Har-Bal Users Forum BBS

Greetings. I was reading an earlier thread regarding reference tracks, and it was mentioned to 'listen to some new and fresh, well mastered music'. I looked at my list of the rock music reference tracks I like and use, and realized only one was released in the last few years -most of them are from the 70s to early 90s! With the push for louder tracks, I really have not heard many well mastered (imho) CDs of late, but I'm sure there are some...any recommendations?

Thanks,
WCH

Personally, I've noticed most of my favorite sounding cd's were all pressed in the early 90's !

Check out this link for an interesting article:

http://www.prorec.com/prorec/articles.n ... 2E005DAF1C

great article - thanks! so...you have not heard anything you like in recent years?

WCH

You are correct, most of the music recorded currently appears to be non-dynamic. The peaks are squashed terribly as a comprimise to make the music louder which is completely unecessary.
When you view the music from the late 80's and early 90's you will notice consistency when viewing the spectrum. It is a perfect guide to show you how a great sounding song should appear.
There are a number of mastering engineers out there that have been trying to educate the public by telling them that louder is not better.
By studying these spectrums you can easily look at your own songs and make corrections easily.
I constantly study the spectrums of commercial music and am amazed at what they let out of the studios.
When you harmonically balance your music it sounds great and people know it. The average consumer out there may not be able to tell you in technical terms why they like it, only that it feels good listening to it.
It's all in the EQ'ing!!

Cheers

Earle

Stacy's Mom by Fountains of Wayne

I have found that picking individual performances, such as acoustic piano, guitar and vocals etc. from different CD's to suit your own instrumentaton, is quite effective. All you have to do is mix them relative to each other in volume. It sound like cachophony, but hear through it and you can tailor the reference mix to your needs.

I recently listened to and analyzed a Supertramp Greatest Hits compilation. I consider Supertramp's recordings to be among the best EQ'ed I've heard so far.

Very steep roll-off in the bass at about 50 Hz, probably for better sounding vinyl.
One could possibly have a gentler roll off whith CDs.