Lessons From a Compilation
Posted on | July 22, 2010 | 1 Comment
I just finished mastering a compilation disc for an artist who is putting together a fundraiser. It’s other people’s recordings of his songs done over the years. So I got to hear recording techniques and quality from a 10-year span. It was educational, to say the least.
There were only 2 new songs that needed proper mastering, the rest was adjusting levels of the various tracks to make everything sound consistent and then cutting a master disc. So I used the levels I set on the two new, well-recorded tracks as the basis for the overall level of the disc. This gave me a good benchmark to hit for volume. A few of the songs needed to come up in level, but most needed to come down…anywhere from 1-4 decibels.
The most interesting thing to me was that of all the songs, two that were released on major labels had the poorest sonic quality. They were just too smashed in mixing and mastering and they really sounded flat compared to the rest of the mixes…all of which were done in project or home studios.
This pretty much validates my theory that technology has become so democratized that there’s really no difference between what you can purchase and what a big studio or label has, equipment-wise. The key is in the care and attention-to-detail given to the music and recording process.
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From Ohm to Om reflects the opinions of mastering engineer Paul Abbott, owner of San Diego's ZenMastering.
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July 23rd, 2010 @ 5:10 pm
A very interesting post, cheers Paul.