Mastering Question for Greatest Hits Albums

[Liam Thompson]

Been a while since I posted here but there is something that I have been thinking about for a while now.

How does the mastering engineer go about mastering something like a greatest hits album? Say something like Signs of Chaos by Testament.

Does the engineer find a happy medium between all the songs from different albums? Has anyone noticed a master of a song on a comilation album like this one being substantially different to the orginal album master, say more squashed or brighter for instance?

Cheers

 

[Razorjack]

I mastered a couple of compilation albums for my college record label which included tracks from a wide range of different albums and genres. Basically, what we did was take the individual mastered album tracks and just make sure that all the tracks were at a consistant level.

 

[prowlergrig]

^ so basically you just normalised them?

 

[Liam Thompson]

Thats what I thought must happen. Cheers again Razorjack.

 

[Ermz]

Well I'd imagine with normalization, a relatively dynamic song would still seem 'quieter' than a squashed one, because the peaks would be at 0 (or -0.3, or whatever you master to), whereas with the squashed ones the entire waveform would be hitting closer to the peak.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say Jack did some limiting and pushing for the 'quieter' tracks.

 

[Razorjack]

^ so basically you just normalised them?

I despise normalisation on mastered tracks, Moonlapse was right on the money.

 

[vile_ator]

Different people do different things. For the really good releases they have been known to get the original mixdown tapes and make a new master. But thats not often.

They usually make the compilation and apply eq to many of the songs. Also maybe run the softer ones through a Waves L2. But they do all sorts of bad shit when they make those Relapse or Century Media comps. Those always have less than album quality audio.

Colin

 

[Genius Gone Insane]

I've noticed that on a lot of movie soundtracks that feature one or two metal bands, the bass guitar is usually much louder than on the album. The best example I can think of is the tales from the crypt demon knight soundtrack, where all the songs are bass-heavy. I guess it's easier on the ears of the non-metal fan!