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Just listened to Aphex's Flim on Come to Daddy today, after not hearing it prolly for years. It was hella muddy and sloppy. I remember it being so clean and precise back in the day. Is digi production changing my perception? Or was it always muddy and sloppy and I just didn't know enough back in the day?

nowaysj wrote:Just listened to Aphex's Flim on Come to Daddy today, after not hearing it prolly for years. It was hella muddy and sloppy. I remember it being so clean and precise back in the day. Is digi production changing my perception? Or was it always muddy and sloppy and I just didn't know enough back in the day?

It is changing for sure. When I break out my old dnb that I used to jizz over, it is shocking how rough the production sounds next to some stuff that comes out today. The thing is the old stuff sometimes sounds better because there is actually dynamics in tact. It is pretty much industry standard to damn near brickwall everything. It's like if you mix a 10 year old tune with a new one, the old one wont seem to hit as hard but if you mix up old ones with old ones they sound great.

Probably a bit of both.

Crazy re-listening to the albums that inspired you, isn't it?

it is interesting hey, I think probably the equipment is getting a bit better too. Doesn't seem like it mattered as much a while ago too, in terms of clean production.. A lot of jungle sounds pretty ratty by todays standards, but it's awesome none the less...

so less compression overall sounds better but less loud? im still kinda trying to get my head around it, id rather not use things like compression and limiters unless i need more punch in my kick or snare or something like that, but at the same time i want my tunes to be as loud as everyone elses.

I'm thinking the game just stepped up. Back then a lot of tracks were just hacked and slacked together, the talent I think was more in the arrangement. Two of my fav breakbeat tracks of all time is Uberzone's Botz Organik mix and Synthetik mix. And they sound sooo weak now! The kicks are thin, and there's like a subbass element that I perceived to be there back then, and now its not. Even the big bass drop at the big break of Botz barely shakes my sub! But its still tops with the sequencing (I think that why Q put that "sequence" sample in there!)
When major money flow goes into the underground music, you get better engineers, producers, all that. But now, our studios at home easily rival many studios in the wild. And mastering can be taught on YouTubes. Back in 96 or 97, that wasn't there. Making tracks now is so much more than just sequencing sounds.

tavravlavish wrote:so less compression overall sounds better but less loud? im still kinda trying to get my head around it, id rather not use things like compression and limiters unless i need more punch in my kick or snare or something like that, but at the same time i want my tunes to be as loud as everyone elses.

The concept that gets lost in the "loudness wars" is the fact that every mixer come equipped with a gain knob on each channel. A brickwalled recording will be louder than a dynamic recording at the same gain setting but boost the dynamic one a bit and it is a new ball game.

yeah, i'd say the main the difference in releases today and back in the day is compression. listen to any radio rock song today, and you'll notice the drum kit and snare especially are ridiculously squashed in comparison to say, an old beatles tune, or even more modern stuff like nirvana.

i use a lot of compression in my tunes, but not because i'm a warrior in the loudness battles. i used to HATE squished up stuff. but listening to a lot of electro, i gained an appreciated for the effect it gave and have learned to use it to complement the music. some would disagree of course. i like uncompressed too, but you gotta bump it up a bit to really make it pop. i'm still against just hard limiting everything beyond recognition.

going from listening to aphex twin to listening to something like spor or noisia is mental
makes you realise how far technology has come in terms of sound quality

I also think people a couple of years back wasn't thinking much about the mix and more about making good music.

legend4ry wrote:I also think people a couple of years back wasn't thinking much about the mix and more about making good music.

good point!

With the loudness war people are kinda falsed to know how to do semi-professional mixes otherwise if they get their tunes mastered and the M.E can't pump it as loud as possible it'll sound quiet in the club and people won't take notice to it.. Its a shame really, I genuinely hate overly loud music haha..I like putting my monitors up half way and listening to old jazz records and no matter how hard I crank it, it still sounds amazing.. Can't do that with music these days .

Then again I can't say much I do try an' make fairly loud tracks but I always tell me M.E to keep the dynamics fairly decent, I don't want no brick walled crapness of my own tunes!

first productions i did where full of compressors...

right now, i use compressors just for a sidechaining... really don't feel the compressed sound. especially in ableton, such an aggressive compressor!

Say what you will but I love Rough Rider on my drum or bass tracks. The thing about compression is that it can be used as an effect. It can color sound and that might be what you want to hear. On individual tracks or groups heavy compression is nice depending on what you're going for in the track. But for the final mix or mastering stage, 2:1 and -12 thresh w/ slow atk and rls. MmmmMMmmmm!

Yeah the tech has come a long way. Software eq's and compressors have actual character and all that.

But beyond the mix, which I did think was muddy, the actual sequencing seemed really sloppy. Maybe it was all hand played. Maybe I'm just tripping today. Feeling rather odd.

nowaysj wrote:Yeah the tech has come a long way. Software eq's and compressors have actual character and all that.

But beyond the mix, which I did think was muddy, the actual sequencing seemed really sloppy. Maybe it was all hand played. Maybe I'm just tripping today. Feeling rather odd.

Heh, eqs and compressors were coloring sound wayyy before software! Analog warmth? It didn't get better than a good analog compressor. But things have changed completely now. Many old school producers still teach the old way of doing things. There are certain mastering details and rules that will always ring true, but the things all these kids are doing with their tools these days is amazing. Its like being taught to cook by your grandma, but then you get to the big city and you're like "I can cook cactus?"
Beyond that, I know what you mean by the sloppy sequencing. I hear loops that aint nudged properly and clash with the kick, or out of tune with the snare. I hear kicks that have no energy whatsoever, bass that isn't really bass. Tracks that used be amazing to me, and are so muddy and shoddy done. The game aint the same as 10-15 years ago. But I don't think its all for the worse.

And on the opposite of the loudness war, dynamic range has gone nuts in the Movie arena. Movies can have dynamic swings of 70-80+ dbs. Nothing worse than watching a late night movie, and you can't hear fuckall what the actors are saying, but then an explosion can be heard in the next house (not like tv, mind you, in which compression in commercials is similar to FM radio, wayyy over compressed.) Sound fucking pollution!

legend4ry wrote:I also think people a couple of years back wasn't thinking much about the mix and more about making good music.

I get semis thinking about production
maybe i should write some music?

b166er wrote:Heh, eqs and compressors were coloring sound wayyy before software! Analog warmth?

Poorly stated on my part... merely saying the technology available to all of us is so good, clean but now also with character. That uber analog stuff was only available to the tips of pyramids, the chosen ones.

But can someone just listen to Flim, and lemme know if I'm tripping?

also, back in the hardware days, if you wanted a compressor you had to get like an alesis 3630, which sounded (and still sounds) shit on anything but processed breaks. and the only eq's that were affordable were the ones built into mackie desks.

w/ the quality of plugins today, our ability to get shit sounding really, really good has grown exponentially.

with that said, play some old jungle, turn it up and the drums kick you in the face with an edge that none of the current bigguns do. the downside of limiting-- the edges go away.

You also gotta consider the fact that the analytical parts of your brain regarding music have majorly increased, probably to the point where you can visualise any tune as if it were nestled into your DAW, showing you everything. This becomes well apparent when listening back to a couple o' metal/rock tracks I liked as a kid, and they just seem to have no mustard to them now. Also the perpetual chase of 'how to get a meaty guitar tone' - was all an illusion! Now when I listen to them, I can see how it's more a case of the voice stealing/layering of several tones; something that simply can't be replicated in a bedroom jamming session, no matter how many guitar effect pedals ya running

A true example of 'ignorance is bliss' - I kinda feel the more you understand something, the less simple pleasures you may extract. What in life offers simpler pleasures than music