Old Guys and Compression

[Tonedrone]

I would like to start by saying I do understand the current trend of compression use on modern masters/mixes/recordings. I myself like wide and dynamic recordings of old; I think Rudy Van Geldar was placed here by Aliens to embarrass all of us trying to cut albums. That being said I would like to pose the question, would engineers 30-40 years ago have used more compression if they were given modern options (multi-tracking, isolation, modern comps with more control, ect). I would be willing to bet that if showed a modern mastering job to a guy like Glyn Johns, or Brian Wilson (showed them 40 years ago) they would crap there pants, and I bet half would completely change the way they produce.
My point is this, after 30-40 years of recording a certain way, very few are going to question there approach, or there results. Sometimes the backlash of modern recording sounds like stubbornness. As for the glory days of noise, flutter, and sloppy edits, I love it all, just not the pretensions that modern recording techniques are some how going backwards.

Just food for thought.

Tonedrone

 

[Chris Shaeffer]

One thing to think about is how the philosophy of recording and mixing has changed over the years.

It used to be that recording and mixer were both oriented towards capturing a live music event and reproducing it accurately. Compression was a tool to help overcome the limitations of the recording medium and the trick was to use it in a way that didn't distract from the natural sound of the live recording. In general, the musicians already knew how to control their own dynamics- the engineers job was to capture that as well as possible.

With the advent of the CD things started shifting. While on paper CD's have a much greater dynamic range, the nuances of the sound tend to get garbled more as the volume decreases: there is much less resolution at the bottom of the scale than at the top. So compression is again used to avoid the problems at the lower end of the dynamics range.

Meanwhile, the theory of recording being to reproduce a live music event was rapidly dimishing in pop music. Advances in recording technology had made all kinds of things possible that weren't really feasible before. More interesting and ear catching mixs were possible if you didn't limit yourself to what the musicians could produce in real time. Compression was one of the creative tools being used in new ways.

Then add the explosive growth of radio and music as a money making machine. Sales of records began to take precedence over the audio quality (i.e. long term listenability) of the records and we eventually arrived at the point we have now: where recording and mastering all seems to be geared towards getting every last bit of your dynamic range squished into the top 6dB.

I wouldn't say this is a backwards trend at all, except when you consider that such squishing was only done way back when mastering engineers were trying to make an LP cut that would fit the whole recording. I would also say its not a good trend for musicality. Why have 100+ dB of dynamic range when you're only using 6?!

My ears hurt.

Chris

 

[bleyrad]

Why have 100+ dB of dynamic range when you're only using 6?!

I read this kind of statement often, and I see the point for sure.
But, it's a little more complicated than that. In a way, extreme compression and limiting make the benefits of lower noise and distortion even better. Limiting doesn't just squash down the peaks, especially when we're talking digital - first, it boosts up everything (including the noise floor and harmonics), then squashes only the loudest material (which has the least noise and harmonics). In other words, the THD+noise is getting a BIG BOOST in mastering, so good converters on the way in are more important than ever.

 

[Ronan]

Vintage recordings almost always had tons of compression. It was a neccesity to deal with the noise floor of older tape formats.

The thing that has changed a lot in recent years is the use of extreme hard digital limiting. Though compression and hard limiting are techniques in the same family they have very different applicatioins and end results.