[BC] Making music worth listening to

[Robert Orban]

At 08:40 PM 10/21/2007, Robert Meuser wrote:

>Bob:
>
>I must disagree. I a have very varied music tastes. They vary from 
>Opera and classical to Hip  hop and Dance. BUT I will NEVER purchase 
>another CD nor will I purchase current downloaded music because of 
>the piss poor mastering of the current product. I can still get some 
>dance and a little hip hop on Vinyl. Any classical I want must come 
>from a file sharing site. If it is not -20 FS I do not want anything 
>to do with it. Tell your record company buddies to produce decent 
>audio or prepare for unemployment. I will do what I can to help in 
>creating their demise and not shed a tear until they are gone.

I fully agree regarding CD mastering of non-classical material. 
Almost every time I buy a new non-classical CD, I kick myself when I 
hear the same old dynamically dead, screechingly bright, squashed, 
"loud" mastering. I feel like a sucker who has fallen for the same 
con yet again.

I often wonder if this kind of sound is what unconsciously impels 
people not to buy CDs. Yet the illegally filed-shared MP3s have been 
subject to the same mastering and this doesn't keep people from 
downloading them. So I'm not ready to say that current mastering 
practices are what are driving people away from paying for music. 
After all, people continued to listen to FM radio in New York City in 
the '80s when over-aggressive processing made the sound much worse 
than most of today's "hot" CDs. (I still remember visiting NYC around 
that time and being amazed to find only two stations that I could 
listen to for more than 30 seconds before I felt an overwhelming 
compulsion to turn off the radio.)

On the classical side, I have observed mastering excesses only 
rarely. For example, I recently bought this boxed set of J.S. Bach's 
complete works:

http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=142935

and despite the amazingly low price (less than $1 per CD), the sound 
is very good and not at all squashed. I listen to a typical 
non-classical "hot" CD with my car CD player's volume control at 
9:00; This set typically requires setting the control to 1:30, which 
is a very good thing.

In non-classical music, here is an example of what record companies 
could do to make a product that is worth buying just to own the 
physical packaging:

http://us.yesasia.com/en/PrdDept.aspx/code-j/section-music/pid-1004481923/

This is a 12" package (LP-size) that includes a spectacular color 
booklet and a hybrid CD/SACD of the music. The mastering is very 
conservative by today's standards and the recording sounds excellent.

Finally, I *have* done something to communicate to the record 
companies. With Frank Foti, I wrote "What Happens to My Music When 
It's Played on the Radio." This paper is on both the Orban and Omnia 
websites and is included in Bob Katz's book "Mastering Audio."

http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Audio-Second-art-science/dp/0240808371/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2/102-4679774-4982552?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1193083511&sr=1-2

I know from hanging out at some of the mastering discussion groups 
that mastering engineers are well aware of how they are damaging the 
material and do so because the labels require them to. For label 
executives, "loud" still means "competitive." It's the same abnormal 
psychology that has infected radio for 30-some years.

Bob Orban