RIAA mixing on modern music

[Lttlwing16]

I have been gifted a good supply of 1960's-1990's vinyl records from my father. I built my own record cleaning machine (https://photos.app.goo.gl/qNoRuBtgwArePQUw8 and https://photos.app.goo.gl/q6A7fuYaDrPJxztw8)
to clean them up properly and am listening through the below :

Technics SL-23 > AT-VM95E (ML for new vinyl) > Art DJ PreII > Drop + THX AAA 789> Dan Clark Aeon RT

I've also picked up a number of new vinyl records, all pressed within the last 10 years, most within the last 2-3 years.

Does anyone know if new music is separately mastered with playback on vinyl/RIAA equalization in mind? I find some of the older LP's to have markedly better dynamics and 'life' than the pressings of newer music.

*Note* please don't hijack the thread with "why bother with vinyl, digital is better" or arguing the merits of why one is superior over the other unless it is related to the question at hand!

Thanks!

David

 

[Blumlein 88]

Modern music is compressed and limited far more than in the past in general. That is what you are hearing. It's the loudness war thing.

 

[aedagnino]

+1 to Blumlein's argument. It has much more to do with modern mastering practices. Vinyl doesn't help either (take this as coming from someone with a 1500+ vinyl record collection).

 

[levimax]

I have been gifted a good supply of 1960's-1990's vinyl records from my father. I built my own record cleaning machine (https://photos.app.goo.gl/qNoRuBtgwArePQUw8 and https://photos.app.goo.gl/q6A7fuYaDrPJxztw8)
to clean them up properly and am listening through the below :

Technics SL-23 > AT-VM95E (ML for new vinyl) > Art DJ PreII > Drop + THX AAA 789> Dan Clark Aeon RT

I've also picked up a number of new vinyl records, all pressed within the last 10 years, most within the last 2-3 years.

Does anyone know if new music is separately mastered with playback on vinyl/RIAA equalization in mind? I find some of the older LP's to have markedly better dynamics and 'life' then the pressings of newer music.

*Note* please don't hijack the thread with "why bother with vinyl, digital is better" or arguing the merits of why one is superior over the other unless it is related to the question at hand!

Thanks!

David

There are claims made on some other more subjective forums that the mastering for some new releases is different for LP's than digital because LP's can not handle the super loud / compressed mastering used for the digital releases (the needle jumps out of the groove) . One that is often mentioned are the Tom Petty recent remasters. I only buy old original pressing so I can not confirm if this is true or not. The Steve Hoffman site has a lot of discussion on this. My guess is there is some truth to it in some cases but that it is hit or miss like anything else to do with LP's.

 

[abdo123]

Modern music is compressed and limited far more than in the past in general. That is what you are hearing. It's the loudness war thing.

I agree, even Jazz records which are seriously loud, even in today's standards, (pictures below) preserved dynamics much better. From the few records i cleaned and digitized from the 60s I feel like whatever compression was applied back then it was to bring the ambiance up, not the peaks down.

 

[DVDdoug]

Does anyone know if new music is separately mastered with playback on vinyl/RIAA equalization in mind? I find some of the older LP's to have markedly better dynamics and 'life' then the pressings of newer music.

I don't think anybody is adding compression or limiting at that point in the process. From what I've read they sometimes apply some EQ/filtering (in addition to the RIAA EQ) to make it more "vinyl friendly", especially rolling-off any low-bass. That's nothing new, it was part of the vinyl mastering process back in the vinyl days.*

Again from what I've read, "modern" vinyl usually starts with the same master that's used for the CD and MP3. Some people claim that the (modern) LP version is more dynamic, and it will often measure more dynamic (a higher crest factor) but that's a side-effect of the vinyl cutting & playback process which changes the wave shape without affecting the sound of the dynamics.

If you have a CD of an older recording and it wasn't badly remastered, it should be just as dynamic as the older vinyl. Some older recordings have been Loudness War remastered so the original vinyl is more more dynamic. (Remastering doesn't always involve compression/limiting and it's not always a bad thing... Of course it's supposed to be a good thing.)

The loudness war did exist in the analog days (and Motown Records was "winning" with a process they called "Loud and Clear") but they have "better weapons" now and they can completely kill the dynamics with digital processing.




* I read Geoff Emerick's book. He was the engineer on most of The Beatles albums. He tells a story where he over-stepped his bounds as the mixing engineer and wrote "MASTER FLAT" on the tape box. He had previously been a mastering engineer which was the normal step before becoming a recording/mixing engineer but it was "improper" for him to give any instructions to the mastering department. He was sort-of expecting a complaint but nobody complained and apparently they did as he requested.

 

[abdo123]

In comparision, this is the #1 song on Billboard 100 right now, luckily we've gone a long way since the loudness war in the early 2000s, there is an abundance of effective upward compression, bringing ambiance up, while leaving peaks alone.

Compared to a hip-hop track in the early 2000s which is basically freshly mowed grass.

 

[Lttlwing16]

In comparision, this is the #1 song on Billboard 100 right now, luckily we've gone a long way since the loudness war in the early 2000s, there is an abundance of effective upward compression, bringing ambiance up, while leaving peaks alone.

View attachment 138458

Compared to a hip-hop track in the early 2000s which is basically freshly mowed grass.

View attachment 138462

That's crazy... I remember pulling in a Bill Withers CD to Pro Tools for a sample, and it had been remastered I guess with the same compression level as the early 2000's hip hop above. Just "freshly mowed grass"...

I did some reading up on the topic today after I posted here, and there is indeed a bit of work that has to be done to take a digital recording and make it meet the requirements inherent in vinyl records. One cannot simply take the master, apply RIAA and cut the vinyl. In fact, one article I was reading was explaining that some songs can't properly be remixed to be compatible to vinyl due to their sonic characteristics. I immediately thought of one of my favorite albums, Parcels by Parcels. The vinyl record is lacking one of the best tracks on the CD "tieduprightnow". However, I later learned it was omitted due to the time restraints of the album, as they clarified on the twitter page "

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1116588644460929026

"

I guess I need to look into who is currently mixing/remastering for vinyl properly, and who is not!

 

[Blumlein 88]

I didn't mention it because I thought it common knowledge you cannot just throw an RIAA curve on a master and send it to the cutter head. Still I think most of what you are describing is starting with a very compressed version in more recent releases before you make the changes for LP. Properly done you'd have a mastering guy get the mix tapes and do one master for digital and a wholly separate one for vinyl. Same guy is still going to use the modern tools of digital editing to slam both as hard as he can more than likely.

The term mastering comes from the days of LP. You had to make the mixed tape to send to the cutter head to create the master lacquer disk which will be plated. So mastering was taking mixes and altering them so they wouldn't create a master disk that couldn't be played. Things like mono the bass lines and restrict the level of them among other details.

 

[Lttlwing16]

I didn't mention it because I thought it common knowledge you cannot just throw an RIAA curve on a master and send it to the cutter head. Still I think most of what you are describing is starting with a very compressed version in more recent releases before you make the changes for LP. Properly done you'd have a mastering guy get the mix tapes and do one master for digital and a wholly separate one for vinyl. Same guy is still going to use the modern tools of digital editing to slam both as hard as he can more than likely.

The term mastering comes from the days of LP. You had to make the mixed tape to send to the cutter head to create the master lacquer disk which will be plated. So mastering was taking mixes and altering them so they wouldn't create a master disk that couldn't be played. Things like mono the bass lines and restrict the level of them among other details.

Honestly, going into this conversation, I had no idea what happens. Sometimes I felt the modern LP's I had, they did just that..just apply RIAA and press it! That said, I agree with you in the fact that for a proper LP, a different mix/master would be needed. Question is how does one go about finding out if they did it properly or took the easy road? Record label, engineer, mastering studio/engineer?

 

[Lttlwing16]

FWIW, came across this site, but haven't looked into their methodology yet..

https://dr.loudness-war.info/album/list