The loudness war just dropped a big giant pile into the middle of my life

[everybody's x]

I just got my copy of a bands finished CD, it is my first full-length that will actually be released that I engineered and produced.
I excitedly tore it from it's plastic wrap and threw it into the CD player. I was curious to see what mastering had done to my mixes as I was not in the loop for the the mastering stage.

HOLY ****ING SHIT

NO DYNAMIC RANGE AT ALL, DIGITAL DISTORTION EVERYWHERE

average RMS -9!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Some of these mixes had 12db jumps in dynamic range, now a flat line across the board. Gentle ambient passages are as loud as full on rocking.

THE BAND APPROVED THIS?

I just went from proud poppa to "oh my god my name is going to be on this" in 4.2 seconds

I had Jay Kahrs lined out to do the mastering for them and they decided to go with Discmakers

Well you get what you pay for


The first wave you see is from a pseudo mastered version I did before it was sent out. The second is the "mastered" version
You are looking at identical sections of the song!!
Here's some clips
The original one here isn't an actual mix I just pulled it from a file that was just pumped up for a reference, even it is too smashed but JESUS look at this mess!

[pingu]

Sorry to hear it dude.

Who did the mastering?

[synthoid]

Hey hey! Looks your you won the loudness war.
.
-synthoid

[denne]

the 2nd file is mono. Is it mono on the CD?

[everybody's x]

I must have saved the clip as mono?
I dunno, it's mono in the fact that it has equal sides of white noise destroying death all over it

[NathanEldred]

No amount of limiting is going to pull that first soft passage up to a brick wall where it rides -.3db of full scale (at least IME, I've mastered plenty of extreme dyamic music and neither an L2 or Sonic Timeworks does this to this extreme). It's going to basically be relative to what the rest of the audio was brought up by. They would have to actually bring the waveform of the beginning of the song up and then limit. I smell BS in some form here.

[Schmacko]

wow, that's pretty awful! Did they already press the discs too?

[everybody's x]

Originally Posted by pingu

Sorry to hear it dude.

Who did the mastering?

Discmakers

[pan60]

that is sad to hear.

[everybody's x]

Originally Posted by NathanEldred

No amount of limiting is going to pull that first soft passage up to a brick wall where it rides -.3db of full scale (at least IME, I've mastered plenty of extreme dyamic music and neither an L2 or Sonic Timeworks does this to this extreme). It's going to basically be relative to what the rest of the audio was brought up by. They would have to actually bring the waveform of the beginning of the song up and then limit. I smell BS in some form here.

Once the master left my hands I don't know what the band did with it, maybe a little home mastering of their own? I don't know, all I do know is that when I gave it to them it did not sound anything like what they just gave back to me.


And yes it has been pressed, so the band (who are in love with it for some reason) had to have approved it or they wouldn't have pressed it.

[everybody's x]

oops double post

[NathanEldred]

Originally Posted by everybody's x

Once the master left my hands I don't know what the band did with it, maybe a little home mastering of their own? I don't know, all I do know is that when I gave it to them it did not sound anything like what they just gave back to me.


And yes it has been pressed, so the band (who are in love with it for some reason) had to have approved it or they wouldn't have pressed it.

So it was either the band or Discmakers. Discmakers doesn't do the best world in the job on mastering, they are very cookie cutter in their approach, but I don't see them doing this. My deductive logic suspects the band as the culprit here. And FWIW, to get an obvious amount of digital distortion on a master, it has to be SLAMMED. I've achieved 'national' (what a joke to call it this) results where the distortion isn't audible (but that still doesn't mean it's a good thing to have it that crushed).

[Glenn Kuras]

This is one of the reasons I love John at Massive Mastering so much. He would soon not do the job if the band wants it slammed like that..

Glenn

[everybody's x]

when I put my first CD out around 97 or so we had discmakers do it, it was bad, but the mix was bad too
This was pre-loudness war though

My bet is the band did something to it, I cant imagine that a: diskmakers would be THAT horrible
b:the band would say that it's OK

[NathanEldred]

Originally Posted by everybody's x

when I put my first CD out around 97 or so we had discmakers do it, it was bad, but the mix was bad too
This was pre-loudness war though

Loudness war started around 1996 (at least for rock music), maybe a little earlier. Ever heard 'White Light, White Heat, White Trash' by Social Distortion from '96, it's a brick. Also, 'OK Computer' is pretty damn loud in comparison to even their previous release, and that was 1997.

[everybody's x]

I'm in Missouri man, we are 5 years behind everybody else

[eligit]

Originally Posted by everybody's x

I just got my copy of a bands finished CD, it is my first full-length that will actually be released that I engineered and produced.
I excitedly tore it from it's plastic wrap and threw it into the CD player. I was curious to see what mastering had done to my mixes as I was not in the loop for the the mastering stage.

HOLY ****ING SHIT

NO DYNAMIC RANGE AT ALL, DIGITAL DISTORTION EVERYWHERE

average RMS -9!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Some of these mixes had 12db jumps in dynamic range, now a flat line across the board. Gentle ambient passages are as loud as full on rocking.

THE BAND APPROVED THIS?

I just went from proud poppa to "oh my god my name is going to be on this" in 4.2 seconds

I had Jay Kahrs lined out to do the mastering for them and they decided to go with Discmakers

Well you get what you pay for


The first wave you see is from a pseudo mastered version I did before it was sent out. The second is the "mastered" version
You are looking at identical sections of the song!!
Here's some clips
The original one here isn't an actual mix I just pulled it from a file that was just pumped up for a reference, even it is too smashed but JESUS look at this mess!

something is not right. no real mastering place could allow anything this distorted and horrible out the door. that crackling is like nothing professional that i've heard.

the first version is kinda harsh to begin with but...

anyway it would be even MORE interesting to hear the original TOTALLY UNmastered mix and a/b that with the finished CD track.

[everybody's x]

FYI, the first version was a half assed clip from an MP3, I was just trying to illustrate

my mix was peaking at -9 tops

let me dig up the real mix, I have already archived the session to DVD and wiped the hard drive

[RainbowStorm]

I can understand the frustation over this mastering job... I would be really frustrated if I would have my mix destroyed like this. You can actually HEAR digital clipping distortion in the mastering, in my opinion this mastering job is one of the worst I've ever heard... I hope your mixes won't go through that much distortion ever again...!

[Fidelis]

Something must be wrong here... the change is huge.

Anyway, my tip for you is: When I'm producing a CD, I'll be there from the first (recording) day, to the last (mastering) day. Cause my name will be there...

Sometimes, I go to the master session even if I just mixed the CD.

[everybody's x]

The kicker is this isnt the worst one, there's a track on the CD that has so much crackling in it I thought somebody was standing behind me sqeezing a bag of doritos

I WISH I was exagerrating

[stellar]

yeah I am working on a CD right now for a band and they said something to the effect of "when we get the mix I'll do the mastering...just put some limiting on it to get it REALLY LOUD" ....so I told them they would be better off if I did it for them. I didn't want to go through what you just did.

[everybody's x]

Originally Posted by Fidelis

Something must be wrong here... the change is huge.

Anyway, my tip for you is: When I'm producing a CD, I'll be there from the first (recording) day, to the last (mastering) day. Cause my name will be there...

Sometimes, I go to the master session even if I just mixed the CD.

I had planned attended mastering with several reputable mastering engineers, got them to sign off on it and lined up appointments. At the last minute the bassist (who had the money for the session) revealed he didn't have the money.
So the band decided to go with discmakers, and/or whatever the hell they did to it.
It was out of my control
Allthough I did tell them that DM would destroy it

[dim light]

Horrified!

myfipie - I know John to... Great guy!

Dim (Evil Eyed Cherry)

[eligit]

Originally Posted by everybody's x

FYI, the first version was a half assed clip from an MP3, I was just trying to illustrate

my mix was peaking at -9 tops

let me dig up the real mix, I have already archived the session to DVD and wiped the hard drive

yeah, i hear that....


anyway it would be cool to hear that real mix. i think everyone here knows where the volume control is on their rig....eh

just two short 16/44.1 clips on the same tune should do the trick....then we can hear exactly what was done with what was given to the mastering place.

either way...your stuff got trashed big time.

[drmmrboy]

Wow!
When the page first loaded, I only saw the 1st wave, and thought, "that doesn't look bad at all." Then I scrolled down... Yikes!

Then I listened.. Sorry bro..

[GPl]

And I'll bet the band will be wondering why no one likes their music, let alone listen to it for more than 30 secs. That's just amazing.......

[everybody's x]

Here's the mix I gave them

http://www.allcapsrecording.com/unmastered.wav

I know I'm no Lord-Alge but it was defi itely workable for an ME

[Matt Grondin]

Originally Posted by everybody's x

Here's the mix I gave them

http://www.allcapsrecording.com/unmastered.wav

I know I'm no Lord-Alge but it was defi itely workable for an ME

Dude, they ****ed your shit up, no doubt. Sorry to hear about it. Just thought that I'd point out that on that version above, the kick drum is about twice as loud as everything else in the mix.

[eligit]

Originally Posted by everybody's x

Here's the mix I gave them

http://www.allcapsrecording.com/unmastered.wav

I know I'm no Lord-Alge but it was defi itely workable for an ME

you got screwed. that mix sounds workable. perfection? well, no. but it has some cool detail and tones for sure. these guys just destroyed em. some careful eq and loudenizing by the ME would have made it perfectly listenable. sounds like they just put the L2 in pancake mode and added some highs.

cool choice of cover tune. i remember when that portishead album came out when i was a freshman in college (or maybe the year before).