20 Years Late Review: Donald Fagen's "The Nightfly"

Very cool. I did not know either it was a digital recording. I still have it on cassette somewhere and have listened to it a couple years back on CD at a friends house. It is indeed a sonic beauty.

Alright. I'll throw in the SACD remaster of Dark Side of the Moon. If you've got a SACD player that is blast to crank up. Clare Torry never sounded so beautiful... the orignal ain't half bad either.

Wings album "Band On The Run" was recently made available for purchase in 24-bit 96kHz WAV format.  There are 2 versions available: "limited" and "unlimited", i.e. a peak limiter applied or not applied at the mastering stage.  Interesting.

http://www.paulmccartney.com/bandontherun/eur.html

You know bit, I've often wondered why people go through great lengths to make stuff so loud, it loses dynamics. I think we have all probably pondered that. Then it hit me...classic rock stuff doesn't really get as much push in the "new music" category and even when it is a bit loud, it's nothing like the newer stuff we hear.

It seems like the stuff with extreme gain guitars is always the loudest. Even if you push the classic rock stuff, it still seems to breathe on its own a bit. For some of this new stuff though, it actually doesn't sound as good when you add dynamics to it. LOL! It just needs to be wide open...it's almost like a punk attitude...loud, proud, and aggressive.

Now I'm not one that takes part in the loudness wars though some of my stuff is a bit loud. I feel just about all music needs to breathe...but some stuff...it just seems to push it over the edge when it doesn't breathe or doesn't breathe as much..if that makes sense? When I master stuff here for clients, I try like heck not to push things too hot. But for the heavier stuff...especially this nu-breed metal stuff, it just seems to sound better with that push. It's actually gross, but it works. LOL! But to push classic stuff up that hot...it would just sound bad and the reason being, it's clean as is with maybe a little bit o' grit. Jack up the cleaner stuff...it doesn't get punchy...it gets nasty sounding. Jack up this newer stuff...it's almost like it doesn't matter as long as the snare drum doesn't lose it's pop/crack...and the additional loudness literally helps the impact of the tune. Trust me, I really do hate all this loud stuff and the day it totally goes away is a day that will make me happy. However, in certain situations and styles of music, I feel that it makes a difference in a good way and without it, the music just is sort of missing something. Make sense at all?

-Danny

listen to the song "No Quarter", off of Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy album.

loud.

holy cow.


when i ran all my mixes down to stereo files for the album i'm working on, the peaks were typically -6db, and the RMS values were typically around -22db.

i really like the sound of the mixes without the mastering for final levels.

very punchy, very dynamic.


i often wonder if the mastering does more of a disservice, than service.

of course, no one would listen to my tunes side by side a bunch of IPOD-ripped aiff's that have peaks of -.1 and rms of -9......!!
LOL

Well said bit, and thanks for the kind words. Yeah man, 10 years too late to be exact..maybe 12. LOL! Born and raised on all the late 60's and early 70's stuff. Then I got the 80's guitar bug when I was 14 and well, I kinda turned into a melodic rocker with some 70's roots mixed with some 80's guitar acrobatics. I was into stuff like Gentle Giant, YES, Boston, Kansas, Chicago, The Who, Beatles, Alice Cooper, Billy Joel, Foreigner, Zep, Floyd, Steely, Doobies...you get the idea. Then the newer stuff bit me due to the insane guitar stuff that was presented...so I kinda started to run with that...and then decided I was really liking blues, so I went back a bit.
 
You're right....the holes say it all really. They don't seem to exist today unless something is acoustic. The rock stuff is just all filled up and is much more sonic now. The more gain on instruments, the more it fills up those holes that are so important. I think that's one of the reasons I only use 2 rhythm guitars in my stuff today. I was starting to enjoy some of the newer music how they rhythm guitars just seemed to be everywhere in a mix. It just sounded so huge even if I didn't like the song. I wanted to get that sound so I experimented with all sorts of guitar layering. A good example of this done the right way if you get a minute, is to check out that song by Creed called "Overcome". Whoever mixed that album had a clue in my opinion. It's loud yet dynamic, has the layering thing going on done right and it just sounds incredible. When it backs down, it literally backs down even though it's up to snuff with today's standards. That's pretty much what I'm striving to do and that album has become one of my bench marks for the newer stuff. I really think it's cool when newer albums have that little bit of edge to them. As long as it's not overkill like some of the stuff we've heard, it's ok in my book because I have to take the style into account.
 
Just think how bad Bryan Adams would sound being all pumped up like that. Then again, I have me doing my own version of Run to You that you'd probably enjoy. Loud and proud with modern sounds...yet I stick to the original game plan and just kinda heavied it up to my standards. But if I would have tried to redo the tune using older sounds, there's no way I would have even attemped to push it due to the stuff you have mentioned. Those "holes" you mentioned are definitely the key as well as having instruments that have less gain. Those big guitar sounds with gobs of gain can really take up space to the point where there is no where left to go. Add drive on a bass like some of these guys are doing now days and it takes up even more space and the holes are nearly all filled. Limit the crap out of it and it's just one big mash of sonic noise.
 
See that's another thing to keep in mind also. The older sounds allowed people to hear the rooms in which they were recorded in. These days, everything is pretty up front and in your face and you don't hear much room if any at all. The room sounds added a nice dimension to the material...but at times, some of it was a bit over-kill too...just like anything else really. With all this direct sounding up front stuff, it changes things. Not to mention I'd be willing to bet there is more direct recording or at least hybrids going on than we know. It's almost like people are afraid to admit that they used a modeler or something. People will argue "there's nothing like a cranked tube amp" however, that sound simply doesn't work for everyone and is not the holy grail of tone for all applications. Sometimes a modeler or an up front sound is the better choice or a hybrid of both. But again, like you said, the more we fill those holes up, the more we lose some elements and gain more of a sonic element. It works for some things, fails miserably for others just like modern music with these holes may not work all the time. ;)

And there's this gem from his partner Walter Becker. Mastered with a typical DR of today but clear as a bell.
Also mixed by Elliot Scheiner, produced by Larry Klein.

http://walterbecker.com/cmfaq.html#q1

player-
http://walterbecker.com/wimpypop2.html

You might like Walt's "11 Tracks of Whack" better from a mastering standpoint. That one came out in the 80's and has a much kinder bent to the ears. Some nice stuff on there though still not as polished as Nightfly. Always thought it had a home studio feel to it and Fagan shows up on sax and keys for one or two songs. Great album to have a drink or two or three and watch the sunset. Late spring and summer always makes me want to listen to Steely.
 
 
Edit: I stand corrected. That one came out in '94.

Good stuff, huh? I dig the buddhist monk chanting at the end of Surf an/or Die. Nice touch.

You know one other recording from the 80's that always stood out to me as masterful recording was CSN's Daylight Again. I haven't heard the remastered CD yet but I pray they didn't butcher it because that was one awesome sounding recording on cassette. Fantastic drums and reverb tails! Pretty much all their recordings are great but that one is a really polished gem from the 80's IMO.

Finding good references from the 80's and 90's is pretty easy, and I have a few from the early 2000's. But most of what I have that's contemporary AND worthy of emulation are really anachronisms and anomalies.

Example: Seal's "Soul and R&B" (2008) is very dynamic and clean-sounding. But it's a collection of live covers of classic 60's songs and not at all representative of contemporary standards. It is a joy to listen to, especially if, like me, you miss the days when "R&B" was characterized by powerful melodies and interesting arrangements.

I have even been betrayed by oldies on CD. Check out this one:



You'd never guess that's George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord", from the 2001 remaster of "All Things Must Pass", coming in at -7.5db average RMS.

Harrison himself complained about it but died shortly after its release (coincidence, I'm sure). Boosting levels is one thing, but this album is actually defective, with thousands of overs. An unforgivable sin IMO when remastering a classic. I have not been able to determine who the mercenary was that performed the mastering job.

Here's an interesting article. It's a few years old but it succinctly summarizes the reasons why contemporary music all sounds the same. Whether or not a song gets radio airplay comes down to focus groups listening to 7-second excerpts. Stairway to Heaven would have never gotten on the radio by those standards, it takes too long to get going.

Me, too. Fortunately, there are others as well. Too bad we can't use radio anymore to find them.

It's really not the state of music in general that concerns me.

Music generally has never been as healthy or more ubiquitous. 20 years ago nothing like the Songs forum even existed, much less communities of song-makers sharing tunes and tips on a daily basis.

I am optimistic. Music itself thrived for thousands of years before there even was a "music industry". It will still be around long after the industry as we know it today has collapsed from within.

I'm not a good one for this subject. Her music and her act in general is anything but original. I would prefer to listen to Tori Amos or Kate Bush, both of those ladies being on a different plane and were truly original and avantegarde in comparison to LG. I don't see or hear anything about LG I would term as avantegarde. That's my personal opinion and I'm certainly not knocking you for yours. It's just to me, she's nothing more than the latest pop queen incarnation. I don't like pop in general but there was far better, original and more interesting pop in the 80's than there is in the present or even the last decade for that matter. The last good music scene to me was the early 90's alternative scene... but that got over commercialized by the biz as well... still there was great  music early on in that scene.

"Clive Young of Pro Sound News called Fagen's I.G.Y. the "Freebird" of Pro Audio, citing that almost every live sound engineer uses the song to test the front of house system's sound response."


Clever use of the word "almost". I'm stuck with Katy Lied.