I'll just state that my response was limited solely to the type of trance on the trancemaster series of CDs. I often make the assumption that posts on tranceaddict are about trance, rather than music generally.

For a lot of other styles, music quality has gone backwards due to overcompression/limiting. And in trance too, those factors haven't helped the sound. But there are other factors to take into consideration besides the loudness war.

I absolutely love some of the old trance songs - as subtle said, and as I alluded to, people, including myself, will listen to great music even if the mix quality isn't what it could be. The sound quality ten years ago is noticeably worse, in general - flat sounding kicks, muddy basses, sounds getting totally lost when other sounds come in. Not for a second am I saying all songs suffered from these problems, but I am saying it is very noticeable overall if you listen to a 2009 trancemaster CD and then listen to one from 1999.

The style will keep evolving though - sounds go in and out of style - at some times trance may feature a lot of extremely hard sounding kick samples, then someone may release a song which works incredibly well with a very soft sounding sample and people really like it because it's so different.

Today's music will sound dated in 10 years - people will be able to tell it's 2009 trance rather than 2019 trance. But as to whether it's undeniably better audio quality/ mixing, remains to be seen. It could well be the case.

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Originally posted by Domesticated I wasn't so much talking about bit-depth (though that's important too) as I was talking improving the relative levels and clarity within tracks.

I think that depends upon the "best" production practices. Assuming any discussion on the loudness war(s) is moot/resolved, is the (any) producer using Mackie HR824s or is he or she using PC monitors?

Are they rendering track files to peak, and then lowering volume on the .wav or are they rendering to mix?

Are they working in the highest resolution their system will allow or are they just working in 16-bit, 44khz, out of convenience?

Do they have a visual spectrum monitor or are they flying blind?

Are they soloing each track or do they work strictly in the mix?

Are the mixing/mastering through one set of speakers or are they taking notes on multiple pairs?

Are they mixing with rested ears or a bad case of ear-fatigue?

Does their mix have a contiguous, desired level for each track or do the have it so jacked its pumping the bus-compressor?

The above are just a few of the ideals vs. sloppy practices, that I could come up with. I'm guilty of some (if not all) of them, myself. A quick listen in the producer's promotion forum will allow anyone to come to a conclusion about how many people are up to speed, so far as their ability to properly mix a track is concerned. There are a lot of people with a lot of promise, there, but there are a lot of people who just don't "get it" yet - even though some of them still demonstrate a lot of promise.

I see a bifurcation occurring, currently, where there is music that is created almost explicitly (albeit without the producer's knowledge) to be disposable. It's the crap littering myspace players and maybe getting played out once or twice before disappearing from the DJ bag - essential filler for the self-aggrandizing DJ Non Stop polluting the consciousness of drunk frat-boys who aren't even concerned with the play list let alone the passive sport of train-spotting. It's marketed on Beatport (Absolutely no offense to those who are selling music on Beatport, here) with the understanding that it has a shelf-life. There is little regard for audio quality beyond an acceptable level of mediocrity - and with so many people doing pretty much the same thing, it seems more profitable to market a piece of most of them rather than a sum of a few. The moment they can find a computer program that replicates what many of today's producers are capable of is the moment Beatport and other hap-hazzard outlets will have to pay out fewer and fewer royalties.

Then there is the second branch where people who actually care about what they're producing; take the technology seriously and work with it to push things forward. It's about creating something that is indelible to the memory, like the first time someone heard Hendrix or Pink Floyd - that essential sound that doesn't sound like anyone or anything else. There will probably always be that niche market of seekers who look out for what's on the horizon looking to find that sound which seers itself into the mind and won't let go.

(I try to put myself in the second category but don't ever kid myself that I've escaped the first.)

This thread seems transcendentally related to the thread you started in the Music Discussion forum, inquiring about how people's tastes have matured/changed. That's an interesting discussion, as well. Either way you cut it, it's dependent on what people want, from time to time. Right now, we seem to be on the lull of a powerful wave that peaked from 2000-2003 (very roughly).

That God-forsaken 90's music is experiencing its own resurgence now drowning out the resurgence of one-hit-wonder pap from the 80's that seemed to peak about two or three years ago. That only means, however, that the music of the twenty-first century is about to resume its up-tick into popularity, again, and as styles become more fused (such as with trance sounds being used in hip-hop albums by the likes of 36 mafia) new arenas are opening up to the untainted listener, yearning to hear the next great ones.

As this occurs, so does the answer to your question. We will, invariably, see an improvement in mixing and mastering and it will be a combination of evolution, both with regard to human effort and to the technology made available.

quote:

Originally posted by echosystm I think in 10 years we wont even use speakers or headphones anymore, we'll just jack into the fuckin matrix and rock out like mad cvnts. Since we would no longer be limited to the poor frequency range of the human ear, I would say mixing and mastering has a long way to go yet. Shutup Kimset7, you are a noob. lol wut?

how did i miss this? your kinda not funny echosysm. Premptive trolling is fail, especially since I don't even think about you.

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commercial and underground electronic music (house/techno/trance/other) will surpass today's hip hop/pop/rock/country in worldwide interest...if it has'nt already.

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Originally posted by RichieV I don't think the loudness war really applies to dance music. Dance music is meant to be really loud on a consistent basis.

wrong. loud and loudness is not the same, louder sound is just apmlifying of everything while loudness is only trying to fill up space at the same level. as dancemusic was meant at clubs with djs controlling the levels and with big amps and speakers this genre didnt need loudness/compression, but as trance became mainstream and started showing up on radio, tv etc it was clear that something had to be done as you couldnt really hear/feel trance in your shitty car stereo or boomblaster or cellphone as good as with rock and pop. Then the problem occured with edm too. In the start it was ok beacuse u usualy had one radio-edit version with crappy loudness smiling sound and one club mix/extended mix/original mix with the original good dynamic soundquality. unfortunately i never see this anymore, its all radiomixes now imo. so thanks to radio (see asot and essential mix especialy) edm is ruined. todays mixing quality could be fucking awesome though beacuse all our avaliable technology and knowledge combined with low prices, on software especialy but also some hardware.

quote:

Originally posted by palm wrong. loud and loudness is not the same, louder sound is just apmlifying of everything while loudness is only trying to fill up space at the same level. as dancemusic was meant at clubs with djs controlling the levels and with big amps and speakers this genre didnt need loudness/compression, but as trance became mainstream and started showing up on radio, tv etc it was clear that something had to be done as you couldnt really hear/feel trance in your shitty car stereo or boomblaster or cellphone as good as with rock and pop. Then the problem occured with edm too. In the start it was ok beacuse u usualy had one radio-edit version with crappy loudness smiling sound and one club mix/extended mix/original mix with the original good dynamic soundquality. unfortunately i never see this anymore, its all radiomixes now imo. so thanks to radio (see asot and essential mix especialy) edm is ruined. todays mixing quality could be fucking awesome though beacuse all our avaliable technology and knowledge combined with low prices, on software especialy but also some hardware.

you might want to go read why i said it doesn't apply to dance music. I made a post about it. My statement includes mention of everything you mention and some logical reasons you didn't consider which deter you from understanding why the loudness war isn't really such a problem for dance.Ask yourself why i mentioned it didn't apply to Dance when i could of said it didn't apply to all music. Then ask yourself where dance music is played. Hopefully it will make things a little easier to get.

and if you still don't get it, dynamic range works great for high fidelity home systems where it is quite and you, the single listener, can have control of the volume, it doesn't work well for noisy clubs where there are 1000 people who can't all control the loudness they feel comfortable with. There are other reasons including speaker design , sound system design and amp design, that make large dynamics a problem in dance clubs.

But hey, if you are a still convinced, i hope to see your next release is sent to the mastering house with a -18dbfs level because that is what it is going to be if dynamic range is so very important to you. That btw is the standard for music for film.

there is a catch i suppose. If the main medium of dance becomes the home stereo, then yes , the issue would apply.

Last edited by RichieV on Apr-10-2009 at 00:17

quote:

Originally posted by RichieV I made a post about it.... understanding why the loudness war isn't really such a problem for dance.

i didnt read your previous post just beacuse of this, i know already from this statement that we would never agree so ill just let it be with that. i think its a huge problem and its the one reason why i almost never buy music anymore. id like to save my ears a few more years.

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Originally posted by derail If your mix sounds like it was made in 1999, people will notice.

yeah, notice how much more badass it sounds.

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https://soundcloud.com/ghostea stuff

If you take this to a further extreme, and of course there wasn't really trance in the 50s, but when I listen to oldies theres this kind of devolutionary compensation in a good way.

Where artists were limited to certain resources, but compensated by refining their music so lesser equaled greater in the end.
Thats still the goal in the modern world, but the lesser to greater proportions have shrunk imo.
Where we refine music to make less = more, but we're not doing it like we use to.

Which is another one of my reasons to support that evolution doesn't exist. We learn to build cars, we pollute the planet faster.
We develop a new weapon, we kill 90,000 people.

We achieve better sound quality, we focus less on refining down our music.

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Sequencers: FL Studio 9XXL & Reason 3.
Main Synth Bass GTs - Pro-53, V-Station, Sytrus, Subtractor, Trilian, Blue, Sylenth & Z3ta.
Main Synth Lead/Pad GTs - Z3ta, Sytrus, Sylenth, Vangard, Albino & Nexus.
Main FXs GTs - Waves Plugins, Soundtoys, Volcano, FL Native FX.
Hardware - Truths, Echo Audiofire, Virus Snow, & Novation Xio Midi-Synth.

I don't have time to go into this whole discussion, but I think it's funny that technology (concerning audio) improved drastically in the last 30-40 years, yet we use all that computing power trying to achieve that analog sound from 30-40 years ago

What about 30-40 years from now? Will we be using our quantum computers trying to emulate the sound of 80's digital synths?

With the amount of processing power, bit depth, resolution,... we're still doing essentially what musicians 30 years ago were doing. The only difference is, now it sounds clearer. A guitarist still plays a 57' Les Paul, through a valve amp. A producer still plays a keyboard that uses waveforms etc...

Has anyone here toyed with Max/MSP? That's the only piece of software (that I know of) that really takes advantage of all the new hardware and let's you do something new, that's not possible on vintage or modern synths. Autechre are amongst the rare ones that take advantage of all the computing power we have now and really push the synths to their limits and not use the same sine/saw/square waves on 40 different synths. Like they said; they didn't want to use a computer to make music just because they could, but because they'd have to.
Most of the stuff we're making can all be made on a vintage console with 80's synths and recorded on tape. Yes, it would take longer to produce, but it'd be possible.


lol, I guess I do have time to go into this discussion.

quote:

Originally posted by DJ Robby Rox .stuff.

Chiptunes. That is all I have to say.

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dig out the grout expose the pest to take it out without the rest

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quote:

Originally posted by Domesticated Putting aside your personal biases or opinions on what constitutes “good” mixing and mastering, how much further do you think we can go with audio quality in productions?

It's already allot further then what the general consumer uses (like, SACD & DSD). Like every technology and every era, we will look back and think to our selves "how the hell did we listen to that, it sounded so blah".

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[i][b]Of course, when compared with the early ’90s, the productions of today have a lot more clarity and generally sound better. Again, if you’re prejudiced against the heavily compressed sounds of today, please keep it to yourself.

Over compression is killing the sound, but it's been noticed in a large consumer bases and for that, more music is slowly getting mastered at reasonable RMS levels.

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[i][b]Do you think that in another ten years, people will look back on the productions of this decade and note how tinny and muddy they sound? Is there much more than can be achieved with mixing and mastering, or have we reached a state where any improvements will be basically negligible?

Improvements don't happen over night, it's years of society and engineers changing both the way we listen to music and the way we create it.

In the end, sound will get much better, and the listeners will get much better at criticizing how much better it could be or how they miss the dirt from 10 years ago.

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quote:

Originally posted by echosystm I think in 10 years we wont even use speakers or headphones anymore, we'll just jack into the fuckin matrix and rock out like mad cvnts. Since we would no longer be limited to the poor frequency range of the human ear, I would say mixing and mastering has a long way to go yet. Shutup Kimset7, you are a noob. lol wut?

LOL! A preemptive strike, well played sir.