[johnnylexus]

Regardless of genre (except classical), please post recommendations for really high quality recordings of the past two years.

I really appreciate the input! To state the painfully obvious, there's a lot of good music these days that's just recorded poorly.

 

[Gladstone]

Radiohead - In Rainbows

Anything by Radiohead starting from OK Computer is fantastic engineering wise really.

 

[Denver Max]

Rosetta's Wake/Lift was recorded entirely on analog tape, and it definitely sounds good if you're into that style.

 

[Sordel]

Umphrey's McGee, Live at the Murat (2007) is outstanding for a recording of a six-piece band. Lots of weight and separation on the instrumental detail.

I actually think that a lot of mainstream albums - American Doll Posse, In Rainbows and Release The Stars - are well recorded, but perhaps it would be truer to say that they are well produced. I can't speak to the issue of the hotness of the mastering: they're all pretty "loud".

 

[bjarnetv]

cornelius - sensuous

 

[Heyyoudvd]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gladstone /img/forum/go_quote.gif Radiohead - In Rainbows Anything by Radiohead starting from OK Computer is fantastic engineering wise really.

I disagree completely. In fact, I've never been overly impressed with any of Radiohead's album in that regard. The recording quality isn't bad by any means but it's not particularly good either. I find that Radiohead albums tend to lack the 'punch' and high level of detail that a really well recorded album would have. Musically speaking, the band has always had excellent production values, but I find the actual recording quality to be pretty average.

 

[virometal]

Hey Eugene! by Pink Martini

I'll quote an Amazon review:

Imagine music that falls somewhere between French cabaret, classical symphony, Latin jazz and pop - and throw in a few touches of Japanese film noir, big band anthems and romantic melodrama.

The ensemble sounds great to boot.

 

[Sordel]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Heyyoudvd /img/forum/go_quote.gif I disagree completely. In fact, I've never been overly impressed with any of Radiohead's album in that regard. The recording quality isn't bad by any means but it's not particularly good either. I find that Radiohead albums tend to lack the 'punch' and high level of detail that a really well recorded album would have.

I wonder whether you've not being thrown by the fact that Radiohead's sounds tend to be rather "middly". It's difficult to get a very detailed presentation of the music without using acoustic instruments in a natural acoustic. I suspect that what was performed was very well recorded.

 

[Davey]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Heyyoudvd /img/forum/go_quote.gif I disagree completely. In fact, I've never been overly impressed with any of Radiohead's album in that regard. The recording quality isn't bad by any means but it's not particularly good either. I find that Radiohead albums tend to lack the 'punch' and high level of detail that a really well recorded album would have. Musically speaking, the band has always had excellent production values, but I find the actual recording quality to be pretty average.

Yea, I agree. I'd never point to them as examples of great recordings, but they usually do have an enjoyable sound, so it can be difficult to separate terms. Godrich uses so much compression that there's almost no dynamic range, so there's very little naturalness, and then adds a lot of reverb and other electronic effects. Kind of a nice watery, liquid sound, but becomes a bit congested too. Hail and Rainbows are both too loud on the CDs, everything at the same level. OK Computer sounded much more dynamic, but it was kind of sterile and digital sounding, even on the great sounding original EMI vinyl. Kid A was probably the best compromise, though that Godrich style started to get in the way of the music a little for me at that point, so I like the sound and music on Bends and OK better overall. But it's all very subjective.

This year I'd vote for the Bon Iver CD (and the vinyl is probably a step up too). Pretty natural sounding, and not punched up and compressed and limited nearly as much as most. Very easy listen, kind of addicting. The new Sun Kil Moon is that way too, but it has a little more of a hazy sound, not much of the sparkle that people tend to like in a great recording.

Last year one of the best I heard was the Electrelane record, recorded in Michigan at the Key Club with the husband and wife team of Jessica Ruffins and Bill Skibbe, who also put together Steve Albini's Electrical Audio studio where the previous records were recorded. And mastered very nicely by Steve Rooke at Abbey Road. This I can listen to all day, because there is some real musical dynamics left. Some nuance. Same with the Sojourner box from Magnolia Electric Co, partly recorded by Albini in Chicago, and partly at Sun Studios, but all of the discs are done in a similar style. Also from Albini was the last Nina Nastasia and Jim White collaboration. And the PJ Harvey record was mastered very nicely. Unfortunately, it's really become all about mastering these days for me, so I tend to think of that as the measure of a good recording, even though it should really be a separate issue like in the "old" days.

High hopes for the upcoming Notwist record. The last one Neon Golden sounded very nice, at least the UK version did. Don't think I ever heard whether the later US release was the same mastering. I know it had a couple extra tracks so obviously wasn't the same master, but you know what I mean

 

[SiriuslyCold]

Shelby Lynne - Just A Little Lovin'
Wilco - Sky Blue Sky
Porcupine Tree - Fear of A Blank Planet

 

[PYROphonez]

I personally haven't heard it, but I've been told many times that the LP version of Icky Thump by The White Stripes sounds fantastic.

 

[Gladstone]

I'll add another one.

Maria Rita - Samba Meu

 

[scompton]

x2 on Hey Eugene and Fear of a Blank Planet

I'll also add

Ceu's self titled album
Zappa - Wazoo

 

[floydenheimer]

Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
John Vanderslice - Emerald City

(Recorded at Vanderslice's all-analog Tiny Telephone studio)

 

[Davey]

Quote:

Originally Posted by floydenheimer /img/forum/go_quote.gif Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga

Really? I haven't heard the vinyl, but thought the CD was mastered way too loud, and does have quite a bit of digital clipping on some songs (unfortunately I guess that is Howie Weinberg's mastering signature these days - see little article below). Shame, because it does have some great music, but I know you aren't the only one who has called it a great sounding CD so I guess it just bothers some of us a lot more than others. They've always gone for that compressed and punchy sound, but the older ones, especially back in the Girls Can Tell era, sound so much better to me

John Vanderslice is always pretty cool. Haven't heard anything new of his since Pixel Revolt which is really good, but he sure puts out a lot of records. What's your favorite?

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adamw’s very own blog » Blog Archive » Howie Weinberg is killing music
Howie Weinberg is killing music

I had an interesting evening. I listened to Ted Leo and the Pharmacists’ ‘Shake The Sheets’ on my nice headphones, and noticed it sounded like pants. I took a look at it in Audacity, and it’s been massacred in the mastering. this is a masterly explanation by a fan of Rush of how a lot of modern albums are absolutely killed in the mastering stage of production; basically, the average volume level of the music is massively increased in order to make it sound VERY LOUD ON THE RADIO, which causes the bits that really are loud (especially certain drum hits) to be ‘clipped’ (cut off when they go above the maximum volume you can put on a CD) and thus distorted. I mailed Ted, who surprised the crap out of me by replying in about five seconds and saying I should get in touch with the guy who mastered it. He mentioned one guy but the record itself credits someone else, Howie Weinberg. I did some googlHHHHHresearch, and it turns out our Mr. Weinberg has a surprisingly extensive track record (see the PDF discography), quite a lot of which I own, and one of which is the exact Rush album that was excoriated in Rip Rowan’s article. So I took a look at all the other albums he’s worked on that I own, and it turns out that Howie Weinberg is single handedly killing music.

The earliest stuff of his I have is from the early 1990s; The Smashing Pumpkins’ Gish and Siamese Dream, Jeff Buckley’s Grace and PJ Harvey’s To Bring You My Love. These are all pretty well mastered recordings. There’s certainly no obvious evidence of the systematic compression and clipping I saw on Shake the Sheets and Rip Rowan saw on Rush’s Vapor Trails. However, the rot seems to set in around 1996. From this point on, the albums he mastered - Garbage’s first two albums, PJ Harvey’s Is This Desire?, the Pumpkins’ Adore and others - start to show obvious signs of systematic compression and clipping. From 1999 onwards, everything he’s touched is basically hideously mastered crap; Vapor Trails, Shake The Sheets, PJ Harvey’s Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea, the Pumpkins’ Machina, Zwan’s Mary Star of the Sea, the Deftones’ White Pony, the White Stripes’ Get Behind Me Satan, Franz Ferdinand’s You Could Have It So Much Better…the list of great albums this man has murdered seems to have no end. Possibly the greatest single improvement to modern music would be to slap a court order on the guy preventing him from being within a mile of a recording studio…