Iron Maiden News, Links, and Interviews

[Melony]

If they noticed and liked it enough to deliberately keep it on the record they would've recreated it live. This didn't happen, which is pretty telling, don't you think?
…

It is easier to play it correctly live than to reproduce it with this “mistake”.

 

[MindlessPieces]

Because they are still musicians who are creating art, not just a product. There are millions of musicians out there to this day who are giving their all to create the best sounding albums that they can, despite living in the streaming age and not selling many albums. That argument does not hold up to scrutiny and I fail to see the relevance.

That seems very naive to me.

It can cost huge money to produce high quality recordings.
Why would musicians want to make a loss? For their art?
It's a business. musicians want to make money. They have large teams of people also wanting to make money. Producers, distributors, tour crew etc.

That's not what the loudness war was. Compression existed before that point as well, and the point of the loudness war was to push the volume of the entire record. You said yourself that there are points that are incredibly quiet which directly contradicts your own argument and proves that TXF simply has a poor production, unrelated to the loudness wars. Furthermore, the real victims of that practice were a decade later with Metallica's Death Magnetic, a clipping mess, being the infamous example.

I fully understand what the loudness war is. Just because a song has a quiet intro or a quiet section, doesn't mean that the song as a whole isn't overly compressed.
Clipping is one thing. But also the reduction in punchy drums is also another huge thing.

 

[Melony]

…It's a business. musicians want to make money. They have large teams of people also wanting to make money. Producers, distributors, tour crew etc.
…

Sorry, but there are many examples from real life that it's not that simple either.
Maybe it would be a good thing, then there would never be any fights about how the final product should sound.

Money is mainly made from merch and touring anyway, not from being a bit more sloppy in the studio.

 

[MindlessPieces]

Money is mainly made from merch and touring anyway, not from being a bit more sloppy in the studio.

We are talking about costs. In particular, return on investment. If you are not making returns in sinking money into making high quality sounding albums, then don't bother. Make the albums to get the songs out there, but invest your money on tours and merch. By and large the consumers of studio recordings are not willing to spend money on it, so why invest in it? Do the bare minimum, get it out there and then tour on it.

 

[Meliegree]

We are talking about costs. In particular, return on investment. If you are not making returns in sinking money into making high quality sounding albums, then don't bother. Make the albums to get the songs out there, but invest your money on tours and merch. By and large the consumers of studio recordings are not willing to spend money on it, so why invest in it? Do the bare minimum, get it out there and then tour on it.

And that means that we have right to complain as often as we want because as you said - Maiden albums are lesser quality corporate product which was made with cutting the cost in mind.

It is like making blockbuster movie blurry to save on camera and post production because you will make money on gadgets.

 

[Vaenyr]

It is easier to play it correctly live than to reproduce it with this “mistake”.

It's a single chord that was missplaced. There's nothing difficult about reproducing it. The argument was that they liked it and kept it in deliberately. If that were the case they'd play it live as well.

That seems very naive to me.

It can cost huge money to produce high quality recordings.
Why would musicians want to make a loss? For their art?
It's a business. musicians want to make money. They have large teams of people also wanting to make money. Producers, distributors, tour crew etc.


I fully understand what the loudness war is. Just because a song has a quiet intro or a quiet section, doesn't mean that the song as a whole isn't overly compressed.
Clipping is one thing. But also the reduction in punchy drums is also another huge thing.

Naive? How so? Do you think Steve started Maiden with the idea of becoming a millionaire? Or did he do it because he had something to say (musically)?

It's never been as easy and cheap to make an album as it is nowadays. If you have the equipment (instruments, cables, a computer with recording software) and Maiden certainly already possesses that stuff, it costs no additional money to produce an album. There are thousands of albums out there that sound absolutely phenomenal and were recorded in someone's bedroom. This "cost" argument is not realistic at all and doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

Also, if we were to completely ignore that music is art and would look at it purely from a hyper-capitalist "this is simply a product" perspective: Modern Maiden albums are an inferior product compared to what they could be. The ROI is easily justified, considering that they could streamline a lot of the process and save money that way.

The drum sound on TXF, once again, was a result of a poor production, not because of the loudness wars. Just like the incredibly weak guitar sound was due to the poor production. The point in the loudness wars was to compress the entire song, reduce the dynamic range (quiet parts become louder, louder parts quiter, the entire volume gets pushed). If TXF were a victim of the loudness wars it wouldn't have any of the parts that are barely audible. Those two things are mutually exclusive.

(As a side note: Has the forum been having issues the last few days? Couldn't connect to the website for a couple of days and yesterday, while I could connect for a few hours, I couldn't browse any thread. Logged out I could see new posts and all, but once I logged in and tried to enter any thread I got an "Ooops, a server error occured" message.)

 

[Vaenyr]

It is easier to play it correctly live than to reproduce it with this “mistake”.

It's a single chord that was missplaced. There's nothing difficult about reproducing it. The argument was that they liked it and kept it in deliberately. If that were the case they'd play it live as well.

That seems very naive to me.

It can cost huge money to produce high quality recordings.
Why would musicians want to make a loss? For their art?
It's a business. musicians want to make money. They have large teams of people also wanting to make money. Producers, distributors, tour crew etc.


I fully understand what the loudness war is. Just because a song has a quiet intro or a quiet section, doesn't mean that the song as a whole isn't overly compressed.
Clipping is one thing. But also the reduction in punchy drums is also another huge thing.

Naive? How so? Do you think Steve started Maiden with the idea of becoming a millionaire? Or did he do it because he had something to say (musically)?

It's never been as easy and cheap to make an album as it is nowadays. If you have the equipment (instruments, cables, a computer with recording software) and Maiden certainly already possesses that stuff, it costs no additional money to produce an album. There are thousands of albums out there that sound absolutely phenomenal and were recorded in someone's bedroom. This "cost" argument is not realistic at all and doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

Also, if we were to completely ignore that music is art and would look at it purely from a hyper-capitalist "this is simply a product" perspective: Modern Maiden albums are an inferior product compared to what they could be. The ROI is easily justified, considering that they could streamline a lot of the process and save money that way.

The drum sound on TXF, once again, was a result of a poor production, not because of the loudness wars. Just like the incredibly weak guitar sound was due to the poor production. The point in the loudness wars was to compress the entire song, reduce the dynamic range (quiet parts become louder, louder parts quiter, the entire volume gets pushed). If TXF were a victim of the loudness wars it wouldn't have any of the parts that are barely audible. Those two things are mutually exclusive.

(As a side note: Has the forum been having issues the last few days? Couldn't connect to the website for a couple of days and yesterday, while I could connect for a few hours, I couldn't browse any thread. Logged out I could see new posts and all, but once I logged in and tried to enter any thread I got an "Ooops, a server error occured" message.)

 

[Vaenyr]

Hey, it's online again! Let's see for how long

 

[TheMercenary]

(As a side note: Has the forum been having issues the last few days? Couldn't connect to the website for a couple of days and yesterday, while I could connect for a few hours, I couldn't browse any thread. Logged out I could see new posts and all, but once I logged in and tried to enter any thread I got an "Ooops, a server error occured" message.)

Got the same problems and same messages.

 

[Ruflux]

Maidenfans is definitely the least stable site I frequent, but the past few days have been extra bad. Usually it's less than a day that it's down, but it was on and off for multiple this time. Is the host having issues or something?

 

[Vaenyr]

Okay, at least it's not just me.

I've been traveling a bit the last couple of months, so I wondered if there's some kind of cyber security measure about changing IPs too frequently or something.

 

[TheMercenary]

Okay, at least it's not just me.

I've been traveling a bit the last couple of months, so I wondered if there's some kind of cyber security measure about changing IPs too frequently or something.

Nope, it's the server who had some issues. Maybe an update that didn't work normally... We'll never know.

 

[The_7th_one]

I almost call the guy of internet

 

[The_7th_one]

Anybody knows if the band are rehearsing in Australia?

 

[Spaldy]

Maidenfans is definitely the least stable site I frequent, but the past few days have been extra bad. Usually it's less than a day that it's down, but it was on and off for multiple this time. Is the host having issues or something?

I've complained on the other thread. Couldn't access here for two days. Almost as bad as listening to TXF again.

 

[Jer]

You’re always welcome at the Strange Death Discussion Forum when MaidenFans is down (and when it isn’t!)…

 

[Spaldy]

You’re always welcome at the Strange Death Discussion Forum when MaidenFans is down (and when it isn’t!)…

 

[Trevoire]

It can cost huge money to produce high quality recordings.
Why would musicians want to make a loss? For their art?
It's a business. musicians want to make money. They have large teams of people also wanting to make money. Producers, distributors, tour crew etc.

It's clearly not a money thing with Maiden. The cost barriers to high quality recordings are basically zero these days. But they choose to book a huge studio for 3 months with basically zero songs written. It's actually a very expensive way to do things.

They could easily get together at one of the bands houses to write, it would cost nothing, or get some cheap rehearsal space.

Then with songs written and rehearsed they could book into the studio for 1/3rd of the time and just focus on getting some tight performances and a clean mix.

Hell you don't even really need a decent studio to record anything other than drums. Everything else is easy to record well in even a very modest studio.

 

[Poto]

Anybody knows if the band are rehearsing in Australia?

Yep.

 

[MindlessPieces]

The point in the loudness wars was to compress the entire song, reduce the dynamic range (quiet parts become louder, louder parts quiter, the entire volume gets pushed). If TXF were a victim of the loudness wars it wouldn't have any of the parts that are barely audible. Those two things are mutually exclusive.

There is no truth to that at all.

They compress during the loudness war to get the overall volume up. So that when their song is played it sounds loud (and exciting) and so the listener is then impressed and goes and buys the album.

Since there is a peak volume on the CD format and since people register the RMS volume at the true volume, then to get the RMS up, they need to compress everything in that part of the song, make everything the loudest possible and so the RMS becomes as loud as it can be. Since everything is at a screaming volume then the drums lose their punch and so something else needs to be done to get the punch back into the drums.

Anyway, just because they compress everything, it doesn't mean they then can't go back to parts like intros or quiet interludes and purposefully make those quiet.