How bad does a mix have to be to ruin an album for you?

Some of you guys seem a little spoilt....


That my friends, is a genre classic almost ruined by shitty production....thanks Roadrunner



Also, has anyone here listened to Antichrist by Gorgoroth?
One of the kick pedals audibly squeaks, once you hear it, you cannot unhear it!
 
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I really got into Have Heart not to long ago, always loved the band and thought their stuff was amazing but I've grown to really appreciate them a lot more. So I decided to listen to some old youth crew bands like bold and... youth crew ha, when I realized that the shitty mixes from the late 80's just completely lost all of the energy and excitement that would normally be there.
 
Bad tunes will be bad tunes irrespective of production.

I can listen to horrible production all day long if the songs are great.
I can't stand to listen to amazing production, and horrible songs.
 
Pretty much the only time bad production significantly deters me from good music is when the mastering goes overboard on compression/limiting. The example that comes to mind for me is In Sorte Diaboli. I think it was that Dimmu album, but I could be mistaken. I enjoyed the music, but it was quite literally painful to listen to, and I couldn't get through much of the album before I couldn't take the headache and ear pain anymore.
 
Pretty much the only time bad production significantly deters me from good music is when the mastering goes overboard on compression/limiting. The example that comes to mind for me is In Sorte Diaboli. I think it was that Dimmu album, but I could be mistaken. I enjoyed the music, but it was quite literally painful to listen to, and I couldn't get through much of the album before I couldn't take the headache and ear pain anymore.

Their "Puritanical..." album was shockingly painful to listen to also,
even though it is a pretty good production, the mastering makes it like having a jackhammer against your jawbone.
 


is this bad enough for you ? lol
I personally don't like the modern quantized editing and too polished shining mixing..
while I also don't mean I love TR00 KVLT underground mixes..

I just think, if the song sound/feel good in the mix, it's a good mix to me
some punk albums sounds like shit at some point of view, like overly compressed jumpy master bus, ear bleeding cymbal harshness.
even the latest Meshuggah Obzen raised some complaint about their harsh high mids..

but I enjoyed them.

as in metal, the recent mix I love the most is Gojira - The way of all flesh.
it's darker mix and a bit too quantized to my taste but it's fucking heavy as shit and the overall feel to is so good!
I especially love how the producer handle the overheads and cymbals.
 
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I dunno dude, that DT song and album have perfect mix imo. It just sounds like it was recorded centuries ago (and it sounds like it lol), it really captured that feeling. Really ancient.
 
It's honestly kinda hard to say, because sometimes a poor production will irk me, other times a poor production will not bother me in the slightest.

For example, I find Metallica's "...And Justice For All" practically unlistenable because of the production. In general I find guitar tracks with the core mids scooped to fuck with heaps of highs, lower mids and bass to just sound incredibly grating, and the lack of bass guitar just further compounds the issue.
This is a big issue for me, bright harsh elements and core mid scooped heavy guitars.







All examples of productions that 'technically bad' sounding, yet I listen to it all day, because the dark/muffled quality is quite pleasant sounding.



A song from a more classic era. It's an absolute nightmare from a technical perspective. Bass guitar is basically doing jack shit in the low end, it's mostly the mids you hear in it. The guitars are most likely a Strat (single coils of course) plugged into a bunch of 'fuzz/distortion' pedals that aren't as nice sounding as the Tube Screamers we have now, and into a Plexi that wasn't technically designed to be pushed as hard as Jimi did, so certainly not an example of a 'good' sounding heavy guitar sound.
Kick drum is more or less an indistinct thud sound and the balance between instrument levels is also just out of whack, with guitars and vocals being way more upfront, as The Hendrix Experience would typically sound.
But again, fuck it, I can listen to this song for an hour straight, cos it has that 'right' kind of 'bad' sound to it.

Regarding The Reign of Kindo album, production doesn't bother me. Not as good as their previous album, but eh, it's not THAT bad.
The lack of low end in VersaEmerge's "Fixed At Zero" has never stopped me from having listened to it almost everyday for the last couple of months. It's not really a bad production as such, just it certainly doesn't have that low end thump you come to expect from a lot of modern alternative rock records
 
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Harry, I understand what you're saying but I absolutely disagree with the notion that those recording are technically bad sounding.
It would suggest that only contemporary sound engineers know what they are doing, that everybody should aim at the same aesthetic properties because there only one good way to do things.
That's a very wrong way to look at it imHo.
 
The question in my case is: "How good does the music have to be to make me not care about the bad mix?"

True dat


I for example HATE the guitars on that album, they pierce my ears with that reckless high end fizz, it fucks my brain so hard that its hurting in my ass.
Still I can stop listening to it.


its just so awesome that I dont care for it when Im in the right mood.
well, beeing drunk and on a festival helps too.
 
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But again, fuck it, I can listen to this song for an hour straight, cos it has that 'right' kind of 'bad' sound to it.
records

^^^^ + 10
I think the warm top end and general lack of clarity in those mixes really makes it sound nice if done well. Means you dont have any over compressed high end junk\painful fizz. I much prefer that :D

I say bad production to make me STOP listening is production that HURTS my ears, or makes the bands music sounds amateur.

Production that hurts: PANTERA!!!! Tooooo much treble\highs in guitar tone. I swear dime must've been fucking deaf hahaha. Bloody amazing musician but.

Production that makes bands sound amateurish: Nearly of the death metal i've heard are prime examples. too tired to think of a definate reference track but :p
 
Some may not know about it but Portal is definitely a weird production, but once you got away of it the mystery unfolds and creeping imagery pounds on your brain.



On the other hand, a extremely bad produced demo that I can't stop listening to would be timeghoul first demos, fuckin nice!

(Wait until the signer start #3:15)
 
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Sometimes I think I'd rather listen to a bad mix because it can make song stand out from a line up of cookie cutter "great" mixes. But as it has been said already...
good music+bad mix > shit music+great mix pretty much everytime
 
For me it's gotta be any of the following:
- one instrument overpowering the rest
- any black metal "production" with guitars sounding like ampsims without a cabsim
- Nile
 
Yet again a knock to the new Evergrey record that I just cannot get my head around. Am I just hearing something nobody else is? (or vice-versa!) It's lunacy, I just can't hear why it's being put down so much! :lol:
 
I can't really think of any examples honestly. If I hate an album it's because either the music sucks or both the music and production suck. Never just because the audio sucks. I love Focus, I love The Adolescents S/T, I love 80's hardcore albums.
 
Sooooo where do you draw the line from not listening to a song because of a bad mix and not listening to a song because it's not your speakers and your room?

Can you guys not appreciate things like Robert Johnson's album because of the noise and "amateur sounding" production?

Will you never watch a band's video on youtube because it was recorded with a camera's microphone?

MANY recordings were done in less than ideal conditions production-wise and are still great songs, timeless in their own way, and even (*gasp*) pleasant to listen to. Everyone has their own standards of what they think sounds perfect and what just barely gets the music across. Yet the music WILL make its way across every time (unless its THAT clipped or what have you). It should ALWAYS be about the energy the music is trying to get across; thats what we listen to it for in the first place. The sooner people understand that not all music comes in a nice shrink-wrapped sonically crafted work with great understanding of music-theory and recording techniques, the happier you'll all be.

FFS I just watched a middle school band play an awesome instrumental rendition of Kansas - Carry On My Wayward Son... obviously they didn't know shit about good guitar tones and room acoustics or even have the best timing, but I still was left wanting more when they finished playing. For the record, I AM NOT a Kansas fan by any stretch of the imagination. Music is everywhere if you look for it... or just keep thinking the world we live in is mostly noise, I don't care really. All I know is I would go insane if I thought that way.