Our solution was to design a proprietary method of transferring high-resolution data to a lower resolution with minimum compromise.  Additionally, we were able to add more depth to the mix.  The pre-mastering files sound cleaner.  The reverb tails hold together.  On a typical bounce to disk,  there is space, or ”air”, that seems to get swallowed up.  Our mixes sound big and real,  rather than veiled and compressed. We call it, “Zero Dither Mixing”.  It was well worth the hard work.   (And we can sleep again!)

We also believe in respecting the dynamic range of an artist’s creation.  The music industry has been unnecessarily “hyper-compressing” music for years in an effort to make the music as loud as possible with little regard for quality or artistry.  Excessive compression sucks the life out of music.  It “homogenizes” the mix and makes it blurry.  Too much compression takes away the impact since everything is loud…always.   Even if you turn down the volume control, you’re left with music that’s very stressful to listen to.  There is no space between the notes.  It becomes psychologically stressful.  Perhaps that explains why people are always skipping around from cut to cut on their iPods.  It’s too stressful to listen to a 45 minute CD anymore, since there are no dynamics.

We can give you a great, punchy sound that will definitely rock any playback system.  It may not be as loud as a lifeless top 40 hyper-compressed CD, but it will sound better, and we all know where the volume control is anyway.

For an explanation of the “loudness war” check out Matt Mayfield’s excellent movie at: here.