Re: mastering on 'oblivion with bells'
 

Not to be too much of a dork, I put together a little waveform sampling.
http://www.humanwire.net/uwmaster.jpg
Two Underworld mixes on top (Mo Move and Lovely Broken Thing)
"Prodigy - Breathe" in the middle.
and "Outkast - Hey Ya" on the bottom, (which is notoriously loud).

The Underworld tracks aren't nearly as bad as the Prodigy or the Outkast mix. There are a more microdynamics in the Underworld mixes (though not too much).

:)

Re: mastering on 'oblivion with bells'
 

Re: mastering on 'oblivion with bells'
 

heh, that shows the differences pretty clearly.
I too hate these horribly squashed cd's you sometimes hear, although I must say I don't encounter it so much in the music I buy. But when I get some popular band/artist on a big label to do a commercial for at work, the sound is invariably compressed to death.

Re: mastering on 'oblivion with bells'
 

If anyone has bought the new 65daysofstatic album, they recorded it so it wasnt compressed to fuck. The quiet bits are quite and the loud bits are loud which makes a good listen.

Production and matering has always been good on UW releases i think.

Though i was listening to Dubno the other day, dont it seem quiet?

Re: mastering on 'oblivion with bells'
 

the other mixes look more compressed (a lot) but they all look around the same volume. which is a good thing.

Re: mastering on 'oblivion with bells'
 

well yeah, everything these days will always be recorded to cd at maximum volume (0 dB or -0.1 dB to avoid clipping) to optimise the use of available bit depth/dynamic range.

Dubno seems to come in at about -5 to -10 dB and doesn't seem to have much in the way of compression or limiting on the final mix so that's why it sounds quiet in comparison.
You can see quite dramatic differences in the waveform between something like Cowgirl from Dubno, and Cowgirl from 1992-2002. Although I'd say it looks more dramatic than it sounds, and even though they applied a limiter to squash the peaks, there's still a fair bit of dynamics left. You have to consider that during 1992-2002 they probably had access to much more advanced mastering equipment than they did during Dubno.

Re: mastering on 'oblivion with bells'
 

oi, mate! amen to that!!
the dynamic range is wonderful, and i love mr. smith's opinion on mixing.
to sit in on a sesh...well,
this would be grand. ^___^

Re: mastering on 'oblivion with bells'
 

Wasn't aware of one until now...thanks.:cool:

Re: mastering on 'oblivion with bells'
 

There touring America soon on a support slot and then back again to supoort The Cure!

Re: mastering on 'oblivion with bells'
 

This is a very common practice in digital music and has been since before - compression is used to achieve sound levels higher than what they normally should be. It makes shit punchy as hell but totally ruins the musicality of the tracks. I don't think I've heard a poorly mastered UW album yet though - so I really do have good hopes for OWB.