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Does big labels spoil the audio quality? ie Adele vs Carmen Gomes


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Does big labels spoil the audio quality by over producing /mixing/ mastering?

Or are there examples that proves this theory wrong?

 

As an example I chose these 2 musically very satisfying albums.

 

 

Adele_-_21.pngAdele;Amazon.com: Adele: 21: Music

002c4886_medium.jpegCarmen_Jazz-in-slof-116-of.jpg

Carmen Gomes;http://www.soundliaison.com/

 

Adele ''21''; DRdata base score; min. 5, max. 8.

Carmen Gomes ''Thousand Shades of Blue''; DRdata base score; min. 12, max. 15.

That is almost 2 times as much dynamic range and Carmen Gomes, on that album, is singing softer than Adele.

 

But of course it is also two completely different production methods;

 

Carmen Gomes

The 12 pieces of music were performed live in the studio in front of a studio audience. The musicians were placed in front of a stereo pair of microphones with additional spot microphones on each instrument. The musicians were playing without headphones, the reason being that we believe that when we get the musicians to play together in the same room,with out headphones, it creates a number of musical and technical benefits:

 

As they are not ''separated'' by the headphones, the musicians, in order to hear each other are forced to create a natural and musical balance, a balance which is then easily captured by the main stereo pair of microphones. Because of the natural and musical balance the need for compression to control levels is no longer necessary, and since everybody is in the same room,the boxed sound which is so common in many modern recordings is absent, and the sound of the room helps ''glue'' the sound of the recording.

This is all very well but there are also problematic aspects to this procedure:

The room, studio, has to have a good sound. The musicians have to be very good and well prepared as it is very difficult to repair mistakes because of the ''cross talk'' between the instruments, we have to be very precise when choosing and placing the microphones and the puzzle of placing the musicians at the right distance to the main stereo microphones and the right distance to each other, is also time consuming. And when we have a live audience in the studio, we pray that they remember to turn of their cell phones and the ones with a bad cold choose to stay at home. The room where the recordings has been done is the now legendary Studio Eleven situated in the the building of the Dutch World Broad Casting Service. The Studio was used extensively in the 60's by European and visiting American jazz musicians (Wes Montgomery, Cannonball Adderley,Dexter Gordon,Eric Dolphy.....) The Dutch World Broad Casting Service asked Frans de Rond to bring the room back to life as a recording studio, and Frans after seeing and hearing the room jumped at the opportunity. Sound Liaison has been allowed to use the room for our audiophile projects and we are eternally grateful to the Dutch World Service for the opportunity.

 

Recorded in Studio Eleven (Hilversum) with a live audience on September 15, 2012.

This recording was made by Sound Liaison for and with lovers of high-end audio recordings.

The file is a one to one copy of the master file (96kHz/24bit).

source;http://www.soundliaison.com/

 

Adele 21;

Vocals: Waves Q6 & De‑esser, Digirack EQIII, Lo‑Fi & Trim, Pultec EQ, Urei 1176, Tube‑Tech CL1B, various spring reverbs and delays.The Lo‑Fi plug‑in got another outing on the backing vocals, where some tonal shaping was applied with EQIII.

The Lo‑Fi plug‑in got another outing on the backing vocals, where some tonal shaping was applied with EQIII.

Tom Elmhirst: Recording Adele 'Rolling In The Deep'

"I had the Q6 on the chorus vocal, notching out 930, 1634 and 3175 Hz very, very heavily: ‑18dB, ‑18dB and ‑12.1dB respectively, with very narrow Q. I also had the EQIII on the lead‑vocal sub, notching something out again. Something obviously needed to be taken out. The vocal is the most important thing in the track, and taking those frequencies out allowed me to keep it up front in the mix, particularly in the chorus. You can never account for what mic the vocals were recorded on, and whatever it is that bugs me, I can take it out. 'T' on the lead vocal bus is the [Massey] Tapehead plug‑in, which wasn't used, but I did use two Waves De‑essers, one taking out at 5449Hz and the other at 11004Hz. Rather than use one to try to cover all the sibilance I used two. I do that quite often.

Tom Elmhirst always creates stem mixes, and in the case of 'Rolling In The Deep', these were recalled and augmented with extra sub‑bass and vocal parts for the release version.

Tom Elmhirst always creates stem mixes, and in the case of 'Rolling In The Deep', these were recalled and augmented with extra sub‑bass and vocal parts for the release version.

"Regarding the outboard, I had the Pultec EQ, Urei 1176 and the Tube‑Tech CL1B on the lead vocal sub insert (desk channel 25). The Pultec boosted around 100Hz and 12k. It's colourful, but not drastic. There was not a lot of gain. The blackface Urei had fast attack and fast release, whereas the Tube‑Tech had slow attack and slow release, it was more evening out the level. You can use compression as an effect, but on the vocal you mainly want control. You want to set it up right so you're not constantly moving the channel fader to fit the vocal in the mix. If you're constantly moving the fader, rather than just doing the occasional ride, you know that you need to look at your compression. There's also Paul's Roland Space Echo track, which I used throughout, and which was the only lead vocal effect in the first chorus. On the backing vocals I had the Digirack Trim, again the Lo‑Fi, and the EQIII, cutting a bit around 405Hz and boosting a little around 3.17k. I used quite a few spring reverbs on the backing vocals, because I wanted them to have a lot more ambience. In the choruses I would also have added several delays. The delays make the backing vocals swing a bit, and they also fill up the space and make sure that they fit in the mix.”

source;Tom Elmhirst: Recording Adele 'Rolling In The Deep'

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Does big labels spoil the audio quality by over producing /mixing/ mastering?

Or are there examples that proves this theory wrong?

 

As an example I chose these 2 musically very satisfying albums.

 

 

Adele_-_21.pngAdele;Amazon.com: Adele: 21: Music

002c4886_medium.jpeg[ATTACH=CONFIG]16950[/ATTACH]

Carmen Gomes;Sound Liaison Music Shop

 

Adele ''21''; DRdata base score; min. 5, max. 8.

Carmen Gomes ''Thousand Shades of Blue''; DRdata base score; min. 12, max. 15.

That is almost 2 times as much dynamic range and Carmen Gomes, on that album, is singing softer than Adele.

 

But of course it is also two completely different production methods;

 

Carmen Gomes

source;Sound Liaison Music Shop

 

Adele 21;

 

source;Tom Elmhirst: Recording Adele 'Rolling In The Deep'

 

Thanks for posting the two quotes - a very interesting read - theres more than one way to skin a cat! Unfortunately I haven't personally heard either of the two albums.

 

Perhaps the interesting thing from an 'Audiophile' point of view is what sort of system the two tracks sounded best on. You would expect the processed Adele track to work better on lower fi equipment, than the more subtle Carmen Gomes one. Or maybe they both work well on all levels of equipment, and how to produce the album is more of an artistic decision and they are be equally valid ways of doing that.

System (i): Stack Audio Link > 2Qute+MCRU psu; Gyrodec/SME V/Hana SL/EAT E-Glo Petit/Magnum Dynalab FT101A) > PrimaLuna Evo 100 amp > Klipsch RP-600M/REL T5x subs

System (ii): Allo USB Signature > Bel Canto uLink+AQVOX psu > Chord Hugo > APPJ EL34 > Tandy LX5/REL Tzero v3 subs

System (iii) KEF LS50W/KEF R400b subs

 

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Thanks for posting the two quotes - a very interesting read - theres more than one way to skin a cat! Unfortunately I haven't personally heard either of the two albums.

 

Perhaps the interesting thing from an 'Audiophile' point of view is what sort of system the two tracks sounded best on. You would expect the processed Adele track to work better on lower fi equipment, than the more subtle Carmen Gomes one. Or maybe they both work well on all levels of equipment, and how to produce the album is more of an artistic decision and they are be equally valid ways of doing that.

 

I have both albums in my car system, which is by no means high end, and even there the Carmen Gomes album sounds way better.

Ok, I do have to boost the volume a little.

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I was having lunch last week with an audio engineer. He specializes in classical music (he is also a very fine Juilliard trained pianist), he pointed out several things to me about the recording and mastering he does. I brought up the famous piece, Ravel's Bolero, as an example of classical music, which usually has a much great dynamic range than popular music. He pointed out that if you are listening to Bolero in a car, you won't hear the first few minutes of the piece unless it is compressed, and that radio stations who play classical music, often compress music to allow them to fit within the allowable dynamic range. He also mentioned the oft bemoaned fact of competition for the loudest average sound on the airways - sometime promoted by the artist, who wants to know why his or her song isn't more prominently heard when changing channels.

 

Larry

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  • 2 weeks later...
But radio stations nowadays also compress the music before it goes on air, so why does the big companies compress it as well?

well there is hope, see this article;

 

n a surprising announcement made at last Autumn's AES convention in New York, the well-known American mastering engineer Bob Katz declared in a press release that "The loudness wars are over.

The End Of The Loudness War?

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  • 2 weeks later...
I have both albums in my car system, which is by no means high end, and even there the Carmen Gomes album sounds way better.

Ok, I do have to boost the volume a little.

 

probably your car system has a loudness/limit system build in.

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  • 2 weeks later...

But OK, maybe we all agree here on this forum that the Carmen Gomes download is the better album but my guess is that Adele sold a lot more albums.

So marketing is more important than music and sound quality?

Carmen has a gorgeous voice and the looks to with it but maybe her music is too advanced for the general public?

cid_05CEB325-0C31-4A36-960C-E88537E39690.jpg

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As a re-fresher I played 21 after this article and it gave me a headache... I have the two albums and sound vastly different, since they are produced (manufactured) for different markets. Each engineer that recorded the album applied the best of their abilities to the job...heh, now is our turn to judge.

 

The Carmen Gomes environment was a carefully positioned array of microphones and instruments destined to record a live performance. Placement is everything, if it went wrong it would sound like garbage. The Adele 21's only live performance was when the vocal track was recorded, the rest is overdubbed, layer on layer, with more plugins and high distortion EQ equipment in the end sounding like mire and confusion. This is manufactured music in a studio, low cost and an engineer creating a mess with knob twiddling where there's no point of return. I suppose this is an example of how NOT to engineer recorded music. Maybe the masters can shoot off to Abbey Road and can be redone.

 

Which is better? Both are musically very engaging,so better is an opinion of appreciation of the music itself, depends what emotional content you get out of it.

 

Technically, the best equipment to listen to Carmen Gomes is a high end stereo system at home to obtain the most out of the soundstage, since it is 'live'. For 21, the better the playback equipment, the worse it will sound, since the equipment can readily reveal the faults of the recording (and there are plenty, don't start me on the drums and piano), to this end, a portable player or phone & BEATS will be great since it doesn't need to resolve high quality audio, since there is none to begin with.

AS Profile Equipment List        Say NO to MQA

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  • 1 month later...

I think you got a point there, Adele is made for '' normal'' equipment but still I agree with Milan that also on a modest system the Carmen Gomes album is superior. Or is that because of the now ''famous'' Sound Liaison placebo effect, that you remember how good it sounded on your good system and some how keep hearing a bit of that on the consumer system? ( see other thread http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f8-general-forum/new-comparing-24-96-wav-vs-24-96-flac-vs-16-44-1-wav-vs-320-mp3-working-link-24269/).

your mind will remember the ''Blueprint'' of the higher resolution file, making it difficult to hear the difference even when finally listening to the MP3 file. Don't be frustrated if you can't hear a difference at first. Hearing is as individual as taste but hearing is also something which can be acquired, like the taste of good wine. Sound Liaison Music Shop
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  • 5 months later...

And a new Carmen Gomes;

 

Head engineer Frans de Rond is proving once again that his knowledge of mic placement and use of equipment is in a class of it's own. He is one of the very few engineers that is able to create a sound stage, which is intimate, yet has depth and space. A sound stage which you could say projects a visual image of the musicians. Not a ''wall of sound'' but rather something like a three dimensional Monet painting, where you can walk in and take a look around.
Sound Liaison Music Shop
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In this day and age with Quality signal chains it's easier to compress more. Less noise and other unwanted artefacts that heavy compression will make very obvious. That level reduction is pretty normal in mixing. In Mastering anything over -2db is pretty rare.

 

That is that if a recording is noisy the compression brings up the noise as well as the low level sounds.

 

Listening on you tube to the new Adele the sound of the voice has lots of phff and sssis, for lack of better words. If they had used less I guess it would have less phfff and ssssis.

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I like Adele, but not the production.

I would love to have a recording of hers done by prof. Johnson(Reference Recordings) or Frans de Rond(Sound Liaison)

or Cookie(Blue Coast) or Jan Erik Kongshau(ECM).

But I hope the 24bit release will do her justice.

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I have both albums in my car system, which is by no means high end, and even there the Carmen Gomes album sounds way better.

Ok, I do have to boost the volume a little.

 

Adele 25 needle drop scores quite well but still no 24/96 download. Maybe a download would reach the same numbers as Thousand Shades of Blue.

 

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[TR]

[TH=bgcolor: #F9F9F9]Artist[/TH]

[TH=bgcolor: #F9F9F9]Album[/TH]

[TH=bgcolor: #F9F9F9]Year[/TH]

[TH=bgcolor: #F9F9F9]DR[/TH]

[TH=bgcolor: #F9F9F9]DR

min[/TH]

[TH=bgcolor: #F9F9F9]DR

max[/TH]

[TH=bgcolor: #F9F9F9]Codec[/TH]

[TH=bgcolor: #F9F9F9]Source[/TH]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]Carmen Gomes Inc.[/TD]

[TD]Thousand Shades Of Blue [24/96] (Sound Liaison download)

i

[/TD]

[TD]2013[/TD]

[TD]

13

[/TD]

[TD]

12

[/TD]

[TD]

15

[/TD]

[TD]lossless[/TD]

[TD]Unknown

[/TD]

[/TR]

[/TABLE]

[TABLE=class: table table-bordered table-striped, width: 100%]

[TR]

[TH=bgcolor: #F9F9F9]Artist[/TH]

[TD=bgcolor: #F9F9F9]Adele[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TH]Album[/TH]

[TD]25 (96/24 LP Needle Drop)[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TH=bgcolor: #F9F9F9]Year[/TH]

[TD=bgcolor: #F9F9F9]2015[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TH]Album DR[/TH]

[TD]

11

[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TH=bgcolor: #F9F9F9]Min. track DR[/TH]

[TD=bgcolor: #F9F9F9]

09

[/TD]

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[TH]Max. track DR[/TH]

[TD]

12

[/TD]

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[TH=bgcolor: #F9F9F9]Track DR[/TH]

[TD=bgcolor: #F9F9F9]

11

11

10

12

10

10

10

10

11

09

12

(might not be in original order)[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TH]Codec[/TH]

[TD]Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC)[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TH=bgcolor: #F9F9F9]Source[/TH]

[TD=bgcolor: #F9F9F9]Vinyl[/TD]

[/TR]

[/TABLE]

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I like Adele, but not the production.

I would love to have a recording of hers done by prof. Johnson(Reference Recordings) or Frans de Rond(Sound Liaison)

or Cookie(Blue Coast) or Jan Erik Kongshau(ECM).

But I hope the 24bit release will do her justice.

 

Don't depend on it. I had the highest respect for Jeff Lynne as a producer and was always a major fan of Electric Light Orchestra. So when he released Alone In The Universe I immediately popped for the HDTracks 24/96 download. Sadly what I got was a DR7 with a min of 5 and a max of 8. Needless to say I was highly disappointed. My database post,

Album details - Dynamic Range Database

"The gullibility of audiophiles is what astonishes me the most, even after all these years. How is it possible, how did it ever happen, that they trust fairy-tale purveyors and mystic gurus more than reliable sources of scientific information?"

Peter Aczel - The Audio Critic

nomqa.webp.aa713f2bb9e304522011cdb2d2ca907d.webp  R.I.P. MQA 2014-2023: Hyped product thanks to uneducated, uncritical advocates & captured press.

 

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Would be nice if the download sites would list the DR:)

Why would they want to advertise that a large percentage of their high priced "Audiophile" downloads are best suited for playback on iphones. They also don't tell you anything about the provanace of the recordings, like was the master a SOTA 24/96 or better digital recording, or from a 1965 analog tape of the lowest quality. :-(

"The gullibility of audiophiles is what astonishes me the most, even after all these years. How is it possible, how did it ever happen, that they trust fairy-tale purveyors and mystic gurus more than reliable sources of scientific information?"

Peter Aczel - The Audio Critic

nomqa.webp.aa713f2bb9e304522011cdb2d2ca907d.webp  R.I.P. MQA 2014-2023: Hyped product thanks to uneducated, uncritical advocates & captured press.

 

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