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Bob,

Question: Why is the trend in rock recordings getting more severe with squashing the hell out of final mixes? It's the worst with the Alternative genre. It seems absurd, that the industry spends millions of dollars on high-end digital recording and processing, only to have the capabilities lost with severe compression. We're left hardly any definition of the individual instruments, and our VU meters hardly move. So, what's the deal to you? Do you find it frustrating? Who is making the decisions on this trend?

I'm a 50 year-old guy. It surprises me that even my 14 year-old son asks me why.

My response:

Dear Mr. Kelly,

This is a question that seems to be asked more and more these days. I'm not absolutely sure, but I believe there's a few reasons. First, radio stations tend to use massive compression (usually multiband) to keep their signal strong enough to reach the "fringe areas", the places just on the edge of reception. So, when the mixer "squashes the hell" out of the mix, the producer and the label guys think it "sounds just like the radio", which somehow translates to "sounds like a hit." Second, (which is really a subset of the first reason) because the record buyers have gotten used to hearing all that radio compression, they actually expect to hear it when they buy, er... I mean.. when they download the tunes.

Third, a certain amount of compression does add excitement to a rock mix (I use a fair amount myself) but as you've observed, it's quite possible that a number of modern mixers may have overdone it a bit.

Also, when you highly compress every track, mixing gets quite a bit easier, as everything just sits at the same level, so you don't really have to push the faders much. But of course, you still must get some kind of a musical balance.

Cheers,
Clearmountain

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