Dark Matter (song)

[tragabigzanda]

pearl jam sucks now

[Rangi Guy]

I'm just happy that most of you appear to be happy with new Pearl Jam

[RockPusher]

The compression argument seems to me to pit those who listen to music as an activity vs those who listen to music as background to their activities. If you are totally zoned in, hearing as much dynamic range as possible will be the goal. If you are doing something else, compression may actually make it easier to listen without "actively" listening.

[oneway23]

If somebody says "the production sounds like this" could somebody else say "no you're wrong, it sounds like this"? How subjective is the perception of what a particular sound sounds like?

Ample room for debate around how to talk about sounds, but decidedly less when trying to identify explicit production choices. For example, what I call "glassy" someone else might call "bright" or "harsh," but hopefully we can drill down to "an excess of 7k" or some such.

I generally think of mixes within the following contexts:

1. Width (left to right spread and instrument separation)

2. Height (high/mid/low frequencies -- It's an interesting phenomenon that we tend to perceive high frequencies as being physically higher in a space, and low ones as being physically lower.)

3. Depth (when things sound up front vs pushed back. Can be a function of volume, frequencies, and decay, or any combination of the three.)

4. Frequency range (Brightness vs. darkness vs. mid-range presence)

5. Dynamics (e.g. compression, loud vs soft)

6. Clarity vs. distortion (analog vs. digital distortion)

7. Movement (are they working the faders like a composer, or are they slapping a compressor on the stereo output and just letting it ride?)

This is my kind of horny right here

[nomorecrackpipes]

I think it's solid and what I was looking for - a song not iterative, a song I can't tell who wrote it, the instruments are the feature and Ed's downgraded a bit. A number of listens in, I wish Mike's solo was extended to the end of the song, and Ed's wails were reduced.

I had it on a radio shuffle via YouTube music and Hail Hail and Elderly Woman were in the set; I think it's very cool of an aged band to bust out a rocker as it was for a young rock band to bust out something like Elderly Woman so early in their career.

[Ms Harmless]

If a tree falls in a forest...are you upset about the sound it makes?

yes

[oneway23]

If a tree falls in a forest...are you upset about the sound it makes?

yes

Especially if there has been an excessive amount of peak limiting

[Strat]

If a tree falls in a forest...are you upset about the sound it makes?

yes

Especially if there has been an excessive amount of peak limiting

Probably not though because youll be able to hear the air being pushed around amirite?!

[spike]

In My Treequency

[spike]

Last Distortion

[Strat]

In My Treequency

nice

[guitar_davey]

Treble Christ

[oneway23]

If a tree falls in a forest...are you upset about the sound it makes?

yes

Especially if there has been an excessive amount of peak limiting

Probably not though because youll be able to hear the air being pushed around amirite?!

There were unfortunately scooped mid-range frequencies at 2kHz that caused the fall to have significantly less impact than it conceivably could have.

[Tj]

Ok for those in the know. Is it a belief in general that compression is being over used in modern music across the entirety of the mix. I wonder if it was used less on the great sounding records of the 70s like Rumors or really any of that sound city sound. I use compression in a very limited way with my guitar, but apply it across a entire mix something I have no experience with.

[Ms Harmless]

Ed does a lot of his modern quick-fire speaky singing in this, but it doesn't feel like word salad because it's more rhythmically sophisticated, gets in the pocket more, with some stops and starts in unpredictable places

[tragabigzanda]

pearl jam sucks now

[Kevin Davis]

The compression argument seems to me to pit those who listen to music as an activity vs those who listen to music as background to their activities. If you are totally zoned in, hearing as much dynamic range as possible will be the goal. If you are doing something else, compression may actually make it easier to listen without "actively" listening.

Which is probably why it is seen as such an effective tool for getting music heard on the radio, in retail establishments, etc. -- make the music as "loud" at any volume as possible, at every part of the song, so that there is no lag in presence, no rises and falls whatsoever in the experience of the music. Constant stimulus.

My senses have become a lot more sensitive to this as I've gotten older. Even at moderate volumes, music that is mastered heavy-handedly like this fills the air in a way that feels overwhelming and unnerving, especially if people then try to talk over it or do other things to add noise to the environment. If it's truly in the background, a lot of the more nuanced ways that compression/limiting/etc. affect sound are less noticeable, but personally I find that music that is produced like this does not "stay in the background" well -- the approach by its very nature strives to push it into the foreground, against a host of competing stimuli.

I have a range of tolerance for it depending on a host of other factors, but it's definitely a thing that is a part of my experience of music now in a way that it wasn't, say, five or even two years ago.

There are some people who treat compression like a bogeyman, in a way that is extreme and can quickly become tiresome; if you've ever been on the Steve Hoffman Forums, you'll know that there are few things more irritating than people who try to convince you how bad music sounds by showing you how bad it looks, and the fact that home recording programs like Audacity and other DR-measuring tools are widely available to these people is a curse upon us all. But when you start to feel it intuitively, you really feel it.

[coptheriotact]

I used to talk a lot with a colleague who studied audio engineering and was recording music for local bands , (who he mentioned were complaining about his mixes)

he would talk about recording drums, quantizing, aligning to grid, creating “shells” adding in samples.. and then trying to recreate the room ambience with plugins.. and I was just thinking I just mic them up and record them..

Taking the DI from the guitar, using amp sims and recreating the guitarists tone secretly etc

Baking in the sound of something being loud rather than letting the listener turn it up loud themselves .

These are the things I expected wotman to do and it’s not a complaint cause I knew it was coming but it does matter

[Buby]

Did anyone else paste the vocal intro from the b-side?

I'm loving this.

[Ms Harmless]

I'd love to hear it, do we think it's on the album?