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In Reply to: Anybody else feel like this? posted by twystd on February 21, 2016 at 22:36:36:
Compression
It's a tool that sometimes helps. Doug Sax owned all the classic compressors, and wasn't afraid to use them. For acoustic instruments and voice, you shouldn't need compression... almost all the time. I have seen jazz trumpet players who needed a couple db of compression just because no playback medium can cover the instrument's dynamic range if the player really pushes it. I have had a (pop) tenor or two with poor technique whose singing levels were just all over the place. Mics can exaggerate that. Good singers, pop or classical, never need any compression or limiting.
There is also really bad compression, the squash-everything-flat-as-a-pancake mastering that was done during the loudness wars. Thankfully, engineers, broadcasters, and Apple came up with loudness-management algorithms (Apple's Sound Check and EBU's R-128) that makes overly compressed recordings almost unlistenable. It's progress.
Yes, "slam" from an acoustic bass is an artificial effect from bad micing. Wrong mic, proximity effect, too close to the f-hole, and you get a dramatic effect that doesn't sound like the real instrument. Yuk foo.
Electric guitar is really hard to get right without a few db of compression. Even when you've got the classic setup of an AKG-414 and a Shure SM57 on the guitar amp, plus a DI from the body pickup to mix in with it, a couple db from an LA2 or an LA3A helps it sit better in the mix, and helps the decay of notes sound more natural. Actually, I've never seen any engineer try to record an electric guitar *without* it - not once. Remember, mics don't hear like our ears hear.
re Vinyl
These classic compressors were developed during the vinyl heyday, long before the loudness wars. Teletronix LA2 and LA3A, Urei 1176, dbx 160A, and the Fairchild 670 are tools engineers used and still use to get the playback sound more like the real thing. They are not evil in the right hands.
Orchestral and opera recordings are likely to need some compression at mastering time, because playback rooms rarely get as quiet as a concert hall. My listening room has an ambient noise level of 30 dB on a quiet night when I turn every noise-maker off. Even so, the dynamic range we I can support is lots less than at Carnegie or the Met, so if I had recordings with the original dynamic range, either the pianissimo would be buried in the ambient noise, or the fortissimo would give me ear damage.
Most vinyl has a pretty limited dynamic range, which is pretty close to what I can support at home. Mastering to vinyl is always a tug-of-war between dynamics, bass content, and playback time. It can be loud and low, but at a cost. The old Sheffield LAB20 drum/bass track record is very quiet, very loud, and has lots of bass. It's also short: 8:20 on side one and 7:35 on side two. For normal recordings, compression and/or EQ may be used to get the dynamic range down to an appropriate level for the home, and to get the piece on a side of an LP. LPs are very rarely uncompressed, unless the source material is something like a violin soloist or a chamber group.
BTW, I have heard a few of the 15 ips half-track tapes selling as "protection copies" on ebay, or from the Tape Project, and that *IS* another world. When either mastered for that medium, or as copies of the mix pre-mastering, the dynamics can be truly breathtaking. If your room is quiet enough and your gear good enough, there's nothing like it.
re close micing, multi-micing, studio live rooms, and minimal micing
It is true: close micing changes things, sometimes dramatically. But this is also true: if you have a jazz group (upright bass, sax, piano, drums) then a pair of omnis in the middle of your non-reverberant studio live room won't cut it. If you're doing Harry James in a great-sounding church, that pair of omnis, plus one or two cardioids on Les DeMerle's drums will sound incredible, at least if it's Doug Sax placing those mics. But a studio live room is a specifically-strange acoustic space, and, even for acoustic instruments, a mix of room mics and *somewhat* close mics gives a good engineer what (s)he needs to pull it all together. Minimally-miced in a great space is the best, but every artist doesn't have that luxury, so they go into a studio and engineers try to give them the best they can.
In NYC there are just two exceptions to the "live room acoustics" problem: Avatar and Kaufmann-Astoria studios both have huge live rooms with great controllable acoustics. The owners of Avatar want to sell so they can retire. Now's your chance to get into the big-time recording business - call 'em up, buy it, and keep a legendary recording operation going. We will all thank you.
Here's where I end up. Compression is sometimes good (elec gtr), and sometimes a necessary evil. Vinyl is almost always compressed at least a little, and somewhat close micing is often used to capture the artist's intent in the very artificial environment of a studio live room. It's what we do to try to bring a performance home. Some are better at it than others.
WW
"Put on your high heeled sneakers. Baby, we''re goin'' out tonight.
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Follow Ups
- re compression... and vinyl... and close micing - Bill Way 02/24/1622:14:57 02/24/16 (1)
- RE: re compression... and vinyl... and close micing - twystd 14:55:07 02/25/16 (0)
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