mixes FTL.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

is it just me or does it seem like alot of todays rock music was mastered a bit on the "middy" side?

Im going through my iTunes playlist, and im noticing anything that was produced in the 2000-2006 era, was mastered a bit on the "glassy" high end side of things, like they used some 10k in the EQ while mastering.

But mostly stuff that was produced after 2007, especially in 2008 and 2009....seems like the 10k high end was left alone, and some mids (900-1.5k) area was boosted slightly.

is this a new trend?

I'm not aware of much of a conscious "belief" or "trend" in making things sound midrangey, I think it's more of a side effect of something else: a lot depends upon genre, but with a lot of the rock stuff it can be hard to avoid excess mids when pushing RMS.

No, I'm not turning this into one of my patented anti-loudness rants; I'm just making the technical observation that it's hard to compress everything tight and *not* have the mids take over, because that's where most of the energy is located.

You can turn up the stuff above 6K all you want but that's not going to make things a whole bunch louder, it'll just make it crisper or more brittle. And there's a limit to what you can do on the low end without having it just become overpowering, and many of it's peaks will be limited down by the RMS push anyway. So that leaves the midrange...which BTW is also where the human ear is most sensitive, exacerbating the situation even more.

G.

 

[AndrewC]

I have noticed this too with certain bands such as Rise Against. Their most recent CD sounds somewhat muddy, especially compared to The Sufferer & the Witness.

 

[bkkornaker]

exactly!

im hearing alot of new released stuff that just doesnt sound so "crispy brittle" as they used to in the past....

 

[AndrewC]

I agree. I prefer the sound of records that came out 5-15 years ago, generally speaking, over the majority of what I hear today. What primarily has changed, I don't know...

 

[bkkornaker]

i dont know....

after hearing some of the new....and the going back to some of my old CDs, i think "my god.....thats so freakin bright!"

im kinda digging the new "smoother" sounds of todays CDs.

 

[AndrewC]

Well, that's the deal-- it's all subjective really. In terms of sound quality, I prefer the analog approach, but it is by far more time consuming, expensive, and leaves you with less options for editing tracks and correcting mistakes. But if I want to listen to U2, I prefer the sound of the Joshua Tree album (before they remastered it) over their more recent albums that were recorded with "today's" technology.

I guess the new sound strikes me as an artificial warmth. So it doesn't seem to add anything other than mud, but that's just me. The mixes come across as too dense and cluttered.

 

[Drummerbones]

You wanna talk about cluttered...check out the two Velvet Revolver CD's. I loved that band and their songs, but the mixes were over-compressed and instrumental separation was almost non-existent. The second album was better than the first in this regard, but that band would have really benefited from a recording & production approach from about 10 or 12 years ago.