IMHO the design of popular music for consumption on many different reproduction systems starts well before mixing and mastering. IME starts with the song, arrangement, orchestration, micing, etc., pretty much everything. Again IMHO, that's what it takes to get a top notch professional sounding product. Staring at the mixing stage, it can already be very difficult to arrive at a good, workable solution using tools available to a mix engineer: EQs, panning, compressors, mix level automation, etc.
Last edited:
As far as I know, you have no pro level experience in recording / mastering for music reproduction. Correct me if I'm wrong.
I do not have experience in mixing and recording, but it seems to me that when an artist starts out composing a song on a guitar or piano they have it in their mind that these things will come through on the lowest of all forms of playback. It has happened before : some of my earliest memories are of the Beatles song "Yellow Submarine" from the late 1960s. As a kid I used to really like that song. It may be that you are right.
@BasicHIFI1,
I just wrote a quick paragraph to try to make clear that professional music production tends to be more complex than most people probably imagine. For example, mastering engineers often get blamed for the loudness wars, etc., which is for the most part not their fault, not their decision.
One point I was trying to make before was that with most non-professionally recorded music, and only then switching to professional work starting from the mixing stage it it can be extremely difficult to turn recorded tracks into something of the quality people expect to hear on the radio nowadays. That can be so for a variety of reasons, some of which were mentioned in the previous post.
Of course you are right there have been some notable exceptions. But the exceptions are relatively rare, just as winning lottery jackpots in the millions of dollars is relatively rare. By far the majority of lottery participants are losers, not the winners that get all the publicity (and that so easily come to mind in the public eye). So it is with music production, more or less as a rule of thumb, but its not a strict logical proposition.
Much more could be said, and maybe more people will chime in at some point with something to add.
I just wrote a quick paragraph to try to make clear that professional music production tends to be more complex than most people probably imagine. For example, mastering engineers often get blamed for the loudness wars, etc., which is for the most part not their fault, not their decision.
One point I was trying to make before was that with most non-professionally recorded music, and only then switching to professional work starting from the mixing stage it it can be extremely difficult to turn recorded tracks into something of the quality people expect to hear on the radio nowadays. That can be so for a variety of reasons, some of which were mentioned in the previous post.
Of course you are right there have been some notable exceptions. But the exceptions are relatively rare, just as winning lottery jackpots in the millions of dollars is relatively rare. By far the majority of lottery participants are losers, not the winners that get all the publicity (and that so easily come to mind in the public eye). So it is with music production, more or less as a rule of thumb, but its not a strict logical proposition.
Much more could be said, and maybe more people will chime in at some point with something to add.
Last edited:
The (hobby) projects I've been involved with, both sides of studio glass, mostly fail due to poor material and/or then over processing it. Modern pop on radio sounds pristine, since almost anything is possible nowadays and people are rather good at it, getting to the best possible outcome. Speakers in the studio matter some but eventually it is the people working on the material that make the quality in or out. The second someone demands to distort and kill it to death then dead it is.
Best stuff have emotion baked in and then the recorded and processed quality doesn't matter too much as long as the quality doesn't ruin the content. From purely technical point of view, not considering the content, hobby projects that want to have it fun and not control every aspect of the production tend to come out successfully and those who have very high expectations mostly fail trying to squeeze the last bits of life out of something that didn't have much life from the start. When the material is good and the band and those who have monetary stake on things don't demand silly things I would like to think most engineers would make it sound very very good no matter what speakers they have in the toolset.
In professional music biz there must be higher success rate for the turd as well. I believe they are now able to polish the turd and sell it! I'm not listening modern pop too much, there is no content for me and most arrangements and sounds just feel artificial to meet some LUFS specs or something, too calculated 🙂 So, intended "quality" is not in our or their speakers I say. The quality is baked in to the product, be it reaching your pocket, your nerves or the heart.
Best stuff have emotion baked in and then the recorded and processed quality doesn't matter too much as long as the quality doesn't ruin the content. From purely technical point of view, not considering the content, hobby projects that want to have it fun and not control every aspect of the production tend to come out successfully and those who have very high expectations mostly fail trying to squeeze the last bits of life out of something that didn't have much life from the start. When the material is good and the band and those who have monetary stake on things don't demand silly things I would like to think most engineers would make it sound very very good no matter what speakers they have in the toolset.
In professional music biz there must be higher success rate for the turd as well. I believe they are now able to polish the turd and sell it! I'm not listening modern pop too much, there is no content for me and most arrangements and sounds just feel artificial to meet some LUFS specs or something, too calculated 🙂 So, intended "quality" is not in our or their speakers I say. The quality is baked in to the product, be it reaching your pocket, your nerves or the heart.
I was a musician and RE/P for over two decades, and worked in several different studios. There was no universal criteria for what sonic signature was being pursued with multi-track recordings. Some artists had preferences, brought in records which had the "sound" they liked, and we would compare our tracks to theirs during mixdown (with caveats, of course). Others left it entirely up to the engineer and producer to do what's best for the music. The only time we mixed for a particular media was for radio. That setup typically included steep hipass filtering, compressor/limiters on the stereo mix output, and having a pair of cr@ppy speakers set up as a "reality check". Sometimes we would do two mixes of a song; one for radio, one for the album.
There are huge differences in the "sound" of studios that have nothing to do with the speakers.
I think it is a mistake to view recording studios as any sort of "gold standard" for sound accuracy. It is primarily a creative environment, and anything goes to get the sound you want. I also think it is a mistake to use mixed multi-track recordings of any kind as an "overall reference" recording for evaluating equipment, except for very specific performance criteria. Do some recording on your own and you'll quickly see why.
There are huge differences in the "sound" of studios that have nothing to do with the speakers.
I think it is a mistake to view recording studios as any sort of "gold standard" for sound accuracy. It is primarily a creative environment, and anything goes to get the sound you want. I also think it is a mistake to use mixed multi-track recordings of any kind as an "overall reference" recording for evaluating equipment, except for very specific performance criteria. Do some recording on your own and you'll quickly see why.
That is true, and good music also shines with even lofi recording technques. Some of my favorite music was recorded in a shed in a backyard in the ghetoo's of kingston (Jamaica) trough an prototype of a Soundcraft I mixer (16ch -4 bus) to a 4 track amperex tape machine by the ingenious producer Lee Perry. His studio was more primitive than what most call a demo recording studio but the vast output of that studio belongs to the absolute top of reggae ever made. But Lee Perry was an absolute master in this with at the time of the song below 15 years of music recording and producing on his c.v. (for Studio One, Joe Gibbs, Randy's 17 and his own labels). This is recorded in that 4 track setup in that shed called "The Black Ark studio".
Agree. Although I have not spent much time behind the mixer for music recordings, I have spent decades mixing live - so have some familiarity with mixes. I have never spoken to a producer or mastering engineer who didn't express interest in hearing their work on "a really high end" system. They are all interested in what their mix might sound like on a high end or "killer" system.
That's interesting, I always thought the 'radio mix' was an edited, cut down version of the song, sometimes it is.
Listening to the Lee Perry produced track "I Chase the Devil" is an interesting case in point: I can clearly hear the artists vocals, the guitar, an acoustic ratchet like thing , and later on the electric guitar. What is important is that all of these, in their bandwidth-squeezed form (on my laptop speakers) carries enough meaning to engage the emotions, after all that is why radio worked in the first place. I think transistor radios or to be more exact, the output from transistor radios were the mp3s of the 60's and seventies. Pluses and minuses there.
Yes, sometimes they were edited down. I forgot to mention, sometimes the radio mix was mono (for AM).
There is one thing I should mention: the music makers intend them for all speakers, not just your speakers, but it must be assumed that all the sounds produced from the drums to the bass to the high hat and cymbals, were intended to be heard. So your system must at least produce these sounds or be equalized to force these sounds out, to get some semblance of the original sound at least as it was heard and intended in the studio.
That said, I am equalizing my playback for loudness compensation, which means in effect treble boost since I listen at about 75-80db and nothing more.
That said, I am equalizing my playback for loudness compensation, which means in effect treble boost since I listen at about 75-80db and nothing more.
Yes, there is a good deal of discussion and debate about mastering levels in the music production world. The general thought being that mastering is usually done too loud, louder than normal consumer playback. Because of the equal loudness curves, that's going to change tonal balance from mastering to listening.
Same here. My old ears have little tolerance for high SPLs. Expressed in a different way, it's just not "fun" anymore, as it was when Skynyrd first said "turn it up".
An interesting flight envelope or density plot would have sound quality on the x-axis, RMS power in the y. I suppose that Purifi 1ET400A would occupy a lone point in the upper right hand corner.
In my current state, I could get away with 100X less on the y-axis. Preferrably 50 - just in case ;') On the x? Who knows - I like to think I can still tell when it's good.
I think what happens is that as a young person, you want to listen to it loud, to hear all the sounds, and to feel the effect of the music. When you have a family, you cannot have loud music for too long - the phone rings, someone calls you, and you learn to listen to the subtleties. That said I remember being of the view that unless you listen loud you cannot "hear all the sounds", which is correct, but now there has to be another way. One becomes more analytical.
Thanks for sharing. I noticed he only talked about sound quality and that through his training and continuous experience, he's ablt to maintain his ability. Didnt say much on the SPL adversity side of ageing.
Perhaps you should get your hands on the book "Here, There and Everywhere - My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles". The book is about Geoff Emerick, the sound engineer on the albums Revolver (with Yellow Submarine on it), Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and Abbey Road, all by The Beatles. In the book it is described that Geoff in his mind 'saw' (in pictures/colours) how to achieve certain sounds and 'soundscapes'.
When Lennon wanted his voice to sound like it was coming down a mountain (for the extraordinary song "Tommorrow Never Knows", also on the album Revolver) Geoff 'solved' this by routing Lennon's voice through a Leslie organ amplifier, which had rotating speakers, and than mike that amplifier and record it. The result can be heared in the last chorus of the song. At the time (1966) the use of effects other than reverb/tape echo/compression was still unusual.
The bassguitar on the songs "Paperback Writer" and "Rain" was recorded using a loudspeaker as the microphone, facing the bass amplifier at a very close distance.
The Beatles were known to create most of their songs in the studio. The process started with an idea/lyrics that one of them presented to the others in the studio, not knowing upfront how the finished song would going to sound like.
Last edited: