Dave Grohl on "Wasting Light"

^ This.

The few torrents I've ever heard from anyone had sound quality issues, but upon buying the CD, were no longer issues.

Well i'd like to think so but i think with it being 320 kb/s sound quality it would have sounded much better than it does. Having said that, whenever i get some money i may just get the CD to see if it sounds that much better. Hopefully i will be proved wrong, but i'm not holding out much hope.

I get your point and I respect your opinion.
However:
1) What's "best-sounding" is 100% subjective. "Most innovatively produced/each one different from the last" does not equal "great/the best/the way things should be". And "most whatever" is an exaggeration. There are many innovative bands.

I think it's quite funny the way you accuse me of not knowing what i'm talking about. You're obviously not an expert in this sort of thing, but you're still trying to convince people who have been doing this sort of thing for years (MFB is much more experienced in it than me though i'll admit) that we're somehow wrong.
The thing is that music is like art, and where it is perfectly acceptable to make your own art which is badly drawn and crap perspective with not very good shading or whatever for your own purposes that you think is great then that's fine if you're just looking at it yourself or with friends, but if you want to actually show the art at a gallery to the public then really it's got to be good. Or, if it's bad, it has to have been done by someone who is capable of really good artwork, but chose to do it badly for effect, knowing what "bad" aspects would work for the picture.
If DG had just been someone like you or me creating this stuff in his garage for the fun of it then obviously that's fine he can do that. But when you're trying to sell millions of records and probably more importantly than that actually telling the world how amazing you think this new album is from a production point of view, then actually if it has these mistakes in it (which are NOT subjective, as MFB said) then it's really not very good. If he'd been deliberately making it sound as bad as it does for effect then that would have been cool if the band had suited that sort of sound, but as far as i'm concerned i don't think they do. Going back to the artist thing, i don't think it was a bad production sound but done deliberately for effect. I think it just sounds bad full stop. Which i think is a shame.
 
For instance, take an artist like Kazimir Malevich, who was a good technical painter, but his 'known' work is anything but:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazimir_Malevich

That's not 'bad' painting as such, but the technical skill involved in his best-known works is quite low. It doesn't matter - it's an aesthetic quality of his work. There is a difference between technical skill and aesthetic appropriation and only knowing both really lets you criticise anything with any value.
 
The thing is that music is like art, and where it is perfectly acceptable to make your own art which is badly drawn and crap perspective with not very good shading or whatever for your own purposes that you think is great then that's fine if you're just looking at it yourself or with friends, but if you want to actually show the art at a gallery to the public then really it's got to be good. Or, if it's bad, it has to have been done by someone who is capable of really good artwork, but chose to do it badly for effect, knowing what "bad" aspects would work for the picture.
If DG had just been someone like you or me creating this stuff in his garage for the fun of it then obviously that's fine he can do that. But when you're trying to sell millions of records and probably more importantly than that actually telling the world how amazing you think this new album is from a production point of view, then actually if it has these mistakes in it (which are NOT subjective, as MFB said) then it's really not very good. If he'd been deliberately making it sound as bad as it does for effect then that would have been cool if the band had suited that sort of sound, but as far as i'm concerned i don't think they do. Going back to the artist thing, i don't think it was a bad production sound but done deliberately for effect. I think it just sounds bad full stop. Which i think is a shame.

I don't know about this. Dave Grohl obviously doesn't HAVE to sell millions of albums, and considering the whole project was for fun and turned into something huge, I'd still like to believe he's making albums for fun. If he were honestly trying to sell millions of albums, he would have done it in the studio he owns. I would guess the reasoning for doing it in his garage with tape was because it was...fun.

I think he intended to have it sound the way it does, and he's obviously capable of making a better quality recording (see other 7 albums). Plus, quite a few songs on Wasting Light fit a dirtier, lower-fi quality.
 
If he were honestly trying to sell millions of albums, he would have done it in the studio he owns. I would guess the reasoning for doing it in his garage with tape was because it was...fun.

You don't think he wants to shift units? Betcha he does. I'm sure it's fun and he has a ball doing what he loves, but make no mistake, he wants to flog his wares too.....and if he doesn't then his record company certainly does.

No doubt he was aiming for a different sound. Bands have used different studios/engineers/recording techniques/producers for this very purpose long before this current venture.


I'll tell you the one thing this thread has done.......now I'm gonna have to buy this album. Not a huge FF fan, but this debate has sparked my interest in the album.

Now who said there was such a thing as bad publicity? Clearly I am a sales and marketing exec's wet dream!!
 
Incidentally, if Grohl wanted that sound he should've hired Steve Albini.
 
You don't think he wants to shift units? Betcha he does. I'm sure it's fun and he has a ball doing what he loves, but make no mistake, he wants to flog his wares too.....and if he doesn't then his record company certainly does.

You're right, I worded that wrong, sorry...

I just meant that I don't think he's making music JUST to sell records, and no one would make an album in a garage with that mindset because...people seem to like overproduced crap.
 
Commitment to concept is he key here. If Grohl wants to make a 'garage' album, then make it that way and master it like that. I haven't heard the album as I said earlier - so I can't judge, but if the album has been digitally mastered for maximum 'loudness' then that's breaching his own concept and doesn't hold up. Commitment is the key.
 
Here's an example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbpqZT_56Ns

I'm no sound expert but the sound is pretty decent to me. Dunno what the processing was (is that the compression, Eddie?) but I'd like the music more still if it was more raw.

I'm not sure of the quality of the clip but it seems to sound pretty warbly to me. That might just be the guitars though. As i say, i'd really have to listen to the CD.
 
I'm just listening to the album on Spotify. This is one LOUD album. The songs are great, but these have had the absolute bejesus compressed and limited out of them. Eddie's right, this is some really bad mastering. It won't seem like it unless you've got a good set of speakers and know what you're listening for (or in my case, I'm listening on headphones) but it's 'Death Magnetic' all over again. It's not as bad as 'One by One' with the mastering, but it's close.

Overloud digital mastering. Sorry, it doesn't fly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRyIACDCc1I&feature=related

This video explains it all much better than I could.
 
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I learned a lot in this thread, thanks for bringing this topic up and everyone's input on the technical aspects behind recording.
 
Nice. What's the deal? Anything specific? It's not like I've dealt with you before here unless you're a previously banned member. Classy.

I know attorneys aren't known for their politeness, but man...
 
I'm just listening to the album on Spotify. This is one LOUD album. The songs are great, but these have had the absolute bejesus compressed and limited out of them. Eddie's right, this is some really bad mastering. It won't seem like it unless you've got a good set of speakers and know what you're listening for (or in my case, I'm listening on headphones) but it's 'Death Magnetic' all over again. It's not as bad as 'One by One' with the mastering, but it's close.

Yeah, I'm starting to see Eddie's point too.

As much as I know Youtube sound quality is not the greatest, I can at least A/B the new official Foo Fighters uploads with their previous official uploads, and blast them through my studio monitors.

The songs from the new album do come off as way over compressed relative to their previous songs.
 
Overloud digital mastering. Sorry, it doesn't fly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRyIACDCc1I&feature=related

This video explains it all much better than I could.

Yes. That total flatline approach.

People often complain that TV ads are louder than the programs, yet volume limits mean ads are not allowed to be louder than the program's peak volume. While a movie may hit the peaks 5% of the time the ads will be at the peak almost all the time, so it seems louder. It appears that the commercial domain operates on a similar principle as ads.

Eddie, could you define "warbly" in this context? "I'm not sure of the quality of the clip but it seems to sound pretty warbly to me" ... uneven??

Disclaimer: this post is for all readers except Itemma74 :p
 
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