how do things sound great in all situations?

[saag paneer]

i just flew from Chicago to SF with my iPod and a pair of crummy $30 behringer headphones. between the crummy headphones and the noise of the plane, everything sounded terrible. the headphones have some awful bump in the mid-mids, and the highs and lows are dull on a good day, and once the plane's rumble got factored in, i couldn't enjoy listening to anything.

and then i put on Beck's Sea Change, which in my personal opinion is a great-sounding record. and even despite the 'phones and the plane it totally came through. i mean, it would have sounded better on my stereo and better still on my monitors, but it was certainly above the listenability threshold; it sounded musical in a way that various (mostly less recent and/or less slickly recorded) other things didn't. the highs had a little bit of sparkle; the bass sounded melodic instead of thuddy; the mids sounded even instead of pinched.

so here is my question: how is this possible?

i mean, i know it sounds good because it's well-mixed and well-mastered. (i suspect the mastering is the key here, although i'm open to correction.) but how do the mixing and mastering engineers make it strong enough to stand up to that kind of abuse?

i hope this question isn't too vague. i understand the concept of making things that translate. but given the awful weaknesses of the listening environment in this case, how could any recording still sound OK?

does this make sense?

[jajjguy]

Interesting question, and I think about this a lot. I think it's about balance and coverage. You want the whole sound spectrum to be balanced, and you want every part of it to be covered. That way, when your shitty listening environment cuts out huge chunks of it, what's left is all stuff you meant for people to hear.

Take a really well made album and start messing with the EQ knobs on your stereo. Sure, boosting the treble (for example) makes it treblier, but it still sounds like the album, and it still sounds pretty good. Why? Because the stuff you're boosting sounds good. If, on the other hand, it's not so good a recording and there's a lot of crap up in the treble that's being masked by other frequencies, then boosting that will make it sound worse.

I think that the loudness stuff that gets done in mastering is very much about this coverage thing. If it's shaped and limited to the point that every part of the spectrum is at maximum, then you've got full coverage. (But of course if overdone or done badly, this can suck.)

[ottokbre]

I was thinking a lot about this over the weekend. I was hiking through this dense forest with a 45 pound pack and my Sony MD Sport pumping the latest 'Do Make Say Think' release.

In all the effort and heavy breathing, even through these little in-ear headphones, I could hear the entire studio it was recorded in. The imageing was so good that I could place the entire mix.

I don't think these guys have acess to the same massive studio power that Beck does. Yet they got the same level of quliaty that comes through no matter what you listen to.

I think having spectural reference points is key. setting that guitar here and having empty space until you get to the lower register (bass?) is actually a good thing. Because psyco-acousticly speaking, your mind's ear will help fill in the rest. Happens in Jazz recordings a lot and I think that's what has created the cult of hi-fi. Space in music. It's essentially what the new Beck album is about. Three major acoustic forces; guitar, voice strings.

I came to these conclusions:

1) Souce is everything, but a close second is the space around it
2) Mastering shall never be under estimated

I think this is gonna influenced my goals a lot. I thought I wanted a ton of great pre's, but now I just wanna get the space in top form and know what insturments/mics go best there.

[todd]

this is obviously not a technical response to your question, but:
Nigel Godrich is a genius and Beck is a genius and thus....

thanks,
todd

[saag paneer]

those are great replies. keep them coming.

the point about Beck and Nigel Godrich being geniuses: obviously that's true, and it's helped me clarify something about my question: there are aspects of their genius that i at least understand on some basic level. like, i get the concept of 'writing a song with a lovely sad melody' or 'arranging strings to sound surprising and fresh and interesting, instead of cliched the way strings usually sound in pop music,' or even 'mixing a song so that each part occupies its own space in the mix and still relates to the gestalt.' i can't do any of those things, but at least i know what i'm going for. but 'making a song that sounds so good that it would still sound great over a celphone' ... well, that's a little harder to conceptualize.

the idea about making sure the whole frequency spectrum is covered corresponds very well with my experience in listening to the record -- it did indeed sound like there was a lot of musical information at every frequency, so there was a lot of richness left even after the headphones had removed a lot of it.

but i think it's also true that if 'every part of the spectrum is at maximum,' there's no space or interest or dynamics to engage the ear.

something to do with multiband compression/dynamic EQ, maybe? any mastering-type folks want to chime in?

[brian beattie]

It's arrangement. I'm not familiar with sea change, but I've got odelay, mutations, midnite vultures and mellow gold. look at "i'm a loser, baby", or whatever that song's called. It definitely has elements of cheap and distorted, but it sure sounded lovely on every damn radio and stereo I ever heard it on. Beck can arrange. It's the parts and the sounds of the instruments WAY before it's eq and compression. Not just what's playing, but equally important, what's NOT playing at any given moment.
and , just for the sake of discussion, I mixed many records off of my black adats onto dat, and whenever I went into mastering, the mastering engineer had a bit of a challenge to bring it out, to give it the record the kind of broad presence it needed. Ever since I started mixing off of black adats onto an ampex 351, mastering has been far less of a challenge, and the records sound better in more varied cicumstances. and my live to 2 track stuff (all tube analog) are even EASIER to master, and sound even more consistant in more systems.
so, in my opinion, the most important factor is arrangement, (listen to any record you think sounds killer, and I guarantee there's players who know how to stay out of the way of the song), but also a good wallop of subtle harmonic distortion lines up those sounds in a orderly, musical fashion.
brian

[cwileyriser]

I think having spectural reference points is key. setting that guitar here and having empty space until you get to the lower register (bass?) is actually a good thing. Because psyco-acousticly speaking, your mind's ear will help fill in the rest. Happens in Jazz recordings a lot and I think that's what has created the cult of hi-fi. Space in music. It's essentially what the new Beck album is about. Three major acoustic forces; guitar, voice strings.

I came to these conclusions:

1) Souce is everything, but a close second is the space around it
2) Mastering shall never be under estimated

I think this is gonna influence my goals a lot. I thought I wanted a ton of great pre's, but now I just wanna get the space in top form and know what insturments/mics go best there.

That's so key. I know it, but I still haven't LEARNED it. I'm still tempted to fill spaces of spectrum and time. I just need to keep listening to the brilliant records that make such great use of nothingness. The new Will Oldham record does it well. I think one of the reasons that the Norah Jones record is one of the few pop records of recent vintage that I like is because it's full of space.

And true - mastering is best left to the pros and the good pros at that. The last CD I played on was an old timey fiddle band thing that was recorded at college studio as a final project for a recording student. It sounds OK, but I don't think anyone understood why I wanted to have it mastered at a good facility. I think the rest of the band and the engineer were a little miffed in fact. But it was the best $1000 the band has spent.

[jajjguy]

saag wrote:
"but i think it's also true that if 'every part of the spectrum is at maximum,' there's no space or interest or dynamics to engage the ear. "

actually, that is what i think of 'sea change.' it's one of the most boring albums i've ever heard. i gave it away.

some albums that have that 'sound good anywhere' qulity are great, and some aren't. and plenty of great albums don't have that quality. i think sometimes what makes a particular album great can be drastic dynamic range, empty spaces that make you work as a listener, and won't sound good over a cellphone. i'm thinking of talk talk's two masterpieces, spirit of eden and laughing stock.

[bert]

Mastering is crucial to the recording process. Won't sugar coat a turd of a recording but will definitley make a good band's good recording sound totally great.

[AstroDan]

I have a suspicion I may get slammed, but I think that great preamps/mics, a great sounding room, and great talent mixed with a little direction, energy and inspiration all combined will no doubt yield a great sounding product. Of course you don't NEED all of these things, but more times than not, it makes for a classic recipe.

[assfortress]

the new blood brothers gets me the same way. no matter where i listen to it everything sounds great, especially the bass drum. its salmming but not overbearing in huge stereo or in little headphones. it just rocks.

[todd]

jailguy wrote

actually, that is what i think of 'sea change.' it's one of the most boring albums i've ever heard. i gave it away.


are you serious?!! boring how? i
think it's just another example of how beck can turn any style of his songwriting into a masterpiece whether it's some funky club tune or whatever it is. you won't find many songwriters as talented as beck these days but that's obviously just my opinion.


what about albums that sound horrible everywhere like the new dan akroyd/jim belushi abomination? come on guys, give it up!

[todd]

sorry, i quoted wrong...jailguy only wrote the part about the beck album being boring...i wrote the rest.
thanks,
todd

[ottokbre]

Now that Beck is a fullblown Scientologist, I doubt a single penny of mine will ever find itself going his way. I don't care to finance getting his alien off his back to reach OT level 7 or whatever it is they do. I wonder if Travolta will appear on his next album.

Regardless, Seachange has some amazing hilights and overall, I like the album a lot. After listening to the new Radiohead this morning, I really do hear Nigel on those albums. Is it just me or is his style just a hair too imposing? I would'nt mind hearing Radiohead without him for once.

[todd]

ottokbre said:

Now that Beck is a fullblown Scientologist, I doubt a single penny of mine will ever find itself going his way. I don't care to finance getting his alien off his back to reach OT level 7 or whatever it is they do. I wonder if Travolta will appear on his next album.

first of all, who gives a shit?! would beck be supporting terrorism if he were muslim? who cares what he or any other artist spends their money on that they earn through their art? i guess the above comment could go hand in hand with those "drug users/buyers support terrorism" commercials. i'm not supporting or condemning scientology since i don't know much about it, but you make yourself look like a jackass when you talk shit about something without getting all your details in order.
anyway, my point is: it's a round world last time i looked and people's beliefs are their own buisness. whatever can get you through this crazy life without harming anyone else is fine with me...i might not agree with some people's "crazy" beliefs, but will i support their art if i think it's good? you're damn right. will i leave it on the shelf just because they're an asshole or believe in new age philosophy? only if the music sucks.
obviously ottokbre you are entitled to your opinion as well as i expressed above, but my opinion is that cynicism on that level doesn't do anyone any good.
thanks for reading my brief rant,
todd