Iron Maiden and the "Loudness wars"

S

Sunner

Prowler
Would I be overly naive if I figured Maiden would be big enough to influence how their albums are mastered?
The reason I ask is the way their recent albums have been butchered, as seems to be customary these days.
I've spent some time recently, ripping my CD collection into FLAC files, and I figured, since I had the wave files on my computer anyway, I might as well have a peek.

So, say for example, two epic songs, separated by a bit more than two decades:
Phantom of the Opera:
http://www.sunner.com/img/maiden/phantom.jpg
Paschendale:
http://www.sunner.com/img/maiden/paschendale.jpg

Or something with a bit more overall punch...
Running Free:
http://www.sunner.com/img/maiden/running_free.jpg
Rainmaker:
http://www.sunner.com/img/maiden/rainmaker.jpg

Yeah yeah, the loudness wars is an old topic, I know.
But, really, shouldn't a band like Maiden have some say in all of this?
They even have their own company and all.

Or does some schmuck at the record company have the final say in this?

Oh and a disclaimer:
Yes, I've bougt every Maiden record I've found available, I've been to every concert during the last 15+ years, so no, I don't hate Maiden, quite the opposite, I would just like to listen to them in a proper way during those other 364 days of the year, when there's not a concert(2003 excepted ;) ).
 
Interesting, although I think you'd be better off comparing something from either Killers or NotB. The debut is pretty much lo-fi, DIY type style of recordings and the recent stuff is using more advanced recording technology. The sound waves aren't reaching distortion levels on the newer stuff, there is just a higher "peak" than on Phantom.. and Running Free but that could have something to do with the way it was recorded 20 odd years ago. I've never had too much of a problem with Maiden albums but there is a few other recent albums in my collection that are, well, pretty much awful for this sort of thing. Looking at the wave patterns that you've linked to though I can't see why it is "maxed out" throughout most of the song. When i was learning recording techniques at college i was put under the impression that it wasn't good technique and you should leave a bit in order for the sound to "breathe." That was 10 years ago though, God knows what's happened since then.

Maybe they do have a say and the say "crank it up to the max!!!"
 
soapymongoose said:
Interesting, although I think you'd be better off comparing something from either Killers or NotB. The debut is pretty much lo-fi, DIY type style of recordings and the recent stuff is using more advanced recording technology. The sound waves aren't reaching distortion levels on the newer stuff, there is just a higher "peak" than on Phantom.. and Running Free but that could have something to do with the way it was recorded 20 odd years ago. I've never had too much of a problem with Maiden albums but there is a few other recent albums in my collection that are, well, pretty much awful for this sort of thing. Looking at the wave patterns that you've linked to though I can't see why it is "maxed out" throughout most of the song. When i was learning recording techniques at college i was put under the impression that it wasn't good technique and you should leave a bit in order for the sound to "breathe." That was 10 years ago though, God knows what's happened since then.

Maybe they do have a say and the say "crank it up to the max!!!"
Click to expand...

Yeah, they've been doing this for a while.
I still haven't made it so far as to NotB, but I did have a peek at Seventh Son as well, and that was pretty good.
But mostly anything(Maiden or not) made after 2000 looks like the tracks I listed or even worse.
I bought Chapter V by Hammerfall a while ago, I checked Blood Bound on that album, the whole song is basically just one big blob.
There's a guy who made an "instructional" video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ
Good watching, if sad.

Oh and my rips were made using EAC with just about as high quality settings as you can get(though I would like a Plextor reader), and I used Audacity for the wave editor.
Just in case anyone cares :)

But really, this post wasn't so much about the loudness wars, I figure anyone who cares already knows about it, but rather about me thinking big bands like Maiden should be able to tell the producers to stay the hell off their music, for the benefit of us, their fans.
 
Correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't Steve Harris co-produced everything since The X Factor?
 
LooseCannon said:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't Steve Harris co-produced everything since The X Factor?
Click to expand...

As far as I remember, his involvement in the mixing began before that, around No Prayer or Fear of the Dark somewhere, maybe even earlier.
Which is not to say he has the final say in what is ultimately sent to the presses.
I have a very hard time imagining he would be thrilled about the prospect of intentionally lowering the quality of his own music.
 
Sunner said:
I have a very hard time imagining he would be thrilled about the prospect of intentionally lowering the quality of his own music.
Click to expand...

Based on the DVDs, I would say that he has rather a strong say about what goes to the presses, since the DVDs were edited by him, and are often quite terribly done.  And my ears don't really detect a bad quality to the music.  I'll trust you that it's there.
 
LooseCannon said:
Based on the DVDs, I would say that he has rather a strong say about what goes to the presses, since the DVDs were edited by him, and are often quite terribly done.  And my ears don't really detect a bad quality to the music.  I'll trust you that it's there.
Click to expand...

It's not that it's "bad", as in a bad radio signal or something.
It's that you lose the "punch" of sounds that should have them, of course a snare will always sound like a snare for example, but the sound won't give you the punch that it should.
The guy in the Youtube video explained it far better than I can though :)

Maybe I should pick up the remasters of some of the older albums and compare it, just for the sake of it...
I already have three copies of No Prayer For the Dying anyway(ran one over with my chair, lost another one, bought the third one, then found the second one again  :blush: )
 
LooseCannon said:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't Steve Harris co-produced everything since The X Factor?
Click to expand...

He produced everything himself in the Blaze-era (two studio-albums that is) but in fact he kind of co-produced all Birch albums as well, and also the last three albums, credited or not.
 
It's just that people keep saying...production this, production that, but my ears can't really hear any difference.  Except for on Iron Maiden, there is some difference there, it just sounds so much more "rough" to my ears.  And maybe The X Factor sounds a little muted.  I dunno.  I thought the last three albums were spectacular, so maybe production just isn't important to me.
 
I have the same issue, mostly, I don't listen to production that much.  I can hear basic differences like No Prayer's raw sound etc., but other than that, with Maiden at least, I really don't care that much.  With Priest it's a different issue, however; I think some of their 80s albums are really ruined by bad production, and to my ears, there's a huge difference between, say, Screaming for Vengeance and Painkiller.
 
IIRC, AMOLAD wasn't mastered at all. Can you make an analysis of, let's say, Different World so we can see what it looks like?
 
We're talking about mastering here, not production. Mastering is about limiters, eq-s, compressors, noise reduction. Basically, it's something you do when everything is recorded, and it now needs to go to the final medium.

Bad mastering maybe won't cripple the "audio quality", but try cranking up the sound, or use your custom EQ preset, and the thing will get distorted easily. As you can see on the Sunner's graphs, Phantom Of The Opera's frequency analysis reveals a graph that varies in amplitude, and the peaks are not that high, while Paschendale's graph is "boxed" with high peaks.

Speaking of Paschendale, i think that whole Dance Of Death is badly mastered. I usually want to "blow my ears out" while i'm listening to Maiden from my portable player (cellphone, smartphone if you wish precise), and the highest volume setting isn't enough often. So i do a bit of EQ and soft pre-amp to crank it up a bit. For instance, Number Of The Beast really remains un-distorted even with high pre-amp setting, while DoD gets all screwed up. All other albums are ok, while i can't really say anything about Somewhere In Time or Seventh Son, because i deliberately ripped the stuff from vinyl to get the "authentic 80's feel" there.

Production is a different thing. It's about sound arrangement. Guitar positioning in the stereo picture, the type of sound, the loudness of each instrument, and such. As you might have noticed, guitars are really loud in TNOTB, because the producer volumed them up a bit, drums are really loud and full on BNW, because the producer wanted so, and even used overlay samples via MIDI triggers, and such. As a do-it-yourself-at-home musician, i can handle some regular production techiques, but i never "mastered the mastering". I can do by-the-book normalizing, compression and EQ, but that's far as it goes. Mastering is one of the most important phases of audio recording.

About AMOLAD, maybe it wasn't post-mastered, but i think all the stuff was done on the fly. Eg, the compressors, limiters and eq's were connected to the chains of each instrument before the stuff went into the recording board. If that wasn't done, even with their fancy cabinets, modellers and instruments, the thing would sound like an extremely good demo tape.
 
Zare, thank you for taking the time to explain a bit more in depth, I pretty much suck at that :)

Of course, how noticeable this is depends a lot on what you're using to listen to it.
I have a secondary computer around with some low end Logitech system connected to it(Z6-something I think).
This system will make anything sound like crap really...
 
AMOLAD was indeed not mastered, and that caused a bit of a stir when it was announced.
 
Perun said:
AMOLAD was indeed not mastered, and that caused a bit of a stir when it was announced.
Click to expand...

Interesting, I still haven't gotten to A Matter..., it's somewhere in the "back" of my CD changer :)
Actually, I haven't listened to it much either, I usually take a couple of years to "suck up" a new Maiden release before it finds its way into my regular rotation  :S
 
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