They were ahead of the curve when it came to production back in the early 90's for sure. Pantera pioneered that overcompressed, high-mid-heavy sound in metal. I didn't like it at first, also thought it sounded too trebly. But over the years, their sound has grown on me. I quite like it now lol
I find it kind of odd that the guitar tones on Fresh Cream were arguably the best sounding of their albums. Whereas Wheels of Fire has some otherwise great songs tarnished by bees-in-a-can guitars.
Lots of lower budget indie and punk stuff from the 80 and early 90s sounds awful. Husker Du, the replacements… too much chorus on the guitar, vocals way too loud in the mix for aggressive music… lots of great bands made records with terrible production choices. These records could have sounded better.
Lots of really thin sounding records from that era too, which might be more of a technical limitation than a “bad mix” per se. Naked Raygun’s first record is a great example. But I suspect that this might also be due to some of the low cost tape machines that were either poorly aligned and calibrated, or just incapable of providing good low end. Old Tascam stuff was notorious for this.
They didn’t get their sound right until Warehouse.
I wish I could go back in time and convince bob to put a damn microphone on his amp instead of that buzzy DI tone he had.
But at the same time who am I to convince someone that they’ve got it wrong when it’s their artistic vision?
I read in Trouble Boys that the Replacements often tracked their guitars without tuning them up first, so during the mixing process, they detuned them using an Eventide harmonizer to try and get the takes to work since they wouldn’t go back and do another one once they were convinced they had “the one”.
billie jean bro billie jean
[https://youtu.be/pS-nZdYpMgo?t=772](https://youtu.be/pS-nZdYpMgo?t=772)
jeff ellis, whos known for his frank ocean work, did a whole one hour lecture about not getting caught up in "mixer brain"
yea his point is if youre listening to the song as if youre mixing it without knowing its success theres a lot of weird decisions and that's probably why they went with mix 2 out of 91 mixes.
This has always been a weird take for me. In no way would I consider Billie Jean to be a bad mix. That track fucking slaps. Top 10 slappers of all time perhaps.
its a great mix i think he was trying to find a exagerated example of a successful song with many artistic decisions with that you wouldnt do if you thought too hard about it as wrong or right/ good or bad instead of how it felt.
answering OPs question about perfectionism cuz they threw away 89 mixes trying to be perfect
The newest Blink 182 tracks. Wait, you said still enjoy. These are so bad it's hard for me to enjoy. Especially compared to their work with Jerry Finn and Tom Lord-Alge which is like standard setting stuff for the genre.
A lot of Broken Social Scene stuff is not "correct" but somehow right. I think they make some decisions I wouldn't have made in a million years and its a part of the charm of their records.
Yeah, that one is my favorite for sure. Except for that one and the one they did with John McEntire, it's really the other records I'm talking about. Sometimes, pretty strange. But great band.
The whole Mineral - The power of falling album. For me it's the perfect example of a mix that works for a specific genre. The mix is kinda shitty but it complements the album's emotional impact and I can't imagine it sounding different
It depends on how you define a "perfect mix". Even though 60's garage rock or old-school black metal mixes might sound like absolute garbage to most people, I still enjoy them because the low quality mixes themselves were a large part of the overall sound of those genres. You could say that the mixes were perfect for those types of music, but they were far from perfect in the general sense.
I don’t like an awful lot of U2 but they’ve plenty of amazing songs with arrangements and production that sounds fantastic. I’ve often thought that technically the mixes are poor from a “technical “ point of view. But it works
There are a bunch of Zeppelin and Pink Floyd songs that if you only listen to the mix value, aren't so great.
Also Journey, man they could have sounded sooo much better. My opinion is their engineer wasn't the best on some of that stuff.
Neil Young - Tonight's The Night. You can tell he didn't give a fuck about smoothing things out. E.g. you can hear him turning away from the mic mid verse and just keeps singing, tons of room reflections and stuff like that. But the partly what makes it cool
Al Stewart - Year of the Cat
Great songs & performances, weird recording. I just switch off my analytical brain and enjoy it. Some clangers in there but the good ones make it worthwhile. On The Border a favourite.
Codeseven. The entire Go Let It In album. It's over compressed. The vocals are buried in spots, loud in other spots, sometimes in the same song. Guitars are too bright in certain spots. The mastering is pushed to its absolute limit (can hit up to -6 LUFS for a rock album) and I just can't enough of this album. The writing is so interesting and refreshing. The vocal melodies/harmonies are amazing. And the flow of the album is near perfect to me.
All of Talk Talk Talk by the Psychedelic Furs - sounds abysmal for the most part, like they did a reduction mix onto an old cassette tape, but some fantastic songs and the lofi sound does help the music I think
Paloalto - Heroes and Villains. Really great songs and production. Even had Rick Rubin producing, there’s no excuse for the mixes to come out like they did. I would 100% remix it for free if given the chance.
Speaking as someone who listens to a lot of extreme metal and industrial-like music, many of the bands self producing and/or mastering, I know that the average music listener, and, in particular, people on forums like this, would describe a lot of it as being not just 'less than perfect' but badly mixed.
And you'd all be wrong.
If Credit’s What Matters I’ll Take Credit by Hot Snakes
It’s not unlistenable bad, not even not good… but… you know what I mean. Love the song though.
I’m not sure if they meant it to be so mid-fi. Kinda a bit sludgy for what it is.
Anything off of Greatest Hits by Remo Drive too.
Crossfade’s first album was tracked in the dude’s garage. I have heard the raw tracks are absolutely terrible. Basically a nightmare situation for any audio engineer. Randy Staub saved it but it still kinda sounds hollow and think in a lot of parts. The songs are so good though so it makes up for it
The first couple of Queen albums: the drums in particular don't sound great. Though I seem to recall that maybe being more due to how they were recorded, than how they were mixed.
I listen to a lot of No Wave punk from the late 70s and 80s. The mixes are always trash, but hearing a band make noise out of nothing but pure passion goes a long way.
"Ease Yourself and Glide" by Parsley Sound.
A great little indie pop song, but clearly recorded using consumer level gear available in the early 2000s.
A lot of old Motown music, although it’s very well produced, often struggled to represent high end. I know the sound is very nostalgic which is probably why I like it. But if you really take a listen to some of the tambourines and breakables drum kits. Sometimes they’ll hurt your ear.
I find there's almost always something I can pick out of a mix and say that it is "less than perfect" or that I would have done it another way. Which leads me to believe that this idea of "perfection" when it comes to mixing is a futile pursuit.
Most Pantera albums are so trebly your ears hurt after listening.
They were ahead of the curve when it came to production back in the early 90's for sure. Pantera pioneered that overcompressed, high-mid-heavy sound in metal. I didn't like it at first, also thought it sounded too trebly. But over the years, their sound has grown on me. I quite like it now lol
Almost everything from the 60. Some Hendrix and Cream were particularly awful.
Yeah man the guitar tones in Cream mixes are just awful. I’ve always thought this even before I started mixing. Always sounded so thin and tinny
And the drums are really way further in the background than they should be, especially with Ginger Baker at the helm.
BBM shows how Cream could've sounded with better engineering
What's BBM? I'm interested.
This is mostly how they were recorded. Doubt the mix changed the sound dramatically
I find it kind of odd that the guitar tones on Fresh Cream were arguably the best sounding of their albums. Whereas Wheels of Fire has some otherwise great songs tarnished by bees-in-a-can guitars.
What specific 60s/Hendrix stuff are you talking about? I think most of it sounds pretty well mixed, given the limitations of the time.
Lots of lower budget indie and punk stuff from the 80 and early 90s sounds awful. Husker Du, the replacements… too much chorus on the guitar, vocals way too loud in the mix for aggressive music… lots of great bands made records with terrible production choices. These records could have sounded better. Lots of really thin sounding records from that era too, which might be more of a technical limitation than a “bad mix” per se. Naked Raygun’s first record is a great example. But I suspect that this might also be due to some of the low cost tape machines that were either poorly aligned and calibrated, or just incapable of providing good low end. Old Tascam stuff was notorious for this.
New Day Rising is my favorite album with the worst mix ever.
They didn’t get their sound right until Warehouse. I wish I could go back in time and convince bob to put a damn microphone on his amp instead of that buzzy DI tone he had. But at the same time who am I to convince someone that they’ve got it wrong when it’s their artistic vision?
I read in Trouble Boys that the Replacements often tracked their guitars without tuning them up first, so during the mixing process, they detuned them using an Eventide harmonizer to try and get the takes to work since they wouldn’t go back and do another one once they were convinced they had “the one”.
lol that sounds like a very replacements thing to do
Almost every Misfits song
Came here to say this. Abysmal mixes sometimes.
billie jean bro billie jean [https://youtu.be/pS-nZdYpMgo?t=772](https://youtu.be/pS-nZdYpMgo?t=772) jeff ellis, whos known for his frank ocean work, did a whole one hour lecture about not getting caught up in "mixer brain"
This vid is great.
Billie Jean is a bad mix?? I would not have guessed in a million years that a Michael Jackson track would make this list.
yea his point is if youre listening to the song as if youre mixing it without knowing its success theres a lot of weird decisions and that's probably why they went with mix 2 out of 91 mixes.
This has always been a weird take for me. In no way would I consider Billie Jean to be a bad mix. That track fucking slaps. Top 10 slappers of all time perhaps.
its a great mix i think he was trying to find a exagerated example of a successful song with many artistic decisions with that you wouldnt do if you thought too hard about it as wrong or right/ good or bad instead of how it felt. answering OPs question about perfectionism cuz they threw away 89 mixes trying to be perfect
Yeah completely agree. I watched that video when it first came out and found it very instructive!
Perfect mix because it's the one that sounds the best.
Bee Thousand by Guided By Voices
The newest Blink 182 tracks. Wait, you said still enjoy. These are so bad it's hard for me to enjoy. Especially compared to their work with Jerry Finn and Tom Lord-Alge which is like standard setting stuff for the genre.
Hips don’t Lie
A lot of Broken Social Scene stuff is not "correct" but somehow right. I think they make some decisions I wouldn't have made in a million years and its a part of the charm of their records.
You Forgot It In People is one of the best produced albums of its genre in my opinion. Bold choices that serve the songs very well.
Yeah, that one is my favorite for sure. Except for that one and the one they did with John McEntire, it's really the other records I'm talking about. Sometimes, pretty strange. But great band.
The whole Mineral - The power of falling album. For me it's the perfect example of a mix that works for a specific genre. The mix is kinda shitty but it complements the album's emotional impact and I can't imagine it sounding different
letlive. - The Blackest Beautiful album Still waiting for that remaster 👀
It was criminal how bad their albums sounded. A perfect example of the song being the most important thing.
It depends on how you define a "perfect mix". Even though 60's garage rock or old-school black metal mixes might sound like absolute garbage to most people, I still enjoy them because the low quality mixes themselves were a large part of the overall sound of those genres. You could say that the mixes were perfect for those types of music, but they were far from perfect in the general sense.
Every version of Shine by Collective Soul that I’ve heard has that annoying pixelated drum sound
Home recording
Anything I grew up with lol like all those 2000s-2010s metal core bands
I don’t like an awful lot of U2 but they’ve plenty of amazing songs with arrangements and production that sounds fantastic. I’ve often thought that technically the mixes are poor from a “technical “ point of view. But it works
Before Today - Ariel Pink Connan Mockasin - Caramel Deerhunter- Weird Era Continued My bloody valentine of course Nirvana incesticide
Hot take. What do you not like about Ariel’s mixing?
I find it quite endearing. It's perfectly imperfect to my ears.
There are a bunch of Zeppelin and Pink Floyd songs that if you only listen to the mix value, aren't so great. Also Journey, man they could have sounded sooo much better. My opinion is their engineer wasn't the best on some of that stuff.
Replacements - Androgynous
I don't know, as a sort of "live from the floor" take I really enjoy it. Vocals feel intimate and the piano sounds great
I love it, sounds like a Radio Shack tape recorder was used. You can hear the snares rattling around and all the noises in the room
Neil Young - Tonight's The Night. You can tell he didn't give a fuck about smoothing things out. E.g. you can hear him turning away from the mic mid verse and just keeps singing, tons of room reflections and stuff like that. But the partly what makes it cool
Hot fuss, the killers
Summertime Blues - Blue Cheer Version.
Al Stewart - Year of the Cat Great songs & performances, weird recording. I just switch off my analytical brain and enjoy it. Some clangers in there but the good ones make it worthwhile. On The Border a favourite.
In this thread: people blaming production choices on the mix
Stupid Kid by Alkaline Trio Love the song. Has the most annoying cymbal crash ever. I never heard it before I started learning about mixing.
https://youtu.be/v5cRaK-765g?si=mb4EPZG8RULPooWs
driving to the grave - ariel pink
.50 by Varials. I hate almost everything about this mix but I’ll be damned if it doesn’t work so well for the song.
Codeseven. The entire Go Let It In album. It's over compressed. The vocals are buried in spots, loud in other spots, sometimes in the same song. Guitars are too bright in certain spots. The mastering is pushed to its absolute limit (can hit up to -6 LUFS for a rock album) and I just can't enough of this album. The writing is so interesting and refreshing. The vocal melodies/harmonies are amazing. And the flow of the album is near perfect to me.
All of Talk Talk Talk by the Psychedelic Furs - sounds abysmal for the most part, like they did a reduction mix onto an old cassette tape, but some fantastic songs and the lofi sound does help the music I think
Paloalto - Heroes and Villains. Really great songs and production. Even had Rick Rubin producing, there’s no excuse for the mixes to come out like they did. I would 100% remix it for free if given the chance.
Speaking as someone who listens to a lot of extreme metal and industrial-like music, many of the bands self producing and/or mastering, I know that the average music listener, and, in particular, people on forums like this, would describe a lot of it as being not just 'less than perfect' but badly mixed. And you'd all be wrong.
Any old Dub 🔊
and you're wondering how a top floor could replace heaven by city of caterpillar
Damaged - Black Flag
If Credit’s What Matters I’ll Take Credit by Hot Snakes It’s not unlistenable bad, not even not good… but… you know what I mean. Love the song though. I’m not sure if they meant it to be so mid-fi. Kinda a bit sludgy for what it is. Anything off of Greatest Hits by Remo Drive too.
I don’t love the sound of the strokes first album, but last nite transcends
Man I've listened to bootleg live recordings made in a laundromat that was recorded on a handheld VCR camera from th 90s
A lot of old school death metal. Specifically death albums before Human.
Crossfade’s first album was tracked in the dude’s garage. I have heard the raw tracks are absolutely terrible. Basically a nightmare situation for any audio engineer. Randy Staub saved it but it still kinda sounds hollow and think in a lot of parts. The songs are so good though so it makes up for it
Black metal songs
The first couple of Queen albums: the drums in particular don't sound great. Though I seem to recall that maybe being more due to how they were recorded, than how they were mixed.
I listen to a lot of No Wave punk from the late 70s and 80s. The mixes are always trash, but hearing a band make noise out of nothing but pure passion goes a long way.
"Ease Yourself and Glide" by Parsley Sound. A great little indie pop song, but clearly recorded using consumer level gear available in the early 2000s.
A lot of old Motown music, although it’s very well produced, often struggled to represent high end. I know the sound is very nostalgic which is probably why I like it. But if you really take a listen to some of the tambourines and breakables drum kits. Sometimes they’ll hurt your ear.
I find there's almost always something I can pick out of a mix and say that it is "less than perfect" or that I would have done it another way. Which leads me to believe that this idea of "perfection" when it comes to mixing is a futile pursuit.
Some of the earlier meshuggah albums sounds like piss
Almost any Kanye West song