4 hours in a studio!

[Electroluver]

I spent 4 hours in a very nice studio. We had big Genelec monitors, Avalon compressors, etc.
So, I gave them my most recent track to be "studio," processed. All of this was done free of charge.

I like the compression on the kick, the bass also sounds cleaner and the gate effect on the snare is nice. However, the other tracks don't sound so great. In fact, they sound a lot worse than the original.
It has me thinking, is it worth it?

Obviously, I'm used to listening to the track the way it was, but isn't that important?

[snsr]

Maybe your tracks' subtleties depend upon the ecosystem in which they were born (your setup.)

May also be that the guy/s running the studio didn't know what they were doing, or didn't take the time to hear and understand your tracks : )

Sounds like fun either way!

[Electroluver]

The studio guy just kept adding more and more compression. By the end of the session, it was a different song.

[cartesia]

maybe you have strange taste in music, I dont like heavily compressed stuff either, but most people want it.

maybe they were annoyed that you were getting it done without having to pay

[madtheory]

It's not about the gear. It's the people using it. You don't just walk in to a studio and expect to get better sound. You need a team of people that are in tune with your artistic vision.

[kuroichi]

It's not about the gear. It's the people using it. You don't just walk in to a studio and expect to get better sound. You need a team of people that are in tune with your artistic vision.

Definately true.

I don't like the heavily compressed sound myself, it can remove a lot of the dynamics from the track, leaving it with a completely different feel to what you originally recorded.

I think the draw is that a studio has a lot of high end stuff you may not have yourself, but it all depends on how its used at the end of the day.

[Electroluver]

The studio itself was perfect. It's just that I had to 2 people that wanted to be creative directors and change/add thing all over every track. In the end, the effects were overkill, the compression was heavy, and the levels misplaced. On the other hand, some of the compression on certain tracks were perfect and I have a different perspective of the song for the future.

[liquidzen]

having genelec and avalon means nothing and for what it's worth... genelec and avalon is kinda like what modern korg and yamaha synths are in the vintage synth world. there are so many better monitors and compressors out there for the same price that sound a h**l of a lot better.

plus it sounds like these jokers didn't even ask YOU what YOU wanted out of your track. that's pretty lame as well.

[madtheory]

The studio itself was perfect. It's just that I had to 2 people that wanted to be creative directors and change/add thing all over every track. In the end, the effects were overkill, the compression was heavy, and the levels misplaced. On the other hand, some of the compression on certain tracks were perfect and I have a different perspective of the song for the future.

Sounds like you figured out the important stuff without any of us

[HideawayStudio]

The studio itself was perfect. It's just that I had to 2 people that wanted to be creative directors and change/add thing all over every track. In the end, the effects were overkill, the compression was heavy, and the levels misplaced. On the other hand, some of the compression on certain tracks were perfect and I have a different perspective of the song for the future.

Sounds like you figured out the important stuff without any of us

Absolutely! It seems the whole over-compression thing is rapidly becoming a sore point amongst many artists and listeners. I can see why those in the dance fraternity like it but I think it's now finding its way into mainstream pop and sometimes even orchestral recordings and "remasters" too which is a shame as madtheory is right - it's ruining the dynamic range and making everything sound far too loud.

I blame this partly on compressed digital audio and PCs - more and more boiler plate DSP mastering plugins are turning up on the market where people just mindlessly wash their mixes through and slap it on a master disk.

Louder does not always = better! Dynamics really make the difference - and nowhere are they put to better effect than in orchestral music and in the film industry.