On Wed, Apr 11, 2007 at 11:22:10AM -0600, Bearcat M. Sandor wrote: > > > Iron Maiden's latest album was released without any mastering... the > > mix that went to press came right form the mix studio. > > > > -- Brett > I have that one and it is excellent. So why do some of the > not-so-well-known outfits (Pagan's Mind, Deamons and Wizards) sound so > bad, while bands like Tool soudn great? Nine Inch Nails is an example of > great studio work, but then again i think Trent Reznor does his own work. > > I would say that 85% of my metal and rock sounds aweful. Aside from mastering, which people have already talked about: I think metal and loud rock in general is inherently hard to record well. All the source sounds are very loud and fighting for space in overlapping frequency ranges. Distorted guitars have a dense spectrum and almost no dynamic range aside from "off" and "on". Somehow you have to translate the live excitement to a home playback system that will be 30 dB quieter than what you started with. So I would guess the difference in sound quality is a mixture of A) the band's arranging and playing skills - if the acoustic sound is a mess the engineer's fighting a losing battle from the start; and B) the engineer's skill with the genre. There can be a huge difference between a first-rate mix engineer who really knows what the material calls for, and the local guy just starting out with a protools rig and charging $20 an hour. It takes a lot of time and experience to learn to engineer really well - especially mixing. Gear matters too, but not nearly as much. I've heard some amazing stuff come out of a Mackie and an ADAT, and that was because of the guy running it. I think if you took Iron Maiden and their engineers and locked them in my hypothetical $20/hour local project studio, they might complain about the gear and the space but the result would probably sound a LOT better than if you took a less-experienced band and engineer and put them in a $10,000 studio with world-class gear. -- Paul Winkler http://www.slinkp.com _______________________________________________ Linux-audio-user mailing list Linux-audio-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://lists.linuxaudio.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/linux-audio-user
