Why do so many new records sound like absolute crap? I love digital recording, and technology makes Valentine Wolfe possible. So, this isn’t a typical “digital sucks” type rant…
No, mostly, its two basic observations: Louder isn’t always better. In fact, many of the reference recordings I use these days are pretty quiet, relatively speaking. The only REALLY loud disks I reference these days are Nightwish’s albums from Century Child on (on a side note…that band got SO much better when Marco joined. These days, I’d say I’m less of a Nightwish fan and more of a Marco fan).
And observation 2: Digital Distortion is not the same an Analog distortion. Seems simple, no? Funny how artists from Rush to Metallica don’t seem to get that. Lars was right, Death Magnetic IS how bands make records these days. Which isn’t a good thing at all. I find it difficult to grasp that in the ProTools era, people would be fine with clipping and the hideous sounds digital zero.
This is one of the many reasons I LOVE my Apogee Duet: level setting is really easy. Headroom abounds, and this is a good thing, especially in the digital era. One of the biggest problems Valentine Wolfe had in our earlier shows and recordings was that we kept making things too loud…we’d squash the headroom right out of what we were doing.
I can’t think of any examples other than Vapor Trails right now, but there are some bands and recordings I can’t listen to anymore because the sonic quality is simply awful (I haven’t bought Death Magnetic for this very reason). Anybody else notice he same thing?
