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In the previous issue I discussed the trend towards ‘louder isbetter’, and the corresponding use of heavy compression inmixing and mastering. This all came to a head in a posting to

the Pro Audio listserv on theInternet by mastering engineerBob Katz. [Regular readers willrecall our interview with Bob Katzon page 50 of Volume 1, Issue 2. –GS] For those of you who do notknow, Bob is a well-establishedand highly regarded masteringengineer. Further, he is anextremely good recordingengineer whose work for CheskyRecords (among others) hasearned him the reputation ofbeing a recording engineer’srecording engineer (AKA “pureenvy!”). He also hosts an excellentwebsite, www.digido.com. Here isBob’s rant:

“A potential client... had come tome for mastering months ago andwas very pleased with what I didon a country music mastering job.So I thought I would call and [push for] doing some mastering fortheir hit stuff. [The client] did a little song and dance about theirEuropean people wanting to do their own mastering. And anothersong and dance about their wanting to build a mastering studiothemselves. Then I said, ‘If I can prove to you that we can do itbetter, then you wouldn’t have to build your own mastering studio.’

“Then he said, ‘You know, your ideas about over-compressionand stuff, we want our songs to sound as loud as possible on theradio.’ I said, ‘They will. Do you know that processing on top ofover-processing actually ruins the sound of the music?’ He said‘I’ve never done the testing...’ I said, ‘The kids will love the sound ofthe record I can make when it’s played on the radio. And if youfeel you have to do it [over-compress], make a special singleversion and squash that, after we’ve already made the album soundreally good.’

“He said, ‘Hmm, those are interesting ideas,’ but I sensed hewasn’t convinced...

“Over-compressed sound makes me nauseous – sick to thestomach, if you want the truth. So I had to prove to him it doesn’tmatter what you do when it gets to the radio, that good sounding

records sound great at home andon the radio, and everywhere else...[I feel like] I’m pushing against amountain of ignorance... Thesound of the CD is in jeopardy!Does anyone realise this... thatbecause of today’s completelyunjustified over-processing, the LPsof 25 years ago sound better thanthe CDs we’re making today?

“To prove it, I put on a Simonand Garfunkel LP and a Pink FloydLP, both 25 to 35 years old. Theysound great! Moderate low levelupward compression at the bottomend was done to keep the signalabove the record noise. And rela-tively little mastering compression– probably just limiting to keep thecutter from frying... Sounded G-R-E-A-T.

“Do you want to make C-R-A-Pthe rest of your mastering life? No? Then fight this over-compres-sion thing, before it beats us. Current commercial pop records areso squashed they have incredible distortion and occasionally [aslittle as] 3dB peak-to-average ratio. It’s worse than tragic. This is asituation directly attributable to the new digital processors... wenever had to process that much in the days of analogue and wenever could even if we wanted to. What is needed desperatelytoday are some ears, a lot of restraint, and a lot of education andsome voices of sanity out of the wilderness. Help!”

Bob makes a strong point. The loudness mythology is firmly inplace, and mis-education is still a big problem across the recordingbusiness. The idea that someone wouldn’t hire Bob because of adesire for over-compression is scary, bordering on the utterlyinsane.

Meanwhile, many contemporary CDs are ridiculously hot. Iauditioned a recent Gloria Estefan CD and found that its levelscruised between -3dBFS and 0dBFS, and an older Toni Braxton

Compression andover compressionIn the second of a two part article, Dave Moulton discusses radio processing, car audio, andhow to make your mixes work in difficult environments.

CD is equally whacked. In both cases, levels and EQ are reallyhard-edged, fatiguing, and unpleasant.

While there may be some argument that these CDs are beingmixed for Auratone-type playback venues, they still sound awfulover a general array of decent loudspeakers. Keep in mind I reallylike the music in the Braxton CD! This is not a musical issue, butmore akin to listening to great recordings through a boombox. I’mnot knocking the mastering engineers either. We all have to dowhat we’re told if we wish to continue working in the field.

Why does this happen? The reasoning goes something like this:radio broadcast is essential to record sales, and if it doesn’t soundgood on the radio it won’t sell in the record stores. Meanwhile,most radio listening is done in cars. So there’s a double whammy –it’s gotta sound good on radio (which has serious limitations, par-ticularly in the AM band) and it’s gotta sound good in cars, whichhave very limited dynamic and spectral ranges, not to mentionstereo limitations.

Radio Sound in CarsRadio in cars sounds like, well, radio. Heavily compressed usually,with plenty of EQ thrown in. Sometimes reverb as well. Why?Because the radio chief engineer has a mandate from the boss tojazz up the transmitter sound, firstly to get the level as hot aspossible within the power limits imposed by the broadcastingauthorities, and secondly to make the station’s signal sound asattractive as possible for listeners in cars, who are the primaryconsumers of radio.

The silver lining to this is that the radio chief engineer is the onedoing all the radio preparation for us, so we don’t have to do it atthe mastering stage. In fact, we probably shouldn’t, because thenour mixes will be double-dipped in heavy compression. Not cute;not pretty.

So if we leave radio audio up to the radio guys, then we canconcentrate on making our CDs more suitable for other end-userclimates. Which is to say, we can concentrate on making bettersounding CDs.

CDs and Cassettes in CarsUnfortunately, all the cassette and CD manufacturers have beensticking cassette decks and CD players in cars, and cars are now aprimary listening venue for music – maybe the primary listeningvenue.

How does one deal with this? The noise floor in a car is around70dBA SPL, and the maximum playback level is a little over 90dBASPL. Some sort of compression is called for (some of my classicalCDs, for instance, are simply unlistenable in the Spyder at, er, 55mph). Compression needs to be done for such venues with careand thoughtfulness, as well as real sensitivity to the musical issues.This compression should also have general consistency.

What the CD or cassette doesn’t have to be is the LOUDEST!Instead of scanning the dial searching for loud and intelligiblestations, the listener is going to be scanning CDs or cassettes.Anything in the audible ballpark will be fine, and the listener willsimply tweak the overall volume to bring it to a satisfactory leveland leave it there until the CD is done (or until he/she slows downfor a toll booth and gets a really strange look from the tollcollector).

There’s a lot of craft to this, and the best mastering engineersdo it really well (I include Bob Katz on this list – I actually first dis-

covered his recordings over the radio in a car, and the stuffsounded so good in that environment that I said to myself, “Self,you gotta pick up that CD!”). The actual dynamic signal range weneed for CDs in cars and other venues is about 20dB for acousticalmusic and 12dB for pop/rock. Further, we can hear music 10dBbelow the noise floor and will put up with that without complaint...for brief periods anyway. If we can fit our clients’ recordings intothat range of levels, then we can make recordings that will workdynamically in a wide range of venues.

But the real advances here are going to come with the develop-ment of more active and high quality car playback systems. Manu-facturers have recognised that premium sound systems are bigsales arguments, and that for many people the car is the primarylistening space.

The problems with car audio are due to a rather hostile andunderdeveloped listening environment. I recently attended an AESconference on ‘Small Room and Automotive Acoustics’, and thesense there was that we have a long way to go before we’ve tamedthe car – but at the same time we have begun to work quiteseriously at it.

Fun and profit timeSo what do you do with all of this?

Firstly, you don’t hire a mastering engineer on the basis ofwhether or not he/she makes the loudest records. Instead, you hirethe mastering engineer on the basis of his/her track record andperceived quality of work.

Secondly, you don’t worry about radio. Forces are at work thatwill take care of that for you, whether you like it or not!

Thirdly, you work at sane levels. I recommend (and use) -14dBFS as a nominal signal level, and I calibrate all analogue gearso that level is equal to +4dBu. I suggest you do the same. RMS(VU) levels should get as high as +3 VU, while the peaks can hit+14. (If you’re confused about this and feeling wealthy, buy a pairof Dorrough mastering meters, which show both peak and VUlevels simultaneously. There are also software plug-ins with meterslike this from Waves, Intelligent Devices, SpectraFoo, and others.)

Fourthly, remember that we’re up against some fairly brutalsignal processing practices in mastering. It isn’t just Bob – acouple of years back I interviewed a major mastering engineer,and he pointed out that some major label clients often asked forso much level that he would just run the mix right up to a levelequivalent to +3dBFS so they could hear the distortion. Whenthey complained, he would back it down just enough to stop themcomplaining. Then he would advise them to cut a productionsafety master 10dB lower so that if and when it ever became timefor a ‘Greatest Hits’ compilation, they would have something inthe vaults that wasn’t quite so, well, ‘dated’; i.e. distorted anddownright embarrassing!

Try to avoid making your mixes so loud that all the dynamicsare gone. My suspicion is you’ll like them a whole lot better in thelong run.

Happy dynamic ranges!

Dave Moulton is the author of the Golden Ears audio ear trainingprogram. His book ‘Total Recording’ is subject to imminent release. Hewishes to thank Bob Katz for all kinds of things. (This article originallyappeared in US-based Recording magazine, and has been reproducedwith their kind permission and co-operation.)

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