Novel mastering process

Interesting! Good album?

I quite like them, but didn't know they had a new album out.  I guess mastering from Vinyl would avoid the over-compression that's ruining pop music these days?

My last "pro" band used to record to tape, import the individual tracks into a PC, and then mix digitally.  It seemed to be the best of each option: the tape warmth with the digital flexibility.  Plus, we had to play the songs through, with minimal punch-ins.  Much more fun than copy/pasting good clips.  Of course we mastered it to death and ruined the mix, but I didn't know any better at the time...

Frank, you're absolutely right. But isn't that just a little bizarre, the idea of intentionally going to a lower-fidelity medium in order to avoid loss of fidelity?

...and even more:

http://www.arcadefire.com/vinyl/

bitflipper


Frank, you're absolutely right. But isn't that just a little bizarre, the idea of intentionally going to a lower-fidelity medium in order to avoid loss of fidelity?

I'm going to try recording to tape and mixing in Sonar too.  Only it's not going to a lo-fi medium to avoid loss of fidelity, it's going to that medium to gain it's peculiar nuances that the 'hi-fi' lacks....to help minimize the less desirable aspects of tape is where digital comes in. ..using the best of both worlds.
I think the word 'fidelity' can be misleading or at least narrow in some ways.
Of course there is no denying it's labor intensive (and i am not sure yet whether it will be worth it on my small scale operation, but it appears to be worth it on a larger scale).

I've not got this new album yet, but unless they have changed dramatically, then Arcade Fire's production ethic has never struck me as being about a 'Steely Dan' super clean production. 

A lot of the previous songs have been pretty dark lyrically and musically and if mastering this way adds to the atmosphere of the new tracks then IMO kudos to them.  

And if it is just a marketing ploy, well then they've got a lot of coverage already! 


Andy