[Ardour-Users] [OT] mastering madness

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Fri, 2011-05-27 at 15:34 +0200, Jörn Nettingsmeier wrote:
> On 05/27/2011 02:52 PM, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
> 
> > I've got the "Blood Sugar Sex Magik" from the RedHotChiliPeppers. The
> > compositions are still ok, but the mixing already is shoot, e.g. the
> > drums are a hardcore compressed sludge.
> 
> if you think that one's bad, check out their "californication" album. 
> again, ok songwriting (even though they are repeating themselves at 
> times), and a great band, but the mastering is absofuckinglutely insane.
> 

Full ACK they repeated themselves, resp. since the Blood Sugar Sex Magik
they repeat this stile AFAIK for all later albums.

Full ACK to the loudness war issue. IIRC even some of the averaged
customers wanted their money back, regarding to "clipping". I guess it
wasn't clipping, but using the limiter involuntary as a distortion
effect, but I never listened to later RedHotChillyPeppers more exact,
I'm not sure.

Btw. JAMin is one of the best compressor/ limiters I know. It's
absolutely possible to freeze at 0 dB full scale without hearing the
compressor "pumping" ("pumpen" as we say in Germany - Do you know the
term in English?). I hope not to many people misuse JAMin this way.

It's frustrating that people rate music by loudness.

I'm not a Katz disciple, I like compressed pop music, but there should
be a limit and "we" already have exceeded this limit.

Regarding to the snare issue IMO it was much more evil in the middle
80's, when hard drum sounds were common. Since the 90's IMO the
drum(machine) sounds became softer again. IIRC Lene Lovich's "Don't kill
the animals" is an example par excellence for a dominating hard snare on
two and four.