Mastering Technique or Mastering - well.....crap???

[zip]

Have any of you heard of a band out of the UK called "Delirious"?? They have a CD which was mastered out of Abbey Road in London called "King of Fools". I love the music but the mix / mastering seemed like compression overkill.

Lemme explain. I imported the files into my editor to find the mix extremely loud / compressed. For most passages of the mix there were virtually NO PEAKS!! I'm talking damn near solid blue color for each of the tracks. (in SoundForge) I've seen (& heard a few loud mixes in my day but this takes the cake! It seems like they mixed all parts of the song to be as loud as possible then compressed the shit out of it!!

So this is my question...

Is this a mastering technique or a studio engineer gone haywire???

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[BBB]

Sounds like overmastering/overcompression.

I'm curious. Did you notice the "excessive" compression before or after you imported it into SoundForge?

 

[little z]

By George, I think you've got it!!!!!!!!

Bravo, even though I have not heard what you are referring to, it sounds like you hit it on the head!!! I have heard a few over-compressed tracks and songs....... just all the life and power squashed right out of it!!!! Boo, Hiss!!!! But, if you're a bad arse, you might be able to pull off some kewl "effects" with compression, but I feel it's better used as a tool................
Little Z (Steve)

 

[zip]

I noticed some of the overcompression before the editor but frankly it was hard to hear. The bass / drums were a bit squashed which gave me some indication. The REAL problem was the equalization. The midrange in the 1500 - 300 Hz range was just plain excessive. I can see what they were going for...the english style crunching rock guitar...but the mids were so loud they were covering the vocals and about everything else!! It appears they may have set the guitar tone / level and then added everything else. A good example of this is what happened AFTER I re-EQed each song.

After I cut out between 3 and 4 dB at 400 and 1000Hz (Q value about 3) and applied a low shelf .... the bass was STILL too loud. After fixing that the volume of the track was brought down a bit too low so rather than using a mastering compressor and compounding the problem....I brought the overall volume up 1 to 2 dB and then set the level at -0.2dB to remove the few clips which occurred. WaLA!! Sounds great.

Maybe I need to rethink (I am) my future career....

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[LongWaveStudio]

sometimes it can cause the track to have much more energy when it's compressed so much. everything just sounds so tight. when we master a lot of "indie-rock" bands, the guy who master's here sometimes compresses the fuck out of them simply cus the drums sound out of this world when they sounds all squashed up. the guitars go mental and everything is just given more energy. abbey road producers dont go haywire! if it soudns overcompressed, it's for a reason. i know the guys who produce there, and they're all excellent producers!

 

[zip]

LongWave....

Upon a closer listen to the CD, I found overcompression not to be so much the issue...

Maybe the original mix presented TO Abbey Road was not ideal. Once I EQ'ed the mix and reset the volume to be more indicative of most commercial CD's I believe it sounds much better. In the original mix the midrange volumes were so loud the guitar was completely dominant in the mix. This (to me) had a spin-off effect on all the other levels. What I mean by this is once I cut the mids - the bass frequencies had to be cut. Maybe this is a preference on my behalf but I like BALANCE in a mix.

You make a very valid point that this may have been the sound the band desired. What I found was a mix that when played on my home stereo (I've got a good set-up w/ Thiel Studio monitors) almost distorted when played at anything other than a low volume. I feel a good balanced mix should be able to be played at any volume desired and still sound good.

So my point is....maybe it had nothing to do at all with the mastering process but was more closely tied to the original mix. I realize Abbey has created very high quality music over the years so I appologise if my title seemed to knock them. This was not my intent. I really was just curious if this was a technique being used today or if it is (or was) just a band / producer preference.....

Since you are in the UK I'm sure someone you know has this CD. If you know of someone who does give it a listen and send me an eMail with your thoughts. In any case I think you will enjoy the music. I am hooked on it but to be honest will listen to my version vs. the one I purchased.

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