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I think we’re all aware that Metallica released a new album awhile ago. Did you also know that the CD version you buy in stores is plagued by clipping and distortion due to multiple stages of brickwall limiting? Well, it is. 

Did you also know that the Guitar Hero version sounds better than the CD version? If you don’t think so, check out the video below:

There’s some great notes on the Mastering Media blog about the waveform anaylsis of Metallica’s new disk (note: keep in mind that, when talking about digital audio, 0dBFS is the end of the road…it’s the ceiling of digital recording and it sounds HORRIBLE when signal reaches this level)

I just skipped through 3 random songs and the highest I saw on the meter was -4,3 dB RMS (-1,3 RMS in AES17 norm), looking at the realtime RMS meter with Wavelab’s default time constants.

Wavelab’s global analysis (with its default time constants) reports -2,93 RMS [+0,07 in AES17] RMS in one of those tracks.

Most of the album (looking at the meters) sits between -7 and -5 (between -4 and -2 in AES17).

You remember that popular myth that mastering will “make your record sound the same across different systems”? I now get the point. Death Magnetic (although apparently not introduced through mastering) sounds thin and distorted on my laptop speakers. And it sounds thin and distorted in my mastering studio. There’s always a silver lining

I’m certainly sympathetic to your reaction, I get to slam my head against that brick wall every day. In this case the mixes were already brick walled before they arrived at my place. Suffice it to say I would never be pushed to overdrive things as far as they are here. Believe me I’m not proud to be associated with this one, and we can only hope that some good will come from this in some form of backlash against volume above all else.

There’s a new interview up with Tetsuya Shibata, Kota Suzuki, and Wataru Hokoyama, three of the audio post-production guys on Resident Evil 5.

Among topics in the article are why they recorded the large-scale orchestras in Hollywood instead of Tokyo and this gem, which doesn’t seem to be a popular opinion judging from the other guys’ answers:

Kota Suzuki: I get the impression that production at western, particularly American developers are ahead of those in Japan. But, I think that more and more in Japan, the process of making video game music is becoming specialized. More and more Japanese production companies are working together with foreign companies, and sound production quality in Japan is approaching that of the west.

Anyways, click here to read the full article. It’s really good.

Note: I’m currently interning at a post-production studio in Northern California that does some pretty big time projects. When I signed on to be an intern, I had to sign an NDA saying, essentially, that I wouldn’t leak any information over future/current projects as well as not give away any secrets as to how the studio works. Seeing as I enjoy this internship and intend to keep it, I’m going to leave things as vague as I feel comfortable with, meaning I won’t be posting a lot of specific names for gear, people, etc. Hopefully you understand!

Post-production is a completely different beast from any recording studio I’ve ever heard of. From the sounds of it, most post houses are versatile businesses: they’ll ultimately do whatever their client needs. One facet I never thought about or discovered was recording voice overs via an ISDN line for applications such as grocery stores (the voices you hear advertising stuff at your local Wal-Mart), telephone applications, and so much more.

To most engineers, ISDN recording isn’t a mystery or some well-kept secret: it’s something a lot of studios do. So let me run you through how an ISDN V/O session works:

• First off, when I talk about ISDN recording, you are to assume that the V/O talent is not in the studio. Rather, they’re somewhere else: LA, Nashville, etc. Both ends (recordist and talent) need some type of ISDN interface. (If you’re unclear as to what ISDN is, click here). Essentially what happens when both studios have all equipment needed is the talent will dial in to the studio where the studio answers.
• The talent often time has their own vocal chain: some type of channel strip followed by a limiter. Each talent has their own settings for each device and every studio they record at will hold their settings in case they ever do an in-house session. At this point, the talent recalls their settings and the recordist sets up a recording session in their DAW of choice.
• Both talent and recordist will have a script for the day’s session: it could really be anything. The talent will read through the script while the engineer follows along, taking notes. At this point its just like music: the talent will often times have to do re-takes of certain lines. The reason for this is their P might pop, they might have a clicky mouth (excess saliva), or they might miss a T at the end of a word.
• Guess what? There’s people that produce V/O sessions. Often times, the producer will be just that: some producer. It’s his job to make sure that the talent is getting good takes and getting the kind of V/Os the client wants. In some cases, the engineer will act as the producer. However, when the engineer acts as producer it’s more about quality control. Getting good lines that are usable.
• Once the session is done, the recordings will go off to be edited.