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Thread: The Loudness War Rages On: Jack White vs Holier Than Thou Audiophiles

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    The Loudness War Rages On: Jack White vs Holier Than Thou Audiophiles

    An interesting read for those who are interested in this kinda stuff...

    Wednesday - May 12, 2010
    mastering notes posted by Jack White at 09:08AM
    hello,

    the staff at third man has informed me of several letters that have been sent to the office regarding the mastering
    quality of some of the records that we've released. particularly sea of cowards and icky thump, and also questions
    regarding "analog" sourcing of the music to vinyl. i would like to take a second and address these questions.


    all of the music that's been released through third man records has been recorded to analog tape.
    all of the music that's been released through third man records has been mixed to analog tape.

    not all of the music has been cut to vinyl from analog tape. why not? because it's not always possible.
    it's not as simple as some people think. would we like to do it everyntime? of course we would.

    for one the tape machines used at third man studios are highly unique and can't be found everywhere.
    another reason is that if you do what's called a "cross fade" such as between the songs 'blue blood
    blues' and 'hustle and cuss' on the new album, you can't mix that onto tape without having three machines
    of the same model type. two to mix from, and one to mix down to. not very easy to do, and very expensive.
    and you lose a generation in that cross fade to boot. "then don't put a crossfade in!" what if thats
    what the song desires and what the artist wants? its not out of convenience to cross fade its about
    aesthetic presentation just as a dissolve in film editing takes place.

    the first time i was able to cut direct from tape to vinyl and and afford it and make it work was
    the album elephant.
    why? because the songs had no crossfades between tracks. sometimes that's not possible
    when sequencing an album. also because the vinyl cutting joint in london happened to have
    the same tape machine as toe rag. besides this we still had to pay double the price because it
    was mastered to vinyl, then started all over again and mastered for digital a second time. probably
    cost more than the entire recording of the album did, and a BARELY noticeable difference in sound.

    don't mistake vinyls lower volume for "better quality" that aint necessarily so. vinyl is always
    quieter and warmer, and hell i prefer it any day of the week. but if i wanted to play my album
    at a venue over the loudspeakers i wouldn't be playing the vinyl i'll tell you that.
    i remember first seeing the video for 'fell in love with a girl' on mtv and sat with jaw on the
    floor as i heard the music volume drop in half from the video that had played before it.
    so what do you do about that?



    here's a breakdown of what happens with the mastering of sea of cowards:

    the master mix tape is sent to vlado mueller in nyc (why vlado? i'll explain in a minute.)
    he RENTS a tape machine that is the same model as
    the one we mixed to at third man. he masters from the tape into his computer and converts the analog signal to digital.
    why?
    because cd's and mp3's are digital formats. vinyl is the only analog format third man releases on.
    why doesn't vlado master the vinyl from the tapes?
    because he doesn't have a cutting lathe in his studio.
    why not?
    because nobody masters for vinyl anymore. bob ludwig (famous mastering engineer) got rid of his lathe in his studio as well.
    we master our vinyl here in nashville with a person who only does vinyl mastering.
    why not send it out to so and so somewhere else? because cutting vinyl "better" than the next cutter is practically indistinguishable
    in my opinon.
    there's only so loud they can cut it before the needle jumps out of the groove. so they all cut it as loud
    as they can, which puts the signal/sound all in the same place. after that it just becomes a matter of how
    "well" you recorded the music. if you had two vinyl cutters cut the same
    record and a/b'd them on a turntable i highly doubt you could tell the difference, no matter what audiophiles tell you.

    why do we send the tape to someone with a lathe? i don't know! it's expensive as hell and practically not worth it.
    we have to master the album twice.
    spend twice as much money, twice as much time, and make a COPY of the mix tape which lessens
    a generation of the music. to get the album mastered to vinyl direct from tape in nashville i have to load
    my tape machine into a truck and drive it over to the vinyl cutting lab and re set it up. and that's only
    if the album is perfectly sequenced onto the tape and contains no crossfades. a cd master starts to
    look like a pretty preferable option at that point.

    whenever possible third man does its best though to cut from the analog source. we would never chose
    digital over analog out of ignorance or carelessness.


    "but my vinyl sounds so much less compressed than my cd!"
    no kidding.
    vinyl recordings come nowhere near the volume of digital recordings. if they could they would, but the needle
    would jump out of the groove. who out there says "make my album quieter than every other record out there!"
    that doesn't necessarily give you "better" sound quality just because you lowered the volume.
    the problem only comes into play when people want things so loud they clip the entire recording
    for the sake of volume. we have never done that. the first master of sea of cowards i received
    did not clip, but i asked vlado to lower the volume slightly ANYWAYS just to make sure.
    computer pictures of sound waves from different programs are not accurate. they don't
    necesarrily show you the same picture we would see in the mastering studio.

    "i can tell that my vinyl is from a digital source."

    no you can't. i've a/b'd them myself along with engineers and mastering professionals and
    you'd have to be a scientist to tell the difference. you only think that because of some outside
    info.


    "my cd of sea of cowards is clipping! it's too loud!"


    do you think that i, my engineers and assts., the mastering engineer and his assts., our management,
    the record label, etc. all heard these same recordings and IGNORED the fact that it was clipping
    and put it out anyway? that's insulting. icky thump and sea of cowards sound incredible on
    the stereo systems i listen to them on. they sound good in the studio, good in the car, good
    on the home stereo, good on you tube, and good on the radio. and good on my computer!
    we honestly have no idea what you're talking about. don't just assume because a recording
    is loud and powerful (or mastered by vlado) that it automatically has joined ignorantly into the loudness wars and
    is clipping beyond belief.

    the big question is what are people listening to their records on these days?
    you guessed it; tiny, tiny, tiny little speakers on their computers and ipods.


    jack lawrence said of hearing horehound on the radio:

    "i'm so tired of hearing our songs on the radio and our music is half the volume of the song before us
    and the song after us." true. it pisses me off too.
    you need to know something else the loudness wars started in the era of jukeboxes. even making
    songs short enough that they could boost the volume of the cut on a 45 to beat the other
    records and be heard in a loud bar. this is nothing new. the only difference is that now they
    have computers with extremely heavy compressors. these can be abused and overused for
    sure.




    why join in the loudness wars? we're not. but i'm not going to put out some puny, thin sounding
    mastering of a heavy record like sea of cowards when i think it should be as loud as possible
    WITHOUT clipping and distorting. i'm not going to do the music a disservice and have dj's
    not want to play it, or have it lost in the noise of a bar just to please some audiophiles
    holier than thou opinion of "quality". it doesn't necessarily apply. i've never said
    "well, icky thump is too loud and clipping....but that's what the people want." either.
    i've made our masters as loud and powerful as possible without falling victim to
    those pitfalls to the best of my ability.


    when an album is mastered loud (which it should be in my opinion) you the listener adjust the volume
    for what medium you are listening to it on. if it's your computer, then don't turn it up to
    "ten", the volume of the mastering probably warrants you listen to it at say "six". remember
    that your playback set up can distort the music more than anything. some set ups
    can't handle bass, come can't handle volume. that's the breaks. an old 1982 pontiac 6000
    stereo wouldn't be able to handle icky thump if it tried. good.


    what's the worst part of all these decisions for a producer is that it's so incredible
    unexciting and uninteresting to master your records for ear buds and laptop speakers.
    probably the last place an artist wants you to hear their music.

    it's like editing a film for the iphone format instead of a movie theater large screen.
    we understand thats the nature of the business now, but it's not favorable. i listen
    to ipods, don't get me wrong. but i would never consider that the "proper" way to
    hear an album by a long shot. for one the digital signal is only twenty percent
    of the total amount of signal that the artist intended for you to hear.


    the main point at third man is this;
    we would never intentionally put out something that is clipping or distorting
    out of carelessness for the sound quality. i mean give us a break, are you
    kidding?

    we would never listen to a mastering of an album and say

    "yep, it's clipping, but we don't care! put it out and take their money ha ha ha!"

    give us some credit.

    i've only done one "shoot out" between mastering engineers in my time.
    it was between vlado mueller and bob ludwig. and for icky thump.
    ludwigs mastering was so much louder than vlados and clipping i couldn't
    listen to it. it was the only time i ever turned down a project i was working
    on on my stereo in my life.

    vlado mueller has gotten a reputation for being "vlad the impaler" and making
    everything too loud and clipping. but i strongly disagree. he only does
    that when the ARTIST INSISTS THAT HE DO THAT. and that's the
    truth. believe me i've had this discussion a thousand times with engineers.

    if you listen to the cd of icky thump or sea of cowards on nice mcintosh
    amps and b and w speakers and still think its clipping, give us a call.
    if you listen to those cds in a bmw driving ninety down the autobahn
    and think it's too loud, give us a call.

    if you are listening to those albums on ear buds and tiny computer speakers
    and think its clipping i don't know what to tell you.



    i hope this addresses some of your concerns and i hope you understand
    our stance on sound quality at third man better. for more info into the
    strange maze of death that is sound "quality" read the book
    "perfecting sound forever" by greg milner. from the guardian review
    of the book, this is what is most important in the battle against new
    technology:


    "For technology freaks, the book provides a veritable history of gadgetry, from the four-track mixing desk to the advent of Pro Tools, software that allows the recording engineer to, as Milner puts it, "see the sounds as digital waveforms on a computer screen and move them around with the click of a mouse… and try 10 variations of an edit, and decide which one worked best". Pro Tools has made the business of recording much simpler, but, as with all such advances, something has been lost in the process. That something is "presence"; the ghost in the machine that makes recorded music sound almost human."






    jack white
    III
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    That is a good read. Has anyone noticed that "new vinyl" feels thicker than "old vinyl"?
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    Good points...

    I asked the guy at Seawolf Studios out in Helsinki (during January while listening to my current bands final mix), "does it have to be that distorted?"
    His answer was "It's the industry standard, what can ya do..."
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    Find a better studio would be my response and action...
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    Thought this was going to be a Loudness thread, was getting ready to break out my Akira Takasaki pic !!
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    Quote Originally Posted by Va Beach VH Fan View Post
    Thought this was going to be a Loudness thread, was getting ready to break out my Akira Takasaki pic !!
    Rock N' Roll Crazy Nights! We are the herrooooooos tonnight! X-M-A.
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    Hey now, no teasing.... Wok and Woll aside, those boys could fukkin' rock....

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    Interesting read. And if an engineer told me something like 'distortion being the industry standard', I would tell him he was full of shit.

    This brings to mind the brickwalled Metallica mixes on their latest album. Comparing it to the Guitar Hero mixes I found it to be pretty harsh sounding.

    Another aspect of the 'dumbing down' of the human race.......conditioning people to think shitty sound is 'high-quality'.
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    Ive noticed CDs getting louder and louder over the last 10 years or so. The factory installed stereo in my VW Jetta at it's minimum volume is often too loud to converse with someone in the passenger seat. I often end up listening to radio down low or no music in car when conversation takes precedence. I used to say "if it's too loud you're too old" but now I just save the CDs for when I'm alone or on a roadtrip. I resisted mp3 thing but was given an ipod as a gift. I like having large library of music in small device but sound quality is lacking and the volume of newer vs older CDs can be jarring.
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    original Van Halen 6 pack CDs are the quietest CDs I own. I hope the remastered ones are better. Totally not even close to loud enough. And then there's Led Zeppelin's latest two live albums; WAY too loud!

    When I tell people I listen to vinyl a lot they look at me like some weird old man drinking cod liver oil. I love it! Animals... Van Halen Fair Warning... ZZ Top Fandango... Led Zeppelin Presence... Man I want to stay home from work and vape it up and spin records all day..
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    Quote Originally Posted by ELVIS View Post
    Find a better studio would be my response and action...
    Tell our drummer. He runs the show with an iron fist...

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    I'm quite sure he's not the only drummer in town...

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    Yeah but if it is the drummer's band, Coyote would be the more likely one to get the boot.

    Hey, when I am recording stuff, I want my mixes to be loud as they can, but I want to give the track room to breathe. Compare a brickwalled wave form to a standard wave form of the same piece of music. It is like putting a dolphin in a 2-liter bottle of water with the lid on vs. letting it swim in a swimming pool.

    Waves has a plugin called the L1 Ultramaximizer. You set the volume you want, and it brickwalls the wave form to that level.

    I checked it out, and it was quite obvious that the result fucking sucked. It DID make the music harsher, colder. I do not use it. Does not make sense to use it just to brickwall the track if it is going to make the track sound like shit.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Hardrock69 View Post
    Interesting read. And if an engineer told me something like 'distortion being the industry standard', I would tell him he was full of shit.

    This brings to mind the brickwalled Metallica mixes on their latest album. Comparing it to the Guitar Hero mixes I found it to be pretty harsh sounding.
    I don't remember if you are a fan of the band, but RUSH had a similar disaster with the Vapor Trails album a few years ago. There were absolutely no lows, everything was maxed out and clipping. I've explained the effect to people before in this manner: Think of the song "Stairway To Heaven". It starts out relatively soft and quiet, then builds to a rocking climax that appears much louder. Now imagine if the entire song sounded as heavy and loud as the ending section. Whatever dynamics inherent in the tune would simply disappear, as the whole thing would be like one long drone with no sonic relief to it.

    I can't stand these over-saturated mixes. If anything, they fail to sound organic, and if I wanted robot music I'd put on some Kraftwerk or DEVO.
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    You are right about Vapor Trails. Never thought of that before. All I recall is I did not care for the mix too much, but at the time I did not bother to analyze why.

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    I purchased a 2012 Rhino records re-release of Chicago's "if you leave me now.. And other hits" for $5. I thought what the hell, for that price I can't go wrong. But turns out I was totally wrong. WTF is wrong with the sound? It's compressed, dry, ear splitting. I have mp3s on my iPod of the same songs, re-mastered in 2003 that sound 10 times better. I blame this on Rhino and more importantly this bullshit Loudness wars. What an affront to recorded music. After a few disappointments I am forever leery of buying any "re-master." Time to hit up the local used record stores and give the finger to the record industry.

    Let's all do it together
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    I think the best CD remaster I have ever heard is Sinatra: Nothing But The Best......came out in 2008 on Reprise.....the best sounding CD I have ever heard. Loud but crisp, clean and absolutely not too loud where it distorts. Perfect re-master of a great collection of songs.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Va Beach VH Fan View Post
    Hey now, no teasing.... Wok and Woll aside, those boys could fukkin' rock....
    They played here on The Island a few months back.....seriously, they rock.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Va Beach VH Fan View Post
    Thought this was going to be a Loudness thread...
    same same (what a letdown)
    Last edited by Yount; 05-22-2012 at 08:15 AM.
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