prince was great producer until he started chasing trends.
his worst and most outdated production(worst and outdated by prince standards)
was during emancipation new power soul,rave era.

but with the realise of the rainbow children his production
values changed.
did prince produced the rainbow children all by himself or with outside help of femi jiya,i know femi is an engineer but did he participate in the production?.
the rainbow children is the best production ,best sound ever on a prince album,you can almost feel songs breathing .

I must admit that i don't like the Rainbow Children, first of all because those crazy dogmatic religious lyrics.
Second, because i think it is overrated in musical terms. Of course, his music was far more sophisticated and organic sounding then the three albums that came before it, but much of it wasnt very different from seventies jazz-rock.
There is nothing as sonically groundbreaking to be found on the Rainbow Children as songs like When doves cry, Sign of the Times, Lovesexy or even The Question of U.

But i agree with you that in general the production was way better sounding then most of his music during the second half of the nineties.

Personally i think it was his own choices and actions that made this album sound like it did.
But i think one outside-person has been very influential on the sound, namely: John Blackwell. I think Prince was really at awe with Blackwells drum technique and sound in that period, and that he wanted to create music that would 'fit in' with Blackwells style.
The rather plastic and generic sounding production he used on Emancipation, New Power Soul and Rave simply doesnt fit Blackwell style.

"The Rainbow Children," is incredible...and personally, I know it may sound rude 2 make a comment like this, however, in my opinion, if U don't like this album 4 any reason, u can't hear very well. Sorry but True.

The Rainbow Children is a mystery to me.

It just kind of popped up from out of nowhere to me. Does anyone remember when and how it was released. I believe it was a single file released as a download or something like that originally.

I was blown away by how different it was from all his previous albums. Complete change of direction.



Today I can't listen to the thing all the way through. It's so goddamned long and slow and annoying.

But it has some really cool instrumental parts and interesting moments in it.


The darth vador narration was also totally unnecessary. One shouldn't need that in a concept album to tell the story. It's like watching a movie with all the major characters thinking out loud. Who the hell does that?

thebanishedone said:

I think you need to familiarize yourself with The Loudness War, specifically hyper-compression in mastering.

The songs on TRC have lost almost all of their dynamic range due to incresed loudness and over-compression. I agree that the mix is good and the musicianship is amazing, but the album has had all of its dynamic life destroyed by modern mastering practices.


Just as a visual aid:

Little Red Corvette - 1983


The Everlasting Now - 2001


As you can see from the waveforms, LRC has plenty of dynamic range; plenty of "room to breathe". TEN, on the other hand, is so loud, so over-compressed that there is almost no dynamic range at all (known as "brick-wall mastering').

This modern trend of destroying music for the sake of loudness is completely out of control, and is ubiquitous in pop, rock, soul, and funk music. (It isn't found very often in jazz or classical music becuase the people who make such albums are interested in delivering the best possible sound quality.)

Personally, I love TRC, but I rarely listen to it due to the extremely poor mastering - the album is almost entirely at a single level of volume.

Bad form... very bad form.


Here's a short video which helps explain the problem:

but maybe that way of mastering gives it charm

thebanishedone said:

Sure... and if I take a piece of chocolate cake, smash it down so it's nice and flat, and then serve it to you, it would have a certain "charm".

Maybe not.

This method of mastering is - literally - destroying dynamic range. Imagine if every time someone spoke to you, everything they said was at a single, unvarying volume - no soft phrases, and no loud ones. You can immediately see that there would be no emotion, no feeling, no life in anything you heard.

Or imagine if everything you saw had exactly the same level of light hitting it - no dark places, and no light places. You could percieve no depth, no brilliance, no richness of color.

Homogenous, uniform, unchanging, unvarying sense perception without contrast is devoid of excitement and emotion.

PsychedelicGoof said:

BEST

POST

EVER

Ive never been that crazy about the Rainbow Children.

but you can feel the songs breath and never i
heard a single person complain abut rainbow childrens sound.i love the sound the production.
in what sense you think production of songs on that album ruind the music itself???

and this is not confrotation to you psyhodelic goof i see you know what you talk about and im curios to know more.

thebanishedone said:

The "brick-wall" mastering has destroyed the dynamic range of the music.

Think of it like forcing a man into a box that's almost too small for him to fit into. There's no room for him to move, gesture, and express himself. The man is still there, yes, but he has been needlessly and ridiculously limited.

So with modern CDs. The music is still there, yes, but it is compressed and squashed to the point of being nearly impotent.

But as more and more CDs are produced this way, more and more people will begin to accept that they sound alright. Well, they don't. Sonic vibration is, by nature, dynamic; removing dynamics from sound is like removing color from a rainbow. The rainbow is there, but... something is missing.


But, don't get me wrong, thebanishedone. I think TRC is one of the greatest musical achievements of Prince's entire career; a truly beautiful work of art. It is the mastering that is the problem.
[Edited 11/2/08 11:14am]
[Edited 11/2/08 11:14am]

PsychedelicGoof said:

you blew all your cred with that last statement

the rainbow children will be regarded as classic and it will gain cult worship of the album.
it already is

i remember loading a track in wavelab from trc just after i got the album and seeing the waveform as the brick as somebody has already shown. i couldn't believe it, it was constantly near 0db all the way through. that's the sort of thing Oasis do. that youtube video explains a lot about today's sound of commercial music.

I still like the instrumentation, arrangements and musicianship, which overshadow the mastering 'problem'. so we are not talking about the production but the mastering. it still sounds good and i am not too bothered about the sound. i dont think it is as bad as the gold experience.

i've always wondered were those backing vocals in Mellow meant to be distorted in parts? it sounds bad to me.

violetblues said:

Oh, well... too bad for me.

psychedelicgoof: wonderful and very interesting posts! but i have to admit that i dont think this production method destroys TRC as much as it did PE for example. the instrumentation sounds so clear and fresh, as if u were standing right there inside of that song. from drums through base and lead vocals to the clapping of hands everything sounds cool.
but the one u wanna c for example could have been much better without that sloppy productioning, dont u think so too?


and spoida: mother nature gave u two ears and i hope they both work fine, so why on earth can someone say The Gold Experience mastering is bad?!? get some good headphones, turn up the volume, close your eyes and listen to Eye Hate U. it all starts with the cracking drums introducing u to the feelings, being joined by all the other instruments (and u can hear every single instrument in perfect quality; in fact the mastering is so good u hear something completely new somewhere in the background every time u listen to the album) and ends with a perfect guitar solo.

u billy jack bitch!
[Edited 11/2/08 13:57pm]

PsychedelicGoof said:

Dave1992 said:

Planet Earth has certainly been more brutalized by the loudness war than some other CDs, but it's a sign 'o' the times; nearly every modern popular CD is mastered this way.

Some of the worst are:

Rush - Vapor Trails
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Californication
Audioslave - Out Of Exile
U2 - How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb
Prince - Musicology

Dave1992 said:

What you're describing here is the mix, not the mastering - and, unfortunately, The Gold Experience suffers from the same type of destructive mastering. Here's a waveform image of Eye Hate You:

As you can see, there is a bit more dynamic range here than in The Everlasting Now (above), but not much. TGE was released in 1995, which was about the time "the loudness war" began - and it's only gotten worse. That is to say, a CD released in 1995 is likely to have less of this massive volume/compression problem than a CD released more recently.

There is a program available called ReplayGain - it adjust the volume of all the music in your (computer) library so that it all plays at approximately the same volume. (Ever notice how some CDs are louder than others? Quite a problem, especially for compilations.)

ReplayGain, by default, tries to adjust the sound pressure level (SPL) of music to 89dB SPL. It does so by increasing or decreasing the volume of the music, so ReplayGain values are a good, quick reference to how loud a given CD is - i.e., the louder a CD is, the more ReplayGain must reduce its SPL.

So, just for purposes of information, here are the RG values for a few of Prince's CDs:

1999 (1983): -1.71dB
Sign "O" The Times (1987): +0.30
Lovesexy (1988): -1.35dB
Diamonds & Pearls (1991): -5.61
Emancipation (1996): -8.02
Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic (1999): -10.39
The Rainbow Children (2001): -10.46
Musicology (2004): -11.02
Planet Earth (2007): -11.06

You can see - just from RG values - that since 1990, there has been a steady, constant increase in the volume of CDs, thereby increasing the compression levels and decreasing the dynamic range.

Of course, the art of mastering music is not limited to determining how loud a CD is; there's much more to it than that. But when an album is as loud as some of these (-11dB!!), you can be certain it won't sound as good as it could.


Here are a few more informative links:

What Happened To Dynamic Range?
Turn Me Up
The Death Of High Fidelity

"With all the technical innovation, music sounds worse," says Steely Dan's Donald Fagen, who has made what are considered some of the best-sounding records of all time. "God is in the details. But there are no details anymore."

Interesting, but not sure this is to blame totally for the 'plasticy' lifeless to production to some CDs, it seems to be quite common in R and B to sound plasticy and muted (no airy/echoey effects), and think this is due to the 'fashion', and unfortunately Prince has in the recent past been trying to emulate that.

The Prince albums IMO that especially suffer from this are: NPS and Musicology and 3121.
Compare the above to the light, echoey, atmospheric 'Pop Life' sound which is great and has a real kick or his best produced album 'Symbol'(that sounds amazing).


However, PE's production is much much better than NPS, Mcology and 3121 (Fury sounds dreadful productionwise) so don't think dynamic mastering is to blame for all these effects, think its more a choice of effect at the production table. I'm glad he's gone back to better production in PE.
[Edited 11/2/08 16:53pm]

whoa.

lots of interesting info here.

On another thread it was learned that Prince bought some new state of the art recording equipment for a project he is working on with a new recording engeneer, so maybe he is intrested in a better recorded sound for his new project.
On another note, I dig the sound of those old Benny Goodman records from the 30's It has a distinct feel of that era,and the fellow that started this thread enjoys the sound of TRBC, its all about the music and what you enjoy, TRBC could be playing live in my living room and i would still hate it.
[Edited 11/2/08 18:38pm]

PsychedelicGoof said:

Thanks for posting info! This is very interesting. It explains some of the audio qualities I've noticed, especially the last U2 album...it did sound blah to me at a certain level. I'll be researching this.

Fascinating stuff, PsychedelicGoof!

As a musician and home-recorder who laments the fact that all his recordings sound wimpy next to Crystal Ball, I want to talk about this, and ask more questions, and I intend to read all the articles you've cited.

But at the moment, I'm drunk.

Back later!

eyewishuheaven said:

Hey PsychedlicGoof, I really appreciated those side-by-side comparisons of the mastering levels you gave us above.

I know that I for one would be really interested in a similar comparison using both original & remastered versions of the same track... say, something off Ultimate or Girl 6, compared with the original discs? ('The Cross' might be an interesting comparison, in terms of dynamic range)

The reason I ask is, I rather like the way Girl 6 and Ultimate sound (and I don't think anyone would dispute that, say, Sign o' the Times is too quiet). I just wanna know if that makes me a traitor in the loudness war!

eyewishuheaven said:

yeah i think Girl 6 sounds awsome!

eyewishuheaven said:

I'd be happy to provide a comparison, but I don't own either of those albums.

I'm stuck between love & hate for the RBC

gotta love a thread that compares the production from this album 2 songs that were 10-15 years previously. don't u think a better comparison would b from say the rainbow childen vs rave or crystal ball since that's a better analogy from that time period?

and does every album song have 2 b so groundbreaking compared 2 his older material that u simply can't just sit back and enjoy the song or album on it's OWN merits?