Remastering

[AnTz0r]

the dude who said that all instruments are audible on orchid was right. it wasn't too off-balance. on MAYH bass is inaudible and undefined. not a mastering problem obviously, but still.

besides, i think this coming from moonlapse, he will have plenty of reason to back it up, and i am interested in those reasons, since i value his opinion. i am not interested in you telling me i need a pair of ears. mine work just fine, thank you. now go and impress dombo with your ears and leave the discussion unless you've got something to contribute, please.

 

[Ermz]

Hey Antz,

I'm glad you just asked straight up. To clarify: I don't really like the production on MAYH, but I do think it's a marked step up from the Orchid/Morningrise era.

You're right in saying that all the elements in Orchid are separated and audible. The problem here is that while all the elements are in their own sonic space... they don't mesh together to create what I would call an album-quality 'wall of sound'.

The vocal sound is really thin, weak and just swathed in cheap artificial verb. It sounds like a first-year audio engineering job done at my university.

The guitars are small, yet really harsh sounding, almost like they were entirely consistent of high end before a mic was even shoved in front of the cab.

I mean I can keep going on and picking at all the elements individually. But really, it should be obvious to anybody why the sound is poor.

What Nordstrom did with MAYH is bring Opeth up to a point where their album actually sounded like one. You may not be able to hear the bass as distinctly as you did on Orchid, but part of his mixing style dictates that the bass is felt rather than heard. It actually meshes into the overall tapestry of the mix and aids in creating the one large wall of sound. This is around the time that Opeth started experimenting with multiple rhythm guitar tracks to add that sense of largeness to their recordings.

There's no more 'oh hey there's 2 guitars on each side, a floppy-ass bass guitar in the center, and some pissweak growl vocal covered in cheesy verb' thing going on. I mean you can't distinctly hear all these elements individually. What you're actually hearing now is the songs rather than the production. They don't sound like they're doing 1-hour long demos anymore.

In all seriousness, Orchid sounds like something I'd expect out of first year audio students at my university. IMO the first real band recording I ever did in my life sounded better than Orchid.

 

[Hondo]

That all makes sense, but how much could even be fixed through remastering? To me it seems that it would just be a wasted effort because there's nothing especially terrible about it so you'd just end up with a slightly nicer but unnecessarily louder version.

 

[AnTz0r]

that's what he said to begin with

Remastering wouldn't do anything for its sound quality. It'd just make it louder, by today's standards. The album would need an entire remix for anything effective to happen.

well i obviously can't disagree with anything you said. bass sounds floppy, there is no single sound etc. etc. still i don't think you can really compare MAYH and orchid... i mean, the MAYH production-approach wouldn't have worked for Orchid.

to me, Orchid is a beautiful riff-fest. it has these meandering riffs every where, and it isn't nearly as focused as MAYH, which relies more on creating an atmosphere by creating this big sound. what i want for an album like orchid is to clearly hear all melodies going on. orchid has that. i think if the bass on orchid would have gotten the same treatment as the bass on MAYH or on still life, it wouldn't have been as good an album as it was now. the guitars have the necessary bite, even if it is a cheap one.

i think orchid is a wonderful album. my theory about a lot of music is that if it an album has one elemt that is absolutely brilliant, the rest doesn't need to be perfect. it should only not reduce the brilliance of the perfect element. for example, if you have an album with a great singer, i wouldn't necessarily care if the guitar lines weren't very inventive. they just need to be solid, and not interfere with the singing. i would care if they were mixed so loud that they drowned out the singing for example.

it's the same with orchid: i love it because the melodies are so beautiful, and the production does not interfere with that beauty. obviously the production could have been a lot better, but as far as i'm concerned orchid doesn't need it to shine. MAYH relies more on production than orchid does, and this goes even more for some other wall of sound bands. how would a band like gorefest sound with orchid's production?

how much would yo usay that the bad production is due to lack of skill, lack of time, or lack of good equipment?

 

[nadavnaz]

Are you serious?

I mean yeah, sure, Nordstrom's work with Opeth wasn't the most stellar sounding stuff in the world, but at least it represented the band faithfully. It's almost the perfect mix of raw and 'produced'.

Orchid and Morningrise just sounded plain shit. I bet the band in rehearsals sounded better.

I take it back on MR, and Orchid.

I have no prob with MAYH and SL production wise.. But the sound quality on those two is HORRIBLE! (Non dipendent on which system I play it... It's all a bit muddy. The sound suits opeth, but the sound quality doesn't, especially on mayh.. Nevertheless mayh is probably my second faviorate album)

But yet again, that's only the way I hear it. People might think differently O:

 

[Hondo]

that's what he said to begin with

page 1 was so long ago

to me, Orchid is a beautiful riff-fest. it has these meandering riffs every where, and it isn't nearly as focused as MAYH, which relies more on creating an atmosphere by creating this big sound. what i want for an album like orchid is to clearly hear all melodies going on. orchid has that. i think if the bass on orchid would have gotten the same treatment as the bass on MAYH or on still life, it wouldn't have been as good an album as it was now. the guitars have the necessary bite, even if it is a cheap one.

Yeah, in a way I even like when an album has weird or slightly bad production, it gives it more identity to me. I know that's a notion that would make the bile rise in a sound engineer's throat but I'm not arguing for it, I just make the best of it. A lot of albums wouldn't benefit from a remaster and a remix is out of the question so what can you do but try to like it.

 

[KjeXXXer]

Yes it does, you just havent listened cloesly enough.

Thats cool about the atmosphere statement though, I mean, I prefer BWP's style of atmosphere (which it certainly does have) but in the end that's a subjective aspect.

Man, I'm tired of being negated as a listener by people on this board just because of that fucking thing. I've listened to it as closely as possible, and I do not hear any dropouts.

And I wasn't trying to say that BWP doesn't have atmosphere, it just hasn't got the same feel as any of the others. What I'm trying to say is that it has a different ambience than for instance Orchid and GR. I prefer the Orchid/Morningrise sound to BWP. Hell, sometimes I prefer the Deliverence sound to that of BWP.

 

[FuneralPortrait]

You might not hear them, but I can assure you that they are there.

If you really do insist that you don't hear them, send me an mp3 of The Moor ripped from your cd if you can... if by some chance you do have a version w/out the dropouts I'd really like to hear it.

And I know what you meant about atmosphere, and like I said, we just have different opinions about it. That's cool.

 

[Lothlorien]

Morningrise is a great sounding album. It's very clear and crisp sounding. I think if you compare it to the albums in that genre that were coming out at that time, Morningrise definetly was one of the cleanest records.

Now MAYH, that's just a bad sounding record. The drums sound like they were recorded at a train station and the guitars to me just felt so overpowering, like they cover everything. Now with that aside, I feel that musically it is Opeth's greatest album.

 

[Ermz]

Morningrise is a great sounding album. It's very clear and crisp sounding. I think if you compare it to the albums in that genre that were coming out at that time, Morningrise definetly was one of the cleanest records.

Slaughter of the Soul?

 

[Razorhog]

I'm currently installing a new stereo system in my truck, and when it's finished lets just say I won't be using Morningrise or Orchid to test it out. I'm thinking the first song that should be played on it is Ghost of Perdition

 

[Lothlorien]

Slaughter of the Soul?

Another great quality album of the time period. I didn't say Morningrise was THE best sounding, one of the best...

 

[CF87]

I can't believe one of you(maybe more) have a problem with the production on Still Life. Someone hit you please.

 

[L0bster]

Pretty much what moonlapse said.

Mastering would just make the old productions louder (however, they could alter the loudness in different bandwiths to somewhat change the overall sound)

I think Orchid sounds just the way I want it, while the sound on Morningrise prevents me from even listening to it as much as it is worth.

 

[CF87]

I have noticed remastering fucking up cds because that's all they do is make it louder. Sometimes the way instruments are recorded seem to be intended to have the the volume they originally have to sound right regardless if someone likes it or not. Some remasterings sound fine and some don't. I guess it just depends who does it.

 

[FuneralPortrait]

I can't believe one of you(maybe more) have a problem with the production on Still Life. Someone hit you please.

I have noticed remastering fucking up cds because that's all they do is make it louder. Sometimes the way instruments are recorded seem to be intended to have the the volume they originally have to sound right regardless if someone likes it or not. Some remasterings sound fine and some don't. I guess it just depends who does it.

You obviously don't know what you're talking about.