BOC: A "dizzying excursion into Pearlman's world"

[Stephen Swann]

On Wed, Sep 15, 2004 at 08:53:13PM -0400, Albert Bouchard wrote:
> On Sep 15, 2004, at 7:08 PM, Stephen Swann wrote:
> > Try listening to _FoUO_ on a really good stereo sometime.
> > It's nicely clear and balanced, but it's compressed all to
> > hell and gone (if I was going to go way out on a limb of
> > guesswork, I'd say its sound was probably deliberately
> > smashed down to make it sound good on FM radio, which it
> > does).  I really wish someone could go back and undo that
> > particular part of the mastering process...
>
> That compression is mostly the bank of 8 UA 1176 compressors that we
> used to compress everything from bass drum, to lead guitar to vocals
> and, yes, we did it to make it "radio-friendly." Probably can't be
> undone.

Dang, I was hoping that was the final stage of the mastering:
to take the "whole sound" and smoosh it all in one pass, but
what you're saying is either:
 (1) every individual element got compressed before it was
recorded, in which case we can never restore the full sound,
or
 (2) every individual element was compressed before they got
mixed together, which would mean that to restore the full
range of sound you'd have to go all the way back to the
original recorded instrumental tracks and completely remix
everything from the ground up?

Either way, it does sound unlikely that it would happen.

That's one thing that was a little disppointing about
finally getting a good full range stereo system: a lot of
albums that used to sound great to me now sound sadly
lacking...

> I was just thinking today about those times and thinking about my
> thought process which was, I don't want to be a one hit band. I knew we
> had the goods again but the lack of ambition from the rest of the guys
> was worrying me (and Martin Birch). They couldn't understand why I was
> getting so crazy about every little thing and I think some of them were
> thinking I was making a power grab but honestly I was worried that we'd
> mess it up.

It's funny, I remember you once saying that you felt that
Martin Birch was the producer who had "done the least" for
BOC's sound.  Oddly, in some ways that's what I liked best
about his mixes, is that they sound really "transparent".  I
always got the impression, when listening to a Martin Birch
produced album (and he produced quite a surprising number of
my favorite hard rock and metal albums) that I was listening
to the band, and not the producer (if that makes any sense). :-)
My only real gripe with the albums he mixed (which I didn't
even discover until pretty recently) was the huge amount of
compression he used (or was that BOC's choice?).  And I
imagine that probably seemed like a very sensible choice in
the context of the time...

--
Steve Swann    | Speak to me in many voices, make
swann at cugc.org |     them all sound like one