I picked up the latest Rush album ‘Vapor Trails’ shortly after it came out, and it’s been bugging me for a while now. Though I’ve always been a big fan and their skills are as finely honed as ever, something about it seemed a little ‘off.’ I’m not generally very musically inclined so it wasn’t immediately obvious to me, but after a bit of research and listening, it became clearer that the problem lies not within the music itself, but in the mixing.
Apparently the key word around studios right now is Volume, Volume, Volume. Now the volume of a CD track can be safely increased to the point where it just fits snugly within the 16-bit sample range, but apparently that’s not good enough for some studios. They’re pushing the volumes high enough that it exceeds that range, and exceeding it has consequences — it introduces distortion into the music. See here for a much more detailed technical article about this distortion problem.
The distortion is pretty minor though; you have to listen pretty closely to notice it. The other, more important problem this volume-mania has is that all of the individual instrument tracks have had their volumes cranked up as much as possible (a technique apparently known as “The Wall Of Sound”). The result is that the final mix sounds ‘muddy,’ with the instruments competing with each other for your attention. There are no subtleties; licks that would have worked better in the background are forced into the foreground and transitions that should have been built up slowly are instant and jarring instead.
There’s not much that can be done about it though as long as the studios are convinced that this is what has to be done to sell albums nowadays, since they seem to think that the kids won’t be interested unless it’s LOUD. Maybe the live versions will be better or a future remix could be possible…
