bought some monitors - what are good albums to listen to

[George]

to get an idea of nice mixes, detail etc to train one's ear?

i really enjoy listening to old 60s and 70s remasters most of all, like the beatles, black sabbath, stones and neil young at the moment. you can hear every little detail and where everything sits. really cool.

[Freddy V-C]

So are we pretty much just talking about albums with cool production? If so, recently I've really been digging the production on these albums:

Blacklisters - BLKLSTRS
The Cribs - In The Belly Of The Brazen Bull
mclusky - The Difference Between Me And You Is That I'm Not On Fire
Made Out Of Babies - Coward

In terms of 60s/70s stuff, We're Only In It For The Money by Frank Zappa is a really cool listen production-wise. I fell asleep listening to it on headphones and had some interesting dreams.

[benecol]

Not sure how useful it is for ear training, since it was apparently recorded and mixed entirely under the effects of a heavy LSD trip, but Free Your Mind by Funkadelic is fantastically lively and all over the shop.

Also, every Spiritualized album since Spiriualized Electric Mainline (especially that one though) are produced to the Nth degree.

[stewart]

DARK SIDE, BRO

[Al_]

I'd say anything you know really well, that you're familiar with how it sounds on other systems in your car, home, clubs, ear buds, whatever. The idea is to see how they sound on your monitors in your mixing environment. Try to get a sense if any frequency range is emphasized more than another--do things sound brighter; is there more or less bass overall? Knowing these things will help you get your mixes to translate well.

[lorez]

First orb album. I remember taking it in to the studio & being blown away, until someone pointed out that its just a (at the time) modern version of pink floyd.

On my studio course at that time they always recommended Phil Collins solo stuff but I couldn't bring myself to listen to it

Also if they are new monitors they will need a little bit of breaking in as well as correct placement to get full benefits. Which did you buy?

[iCEByTes]

motown classics over monitors would be awesome

[George]

been listening to some flac of the following

zappa
cream
sabbath
beatles
floyd
grizzly bear

it all sounded great at first but i think i might have ear fatigue or something cos i don't want to listen to music anymore

might need to tweak the settings on them. some sound great, some sound bad, like grizzly bear is very boomy

thanks for the suggestions

[Freddy V-C]

DARK SIDE, BRO

HOW COULD I FORGET!?

[George]

dark side is actually mind blowing now

i didn't really care for floyd before

[Freddy V-C]

It's such an obvious thing to say, and stinks of somebody who hasn't actually listened to any of their other albums (I have, for the record), but I honestly think Dark Side is their finest work.

[benecol]

been listening to some flac of the following

zappa
cream
sabbath
beatles
floyd

Also:

It's such an obvious thing to say, and stinks of somebody who hasn't actually listened to any of their other albums (I have, for the record), but I honestly think Dark Side is their finest work.

Shut your whore mouth and listen to Piper at the Gates of Dawn again.

[George]

been listening to some flac of the following

zappa
cream
sabbath
beatles
floyd

i'm trying to dive into this recording game and i like how these records sound

[Concretebadger]

Heh, I listened to my dad's old copy of Ummagumma when I visited this afternoon...but just because that and their others aren't as good as Dark Side, that doesn't mean that some of them are bloody brilliant in their own right. Wish You Were Here feels like their most 'cohesive' LP, but it did take me longer to get into the Syd-era stuff.

I'm not sure what qualifies as a 'good' album to test monitors on; I'd go for anything that you're already familiar with. My personal go-to would be Siamese Dream because it's so 'layered' without being quite as overproduced/overprocessed like their later ones were, and I feel like I know it inside-out.

Another obvious one would be MBV's Loveless, but I'm only saying that because it took a really good pair of AKG headphones for me to notice guitar parts that I never noticed before. That's probably too compressed and 'blurry' (I need to look up better descriptive terms for this sort of thing) to be a good yardstick though?

[stewart]

It's such an obvious thing to say, and stinks of somebody who hasn't actually listened to any of their other albums (I have, for the record), but I honestly think Dark Side is their finest work.

Shut your whore mouth and listen to Piper at the Gates of Dawn again.

It's not really the same band, to be fair. I always treat Barrett Floyd as a separate entity.

An aside; having listened to Floyd extensively (with the exception of Atom Heart Mother- a turd of an album), Dark Side and WYWH are their best post-Syd records in terms of both songwriting and production, (although I also love A Saucerful of Secrets - but technically that's a transition album).

Fuck, also- apart from the (fantastic) live disc, Ummagumma is a shockingly shit record.

[ekwatts]

It's such an obvious thing to say, and stinks of somebody who hasn't actually listened to any of their other albums (I have, for the record), but I honestly think Dark Side is their finest work.

Shut your whore mouth and listen to Piper at the Gates of Dawn again.

It's not really the same band, to be fair. I always treat Barrett Floyd as a separate entity.

An aside; having listened to Floyd extensively (with the exception of Atom Heart Mother- a turd of an album), Dark Side and WYWH are their best post-Syd records in terms of both songwriting and production, (although I also love A Saucerful of Secrets - but technically that's a transition album).

Fuck, also- apart from the (fantastic) live disc, Ummagumma is a shockingly shit record.

Yep, some of the early Floyd is a bit rubbish. Useful only to study how their style progressed. Once you get to Meddle you can see how Dark Side of the Moon was the album they'd been trying, and failing to some degree or another, to create for years. In fact, once they made it (in several senses) that version of Pink Floyd was over. Then it was mostly just Waters, accompanied by a band of excellent musicians (and still good, but different). It took ages for them to get back into the studio afterwards.

My favourite Floyd album is Animals. Easily the most interesting. But Dark Side and WYWH are the most satisfying to listen to, particularly if you're in it for the production.

Listen to some 80s records, stuff you might not immediately think of. There are "styles" in production the same as in guitar, or anything else. There was a period of horribly gated drum sounds on pretty much everything for a while in the late 80s/early 90s. Even the Pixies' Bossanova didn't escape.

Also, I love So by Peter Gabriel for its production.

[Concretebadger]

Yeah, Ummagumma is a game of two halves really. The live disc is fantastically good while the studio one sounds like half-baked ideas and studio doodling. The same goes for Meddle for me - Echoes is absolutely epic, but it felt like they had the excellence of 'One of These Days' and then a big gap in the rest of the other side to fill. To my shame, I've never listened to Animals all the way through. I think it's because it felt like they lost a big creative force when Waters left. And I'm a huge admirer of Gilmour too.

It only came out last year, but Caspian's Waking Season album might be another good 'monitor test' album in terms of production. It's less wall-of-sound (as in, post rock-ish like Explosions in the Mogwai or Isis) than their previous ones, and it has a more natural and textured sound. There are plenty of varied guitar tracks scattered around the soundstage, and there's something about the way the drums are recorded that makes them sound really crisp and lively. It's a great record overall actually.

[Paradigmforcosmos]

Yeah, Ummagumma is a game of two halves really. The live disc is fantastically good while the studio one sounds like half-baked ideas and studio doodling. The same goes for Meddle for me - Echoes is absolutely epic, but it felt like they had the excellence of 'One of These Days' and then a big gap in the rest of the other side to fill. To my shame, I've never listened to Animals all the way through. I think it's because it felt like they lost a big creative force when Waters left. And I'm a huge admirer of Gilmour too.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding but the last album Roger Waters did with Pink Floyd was The Final Cut in 1983. He was a very present creative force when they recorded Animals in 1976.

[Concretebadger]

Yeah, Ummagumma is a game of two halves really. The live disc is fantastically good while the studio one sounds like half-baked ideas and studio doodling. The same goes for Meddle for me - Echoes is absolutely epic, but it felt like they had the excellence of 'One of These Days' and then a big gap in the rest of the other side to fill. To my shame, I've never listened to Animals all the way through. I think it's because it felt like they lost a big creative force when Waters left. And I'm a huge admirer of Gilmour too.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding but the last album Roger Waters did with Pink Floyd was The Final Cut in 1983. He was a very present creative force when they recorded Animals in 1976.

My bad - I didn't make myself clear there. I sort-of part company with PF around A Momentary Lapse of Reason...Animals and The Final Cut - the tracks I've got around to listening to so far, at any rate - have real lyrical and thematic power behind them. After that, there were some interesting sounds and whatnot, but my favourite stuff of theirs is the material that had Waters involved. FWIWI, I love The Wall as well, but I find it hard to appreciate the songs individually.

[Brandon W]

Pet sounds or some of the wall of sound records phil spector made. Also maybe try the zombies odessey and oracle. That is a fantastic record.