Dylan’s comments on modern recordings
From a 22 August 2006 Reuters story: “I don’t know anybody who’s made a record that sounds decent in the past twenty years, really,” the 65-year-old rocker said in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine.
-and-
“You listen to these modern records, they’re atrocious, they have sound all over them,” he added. “There’s no definition of nothing, no vocal, no nothing, just like … static.”
Discuss. I’m not sure whether he’s referring to arrangement issues or the “loudness battles,” where the signal is compressed to the max so everything is loud (bye-bye dynamic range).
October 16th, 2006 at 8:08 am
I think it’s more the arrangements over the compression….. It reminds me of Phil Spector’s “Wall of Sound” he produced on numerous ’70’s recordings including “Let It Be” by the Beatles….. I didn’t care much for his over-producing…. Too many un-necessary instruments resulting in loss of individual definition which basically turned all the parts of the piece into lead instruments causing a muddled (static) mess….. Thank God and Greyhound, they brought out “Let It Be – Naked”….. What the hell was George Harrison thinking when he brought in Phil Spector?……
October 16th, 2006 at 9:48 am
Here’s an interesting article on the topic of compression, etc… Imperfect Sound Forever.
October 16th, 2006 at 10:43 am
Great article, TTop. Thanks. His description of the peak limiting production/mastering being “fatiguing” is just the word I’d use. The Chile Peppers album he gives is a good example.
A couple years ago a friend forwarded me an article from Prorec about the production of the most recent Rush album. Pro-rec must have gone out of business, but I found the text of the article here:
http://www.brooklynvegan.com/archives/2006/08/bob_dylan_says.html
It’s about 2/3 of the way down. I really like some of the work on this album, but it’s unalienable.
Watching bands play on late-night TV is excruciating. The network compresses the audio signal so much that, for example, a quiet vocal part is as loud as the band playing full throttle. And when the full band does come in, you can hear the “whoosh” as the volume of the vocal comes down even with the level of the band. Yuck yuck yuck. It’s almost as bad as listening to classical music on the radio, where an oboe solo is as loud as the full symphonic bombast.
OK, I better stop now, lest I sound like a crank. (Too late…)
October 16th, 2006 at 10:45 am
I meant it’s unlistenable, not unalienable. That’s what I get for mindlessly clicky through the spell checker!
October 17th, 2006 at 11:08 am
Thank you, TTop and Huskysooner, for the great info links you provided…… I had no idea that we are living in such a “compressed” world….. I don’t buy too many new CD’s like I used to, so I mostly listen to the older ones in my collection and even to an occasional vinyl LP….. I still have over a thousand or so of them in my collection (Jek has all my Beatles vinyl)….. I do need to get a new turntable one of these days….
October 19th, 2006 at 2:22 pm
I also found something recently buried in the “Advanced” menu of my Comcast DVR. A compression setting for audio! By default it was on “High”. Ugh. I turned it off.
October 20th, 2006 at 1:12 pm
Thanks for the tip, TTop, I’m going to check the manual for my DVR right now….. I’m really getting COMpressED over the whole thing…..