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

[emdot_ambient]

#1: Alan Parsons Project has 2 good albums

Personal taste. All I know is they'll never enter my CD player

#2: Evaluating engineering/production and evaluating musical content are at the least two entirely different things.

Agreed. And there's a LOT of really good/extremely interesting production out there now. But when you read interviews with professional sound engineers (particularly those doing mastering), they almost all tell you that it's the clients, i.e. the music companies and musicians, who insist on the mega compression that's going on today. What are they going to do, piss off their clients and effectively slit their own wrists? No, so they slap on mega compression and away you go.

#3: #2 as a concept seems to have been lost for the last 15 years and for whatever reason the music is gone and all anyone is concerned with is "how f**king loud can I get the beat"

[/quote] Well, what do you expect with a music industry ruled by the bottom line and a music market saturated with almost nothing but rhythm and chant?

[Z3R0T0N1N]

@ SJ:

thanx for my new sig.

[Markleford]

Just an historical note to the kids of the DAW generation:

Recording on magnetic tape has a built-in compression effect. You can drive the levels a little hotter on tape and it will still cover your ass (to an extent).

So... while AP might not specifically use a compression circuit to maximize his levels when tracking certain instruments, he most likely consciously relied on this effect at some point in his career. (Not to mention that amplified instruments that push sound through a gain stage will also be compressed naturally, tubes or otherwise)

Which really is neither here or there: the quote from his interview doesn't really give us much context as to what he considers "compression".

Incidentally, I agree with him mostly. Vox almost always need comp, bass sometimes, and never across the master. But there are always exceptions.

- m

[SJ_Digriz]

@ SJ:

thanx for my new sig.

hehehe, I'd love to take credit for that but unfortunately I believe I am only slightly changing a line by someone else about sports. I can't remember who it was though.

[greendoor]

Alan Parsons is famous for his work with The Beatles and Pink Floyd. Abbey Road (the album he worked on) has some of the most extreme compression effects ever heard - fantastic stuff. The Chandler Channels of today are bloody expensive, but the closest you can get to those old EMI desks. The things to remember when somebody like Alan Parsons says "he doesn't use compression" are that he works in a completely different world to the typical DAW user. For a start, he probably uses magnetic tape - which gives about 6dB limiting right off the bat. Also, on those big projects the producer, the session engineer, the mix engineer, and the mastering engineer are never the same person. This often explains the discrepancies between studio stories. Maybe the mix engineer "never" uses compression, because the session engineer has already smashed the snot out of everything - or whatever. As a DAW user who has to do everything, some compression and/or limiting is necessary on some tracks, certainly not all. It's definately an art to know when or when not to compress.

[Markleford]

Maybe the mix engineer "never" uses compression, because the session engineer has already smashed the snot out of everything - or whatever.

Yeah, that's another problem: when a presumptuous session engineer takes it upon himself to shape and "sweeten" everything before it hits tape, rather than keeping it pristine for the mixer and subsequentally mastering engineer to do their thing... (or even the mixing engineer trying to act in a mastering role)

Perhaps a lot of the problem is impatient producers mucking with the process too early in the chain and wanting immediate "results", rather than not letting everyone play their role in due time?

- m

[waveriderarts]

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.

too bad for you!

Indeed. I always feel bad about not being stuck in the 1970's.

.

[greendoor]

Perhaps a lot of the problem is impatient producers mucking with the process too early in the chain and wanting immediate "results", rather than not letting everyone play their role in due time?

There are some good reasons to compress some things in the analog realm while tracking - and the big desks usually had an excellent compressor on every channel. That was common in the days of tape, to preserve signal to noise, and is still theoretically the ideal with digital, to preserve resolution. But unless you have a truely excellent hardware compressor, and know exactly what you're doing, it's safer to track with no compression and make those decisions later.

[CC4]

i read that article, and will make no commentary on Future Music US vs. UK, or even the Pink Floyd articles themselves...

i was just remembering how the alan parsons project was big during the audio cassette days, and how it seemed that a lot of his albums were dumped onto those tapes that would start to squeal after several months of playing.

[McLilith]

i was just remembering how the alan parsons project was big during the audio cassette days, and how it seemed that a lot of his albums were dumped onto those tapes that would start to squeal after several months of playing.

So... I gather that you played your Alan Parsons cassettes for several months straight, until they squealed?



McLilith

[LBN]

If I had to listen to Alan Parsons Project for several months straight I would probably squeal too.


I keed.

[Z3R0T0N1N]

If I had to listen to Alan Parsons Project for several months straight I would probably squeal too.


I keed.

[birrbits]

here's an interesting little article concerning 'loudness'

http://www.digido.com/portal/pmodule_id ... age_id=93/

[jens]

The things to remember when somebody like Alan Parsons says "he doesn't use compression" are that he works in a completely different world to the typical DAW user. For a start, he probably uses magnetic tape - which gives about 6dB limiting right off the bat.

nope - he's using Nuendo these days...

[seamoss]

It is interesting how certain people in this thread want to say that the production of AP isn't all that…..but yet haven't given ONE example of what they consider good production.


edit:typo