Wow, I really messed up this time.
Not only did I criticise the sound of the new Beatles single (gasp) and not only did I say it wasn’t a mastering issue (sharp intake of breath) but I used numbers to describe what I heard ! (Appalled silence, wolves howl in the distance etc...)
Oh, the horror…
People really didn’t like it.
I managed to upset people from every side of the debate, and they made that very clear in the comments on Facebook.
On the one hand, they told me that anything the Beatles do is beyond critique. And on the other that it was a rubbish song so the mix doesn’t matter and it was nothing but a blatant cash-grab and should never have been released anyway (I disagree !). Some told me it’s OK for the stereo mix to be heavily squashed because that’s how everything sounds these days – or that it needs that sound to be ‘current’, or work on mobile devices, or be accessible to younger people. And others told me it sounded exactly the way Paul and Ringo wanted, so how dare I have an opinion about it at all ?!
Meanwhile some asked a very valid question - “if they really like the sound of the stereo, why is the Atmos mix so much more dynamic ?”
And then there were the people who were simply outraged that I was using numbers to talk about a piece of art in the first place…
So there are a lot of interesting points being raised, and in this post I want to address as many as I can of them, and try to clear up a couple of misconceptions along the way.
(Actually the vast majority of comments agreed with me, said Thanks for describing what I thought the problem was, and expressed regret that different decisions hadn’t been made - but comments like that would make for a much less interesting post…!)
First of all though, I’ll say again - I don’t think the stereo mix sounds terrible, it’s just too compressed for my taste, in a way that I think works against the emotional intent of the music. This is backed up by the more dynamic Atmos mix, which I strongly prefer. The Atmos binaural render even works when listening on a mobile phone speaker in my opinion, so I don’t buy the argument that this degree of crush is somehow ‘necessary’ for mobile devices or earbuds, either.
And like it or not, the numbers back that up.
See what I did there ? I’m not saying “because the numbers measure XYZ this mix is bad”, I’m saying “this mix sounds sounds less musical than this one to me, and - oh look, it measures much louder”. The numbers are an observation that I made because of the way it sounds and feels.
I’m not even saying the high loudness is the cause of the problem, necessarily. As people have pointed out, there are plenty of records released at -6 LUFS that sound 'OK', and where the loudness doesn’t get in the way of the musical intent. But in this case, the decisions made during the stereo mixing process resulted in a far less dynamic result, which doesn’t work as well for me, or for many of the other people commenting. It’s the way it was made this loud, not the loudness numbers themselves, that bother me.
And yes, I’m afraid it IS valid to talk meaningfully about measurements and technical issues when we’re discussing music !
For a painting we can talk about the skill and passion of the artist, composition and use of colour, but also discuss the quality of reproduction of a print of that painting, the way it was mounted and framed and the paper used, and whether those factors affect the way we feel when we look at it.
In the same way with music, of course the melody, harmony, lyrics, performance and arrangement are the most important aspects of a song, but technical aspects like tonal balance, dynamics and the influence of streaming codecs also affect how well it comes across to us. And we can assess and discuss all those aspects using numbers and meters, up to a point. I’m a mastering engineer, it’s part of what we do - the blend of technical and artistic skills is one of the things that make it such a fascinating profession.
As my friend and fellow mastering engineer Nick Watson said - “I've had this all my life, even outside the professional sphere - a friend will ask my why I don't like a song that they like, so I'll think about it, try and find something to put into words in order to answer the question. Then they'll tell me I'm "too analytical" - when I didn't analyse anything until they asked me to…”
So, let’s get back to the sound ! What about all the people who said “it needs to sound like that”, or “everything is loud these days, get over it” or just “it sounds fine” ?
Well firstly (again) I actually agree that it doesn’t sound terrible, just under-whelming. So for those who aren’t bothered by the heavy compression - great ! I strongly disagree that it ‘needs’ to be this squashed though, either for mobile phone speakers, or to be ‘competitive’ or to sound ‘current’. In fact as Rick Beato has commented and I said in my original post, personally I don’t think this song needs to sound ‘current’ at all. But I do accept that’s exactly what Paul and Ringo asked for, and Miles Showell, who mastered the single at Abbey Road, has confirmed that the stereo mix was approved by both the band and label before being sent to him.
In fact, anyone assuming that the loudness of the master was determined in mastering might be surprised to know that Miles also commented that “It could have been even louder, the source I worked with was the LESS limited version”. Some people have gone as far as to suggest that the mix should have been rejected or changed because it was supplied at such a high loudness, but that’s not the job of a mastering engineer. We can politely query, and suggest that we might have more flexibility working with a more dynamic source, but if the client is happy, then we work with what’s supplied. (Of course there’s also the option to politely decline to work on a project at all, but as passionate as I am about balanced dynamics, I’m not sure even I would turn down the chance to work with the Beatles, if I got it!)
And as for the idea that “The loudness wars are over, loudness won - everything is loud these days, get over it” - no. Yes it’s true that many mainstream releases are very loud at the moment, but there are also plenty of examples with great dynamics, and what kind of argument is “everything else sounds like this, so it doesn’t matter” ? That’s just an excuse or justification, not a valid reason to make choices about the way our music sounds.
So why do the two mixes sound so different ? I covered the technical details in my previous post, but artistically why would the band choose this amount of compression for the stereo mix but not the Atmos? Why not make them sound more similar ? Again we can only speculate, but I have a couple of theories.
First of all though - why should they ? Immersive audio is an entirely different listening experience, with potentially 12 or more speakers rather than 2, just to begin with. Most Atmos mixes right now are carefully tuned to work equally well on many-speaker systems and earbuds - including this one. And especially when the stereo mix is usually still considered the most important version, Atmos mixers take great care to maintain a consistent feel between the two. But it’s entirely up to the engineers and artists how far to take this, and for this song there were equally experienced and prestigious teams working on both versions.
Having said that, dynamics aside there’s still a lot of similarity between the two versions of ‘Now and Then’, so here are some ideas from me about why a different approach was used.
Who knows if these are the real reasons, or close to them, though - or what conversations were had about this, if any !
Ultimately of course we have to say it doesn’t really matter. The single has received a fantastic reception with almost universally excellent reviews. It went to Number 1 in the UK & US charts, breaking all kinds of records along the way and moving people to tears in the process, so clearly the sound hasn’t affected the emotional impact of the song too badly, for most people !
Personally I still wish they’d chosen to make the dynamics of the stereo mix closer to the Atmos version, and judging from the reaction to my original post, so do many others. But luckily we have the Atmos version to listen to, and at the end of the day, it’s the song and the artists that are most important. As Paul himself said around the release of The White Album (sort of) “It's a bloody new Beatles song, shut up!”
So I will.
