Crying like a rainstorm!

I was listening to Linda Ronstadt's Cry Like a Rainstorm, Howl Like the Wind on the train today. I haven't listened to this album for quite a while now but listening to it again was just such a treat! Produced in 1989, long before the days of the 'loudness' wars began, it was just an amazing sonic and dynamic experience that is missing in so many songs produced today.

Recorded and mixed by one of my audio heroes George Massenburg at Skywalker Studios, and featuring a A list of musos and singers including Aaron Neville, Lee Sklar, Dean Parks, Carlos Vega, etc....the arrangement was impeccable and the detail was vivid. Every instrument and voice was in the right place. Did I mentioned that Linda's vocals were absolutely amazing and captivating?

One of the things that all audio engineers constantly need to do is to continuously reference their own works, whether live or studio, to other works that are out in the market. It's unfortunate that so many of the CD's that I've bought in the last decade or so are obliterated by massive compression and leveling by so called mastering engineers that specialise in making them louder at the expense of dynamic range. While some compression is necessary to deal with dynamics in the limited headroom inherent in digital recordings, it has been an absurd downhill slide since the discovery of multiband compression and usually demands from clients who want their recordings to be 'louder' than the other fella's album.

Anyways, listening to this album was a breathe of fresh air.... it sure made a long journey much more enjoyable today!