Thanks to all of you for this thread. I have more than once been lambasted for asking Q's about adding compression to classical. The purists' mentality which seems to (rightfully?) prevail here always shuns my tendancy to master things. As I don't really release or seed any of my stuff (classical) I tinker with it, because, frankly, it is more the mastering that draws my attention rather than the taping. I like taping fine, but it's the simple manipulation of the source that interests me, thus I can spend hours working w/ my recordings of live opera. My tapes are really done to give to my fellow singers with whom I am performing, and hell, they'll like anything I give them, so I don't need to worry about the purists mentality.
I DO use Wavelab 5 montages more and more, as all mastering in them is non-destructive. I usually will keep the source untouched, but seriously, you guys that do rock and louder shows w/ less dynamic range would be very hard pressed to tape some classical and be happy with your tapes, ESPECIALLY give the less than ideal circumstances I have to tape in (stealthed and balance problems between orch and singers). HELL YES, I use eq'ing, punchers, and L2!!! In doing so, I can (shudder) IMPROVE the live sound. There IS a reason why the majority of the POP artists are lipsynching so much of their shows....cuz it sounds BETTER on tape when they're not jiggling their tushes off in some shitty dance move. The same reasoning applies here too. WE have to stop being afraid to 'improve' our tapes.
Does anyone really bemoan the fact that the EXACT duplicate of Caruso's recordings might not be in circulation, or are they happy that they simply GOT him on 'tape?'
This is all very interesting stuff. My classical sensibilites are of two minds, and always have been (even before I got "into" recording my own performances as i have in the last year or so): 1. Live, warts and all - let us hear it the way it WAS without cleaning it up or "improving" it 2. Clean studio recording, heavily mastered making it sound "as good as possible". Both have their virtues, but over the years I've definitely decided that I greatly prefer live, no matter WHAT.
Which begs the question, "How much compressing/limiting/mastering is reasonable?" Well, it depends. There have been times when I'd have given a body part for hard limiter/compressor just so I didn't wind up with blown out tapes (there are some classical pieces for which it is virtually IMPOSSIBLE to set a successful "all purpose" level - the Verdi Requiem springs to mind, with its supersofts followed by BLARINGLY loud brass). Even with a good guesstimate for levels for the "normal" parts of the piece, the softs are barely audible and the brass stings are off the scale (fortunately, with one exception I wasn't singing during either of those passages so I still got hte parts of ME that I wanted to get cleanly!) But generally, I guess I sitll go for "highest FIDELITY" rather than "highest QUALITY" and try to do as little as possible to my own recordings - for the ones taped live in the house (which have been FAR more successful than my efforts at a "studio" recording), it's usually been little more than boosting the volume (very occasionally compressing slightly and THEN boosting hte volume). For the "studio" recording I made of myself - with mixed (possibly even limited) success, I wound up having to add some acoustic ( the preset reverbs in wavlab and soundforge were a nice tool to help) and then twiddled with the EQs until I liked what I heard. I make NO claims for expertise - it was entirely done by the seat of my pants and to see what I could come up with; an exercise I set myself as much as anything else.
I DID have the good fortune to sit in on a mastering "lesson" earlier in the year, and I learned on helluva a lot, not least of which the fact that I am such a lowly and ignorant noob about what to do and how to do it that it's kind of scary! But it was fascinating to watch an experienced pro engineer at work, especially since he was willing to answer sooooooooo many questions and demonstrate how he would handle certain situations. I will say, however, that with three of us involved - all professional musicians with excellent ears and a good grasp of both the musical and technical side of things (well, in my case, modest grasp of the latter, perhaps, but certainly better than the average bear) - there were three varied opinions on each and every sound we played/heard/tweaked. Was an eye-opener, actually, to see how differently we heard/interpreted the same extracts; what one of us thought was "just right" another thought "too much" and the third "not enough". Goldilocks city....
Anyway, not sure I'm adding much to the discussion except another shout from the classical peanut gallery. I guess my bottom line is that mastering should be kind of like retouching a photograph: nothing wrong with enhancing what's already there, but it still needs to "look like the person really did". Enhance, rather than surgically alter
And "how much is enough/too much" is very VERY hard to define!
