Miscellaneous > Recording - Studio Talk

New Music Video and Single

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rabidgerry:
I have other albums similar to this, but I cannot detect distortion.  The Metal Church album I can hear distortion in various places, it's quite obvious in my studio reference headphones.

I had tonnes of head room before I put the album through a limiter.  I boosted about 7db.  I could have boosted more and made a square wav like the Metal Church album.  Crazy shit man, I don't get it, perhaps it is us who don't know best and these square wav makers are the authorities eh?   :lol:

rnolan:
Hey RG, pushing the limits makes distortion a real likelihood, and digital distortion isn't pleasant, that Donnas track is pushed about as far as you can get away with (IMHO), don't get me wrong, I like the Donnas album, I also don't mind it's so "in your face", but it's carefully crafted.  That said, I like some decent headroom (depends on the music how much).  Compression and limiting is something I've always been very careful with.  E.g. If a drum gets hit harder, it should sound such, and have the room to cope.  Some of it is the medium (music, file type etc) and also the final transducer (eg ear buds, decent headphones, decent monitors).  Hey if making square waves works for them and their audience, so be it  :facepalm: , it's their choice, for me it's about making it the best I can with plenty of headroom for the transients.  The only time I've used a limiter is in large PA applications, but this is to prevent speaker damage, not to squish the music.  In the early days I sometimes used a bit of lite compression (max 2:1) on the kick and bass just to make them sit nice and tight, and very occasionally on a vocal, again just to make it sit (and being careful not to loose the "s"s and "t"s).  I think while there are more people out there these days with decent monitoring, there are way more who don't care and listen through crappy ear buds.  The world has got used to shit sound, maybe it always was ? My dad was a HiFi nut, it's always been important to me, hence my dislike of mp3s, hey I get they are very convenient, but you loose so much  :facepalm: . 

rabidgerry:
I understand completely.  Although it's all subjective.

Although no professional piece of music has anything like that little amount of compression you mention used on it these days.

And Limiters are also common place and have been for years.  I may have not blitzed my album but there is a limiter used on the vocals to tame peaks, there is also various compressors on mostly the vocals (I used parallel compression on vocals) and on the bass guitar, and snare.  Then at the very end of my mix I used a mastering limiter to boost the level.  It's that final limiter that people pump up the volume too much and squash it to death.  It's too easy to do you see.  However it's not amateurs just doing this, it's the industry pros.

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