Here Today... Gone To Hell!

On Sunday, November 23rd the new Guns ?N Roses record Chinese Democracy was finally released after many years of waiting and many millions spent making it.  14 different recording studios are credited.  I was thrilled to have been chosen to master the album.

In October, when I first heard some of final mixes which were incredibly multi-layered and dense, I was surprised by two things:  The mixes were so finally honed that doing the smallest move sounded like I had done a lot and also that adding the typical amount of compression used in mastering these days took the life and musicality out of the recordings in a big way.

The trial disc I submitted to the producers had 3 versions: The one I personally liked had no compression that was used just for loudness, only compression that was needed for great sounding rock and roll.  Then, knowing how competitive everything is these days, I made two more masterings, one with more compression and another with yet more compression, but even the loudest one wasn?t remotely as loud as some recent CDs.  Hoping that at least one of these would satisfy Axl and Caram Costanzo, the co-producers of the record, I was floored when I heard they decided to go with my full dynamics version and the loudness-for-loudness-sake versions be damned.

I think the fan and press backlash against the recent heavily compressed recordings finally set the context for someone to take a stand and return to putting music and dynamics above shear level.

The dynamics vs. volume trade-offs include the act of simply turning your playback volume clockwise a little.  True, when shopping the iTunes store your song may not blast out as loudly as other songs. When trying to impress the radio station PD it may be an issue if you don?t have the guaranteed attention this record deserves, however level on the radio broadcast is NOT an issue.  As I have been lecturing to people for years, the radio stations are all in competition with each other and they all have devices to make loud things soft and soft things loud and indeed, I heard a critic?s review of Chinese Democracy on NPR and the song examples they played screamed over my portable radio.  Even with the radio station compression you can still hear detail in the car? amazing!

I?m hoping that Chinese Democracy will mark the beginning of people returning to sane levels and musicality triumphing over distortion and grunge.  I have already seen a new awareness and appreciation for quality from some other producers, I pray it is the end of the level wars.

And what about "Chinese Democracy" ? One of the most expensive and anticipated rock albums in recent years ? Against all expectations, it has been produced and mastered with dynamics, punch and power. The average A-weighted RMS loudness is around -16 dBFS, and as a result it "jumps out of the speakers" at you in a way "Death Magnetic" never will. Check out a preview of the first track on Last.fm - listen to the way the guitars pile in at 1'26" and then again at 2'10" and then again at 3'36" - you just can't achieve that kind of buzz and build with an RMS of -4 dB.

I'm lost, I need the concept explained better.  Is this like where I'm going I can't hear the singer's voice as the sound from the instruments is competing for who is louder?  Where I'm getting a wall of sound and not individual instruments?

There is so much going on musically and it is nice to hear all the instruments. This is what keeps it it fresh beyond the 100th listen. Great move. This is music to listen to, not just blast as loud as possible. But the way it is mixed you can do both.

What's really important is that the quiet parts in the songs are actually quieter than the loud parts which are actually louder, as they should be. In the Loudness War you tend to lose this kind of contrasts.

This is one of many things I admire GnR doing in regards to this album, the loudness war is fucking stupid and ruins everything. I'm glad that they didn't conform to this corporate, quality degrading shit... good work!

There were two things that I wished for on this album:

1) No songs fade away;

Shit, I thought I was the only who hated this!!!

Songs that ends with fade out SUCKS!  :-*

Do you forgive 'Prostitute' for fading out, as it is the last song on the album (granted, not a traditional 'fade out' while lyrics are still being sung, but still a fade out)?

Well, Prostitute is my least favorite song from CD, but yet, it's fade out is what I like to call a "natural" fade out, I mean, is a fade out that can be reproduced by the band if they're playing the song live, it's not like Nightrain's studio version, for exemple...

Prostitute does not fade out. There's a string arrangement at the end that plays and becomes naturally softer and is composed that way. It's not the same thing as Nightrain as mentioned.

a.

Exactly. That's why I said it's some sort of "natural" fade out, because it's part of the song's arrangement. Different than selecting the last 30seconds of the song on pro tools and make an artificial fade out out of it...