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Modern songs and 'brick walling'

Chad Michael

Chad Michael

Sep 19, 2001
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#1
In general terms, I like somewhat older music and recording techniques and playback formats. However, I try to find something with modern music,.

I hear a trend in recorded music referred to as brick walling. The music is compressed and topped out... to the point, that the dynamics of instruments are lost. Curious if anyone notices or has an opinion of the recording topology.

Here are a couple of modern tunes that I really like, the 'chorus' has a hook that I dig and respect. However, they are certainly 'bricked'. Thoughts???

Almost Monday - Can't Slow Down
Tame Impala - Dracula




 
#3
Chad Michael said:
In general terms, I like somewhat older music and recording techniques and playback formats. However, I try to find something with modern music,.

I hear a trend in recorded music referred to as brick walling. The music is compressed and topped out... to the point, that the dynamics of instruments are lost. Curious if anyone notices or has an opinion of the recording topology.

Here are a couple of modern tunes that I really like, the 'chorus' has a hook that I dig and respect. However, they are certainly 'bricked'. Thoughts???

Almost Monday - Can't Slow Down
Tame Impala - Dracula




Click to expand...

I heard that sort of thing way back when on all sorts of recordings, then further compression when that stuff hit AM radio broadcast. Not every band got to record at Abbey Road or the Record Plant, either. Plenty of notable records were done at cheap studios, where they had to squash dynamics on tracks or entire mixes so as not to overload lesser equipment.

But on modern releases, yeah, I hear it. One of my favorite new bands is Wet Leg, and on their highly anticipated recent second release, Moisturizer, it’s more prevalent than on their first album. Especially on the final song, “u and me at home”, an ode to just staying in for the evening. It ends up being an everything and the kitchen sink, gang sing-along thing at the end, but squeezed and kinda crunchy…
 
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#4
Yep, that über-compressed style was a big thing in the 90s. I am not an audio snob by any measure, but I still occasionally notice how bad it sounds and find it fatigues my ears. I don't think I'd go so far as to say it ruins my listening experience, in part because I rarely listen to entire albums with this production method.

My impression is that mainstream pop never stopped this practice. Did lesser-known musicians/bands stop for a bit?
 
#5
Lotta bands are sort of going for that vintage sound, in contrast to the super-clean and overproduced sound. I've got a few rando Indie Rock playlists on Spotify I follow, this sounds about on-par with that kind of stuff. I think it's intentionally the sound the band or Producer is going for.
 
#9
Far from the most objectionable of trends in recorded music these days.

We are currently spending some time with one of our grand kiddo families, and had heard about all the great songs associated with the Demon Hunters Movie.

Yesterday, I finally heard some of this drivel; much of which seemed to be more of same computer generated “music” with human lyrics added to it. The “music industry” just seems to continue replacing musicians with computers. The target audiences have become so conditioned that they don’t even notice a difference any more.

Real food vs Corporate processed food. Poisoning our minds and bodies in the name of profit.

Sad.
 
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#10
The way streaming algorithms work now for music, mastering has been moving back to a more dynamic, "open", less smashed sound. Read up on LUFs, etc. If your master sounds like a brickwalled flatlined thing from the 90's/early 00's, it'll actually stream quieter than a track mastered....better. It will sound small compared to the other music. Ironic, but it's one of the positive things about modern streaming;)
 
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#11
The older stuff with bricked dynamics were the victims of the tech at the time.

The more modern bricked stuff it seems is produced to sound good on ear buds. Crisp but not extended. Clean mids for the vocals. Synth that has neither extended highs or lows. I just listened to Don Was, Groove in the Face of Adversity. I heard it on a crappy stereo in my office, then on a high res system at moderate volumes. Immense difference, particularly since half the tunes were recorded live. They jumped in the high res system, but sounded bricked in the crappy stereo. I doubt many teens, tweens or twenty somethings will be listening to it.

The moral of the story: MoFi, Deutche Grammophone etc. mondern pop is not. Punchy and catchy in a personal stereo listened in isolation, it is. IMHO, YMMV, etc.
 
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#14
bucephylus said:
Far from the most objectionable of trends in recorded music these days.

We are currently spending some time with one of our grand kiddo families, and had heard about all the great songs associated with the Demon Hunters Movie.

Yesterday, I finally heard some of this drivel; much of which seemed to be more of same computer generated “music” with human lyrics added to it. The “music industry” just seems to continue replacing musicians with computers. The target audiences have become so conditioned that they don’t even notice a difference any more.

Real food vs Corporate processed food. Poisoning our minds and bodies in the name of profit.

Sad.
Click to expand...
Just trying to find a gem in the coal. I actually like the original post songs above, it's the processing that I find distasteful...

Being a 'target audience' is almost completely gone for me and my peers....
 
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#16
This has been going on for 30+ years, unfortunately. The reasons are allegedly valid because of how people listen to music today, and, the loudness wars of the past in regards to hard rock/heavy metal, but, I am a proud boomer and have never listened to music with earbuds or the like. I still listen on full fidelity speakers and old school headphones. I want dynamics and separation as found in well produced music. I think now the overuse of compression is laziness. It's generally socially acceptable and the paradigm of this era. Sure, most people may be listening, if they really are listening, or just filling their ears and brains with noise to offset other external "noise". But, there are the times that you want to simply relax, or enjoy the music for its beauty and creativity, to internalize it, not just to be a blockade and a way to not be "here".

Even loud rocking Rush knew they screwed up Vapor Trails with overt compression and re released a second version, which they said couldn't correct as much as they would have liked, but, they tried. They were cognizant of dynamics. 2112 and A Farewell to Kings grandly showcase that.
 
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#17
Metallica's Death Magnetic album comes to mind. I think the songs on it are pretty good, but it's a hard album to listen to.

Also @BigJohnAZ mentioned Rush's Vapor Trails, which also suffered horribly. I have the remastered version and it's better but not great. I also think that it didn't end there, Snakes and Arrows and Clockwork Angels also seem to be albums with good songs that for some reason give you a headache if you try to listen for too long, which is a shame since they have good music.

Personally, I don't really understand compression. I mean I know what it is and so on, but I can't tell you the difference between a compressed and an uncompressed recording just by listening. I do know that album A sounds pretty good but album B, even though I like the songs, gives me ear fatigue after a few minutes.
 
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#18
It's gotten way out of hand recently, well beyond the "loudness wars" issues, with poorly applied overcompression during mastering severely degrading the overall sound of the mix. When the Beatles' newest tune "Now and Then" was first released, the sound was so squashed that it was really difficult to listen to, it was just so carelessly mushed together by bad compression settings and it ruined the sound. Then someone did a stereo downmix of the Dolby Atmos version, and it sounded much better than the original stereo release; when the waveforms of the two versions were compared onscreen, you could absolutely see how the original stereo release was just a solid brick from beginning to end and the Atmos downmix version actually had a dynamic looking waveform. It's almost as if a different mastering engineer worked on each, and the engineer of the Atmos version was more competent and knew how to use compression properly. (The new Anthology 4 release has "Now and Then" on it; I compared its waveform with the waveform of the stereo downmix of the Atmos version and it looks identical, so it looks like they corrected that issue.)

A similar thing happened with the new Last Dinner Party album; it wasn't as bad as the Beatles' instance, but the Dolby Atmos version was less compressed and more lively and clear sounding. The stereo version sounded really depressing; bass and drums super bland and lifeless and just constantly putting out a mudpile of low mids; almost all of the orchestral parts (literally dozens of session players) totally buried and inaudible under the mud. A huge sonic disppointment compared with the epic cinematic sound of their first album. Thank goodness the Atmos version was better.

Compression, even lots of it, can sound good when used appropriately or artfully by people who know what they are doing.
 
#20
Some are, some aren’t. It used to be more prevalent than it is now. It’s not as much of a trend these days. But it’s still a choice that the mastering engineer gets to make. But some of them make good choices, and others not so much. Let’s not over-generalize.
 

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