on a serious note - are you part of the production? do you have access to the mix? otherwise how could you know what was done in mastering vs the mix?

top mixing engineers mix into full-fledged master bus chains and can leave as little as 0.5 dB of headroom for mastering. also randy is well-known for doing (little to) nothing at mastering, when needed.

so again, what information you possess that puts you into a position of talking about the master and not the project as a whole?

 

this just sounds like digital clipping. highly improbable that it was like this in the mixing stage

 

at this (top40) level, the mix is everything. the mixing engineer receives the "demo" (which is a mix 90% done). often times a very loud one. he has to match that mix. if the demo was clipping, and the producer made it intentional, then the mix would clip.

discussions like "i will send you the mix without a clipper, and we will aply that during mastering" never happen.

unless you have reliable inside information, the probability for a certain aesthetic decision relies on the mix (mixing engineer executing the request of the artist/producer), not the master.

 

You're right. it might be the mixing engineer's /artist's fault.

still sounds pretty bad and full of unpleasant distortion (unlike the adolescents, paramore, rikk agnew, and many others...)

 

kinda too obvious it's shitty mastering job, if you can't tell then it's on you I guess. Every song in the album is around -6.5 to -7LUFS max. That one particular song is the first single of the album and was surprisingly the quietest in the album real volume wise, but has max -4.2LUFS momentary and average at around -4.9LUFS integrated at 4.5DR while other songs sits at 5-6DR which is normal. Had to be mastering job. 100%

The label probably requested it to be 1db louder than the others (it's standard practice for singles) because it's the first single from the album with a music video and stuff. Everyone that knows what they are doing with enough experience, should be aware with that type of arrangement, to get to -7 is already lucky. No way Randy Merrill will say "no sir, cant master it to -5db, or ask someone else to do it, it's against my principle" with him being a partner at Sterling Sound, that would mean thousands of future income gone. While it's not entirely his fault, the truth, he fucking smashed the song to -5LUFS and slapped his name on it. If the song was already smashed to death during mixing, the mastering process will clean it up and make it bearable to listen by removing all those limiting/clipping artifact because the loudness is already there, that's how it works.

 

Last edited: Mar 4, 2024