Even the Darkness Will Not be Dark to You

We just got our mas­ters back this week for the new Secret Sibs album. I am so happy with how every­thing sounds. This record is def­i­nitely more straight-forward than our first record. Don’t get me right, the lay­ers are still there, but it’s more of a clas­sic rock sound this time out. We went for a clas­sic rock vibe in the mas­ter­ing process too…throwing the mixes to 1/2 inch tape and run­ning every­thing thru a Neve-esque chain and then thru the Pen­du­lum 6386 vari-mu tube com­pres­sor on the 2-buss.

Alan Douches (as in “couches”) mas­tered this record as well as our first double-disc set. You may notice some­thing a bit dif­fer­ent when you hear our new record. We’ve made a con­scious deci­sion to allow this record to have more dynamic range than the last one. To the aver­age lis­tener, this means that our new record will sound “qui­eter”. After sev­eral dis­cus­sions with Alan on the mat­ter and some care­ful lis­ten­ing on my part, I am in agree­ment that keep­ing the record qui­eter makes for a much bet­ter lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence. It’s less fatigu­ing for longer lis­ten­ing at loud vol­umes too, which is super cool. In addi­tion, by not heav­ily brick­wall lim­it­ing the two buss, Alan is also able to retain some seri­ously opu­lent* bass — so nice…

Alan’s words were some­thing like this…“Mike, this isn’t the new Tay­lor Swift record. You don’t have to ‘go-for-the-jugular’ and make peo­ple pay atten­tion within the first 10 sec­onds of lis­ten­ing. Your new record is super dynamic, you need to leave those dynam­ics in there. That way, when peo­ple reach for the vol­ume knob and turn it up, they will get pum­melled in the chest by the bass and drums with­out their eardrums bleeding…without all the ‘harsh­ness’ that extreme brick­wall lim­it­ing can cause. This record is more “art” than “pop”…more clas­sic rock than mod­ern rock…let’s make it sound really good and hope that peo­ple reach for the vol­ume knob.”

All that being said, it wasn’t an easy deci­sion to have our new record be on the quiet side…it sort of makes me nervous…so, by all means, please TURN THIS RECORD UP!…we think you’ll be pleased with the results…

For a super in-depth dis­cus­sion on “The Loud­ness Wars” and dynamic range in mas­ter­ing, check out this blog post by Barry Dia­ment or over here at TurnMeUP.org…

*OPULENT - a : hav­ing a large estate or prop­erty : wealthy <hop­ing to marry an opu­lent widow> b : amply or plen­ti­fully pro­vided or fash­ioned often to the point of osten­ta­tion <liv­ing in opu­lent comfort>