The Logic Off Topic list

On Thursday 09 May 2002 09:54 am, Tobias Seyb wrote:

> Hi Luggers,
>
> I hope this isn\ufffdt too OT, but while listening to my new sheryl crow album
> (c\ufffdmon), i suspected my sony discman to have a too weak amplifier, although
> I just had set the vol to half. I heard a lot of distortion, so I checked
> the disc in the sample editor in Logic.
> I found up to nine (9) continuous zero db samples on both channels (time
> 3:37.999 in song #13) and a lot of flat peaks on at least on channel.
> So no wonder why I hear such a lot of digital distortion on this and many
> more other newer albums (for example ally mcbeal 2).
> Is there a new fashion in mastering that I missed or are some of the pro\ufffds
> getting too lazy to do proper work? This sounds like homerecording to me.
>
> Yours,
>
> Tobias

I don't really know the situation for that album. But, these days its not 
uncommon for an artist to work with an upand coming producer who has a little 
home studio and hasn't taken the time to learn the ins and outs of audio. I 
definitely get this impression with her new single (My god could the vocal 
get any louder?) On the other hand I once did a mix for an artist on EMI 
which we worked painstakenly on vintage never consoles, 2 inch tape, AMS 
processors and all that to get a real authentic sound. But when it came back 
from the label it was completely distorted to the point that the average 
listener would notice. We called the pressing plant thinking it was them, but 
it turned out to be the mastering engineer at the Hit Factory. The artist 
just shrugged it off and didn't want to bother getting it all redone, so the 
end result was a distred CD. Maybe Sheryl had the same situation (and same 
mastering engineer).

Colin Miller