Red Mosquito

“In August we passed back through New York to do some recording: ‘Mary Anne with the Shaky Hands’, some more overdubs on ‘I Can See for Miles’ and a version of ‘Summertime Blues’. During this process I began to question some of Kit’s technical decisions for the first time; he was trying to keep me out of the recording process, but by this time I knew a lot about it, and had a lot to offer. I considered some of his technical decisions amateurish, and he seemed to be pressing engineers to lower their standards to get more level on a master, causing distortion by having all the needles in the red. As a result many of our recordings from this time don’t sound as clean as they should have.”

Excerpt From: Pete, Townshend. “Who I Am: A Memoir.”

Guess this isn't a recent phenomena.

No, I don't think it is either.

It worked for The Woods. It doesn't really work anywhere else.

What are some examples of records that are produced this way other than Pearl Jam's self-titled album (and "The Woods," apparently)?

I don't know if The Woods was technically brickwalled or just a bit more wild in the production. Either way I love it a lot more than those previous clean post-punk sounding records.

Wasn't Death Magnetic brickwalled to all buggery?

Basically anything produced by Rick Rubin in the last 20 years. "Californication" sounds like ass.

Even the Johnny Cash albums? I always thought they had a nice sound to them, though I can see where one might say they're a little thunderous for what are supposed to be intimate acoustic records.

I'm just wondering how sensitive my ears are to this.

Kevin Davis wrote:What are some examples of records that are produced this way other than Pearl Jam's self-titled album (and "The Woods," apparently)?

I'm far from an expert in the area, but I'm pretty sure I've seen Oasis' What's the Story Morning Glory cited a few times in articles on the subject. I'm sure there have been more glaring examples since, but it seems to be considered a seminal album, if that's the right phrase for it, in relation to the Brickwalling phenomenon.

Kevin Davis wrote:What are some examples of records that are produced this way other than Pearl Jam's self-titled album (and "The Woods," apparently)?

I was under the impression that it affected the vast majority of albums to some extent.

A long-ass list:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... oudnessWar

Yeah, I was going to reply "most commercially-released popular music in the last 15 years."

Some examples are obviously worse than others but there's been a widespread reduction of dynamic range across virtually all pop/rock music released from the mid/late 90s onwards.

Heathen wrote:http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LoudnessWar?from=Main.RecordOfLoudnessWar

The Veronicas are ridiculously loud for a girl band

Haha, what?

Girls can't be loud with those petite wrists and all those high heel shoes they have to wear.

Kevin Davis wrote:What are some examples of records that are produced this way other than Pearl Jam's self-titled album (and "The Woods," apparently)?

Seriously? What do you use to listen to music? Don't you have to adjust levels when you listen to different things? Surely you can tell the difference between something that is "normal" and something that is extremely loud and abrasive at any volume.

Heathen wrote:

Kevin Davis wrote:What are some examples of records that are produced this way other than Pearl Jam's self-titled album (and "The Woods," apparently)?

I was under the impression that it affected the vast majority of albums to some extent.

A long-ass list:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... oudnessWar

interesting list, though i'm not sure if I agree with their assessment of certain metal albums. the very essence of metal requires pushing sonic boundaries. it's not supposed to be pleasant. while there is a fine line between being brickwalled into unlistenable territory (Death Magnetic, i'm looking at you), a somewhat brickwalled sound is precisely how modern metal is supposed to sound. when you go to a show in a club there is almost always a backline of high gain amplifiers and a full frontal sonic assault is the intended result. of course it should still sound dynamic -- by metal standards. but holding the genre up to the standards of genres doesn't work. even using the popular metal bands of the 70's and 80's as a yardstick for how today's metal should sound doesn't make much sense to me. if Crack the Skye was produced in 1985 it would probably sound weak.

then again 95% of my listening takes place on $150 mid-level ear cans, so maybe I simply don't have the equipment to hear the things other people are hearing.

Thanks for the article, Heathen.

Wendy Carlos's Twin wrote:

Kevin Davis wrote:What are some examples of records that are produced this way other than Pearl Jam's self-titled album (and "The Woods," apparently)?

Seriously? What do you use to listen to music? Don't you have to adjust levels when you listen to different things? Surely you can tell the difference between something that is "normal" and something that is extremely loud and abrasive at any volume.

Sure, I can tell the difference between two things that have different "base volumes," for lack of a better term, but I have a harder time thinking of things that are loud and abrasive "at any volume." There are some exceptions of course (I can definitely understand the criticisms of "Californication," I remember noticing that even in high school), but usually I can just fiddle with the volume settings until the levels are right for my ears and carry on. I suspect that's probably the case for most non-audiophile listeners.

I'm not trying to argue that this is all in people's heads or anything, I'm just trying to get a handle on what people are talking about when they go on about it. I'll consider myself lucky that my ears don't instinctively zero in on it.

This is a pretty good site:
http://www.dr.loudness-war.info/

For the record, Pearl Jam's albums listed in order from most dynamic to least, using that site's scores (higher scores are preferred):

Pearl Jam 6
Backspacer 7 (loudest track is louder than Binaural or No Code's loudest, but average is the same)
No Code 7
Binaural 7 (loudest track is not as loud as No Code's loudest, but average is the same)
Yield 8
Vs 9
Vitalogy 9
Ten 10 (remaster is on par with s/t)

For comparison's sake, Tom Waits's Real Gone and the 2008 Who's Next remaster both score a 10, the Grinderman albums, In the Aeroplane, and The Soft Bulletin all score a 6, and Ryan Adams's Love is Hell scores a 7.

The Woods? 3.

I think two of the worst offenders are Brude Springsteen's Magic and Metallica's Death Magnetic. I like both albums but cannot in any circumstances listen to either the whole way through. They just plain hurt my ears after a bit.

surfndestroy wrote:I think two of the worst offenders are Brude Springsteen's Magic and Metallica's Death Magnetic. I like both albums but cannot in any circumstances listen to either the whole way through. They just plain hurt my ears after a bit.

Magic actually has a pretty decent dynamic range. Better than The Rising or Devil's and Dust.

I think that it, like Backspacer, suffers from the way that Brendan records individual instruments. He wants them all to feel very "present," and I'm not sure what on earth he does with those things but lately he just sucks the life out of every individual part that's played, so that by the time he's done it doesn't even MATTER if it's dynamic or not.

McParadigm wrote:

surfndestroy wrote:I think two of the worst offenders are Brude Springsteen's Magic and Metallica's Death Magnetic. I like both albums but cannot in any circumstances listen to either the whole way through. They just plain hurt my ears after a bit.

Magic actually has a pretty decent dynamic range. Better than The Rising or Devil's and Dust.

I think that it, like Backspacer, suffers from the way that Brendan records individual instruments. He wants them all to feel very "present," and I'm not sure what on earth he does with those things but lately he just sucks the life out of every individual part that's played, so that by the time he's done it doesn't even MATTER if it's dynamic or not.

I checked the site provided and was really shocked at the rating Magic was given. To me, it's a good album ruined.

What people attribute to brickwall production, and what is, are often very different things. It should also be noted that you can actually compress to the point of pretty sizable reductions and, to an extent, the human ear will still perceive dynamic shifts due to frequency shifts and perception issues.

Magic seems to be a problem from the recording side. Each individual instrument is smashed and then just BURIED in shared frequencies, and many seem to have been intentionally distorted (a very misguided attempt to create a 1960's feel?). The dynamic range inherent to the album mostly comes from those times when instruments cut out or stop playing. It also has a very bizarre feeling of frequency loss/muddling that is usually associated with extremely low quality mp3s....which would not be a result of compression-heavy mastering (though, to be fair, it should be hard enough to attain using today's equipment that you'd almost have to go off in pursuit of it.

I have often wondered if Springsteen, who by all accounts is very opinionated about his records' sounds, has some sort of hearing loss. He seems to be favoring too much increase in very messy areas of the spectrum.

theplatypus wrote:Basically anything produced by Rick Rubin in the last 20 years. "Californication" sounds like ass.

Californication is one of the all time worst offenders. It sounds so bad.