another casualty of the loudness wars
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another casualty of the loudness wars
A Place to Bury Strangers kill a 10" vinyl record press
Seems like someone somewhere along the line should have thought to turn the fader down a dB or two...
Seems like someone somewhere along the line should have thought to turn the fader down a dB or two...
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As someone who was a production manager for a vinyl pressing plant for a number of years - and has mastered hundreds of vinyl sides - this article is utter bullsh*t.
First off - while lots of things can damage a press (it's a mechanical device with lots of moving parts subject to extreme pressure and heat) - a press can not be destroyed only by the presence of wide/deep modulations on the stamper in it! And second - if this happened more likely during the cutting of the lacquer master - i.e. smoking the cutter head due to too many high frequencies present in the source pre-master - then it's the fault of the cutting engineer for not using an appropriate amount of high frequency limiting or LPF when transferring the program to the master.
Best regards,
Steve Berson
First off - while lots of things can damage a press (it's a mechanical device with lots of moving parts subject to extreme pressure and heat) - a press can not be destroyed only by the presence of wide/deep modulations on the stamper in it! And second - if this happened more likely during the cutting of the lacquer master - i.e. smoking the cutter head due to too many high frequencies present in the source pre-master - then it's the fault of the cutting engineer for not using an appropriate amount of high frequency limiting or LPF when transferring the program to the master.
Best regards,
Steve Berson
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i saw this article this morning and was meaning to post it here, simply to get this response. when i read it i defnitely had some serious 's going on.Cellotron wrote:As someone who was a production manager for a vinyl pressing plant for a number of years - and has mastered hundreds of vinyl sides - this article is utter bullsh*t.
First off - while lots of things can damage a press (it's a mechanical device with lots of moving parts subject to extreme pressure and heat) - a press can not be destroyed only by the presence of wide/deep modulations on the stamper in it! And second - if this happened more likely during the cutting of the lacquer master - i.e. smoking the cutter head due to too many high frequencies present in the source pre-master - then it's the fault of the cutting engineer for not using an appropriate amount of high frequency limiting or LPF when transferring the program to the master.
Best regards,
Steve Berson
it's about what i expect from Pitchfork, actually.thieves wrote:i saw this article this morning and was meaning to post it here, simply to get this response. when i read it i defnitely had some serious 's going on.Cellotron wrote:As someone who was a production manager for a vinyl pressing plant for a number of years - and has mastered hundreds of vinyl sides - this article is utter bullsh*t.
First off - while lots of things can damage a press (it's a mechanical device with lots of moving parts subject to extreme pressure and heat) - a press can not be destroyed only by the presence of wide/deep modulations on the stamper in it! And second - if this happened more likely during the cutting of the lacquer master - i.e. smoking the cutter head due to too many high frequencies present in the source pre-master - then it's the fault of the cutting engineer for not using an appropriate amount of high frequency limiting or LPF when transferring the program to the master.
Best regards,
Steve Berson
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Re: another casualty of the loudness wars
Total Bullcrap.signorMars wrote:A Place to Bury Strangers kill a 10" vinyl record press
Seems like someone somewhere along the line should have thought to turn the fader down a dB or two...
Howling at the neighbors. Hoping they have more mic cables.
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I'm surprised that they are aware of anything related to excessive loudness/flattening over at Pitchfork. I thought they were all deaf over there. Seriously. It's not entirely clear that the reviewer is on board with the overall mastering compression issue, but that article gives me hope that they don't just see all loudness as good.
BTW, I have always hated the Neutral Milk Hotel album that everybody here loves (i forget the name just now) because it's so much louder than anything else in my CD changer and when I shuffle the songs that darned album makes me poop my pants whenever it comes on. That album is prolly 10 years old by now? Jeez.
BTW, I have always hated the Neutral Milk Hotel album that everybody here loves (i forget the name just now) because it's so much louder than anything else in my CD changer and when I shuffle the songs that darned album makes me poop my pants whenever it comes on. That album is prolly 10 years old by now? Jeez.
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two notes on this... i know some of the folks over at pitchfork, there's a lot of good people running that site. not to mention they've put on one of the most affordable, entertaining music festivals since lollapalooza mk1. they're just in the shitty business of reviewing records... to compound the problem, they review pretentious indie music, it's hard to even talk about that sometimes without seeming like a douche.Tatertot wrote:I'm surprised that they are aware of anything related to excessive loudness/flattening over at Pitchfork. I thought they were all deaf over there. Seriously. It's not entirely clear that the reviewer is on board with the overall mastering compression issue, but that article gives me hope that they don't just see all loudness as good.
BTW, I have always hated the Neutral Milk Hotel album that everybody here loves (i forget the name just now) because it's so much louder than anything else in my CD changer and when I shuffle the songs that darned album makes me poop my pants whenever it comes on. That album is prolly 10 years old by now? Jeez.
as for that neutral milk hotel album... i own it, like it, but not nearly as much as some. the distortion was done in tracking/mixing... all in the analog realm. there really isn't digital clipping going on there. (at least that i can hear).
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Bingo.thieves wrote:
they're just in the shitty business of reviewing records... to compound the problem, they review pretentious indie music, it's hard to even talk about that sometimes without seeming like a douche.
Yeah, it's not a distortion problem, it's just a simple issue of it being too darned loud. They elegantly made it that loud, though, unlike the White Stripes new one which is just grotesque.thieves wrote: as for that neutral milk hotel album... i own it, like it, but not nearly as much as some. the distortion was done in tracking/mixing... all in the analog realm. there really isn't digital clipping going on there. (at least that i can hear).
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Smells like someone wants some punky cred in their promo--"our music is SO LOUD it breaks the machines that make records." Criminy.According to an NME.com story confirmed by a publicist, the "red noise levels" on the master tape for "Gash" were so high that the process of transferring them to disc resulted in the destruction of the equipment manufacturing the record. To add insult to injury, the press was one of the few 10" presses left in the UK. You guys ever think about turning it down just a notch?
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"Lots of people are nostalgic for analog. I suspect they're people who never had to work with it." ? Brian Eno
All the DWLB music is at http://dwlb.bandcamp.com/
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What? Music journalists don't understand the recording or mastering process? Not new news. How many times have we seen mixing and mastering interchanged, or some assistant to the assistant given credit for recording an album, or some total BS about breaking a lathe. Wait, breaking a lathe is a new one! Let's run it.
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