Adele’s producers were fully conscious and calculating of her tone. This has two main causes:
Music must be played in the car, on cheap equipment, heard in noisy places and when working out, and heard by people who’ve done terrible damage to their hearing. One cause of the Loudness War was likely premature deafness among many.
Producers calculate “attitude” or toughness with female performers. Women work with a much larger communication and fashion palette than men (i.e., sex roles), and all aspects of the delivery communicate different things. Some are innocent and girlish, others focus on come-hither, and others “love rock & roll.” Listen to the tone, sizzle, and tube distortion of:
Adele is a variant of the powerful, strong, commanding female theme.
This 1000%! The limiting on this track (and many tracks like it unfortunately) is really aggressive in the chorus sections. It’s always preferred by mastering engineers to not have the track already as loud as it can be. There’s no room to improve anything when it’s like that.
Agreed. The raw recording quality of this track is incredible, no doubt. It’s the post-production processing that the mixing engineer did, then on top of that, the mastering engineer’s processing (plus all the opinions he has to deal with from label execs). Great thoughts, @Nephilim_81, you’re right on point!
Yeah, I understand the recording is the main problem, but if more people get into quality music due to Apple making it more mainstream then maybe producers will slowly improve the quality. This is also why I said, encourage better recordings. I understand a shit recording at a higher bit rate is still shit.
It’s not going to be overnight but maybe if the mainstream market craves the better quality we’ll slowly get there. Regardless I think Apple getting into the lossless game will help music quality long-term. And this is coming from someone who doesn’t use Apple music.
Thank you so much.
And as much as I love listening to music I no doubt care about the audio sciences or recording processes, which is as to why I love listening to music so much!
I look at audio Producers, Mastering and mixing engineers as important members of the band. The first thing I do when I buy a cd is look at the liner notes and credits. Always interested as to who helped make the album I bought sound really amazing or even really poorly.
I feel I owe a lot of my decent insight into the audio sciences to Alan Parsons.
He has thought me quite a bit, but not personally of course.
I somehow lost track of this thread and realized it had some new activity. WOW! What great insights from the experts in the room! I learn something new every time I browse these forums - thank you all for sharing your knowledge with us.
@Nephilim_81 I’m likely in a far different league than you, but I agree that Alan Parsons has introduced some incredible technique and quality to audio sciences. Roger Nichols is another name that comes to mind.
I don’t think we are in a far different league cause you are here and that must mean something in regards to loving music and appreciating a terrific sonic template of well mixed and mastered recordings.
Thank you for your nice comment though, but for a guy who has been a music head for a couple of decades you really pick up on some things, especially when you buy really elite listening equipment.
I have something for you. I want you to listen to Peter Gabriel’s 4th solo album “ SECURITY.” I want you to listen to the 2010 remaster/reissue because it is such a great example of how a remastered recording should sound like. It is extremely tastefully done with loads of dynamic range. I think you’ll really like it and it will test the limits of your system. ;
I recently did a shootout of the first 4 Peter Gabriel albums. I own the original UK CDs, I got the 2002 remasters (same mastering as 2010) from the library and bought the current remasters from Bandcamp (originally released in 2016).
Normally I like original masters, which is fortunate since I have a whole backroom full of pre-loudness wars CDs that I compulsively bought in the 80s and 90s, but I kept reading on the Steve Hoffman forum that the latest remasters are really good.
Actually all the PG versions are pretty good, but I have to say that I liked the latest mastering the best, and they’re easily attainable from Bandcamp without having to look up release years and catalogue numbers on Discogs. I didn’t make notes, but from memory, when I compared the originals to the 2002s, the 2002s sounded like they had been EQ’d to make them sound better, and I would have liked them if that’s all I had, but when I compared back to the original, they sounded a little “off” in places to me. The Bandcamp remasters were similar to the 2002, but I liked the EQ a little more. YMMV
The other remaster that I recently listened to and slightly preferred to the original was Metallica’s Black album. The original CD is actually mastered very well, the differences are tiny, and obviously my perception of improvement is subjective, so if you own the original, I wouldn’t rush out to buy the new deluxe box unless you’re after the extras, but I was surprised about how much I liked it.
