Blah Blah Cafe, the Jean-Michel Jarre forum

[Jakob BC]

I just wondered what peoples oppinions of music recording are.
It's like quality and purity is very important for music production.
I have been thinking about this for a long time but I realized that maybe there was something about it after having listened to an interview with the electronic musician Legowelt, where he explained how he think music productions now adays are too sterile and cold.
I do agree, I think too much music mainly the radiohit productions are like this. Everything is so clean and smooth, almost too much which I think is destroying in my oppinion the quality of a sound. Im not saying the other way of recording will be poor quality, but different.

I don't know if there is anything to comment on this, but what do you think about music recordings?

[jarrekid]

Yes, they are too clean.

I've been recording/producing tracks for my friend's rock band and I must say, when you start using dynamic mics instead of the cleaner compressor mics to record drums, you get a much more powerful, dirty sound. It reminds me a LOT of the classic John Bonham drums (Led Zepellin).

[GeeJee]

Indeed, I don't mind a bit of dirt and analog instability. In musical composition there is the importance of leaving out certain things, and it should be like that productionwise too, imo.

[Equinoxe]

Digitalism doesnt kill Music recording,there are lots of coherent devices for simulating that Analog warmth,but you can never have a too pure sound,At the end of the day the artist will always want the best recorded sound as it portrays there Music in its purest form,if you want distortion add distortion,but the Distortion will be the same effect be it digital or Analog if your recording to a digital medium and the same for Analog,you cant warm up a Digital Distortion by recording it onto Analog tape it will still be Digital......

Digital recordings are a way of preserving Analog data,not to Clean them up for instance many of Jarres and many other artists who recorded stuff years ago will inevitably have reels and reels of master tapes,now over time these Decay and deteriate,the only way to presever them is too transfer them to Digital Medium,which doesnt decay as fast.the quality doenst dissapate it just becomes cleaner,when Oxygene was remastered it was still Analog Quality it was just recorded with Higher Bit rates to a newer medium transferred fro mthe Original masters,so it would allow you to hear more not make it colder or more digital

I personally prefer Cleaner recordings theres nothing more distracting than Hiss or compression from analog tape taking awaying that clarity of high range frequency end sounds...
I've never understood why Korg stuck and analog valve into the Triton Extreme,yes ok to maybe add some warmth or growl but the engine is still digital and no matter how much valve processing you give it,it still sounds digital.....

Its a joke to me,for years everyone wanted Clean clarity on recordings and designers were forever making devices to give the artist the chance to give the Public there music in its cleanest purest form as heard in the studio,but nowadays designers are forever trying to simulate older technology because it supposed to give warmth or make something Organic,when its totally shit,in years to come People will come to love the Sound of a 24 bit mastered album because it sounds so much more pure..

the Analog warmth is not something you can capture,its all down to your own perception on music and what you want to hear,if someone blind folded you and Pressed two recording of Oxygene both onto Vinyl ,one was the original masters and one was the remastered CD version.........I bet none of you would be able to hear any difference and tell the Vinyls apart and thats a fACT!!!!!!!!


I know you can hear immediate timbre difference in Analog synths as opposed to digital Clones,but that again is like the Difference between analog tape and digital ,you know the difference because of the way the sound is filtered..........but when it comes to digital Medium,no-one can really hear a Distinct difference its only what you read about the Recording process that Makes you think about it differently.....

If the Jarre CD remasters never had the Type telling you it was recording using 24 bit 96Khz equipment you wouldnt know any the wiser........
these people who say they can tell the difference between 44.1 Khz and 96khz or 16 bit and 24 bit are full of shit,how can human ears pick out distinct differences with Bit rates??????thats just a sampling issue and how much data is record per sample cycle

[Jakob BC]

I think you have gone the digital vs. analog way, which is not quite what I am talking about. It's just like soundproducers are trying to remove all funny details. Not a single noise is allowed to be on the recordings, everything has to be pure and sterile. One of the most famous productionstudios in Denmark, host for many worldwide known bands, they have recording gear for a damn alot of money, so they have tools to clean up a track in every corner. This is how many studios are working.
I think you can still be a master of production without cleaning a track 100%. This happens mostly in the mainstream hit culture where they often don't focus on the same qualities in the musicproduction.
It's a shame anyway.

[jeremy]

I tend to believe that it's just a matter of technology... When you record your music, you want it to be the best quality possible. Why bother with noises when you can remove them??? Or even not have them at all from the beginning. It would have been the same in the 60s or 70s if they had the technology at that time. Maybe we should all praise the recordings of the 20s and 30s... Wow! Those are fantastic sounding recordings!!! All those noises and crackles, simply fabulous!

Seriously if I had the chance to work in a big studio, I would remove any distracting noise in my music.

[VinceBlood]

Music recording is today less spontaneous than before. Cold sound comes from perfection way you process the sound not from the equipment behind. Intention you put on the sound IS important, it is the message I kept from Jarre.
There is also tendency that oblige you to have a 'standard' sound for radio broadcast.

Such discusses could be long

[Jakob BC]

I tend to believe that it's just a matter of technology... When you record your music, you want it to be the best quality possible. Why bother with noises when you can remove them??? Or even not have them at all from the beginning. It would have been the same in the 60s or 70s if they had the technology at that time. Maybe we should all praise the recordings of the 20s and 30s... Wow! Those are fantastic sounding recordings!!! All those noises and crackles, simply fabulous!

Seriously if I had the chance to work in a big studio, I would remove any distracting noise in my music.

If you used analog synthesizers for instance, did you want to remove all the cool stuff showing it's alive they bring along with it's sound?



Maybe I don't express precisly what I am talking about, because it seems you don't understand what I mean

[AnDrOiD]

I think recordings were much more clean in their sound in the 80's. Lots of recent releases tend to have a much more rough/noisy sound. Just listen to Depeche Mode's latest album “Playing The Angel” as an example.

[Finaero]

Yeah, there's some kind of magic in the recording sounds from 70's and 80's and then it suddenly gets eurodancecold in the 90's... sometimes it bothers me, but then I realize I only get that cold sterile feeling so blah

[Equinoxe]

I think recordings were much more clean in their sound in the 80's. Lots of recent releases tend to have a much more rough/noisy sound. Just listen to Depeche Mode's latest album “Playing The Angel” as an example.

Thats down to overuse of Distortion not any particular recording method,Playing the Angel is not as easy on the ear as past albums,its quite a dirty sound,to be honest its a rocking album,but not sonically there best,song ability it is one of the best albums but musically its quite harsh and easily fatigues the Listener...

[Equinoxe]

I think you have gone the digital vs. analog way, which is not quite what I am talking about. It's just like soundproducers are trying to remove all funny details. Not a single noise is allowed to be on the recordings, everything has to be pure and sterile. One of the most famous productionstudios in Denmark, host for many worldwide known bands, they have recording gear for a damn alot of money, so they have tools to clean up a track in every corner. This is how many studios are working.
I think you can still be a master of production without cleaning a track 100%. This happens mostly in the mainstream hit culture where they often don't focus on the same qualities in the musicproduction.
It's a shame anyway.

Any producer/engineer will tell you the importance of removing Noise.....Its part of the mixing process,if you left it in before long all the tracks that contained noise combined would amount to a rather unlistenable tone..and spoil the Music..

Many analog synths didn't have the Signal to Noise ratios of digital equipment and of course there were impurities with older recordings,but they would have still used some form of gating or expanders to remove audible noise.thats the reason such devices within recording were invented...they dont make anything sound purer or any more sterile and clean they just remove the Noise level thats not required.what you hear at the Input is the same on the output just minus the Noise

Between the Music recording studios of the 60's and 70's and today's equivilant nothing has changed,the only thing that has changed is the way WE like to listen to the music, In that respect I'm talking about the devices we listen to music on,this generation will never understand the Importance of Vinyl and its strengths and pitfuls,but that again is down to technology not the way in which music is recorded in studios,because a piece of music recorded to Vinyl is still the same in CD form,its the device its played on that makes the Sound different....And how we interpret that is because of our needs,not because Recording techniques have changed because between a Recording of the 60s and the 00's all that has changed is the instruments used in modern techniques(PC/Synths)recording tracks still is the same Process to remove noise and bring out the cleanest sound as it should be heard.

the only thing that has altered recorded Music is our ears,music nowadays is louder in its medium,than recordings of yesteryear,thats why so many artists release remastered Versions to bring them up to db Normalisation levels of digital Equipment,and that again is because of the Technology that the Listener uses.but that sonic Analog quality is not lost.

[AMR]

Hi,

I believe you are mistaking "noise" with "trasients" in the signal.
The computer generated signal can be perfect and sterile not because it has no noise, but because it keeps repeating a soundwave with no subtle variations (pitch, harmonics, wave, etc.).

Jarre's Ethnicolor is a brilliant example of "analog" at work even in a digital medium (CD). In analog, when something is too loud, the medium (the sound it ouputs) seems to "shiver" to "shake" to be "too loud" but with respect.

In digital, too loud is simply harsh noise, not a "shiver" of the sound.
Just try "Ethinicolor" when Jarre bangs the timpani's/bass drum's and notice the "shivering" the digital sampling caught from the analog master, it makes your ears "quake" - that's what digital seems to be missing, but not because it's digital, only because people don't use "analog saturation" or "trasients" as effects, and there are plenty of VSTs and tricks to achieve just that, impressive loudness you can hear, not the unbearable loudness that makes you deaf most producers demand today (everything is crunched and pulled up with no distortion, except in dinamics)...

Kind Regards,
AMR
http://www.alvaromrocha.com

[Equinoxe]

Hi,

I believe you are mistaking "noise" with "trasients" in the signal.
The computer generated signal can be perfect and sterile not because it has no noise, but because it keeps repeating a soundwave with no subtle variations (pitch, harmonics, wave, etc.).

Not really!!!!I'm talking about Noise not transients,most transients can be dealt with by compression or at least tamed, or can be used to good effect,depending on what your dynamic structure is of the song


I agree that too loud in digital terms is harsh,kind of like distortion without the pleasant sounding tightness,but anything that clips in Digital is distortion,so you'd be foolish to record everything at normalisation level,adding eq to a sound will push it further up the clipping range I've never known anyone to record everything at 0db even after normalising (if needed),you'd be pretty foolish and amaterish to even think about that even after making the sound sterile,you can add loudness without normalising everything,that also can be achieved with Dynamics within the song,Vangelis has achieved that with some of his songs.

Digital doesnt allow for the same saturation as tape so inevitably will sound more pure as it doesnt curb certain transients like analog does,so everything recorded using it will sound harsh if not structured properly.


I'm talking about hiss or "White noise" present on many analog synth outputs,you dont tend to get so much of it with digitial circuitry as the majority of Equipment nowdays have good Signal to noise ratios,or at least have some form of advantage to compensate it but even so it exists in any form within most electrical audio equipment,just depends on your recording gear and gain structure in the chain you can never fully eliminate it without further processing,if that was the case,we'd all have sterile sounding recordings....but however you record sooner or later your gonna need to clean up a recording,noise also adds to the frequency range of that track so effective EQ cannot be fully implemented if your compensating the noise by trying to filter it out with EQ cos invariably the range your cutting will not be the same as the range needed by the timbre you've recorded so spoils the clarity of the sound

[Pete]

...not the unbearable loudness that makes you deaf most producers demand today (everything is crunched and pulled up with no distortion, except in dinamics)...

I totally agree here. I think that lots of production sound "harsh" rather than clean today.
To me the main "guilt" is Protools, actually how people use Protools.
Many "producers" (...?) make a big mess with lots of plug-ins here and there and overprocess the recorded tracks.
Then there is also a new Protoolish trend to abuse of automation (and here you can see Protools operators drawing with the mouse hundreds of dots to automate a recorded take, to control every bit of a performance untill they have killed it) and also to slice the recorded takes and to quantize them (have you heard about the "beat detective"?)
They could be very useful tools until you overuse them.
It's incredible how similar many today's productions sound, there are tons of software effects, instruments, libraries and everything could sound very different... and instead there is so often the same bad stamp everywhere.
So you see growing hardware analog summing devices, trying at least to better the final mix rather than summing in the box (like the very good "Dangerous 2bus" from Chris Muth or the Audient Sumo or the new AMS Neve 8816) but I still think that the problem is before...

Just try "Ethinicolor" when Jarre bangs the timpani's/bass drum's and notice the "shivering" the digital sampling caught from the analog master, it makes your ears "quake"

Are you referring to the sampler that sampled the analog sound or to the original master? For what I know Zoolook was the first album JMJ did completely digital, from the multitrack to the master (I also remember a 1994 interview in which he complained a bit about that)
\edit: to me zoolook sound digitally clean but not harsh (!)

P.