mastering on 'oblivion with bells'

[viddy]

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).

[sanakan]

Originally Posted by karl

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[King of Snake]

Originally Posted by viddy

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).

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.

[Dirty0900]

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?

[bryantm3]

Originally Posted by viddy

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).

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

[King of Snake]

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.

[selector]

Not to be too much of a dork, I put together a little waveform sampling.
http://www.humanwire.net/uwmaster.jpg

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. ^___^

[the mongoose]

Originally Posted by Dirty0900

the new 65daysofstatic album

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

[Dirty0900]

Originally Posted by the mongoose

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

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

[botkiller]

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.