[peel] Re: S013 and S014

[Stuart Brooks]

Preaching to the converted there! Though these early 90s reactive Optimod settings are worse in some ways, as they seemed to settle into the quiet intro, boosting gain, then panicking when the main body was 10dB louder and after a brief period of distortion reduced gain therefore making the elements intended to maintain volume (such as Polly in Sheela-Na-Gig) fade into the background. At least then you knew you could buy a vinyl copy (and CD perhaps) for the intended sound.

Harder if that’s already been done at CD source which is the normal situation now with these loudness wars ... but I don’t see what’s wrong with digital releases being available in both “director’s cut” or “full bhuna” or”premium sound” non-compressed form as well as something labelled as “transistor-friendly constant volume” cut, or something labelled sufficiently negatively to encourage use of the unadulterated versions.

Even back in the 1980s I thought that for some reason many Peel sessions sounded much more natural, exciting and dynamic than the studio releases, such as the drums in the Smiths’ What Difference Does It Make and Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart, even Simple Minds’ Love Song. The BBC engineers weren’t having to answer to record companies demands.

Stuart


From: mailto:peel@yahoogroups.com 
Sent: Thursday, October 09, 2014 12:03 AM
To: peel@yahoogroups.com 
Subject: [peel] Re: S013 and S014

  
Loudness by radio broadcaster deliberate compression, loudnes by CD mastering - it all hurts the music


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