Alan Parsons on compression - from the man himself...

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McLilith wrote: Peter Gabriel's song "San Jacinto",
now were talking! :-D
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jens wrote:
McLilith wrote: Peter Gabriel's song "San Jacinto",
now were talking! :-D
OMG!! it's a sign of the Apocolypse. Jen and I agree on something :-o . Fortunately someone else posted it first.

San Jacinto is a spectacular tune.
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By the way, Wallflower on the Security album is probably a better example of a song that has all of its dynamics left intact.

Security is also one of the spec CDs suggested by Bob Katz
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SJ_Digriz wrote:
jens wrote:
McLilith wrote: Peter Gabriel's song "San Jacinto",
now were talking! :-D
OMG!! it's a sign of the Apocolypse. Jen and I agree on something :-o . Fortunately someone else posted it first.

San Jacinto is a spectacular tune.
:o I didn't realize that we usually disagree... :shock: :lol:

but in this case we most definetely agree 100% :-D
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Vocals and bass is all that I really use it on too. I have a modded Alesis 3630 that I use, and it works great.

There are some albums that I can't really listen to because of how much it was compressed. Rush's Vapor Trails is just too difficult for me to listen to. The songs are great, but the compression really ruins it.
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theshaggyfreak wrote: Rush's Vapor Trails is just too difficult for me to listen to. The songs are great, but the compression really ruins it.
They need to come up with a new word for mastering jobs like that. Compression is far too tame a word. More like dynamic obliteration.
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theshaggyfreak wrote:Rush's Vapor Trails is just too difficult for me to listen to. The songs are great, but the compression really ruins it.
I have often thought that the fundamental difference between old and new Rush is that after Moving Pictures, the dynamics that made them interesting seemed to vanish.

Great thread, BTW...I've only begun home recording and I have frequently wondered why I just wasn't getting the whole compression thing. Now I understand why...my favorite albums were all engineered by Alan Parsons! Count me in on the anti-compress-everything bandwagon.
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This reminds me, I had some old cassette tape recordings of me and some friends playing music. They're old, cassette technology itself isn't very great. Our microphones were Utter Crap (tm). (We also didn't have any "pop" shields for our Utter Crap (tm) mics. Most instruments were ran directly into a mixer that I built myself. There were no high quality pres. There were no tone controls or EQs, except for tone controls on some of the instruments. There were no noise gates. There wasn't a tube or class-A circuit to be found in our makeshift studio. The only effects were a home-made stereo spring reverb, and an MXR Phase 45 pedal. :-o

Still, there are certain lifelike qualities in some of those noisey old recordings, that I don't hear in many commercial recordings. My theory, is the total lack of compression and EQ adds a certain amount of realism that isn't present in many commercial recordings.

I'm not suggesting that everyone dump all their signal processing gear, but think twice before you start to "fix" something with one of your shiny little boxes or plugins. Make sure that while you are "fixing the mix", you don't destroy the "integrity and soul" of the music.

take care,
McLilith
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jens wrote::o I didn't realize that we usually disagree... :shock: :lol:
Sorry, I mess around a lot. Just ignore like 98% of everything I post and the things I say will start to make sense. Finding the %2 can be difficult though. Maybe you should ignore that too. Might be easier.
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What I do these days is master at 24 bits and 48k, then set up a project in Sony CD Architect and add a little compression as I see fit to whatever CD I'm burning. Often I use Waves Ultramaximizer so as to get a little more volume without sounding compressed by just brickwalling the occasional loud transient. CD Architect dithers, sample rate converts and adds the compression on the fly as I burn the disks.
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jplanet wrote: I have often thought that the fundamental difference between old and new Rush is that after Moving Pictures, the dynamics that made them interesting seemed to vanish.
It could also be that they were trying to correct the fact that the majority of the songs sucked after that.
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So if I over use compression can I be guaranteed to sound nothing like anything ever touched by alan parsons?
Any other tips on not sounding like him?
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nuffink wrote:So if I over use compression can I be guaranteed to sound nothing like anything ever touched by alan parsons?
Any other tips on not sounding like him?
So, you don't like the sound of Dark Side of the Moon or Abbey Road?

I can make a lot of suggestions how NOT to do it, but people tend to succeed without any direction from anyone.
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McLilith wrote: I'm not suggesting that everyone dump all their signal processing gear, but think twice before you start to "fix" something with one of your shiny little boxes or plugins. Make sure that while you are "fixing the mix", you don't destroy the "integrity and soul" of the music.

take care,
McLilith
I try to explain this to folks that I record. They think that the computer is a magicical device and can fix anything. It's so hard for me to explain to them that if things don't sound good going in the DAW, the end product will be tainted. I really frown on cust and paste hacks or throwing in a billion plugins to make something 'sound better'.
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SJ_Digriz wrote:
nuffink wrote:So if I over use compression can I be guaranteed to sound nothing like anything ever touched by alan parsons?
Any other tips on not sounding like him?
So, you don't like the sound of Dark Side of the Moon or Abbey Road?
No.
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