Every time that I listen to
a past or present Four Seasons CD it becomes more apparent that we are so much
in need of this archive. Since 1986 and the advent of their music being
presented in a digital format we have seen the best and the worst of mastering
in what was supposed to be the ultimate listening experience.
It has been publicized in
the ‘Loudness wars’ and
every day sees another re-mastering project being condemned for its almost
mindless compression.
To understand this here is a
quote from Wikipaedia…
The concept of making CDs
"hotter" began to appeal to people within the industry, due in part
to how noticeably louder CDs had become and also in part to the notion that
customers preferred louder CDs. Engineers, musicians and labels each developed
their own ideas of how CDs could be made louder. In 1994, the digital brickwall
limiter with look-ahead (to pull down peak levels before they happened) was
first mass-produced. While the increase in CD loudness was gradual throughout
the 1990s, some opted to push the format to the limit, such as on Oasis'
widely popular album (What's the Story) Morning Glory?,
which averaged -8 dBFS on many of its tracks[15]—a
rare occurrence, especially in the year it was released (1995). In 1997, Iggy
Pop assisted in the remix and remaster of the 1973 album Raw Power
by his former band The Stooges, creating an album which, to this day, is
arguably the loudest rock CD ever recorded. It has an average of -4 dBFS
in places[15],
which is rare even by today's standards[citation needed], though
getting more and more common.
The standards of loudness would reach
their limit in the 2000s. -10 dB had been the standard for the past
several years, but this was often pushed to -9 dB. However, -6 to
-5 dBFS is common in rock, pop and rap music. Quieter exceptions to
today's standards are rare. The latest releases as of 2008 have reached average
levels as high as -3 dBFS
Everybody wants their disc to sound great,
but it seems that nowadays a lot of people equate “best” with “loudest.” That
puts a lot of pressure on mastering engineers to compress their masters heavily
so that they can achieve as hot a level as possible. “It's a losing battle for musicality,” Bob Ludwig laments. “To me, it's a fact that highly compressed
music is tiring to the ear and doesn't make you want to listen to something
over and over again. Could this be one of the reasons for the record industry's
demise? The problem is that many artists, producers, and A&R people are
very short-sighted,” he continues. “If you take a new recording and compare
eight bars of a piece that's been mastered by four different engineers, often
the loudest one sounds immediately the most impressive to the listener. Hardly
anyone listens to 40 or 50 minutes of the whole recording todecide how the
total musical experience was for them”.
In terms of recent Four Seasons
releases you might ask how their releases compare?
Well it requires a lot of
listening time to be definitive and every CD released (which is impossible for
any one collector) but the pattern is clear. Releases since 2000 show levels moving closer to a -0db peak. Whilst max
levels of -10 db could be found before then the latest CD’s are showing max
loudness as high as -4 db on some tracks. This is unacceptable re-mastering.
So looking back what makes a best
mix and how do you recognize it.?
Well we hope to help fans
with this in our ‘long-term’ project to define and preserve the ‘best mixes’. In the ‘Sound Archive’ pages we are compiling
the Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons ‘CD
Discography and Buying Guide’ which will review and evaluate every CD
master of the groups work we can find. Many have in the past been reviewed by
George Ingram in past UK
As Charles Alexander says in
the ‘Jersey Beat’ booklet…….”Millions of
people from all walks of life have bought 4 Seasons recordings and attended
concerts for decades- as loyal a group of followers as any artist could ever
hope to have”. They deserve to know ‘what are the ‘best mixes’ and where to
find them. Maybe some day the whole catalogue will be re-mixed to the very best
sound standards.
Click here to access the first
sections…and if you have one of the
CD’s and can add to the reviews e-mail me. Casey Chameleon.
…and if you are into
audio…check out ‘The
Ten Biggest Lies In Audio’
It's "Come Si Bella" not "Comme Si Bella." That is a misspelling by the budget label albums, mostly by Pickwick,that misspelled the song and falsely said it was "The 4 Seasons." The Cindy 3012 label reads "Come Si Bella."
Posted by: JMark Sappenfield | August 12, 2009 at 11:38 PM