On Wed, 11 Apr 2007 11:24:53 -0600 (MDT) "Bearcat M. Sandor" <HomeTheater@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > > Blame the labels and the mastering methods that they insist upon. > > There's a great article by Rip Rowan using Rush's Vapor Trails as > > an example here: > > http://www.prorec.com/prorec/articles.nsf/articles/8A133F52D0FD71AB86256C2E005DAF1C > > Well, Rush is imfamous for bad mastering aren't they? It's a shame. You'd > think they'd want to get a good drum sound what with Niel Pert and all. > > When you speak of "mastering methods" what specificly are you referring > too? I could not get that article to load, so i apologise if the answer is > contained within it. Here's a link to the Google cache of the article: http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:RbOJj6KLsO8J:www.prorec.com/prorec/articles.nsf/articles/8A133F52D0FD71AB86256C2E005DAF1C+mastering+rush+audio&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us Basically, mastering is an audio manipulation process that's done after the final mix is delivered. Done correctly, it enhances the final mix by applying equalization and compression. (There's plenty more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastering ) What has been happening more and more often, though, is that the labels want to optimize the music for play on the radio, and thus want to minimize any dynamics in the music for fear that you'll lose interest and change the station during a quieter passage. Thus they have the mastering engineer compress the hell out of the music, making it all universally loud and thus "good". (They seem to forget that 95% of all radio stations then add another layer of far too much compression, making it sound even worse.) I found a good article on this at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war Rush does indeed seem to be famous for bad mastering, but in all fairness, I do not know how much sway they have with their label. -- ====================================================================== Joe Hartley - UNIX/network Consultant - jh@xxxxxxxxxxxx Without deviation from the norm, "progress" is not possible. - FZappa _______________________________________________ Linux-audio-user mailing list Linux-audio-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://lists.linuxaudio.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/linux-audio-user
