Production Advice

or, What are the Fletcher-Munsen Curves, and why do you need to know about them ?

If you’re mixing audio, you need to know about the Fletcher-Munsen curves, sometimes known as the smile curves – and if you’re mastering then you really need to know about them. Luckily though, you don’t need to know very much !

You can get the full technical low-down from the Wikipedia article, but in a nutshell:

Louder music sounds bassier and toppier than quiet music

Put another way, quieter music sounds thinner and duller. It’s not really, it just sounds that way to our ears – they just work that way.

Maybe it’s an evolutionary thing, to protect us from predators, and pay more attention to sounds that are closer and potentially more dangerous – maybe not. But it’s the reason you used to see a “loudness” control on amplifiers – the idea was it added bass and treble to compensate for lower listening levels. It’s one of the reasons for the loudness wars, and it’s very important to bear in mind when you’re making mix decisions.

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One of the most popular posts on this site is “Using compression to add punch, warmth and power to your mix” – a tutorial to help people get started with the basics of using compression.

In it, I suggest a rule of thumb:

If the gain reduction meter doesn’t return to zero several times a bar, you’re almost certainly using too much compression

And I stand by that suggestion – most of the time.

Now, just yesterday my good friend Joe Gilder over at Home Studio Corner put up a post on this subject, and quoted my rule of thumb. And immediately, the Devil’s Advocate in me wanted to post a reply. It got so long, I changed it into this post – I think I see a trend developing !

So, this post is about the times when you might want to ignore that rule – after all, rules are made to be broken, especially rules-of-thumb : )

The exception to the rule

When might you want to have compression constantly happening ?

When it sounds great.

OK, I know – when is that ? The answer often involves a parameter in compression that people don’t talk about much – the knee.

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“Should I use a buss compressor on my mix ?”

That’s a question I get asked a lot, and as a mastering engineer, I’m conflicted about what advice to give. The follow-up, “should it be single or multi-band ?” is easier to answer, though.

First of all:

Why would you use a buss compressor over your whole mix anyway ?

This post started out as a comment on The Recording Revolution about buss compression, and Graham’s video from that post (above) gives a good explanation.

He’s pretty clear that you should compress your whole mix, and the truth is that almost all “name” engineers in the pop, rock and indie genres, will slap an SSL or similar buss compressor over the mix as one of the first things they do when setting up a mix.

Simple, right ?

Well… maybe. A great buss compressor used on a great mix will often “glue it together” nicely, as Graham says. It’s a tried and tested technique that has been used on a huge number of hit records.

BUT:

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A while ago I posted a video where Dave Grohl discussed Foo Fighters decision to record “Wasting Light” in their garage. They also chose not to use computers at all during the recording or mixing process.

Here are some quotes that stood out to me from a great new article on eMusician.com talking about the process and the consequences of that decision:

“If you only have cheap mics and pres on hand, it doesn’t mean you can’t get good sounds,”

“The main rule of thumb is, if it sounds good in the room, there’s a good chance it will sound good recorded.”

“Something happens to the tape, oh well, you have to play it again. God forbid you have to play your song one more time.”

“If you zoom in with Pro Tools and put everything exactly on that microscopic downbeat it’s so perfect that it loses a thickness. If everything is off just a little bit the music just gets wider and thicker.”

“We mixed manually on the API board, with me, James, Alan Moulder and Dave, all eight hands on board, all doing the faders, no automation; we couldn’t even do mutes. So every mix was a performance.”

“You have to be patient and get focused. Sometimes, with the Foos, they rehearsed a lot… You need a band that can play great, and is willing to do that. It’s so easy to manipulate stuff with computers. I don’t know if I will do this in the future. They have to be as good as the Foo Fighters, and play that well.”

(To read the full article, click here.)

That last quote is one of the most interesting, I think. Does it mean no-one should record in this “old-school” way unless they too are as good as the Foo Fighters ?

Regardless of the process they used, the end result of the sound of “Wasting Light” still sounds very slick and clean, to me. I’m not sure I’d have guessed it was recorded 100% analogue in a garage if they hadn’t told us. How about you ?

OK there, I said it. I just don’t get the fuss about LCR mixing.

I’ve been reading Mixerman‘s superb “Zen and the Art of Mixing” book recently, and really enjoying it – not so much because I’m learning a huge amount, but because he has a unique and refreshing take on things. It’s fascinating reading his perspective on issues that I’ve thought about over the years, and seeing where we agree or disagree.

And at times, he brilliantly crystallises something – one of my favourite quotes is his observation that

“Your job as a producer or mixer is simple – follow the song“

Maybe out of context like that it sounds like a no-brainer, but it’s a point that’s all too easy to lose sight of, in our obsession with the mechanics of recording and mixing.

I strongly recommend you get hold of a copy, either real or Kindle – there’s a link to it in the Production Advice bookstore – click here.

BUT I do disagree with him on various points and one of the biggest is his suggestion that

“When in doubt, pan hard or don’t pan at all”

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