"On an Island" in HarBal-very interesting

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dyonisos
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Joined: Mon Dec 06, 2004 8:59 pm

"On an Island" in HarBal-very interesting

Post by dyonisos »

I'm enjoying David Gilmour's new album, "On an Island". The first thing I wanted to do was load a few songs from the album into Har-Bal, to see how closely the songs' graphs came to mirroring the Pink-Floyd .anl file I created (in the downloads section). The results are amazing (see screenshot of "Take a Breath" in Har-Bal). On an Island is, in general, mixed a little louder than all of the old Pink Floyd and David Gilmour albums, probably a result of the times (volume wars). However, no section of any song appeared to get any louder than -12db average RMS. That's the sort of restraint I would expect from Gilmour and Co.

It's almost as if the "Mastering Lab" in LA is using Har-Bal. If not Har-Bal, then perhaps something similar. It's hard to believe that a "sound" can remain so consistent over a more than 35 year period!

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HarBal
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Post by HarBal »

I didn't realize he had a new album out. I should check it out.

I don't think it impossible that you can get a spectrum that similar without using tools such as Har-Bal. It does require a quality listening environment and a considered approach with an aim to remaining true to a particular sound. David Gilmour certainly has the resources to use the best studios and if he took an active production role (as I suspect he might of done) it doesn't seem that surprising the the sound is similar.

Where strong variations in spectrum balance come from is more to do with variation in the acoustics of the monitoring environment from studio to studio. In the best studios the variation is small because they spent up big to make it so. In smaller studios and home studios the variation is much larger.

By the way, I'm glad to hear the average level is -12dB and no higher. There's way too much coming out these days with the dynamics sucked right out.

Cheers,


Paavo.
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