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from the some-art,-some-science,-and-a-whole-lotta-black-magic dept.
According to many Metallica devotees, the official version of the band's 2008 record Death Magnetic is not the one worth listening to. Upon the album's release, fan forums exploded in disgust, choked with complaints that the songs sounded shrill, distorted, ear-splitting. These listeners liked the music and the songwriting, but everything was so loud they couldn't really hear anything. There was no nuance. Their ears hurt. And these are Metallica fans—people ostensibly undeterred by extremity. But this was too much.
The consensus seemed to be that Death Magnetic was a good record that sounded like shit. That the whole thing was drastically over-compressed, eliminating any sort of dynamic range. That it had been ruined in mastering. Eventually, more than 12,000 fans signed a petition in protest of the "unlistenable" product, and a mass mail-back-a-thon of CDs commenced. The whole episode provoked a series of questions, not just about what had gone wrong with Death Magnetic but about the craft in question: What is mastering, exactly? How does it work? Beyond the engineers themselves, almost no one seems to know.
An article on sound engineering, but the real question is, people listened to Metallica after 2000?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 24 2016, @09:25PM
Not Pitchfork. Those twits wouldn't know engineering if it had a beard, plastic glasses, and was carrying a case of PBR. They can't even differentiate between a recording, mix, and mastering engineer. Dark arts my ass. It's as if we haven't had a few hundred years of recording audio to study.
The loudness wars has already been pretty well documented. Bands are being idiots not taking the recommendations of studio engineers to heart, and then seem surprised that their albums sound like shit.
It's a product of the times, where most music is listened to on less-than-hi-fi equipment, so the nuances of a good recording aren't as apparent on a heavily compressed mp3. And you have hipster faggots gushing about how much better vinyl sounds, completely ignorant that is a product of mastering for an analogue source and a different eq setting. You could get that sound from a CD too. There is nothing inherently superior to vinyl.
There's a lot of bullshit and snake oil out there with regards to audio, and obfuscating the issue with idiocy like "dark arts" isn't helping.
Numerous bands on bandcamp have at least got the fundamentals down, with droves of websites dedicated to helping the home recordist. Let's not forget Metallica ok'ed the final release of Death Magnetic. That's how they wanted it to sound.
(Score: 2) by Alfred on Tuesday May 24 2016, @09:52PM
Those twits wouldn't know engineering if it had a beard, plastic glasses, and was carrying a case of PBR.
You misspelled "hipsters." Unless PBR is some acronym for a pocket calculator of some sort?? But still the wrong kind of "engineer."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 25 2016, @12:17AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 25 2016, @12:38AM
Study of acoustics predates Edison which is part and parcel of recording.
Oh and:
http://boingboing.net/2011/12/15/the-worlds-first-audio-recor.html [boingboing.net]
(Score: 3, Informative) by JNCF on Wednesday May 25 2016, @01:12AM
Audio recording and playback was invented by Thomas Edison only in 1877.
Study of acoustics predates Edison which is part and parcel of recording.
Oh and:
http://boingboing.net/2011/12/15/the-worlds-first-audio-recor.html [boingboing.net]
Your statement may not contradict GP AC's. It depends on whether GP AC intended "audio recording and playback" to be one item or two. The article you linked notes that Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville had no way to play back his recordings. If you take "audio recording and playback" as one item, whoever invents the last-to-be-invented part and combines them invents the combination of those parts.
I'm not saying anything about the history of audio recordings, just whether or not your statements are in conflict. I think you may be talking past GP AC, instead of with.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Wednesday May 25 2016, @02:45AM
We do however have some thousands of years of experience in delivering music to an audience. Mozart, Beethoven, and others never worried about:
“to make the song competitive in the marketplace.”
How to master classical music: Take a copy of what the musicians produced, press it to wax cylinder/vinyl/CD. There's never been any artificial need to "make it competitive in the marketplace" by adding musical MSG.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 25 2016, @09:24AM
The Michael Schenker Group would have sucked without MSG.
(Score: 1) by oldmac31310 on Wednesday May 25 2016, @03:31PM
No, they sucked regardless.
(Score: 1) by toddestan on Saturday May 28 2016, @02:17AM
It's a lot more complicated than that if you want it to sound good. You don't want the trumpets to be too loud, or the drums too soft, the flute to get drowned out, and so forth. So you typically have several microphones positioned in and around the orchestra, which you then have to mix it all together to get it to sound right. Generally you'd also want it to be in stereo too (or perhaps even surround, though that never really caught on). Yes, you can try to have one (or two) well positioned microphones and then press it right to wax/vinyl/CD/whatever but it won't sound nearly as good.
(Score: 2) by purple_cobra on Monday May 30 2016, @12:14PM
"...the flute to get drowned out..."
Please send this person to record Jethro Tull!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 25 2016, @07:13AM
Sure, you *could*. But I'd say that being physically unable[1] to have as compressed sound as they like to put on a CD does fall under "inherently superior" :-)
Being unable to sound as bad as a compressed CD is a quality in a world where everyone competes for the worst sound quality.