HW: Yule Ritual

[Michael Blackman]

That is really bizarre because my copy is great to listen to.  Has the mix
been messed with since it was first released perhaps?



----- Original Message -----
From: Dr _ Technical <dr_technical at MCMAHON66.FSNET.CO.UK>
To: <BOC-L at LISTSERV.SPC.EDU>
Sent: Tuesday, December 17, 2002 7:41 PM
Subject: Re: HW: Yule Ritual


> My version of this album is also bass heavy (recently purchased). Even on
> cheap monitors, it nearly blows them up with the volume halfway decent!
>
> On Fri, 13 Dec 2002 17:10:42 -0500, Doug Pearson <jasret at MINDSPRING.COM>
> wrote:
>
> >On Fri, 13 Dec 2002 07:34:52 +0000, Jonathan Norman <rockypaths at MSN.COM>
> >wrote:
> >>Hi
> >>
> >>I need to know if I have a duff copy of this album.  The version I have
> is
> >>very bass heavy - so bass heavy that you can't turn up the volume as my
> >>sub-woofer hates it.
> >>
> >>Has anyone else had this problem?
> >
> >Yes, it's a typical newbie mastering engineer mistake to overuse a
> favorite
> >(or newly-obtained) piece of equipment or (if computer-mastered) plug-in,
> >in this case, something along the lines of an Aphex Aural Exciter/Bass
> >Enhancer (a web search on the name of the mastering engineer turns up a
> guy
> >who seems to be very experienced at binaural recording, but has no
> >mastering credits mentioned ... no idea whether or not it's actually the
> >same person, as those two audio engineering tasks are not at all
related).
> >So you get a bass sound that sounds "awesome" on cheap equipment (like a
> >boom box or car stereo, and maybe even crap monitors that are all treble
> no
> >bass like NS-10's), but utterly nothing like a real bass guitar when
> played
> >on a system capable of accurately reproducing the sound of a recording.
> >
> >I have a bad enough time listening to 'Yule Ritual' through my speakers
> >(Vandersteens - http://www.vandersteen.com/ ), which have much more of a
> >flat, uncolored, studio-monitor-like response than most home audio
> >speakers, so I can only imagine that the sound must be utterly abyssmal
> >through a system with a subwoofer.
> >
> >Which is all too bad, as I like the album quite a bit (although there's
> >major room for improvement in other areas, but I've bitched about it
> enough
> >for one day).  Great contributions by Ron, Simon, Harvey & Keith
Kniveton,
> >especially (and presumably Jerry, but like I just said ... ).
> >
> >There was a web broadcast of part of the show which had a proper sounding
> >bass guitar, so a decent recording obviously exists somewhere ...
> >
> >(And on the "other" subject, this underscores the importance of audience
> >taping, since that's the only way to get a copy of the 'Yule Ritual'
> >Astoria set that *doesn't* have this mastering screwup.  Sorry to dwell
on
> >this, since I've mentioned it before, but words cannot describe how
> >appalled I was when I first heard it.)
> >
> >    -Doug
> >     jasret at mindspring.com