Quote:
Originally Posted by UnwindedDreams
This is why I love the album.
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The only thing I really despise about the album is its engineering and thus probably its mastering. It followed that awful trend that started in the 90s of compressing all the dynamic range out of the tracks. That decision was probably Lindsey and Mark Needham. As far as I’m concerned, it was a fatal blow to the album. That whole approach back then was known as the Loudness Wars. It was extra compression and “brickwall” limiting that turned albums into a solid noise. It was a fatal aesthetic and it got the industry hooked on it. It has ruined a couple of Lindsey solo albums, too. I sometimes feel like slapping him. He seems to have developed an aversion to space, especially in his vocals. (That breathy back-of-the-room quality many of us do not like in his singing is actually an effect of compressing the signal so that he sounds less human and more machine-like.) It destroyed his track “Say Goodbye.” He used to mix older Fleetwood tracks with headroom (back when you couldn’t add compression on every individual channel). Headroom is totally lacking on
Say You Will and his last solo album. My understanding of it may be technically imprecise, but the problem is definitely tied to compression. When you flatten dynamic range, you get louder tracks you can play in the car and hear over the highway noise.