Mastering is all about being loud.

  • Thread starter Thread starter ruben68
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I think the best mastering comes with making the track as loud as possible with the most dynamics, a tight bass, and the least distortion, but I do electronic music so that's just my aesthetics. A great mix is half the battle.
 
I'll give you the great mix being half (more like 80%) of the battle. But you realize that "as loud as possible" and "with the most dynamics" are perfectly at odds with each other...
 
ruben68 said:
Mastering right now is about being loud. It is so annoying. I have heard re-mastered versions of great albums like Supertramp - Breakfast In America and they just ruined that wonderful mix.
Just turn the volume up that's all. I had to say this.
Thank you
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yes, often it is about making something loud, but the decision doesn't come from the mastering engineer. the client is asking for it.

further: there is "loud" & there is "too loud" (for the mix, the production, genre, etc.). typically the "too loud" destroys the mixes.
 
As Bob Katz said, "It's not how loud you make it, it's how you make it loud."

Cheers :)
 
I may be mistaken, but I vaguely recall there were reports of the industry attempting to make some sort of "loudness normalization" the default mode for all music players (software/hardware) in order to counter the loudness wars. Anyone knows what happened to it?
 
Almost every account I've read of producers and engineers from the 60s includes some comment on how they tried to cut the hottest masters possible. It was a real bugbear of studios in England that American records were always so much louder. I get the feeling that the limitations of analog actually worked in it's favour in terms of hot masters not 'overheating' the sound once on disc whereas digital's greater headroom may be an example of omnipotence having the potential to shoot itself in the foot {if indeed omnipotence has feet}.

I typed that in my sleep ! :D
 
Was it the musicians and engineers that wanted the music so loud that is was detrimental to the audio quality? I don't really know, but I would guess that decision was made by someone more interested in what they thought would make more money in lieu of a musical reason.
I see no issue in audiophiles fighting for what they believe in and attempting to educate the public. Many people only know what they are exposed to, why wouldn't people in the engineering business that care about their craft want to let people know there is a better option?
I recently played a random modern tune for my 16 year old. Then I played him a random 80's tune at the same level. He couldn't get over the dynamic difference of the music. Especially the drums.
 
And was it an 80's release of an 80's tune, or a 2010's release of an 80's tune? Big difference there.
 
Seafroggys said:
And was it an 80's release of an 80's tune, or a 2010's release of an 80's tune? Big difference there.
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80's release I believe. Dynamics difference was quite noticeable. Heck, even driving around in the car listening to the 80's station on XM you can hear a huge difference in the impact of the drums compared to a modern channel.
 
grimtraveller said:
I get the feeling that the limitations of analog actually worked in it's favour in terms of hot masters not 'overheating' the sound once on disc whereas digital's greater headroom may be an example of omnipotence having the potential to shoot itself in the foot {if indeed omnipotence has feet}.

I typed that in my sleep ! :D
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Digital's greater headroom doesn't come from it being able to be "louder," it comes from the lower noise floor than analog media. Not to be nitpicky, grim, jus' sayin'.

Either way, it's a sad state of affairs for digital. Either it's shooting itself in the foot or, as I would put it, all of those open, nice, quiet, clean decibels and only four of the fuckers being used. Sigh.

And I've never heard that about British versus American mastering. Very interesting!
 
BrentDomann said:
Digital's greater headroom doesn't come from it being able to be "louder," it comes from the lower noise floor than analog media. Not to be nitpicky, grim, jus' sayin'.
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If I were picking nits I would say that using longer words translates to more dynamic range, and how that dynamic range is distributed between headroom and noise floor is an arbitrary matter of how the converters are calibrated.

[Edit]...and using words that are too short will result in less dynamic range than some analog.
 
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