the "Production Quality" of an album

 

I've read on numerous occasions how an album would deserve a higher "rating" if it's production values were better.

Granted, I do completely understand that the sound quality of an album can be an important factor... but I don't understand why everything HAS to have such a pristine overly-compressed sound to be considered "professional" anymore.

I read (in a review on this site) that the production was really poor on Mahavishnu Orchestra's "Inner Mounting Flame" album ... and it kinda annoyed me for some reason.   THAT's the real charm of the album--the sheer RAWNESS of it all!  In fact--it sounds acoustically accurate to me.   If it was mixed and mastered like some Kenny G "jazz" album, it would simply lose all its balls.

Then, I read somewhere how someone thought that the first Asia album had production problems.   Are you kidding me?  It couldn't be any more polished and still sound REAL.

It seems like everybody has forgotten what music really sounds like... you know... like when it's PLAYED live by an ACTUAL BAND in front of you... NOT sequenced and manipulated by computers.

Propagating the concept that all recordings have to reach "perfect" commercial standards is probably another reason for the lame popular music scene overall.   Big record companies with the money to access the best Mastering facilities are not going to risk signing experimental bands with interesting ideas.  It's not safe.   Instead, those bands have to use Joe's corner recording studio to make their album... and nobody wants to take it seriously because it's not perfectly mastered like the Green Day songs that are forced down their throats on radio and TV.

When did Electrical Engineering become a prerequisite for Rock'n'Roll anyway?

It just makes me sad. 

 

That Mahavishnu album is a dawg! I have a rip from an original LP of it... but it adds some charm to the live fusion sound of the band. I don't know becuase I haven't heard pristine versions of the tracks.

As one who gets a tad confused over the term "producer" on some albums, I would enjoy reading a comprehensive "job description" of a record producer. It seems the term applies equally to a sound engineer as well as to someone who totally reworks the artist or songwriters intentions.

     And then there's Union

I hate hearing music with 'pristine overly compressed sound' it's the worst trype of production there is IMO. It removes the human element from the music and makes it sound like it was created by a computer.

It's all down to personal taste, I guess, but I like an album to sound 'organic' rather than machine made...if you know what I mean..

It doesn't matter for 99.9% of people, but you would amazed
by what a great system could do.
Eventually, the problem i'm faced to is that my system is too good for most of the "rock" Cd i play on.
Jazz and classical, and some fusion (ECM) Cds are overall much better sounding.
Rock Cds are bumped for mr everybody's nasty system.
To make low on a system without low.

Edited by oliverstoned

Blacksword wrote: I hate hearing music with 'pristine overly compressed sound' it's the worst trype of production there is IMO. It removes the human element from the music and makes it sound like it was created by a computer. What you describe there is numeric sound, (CD) or worst, MP3. It's all down to personal taste, I guess, but I like an album to sound 'organic' rather than machine made...if you know what I mean..

You mean analog. With flesh, sound matter. Unlike the skeleton numeric sound.

Edited by oliverstoned

BaldFriede wrote: I couldn't care less about production quality. The stereo equipment I had for half of my life was sub-standard; why, in the beginning I didn't even have a stereo equipment! All I had was a primitive tape recorder. And this "clean" sound is so bloodless and inhumane it leaves me absolutely cold. The same is true for live concerts, by the way. Some of the best concerts I ever attended were given by bands with a rather poor equipment; the first concert I ever witnessed was by Here and Now in the early eighties, when I was 12. It was fantastic, but their equipment was battered and torn. There is a certain level of sound quality, below which it becomes hard to listen to an album, in my opinion. But that level is nowhere where some people want to put it. When I read complaints about the "bad production quality" of albums like "Foxtrot", for example, I can only shake my head in amazement.

I saw Here and Now many times during the late 1970s-1980s, and went to a huge number of free festivals, usually featuring Hawkwind, where just about all of the equipment was second hand, begged or borrowed - and the sounds that were made were amazing - and that was before I'd taken anything...

I love the quality of sound on "Foxtrot" (at least, on the original, first press vinyl ), and could care less whether it meets particular standards or if there are glitches in there - the overall effect on the music provides a wonderful "retro" feel, and I would miss it if it was ever "cleaned up".

Edited by Certif1ed

oliverstoned wrote: There may be confusion between the original recording quality released of 70s albums(on vynil) and the Cd reissue which is often bad, without talking about inherent CD/numeric format limitations.

Early CD releases were particularly poor - especially where the Analogue source wasn't converted to digital early in the chain.

The older Genesis CDs I have all claim to be AAA, which is nonsense, of course - at some point the music had to be digitised to get it onto CD, and in the meantime, the rich sound of the master tapes got mangled by the multi-stage analogue processing, and finally crushed by inferior early digital technology.

But first presses of Genesis albums sound fantastic... until you get to the end of the side. They just tried to squeeze too much music onto a limited format. I'd guess the original reels sound better.

« Early CD releases were particularly poor - especially where the Analogue source wasn't converted to digital early in the chain.”

This may be an explanation.


However, all that is quite complex and there’s no absolute rule.
Indeed, early CDs were bad in general, due to the fact that early numeric technology was not mature.
Although, there’s a very bad trend these days in rock CDs, (without talking about over compression) which is to bump outrageously the low, cause most people have systems without low, and it sounds quite good that way on Mr everybody nasty system. With my neutral system featuring a subwoofer, that’s another story.
So, sometimes, you find yourself with a remastered version which is better in terms of image (sound scene) , dynamic, details, transparency, even quite soft highs (for numeric!) but at the same time, you get a ridiculous over bumped low, which does the big drum foot like an earthquake in my house with my 38cm sub.
And of course, bumping the low that way doesn’t makes a tight
bass/drum but a low which dribble, and the bass line is not intelligible as it could be on a more neutral and equilibrated CD.

Talking about AAD, ADD or DDD issue, even If I quite agree with what’s saying up, there are other factors which make no absolute rule there, except that current recording in DDD have often less harshness due to the fact that there are less steps, no analog/numeric conversion , which is often a source of degradation when it’s not well done.
On another hand, we know that some artists use the old
Big Studer recorders (designed in 1967 for Sergent Pepper) for the initial recording and mixing . What’s important is the care they take (power filtering, cabling in studio also counts) and often they take little care, especially in the rock world. Some engineers don’t even care about power phase, thinking it’s an audiophile joke.
Engineers are far more serious in the jazz or classical field, and the results are there, in term of final CD quality.

I was naively thinking that everything was carefully made in studio, and I was quite surprise to learn that they use kilometres of poor entry level “Monster” cables, for example.

^ yes ... we should focus on the music, not on the medium.