Intrada Soundtrack Forum

We entertain plenty of opinions around here, both complimentary and critical - and some collectors like to emphasize the latter over the former. I personally have little interest in deleting posts and stifling conversations... but this topic was somewhat alarming and the header suggesting our CDs have high frequency noise was both insulting and inaccurate.

Regarding PREDATOR:

Who knows what caused the tone (which I hear but does not bother me at all) but things were still on a learning curve in 1987 regarding digital recording in the film music industry.

A faulty microphone cable in the tuba section? A bad cable connection between the 24-track recording machines and the mixing console? A bad patch between the multi-track board and the two-track machines capturing a live two-track mix? A crummy cable on a DAT machine somewhere in the loop? Can't say.

Our source was a DAT. The era of DAT technology was literally brand new. Perhaps our DAT came from a 1-to-1 transfer made somewhere a year or two later? Perhaps some engineer at Fox did a re-mix and re-transferred their elements way back when with a bad cable somewhere? Can't say.

But locating this stuff, getting it newly transferred using today's digital technology which is several generations away from what was done in 1987 (many of those formats are now obsolete and can't even be transferred without finding old equipment that still operates) and making it available to audiences today requires the recognition that we seldom will achieve perfection with these masters. It won't happen.

The suggestion that we should just roll off the offending cycle frankly was an insult: that would also roll off every musical overtone in that frequency range, a far more damaging decision to my ears. I've never liked adding unnecessary signal processing, noise reduction, audio expanding and enhancing and whatnot - never have, never will.

These old recordings just aren't perfect. Nor is today's state-of-the-art technology for transferring, re-mixing, editing and mastering those same recordings into 16 bit, 44.1 kHz pieces of plastic, whether the source material is analog on two tracks or 24 tracks, be it recorded with PCM 1610 or 1630 digital gear now obsolete and so on and so forth. In fact, we're still at a stage in the industry when we have to dither digital recordings on things like DATS from 48k down to 44.1k just to get them to read in the CD format.

The number of places where a high frequency tone can be introduced is almost infinite. Thankfully, it doesn't happen too often... at least to my ears.

Anyway - we didn't purposely introduce high frequency noise on PREDATOR, nor can we say where in the chain it originally cropped up. The topic seemed alarmist, implied a defect in our final mastering and basically irritated me. It takes effort to irritate me... but this topic, or at least the way it was presented, did just that.

--Doug

Hear hear, Doug! I agree with your post 100%.

Film music IS a niche, and most scores (sadly) haven't been preserved with the care, importance and regard taken with other mediums - be it film, mainstream music, or otherwise.

Technology certainly wasn't perfect back in 1987 - it certainly isn't perfect today, but it's dramatically improved since then. And for one, Predator sounds great to my ears. The nerve that some people have in what they think is poor mastering decisions that Intrada has done... it really bothers me. (Okay, maybe it wouldn't bug me so much if people expressed their concerns in a manner where they're not flinging mud at Intrada right off the bat, or making it sound like cold, hard facts before a consensus has even been reached)

Indeed. Lord save us all from anal retentive audiophiles and people who want to clutter up pages of threads with discussions of just what WAS the correct aspect ratio for 70mm.

Please Roger don't be angry on me, but, can I suggest that maybe a didactic explanation like this in the first place instead of just saying that your time machine didn't worked (what indeed was a funny answer but I suppose it could also be interpreted as sarcasm or a way of showing contempt) would have worked better and ended the discussion?

Roger didn't "end" the discussion, so don't blame him. I ended it. Not because the topic was void of interesting points to ponder but because the heading and tone of the initial post bugged me. And you know it takes a lot to bug me. It was simplistic in assuming we should be able to know, hear and trace virtually any audio anomaly no matter how small and then easily fix it by simply removing a (not insignificant) portion of the audio spectrum to satisfy an admittedly very small segment of our audience.

In an endeavor of love (with little financial reward or security) where complaints sometimes seem just a little too frequent, this topic in particular just took the cake for me. There was the implication from the heading and comments about our mastering that - whether intended or not - suggested we produce faulty discs or at least substandard ones on a routine basis and that we're not paying attention to the quality.

I took that kinda personally. I don't typically say this is my sandbox but - well, this is one time I guess I did just that.
--Doug

I don't know much about music recording or even about scoring sessions, but I do know something about how pragmatism can often reign when it comes to production management. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong (those who are better versed), but I think that music has alway been produced with the idea that minor technical issues and occasion ambient noises are not a reason to re-record a cue since it's assumed that the sound design will disguise most of it. As far as the production manager for the film is concerned, the music is there to serve the movie, not to serve as a pristine work unto itself.

Other labels should take note, this is how you conduct a business. Intrada deserves and has earned all the praise that has come, and hopefully, will continue to come their way.

Thank you Doug, Roger and the hamsters for allowing me to play in your sandbox!

All right Doug.
I just hope that "what's-his-name" the Dutch, has not been jailed. He didn't looked unpolite, just in a hurry with wrong conclusions.

_________________
Don't ruin your life searching for success. Simply do what you feel like doing. Time is not money. Time is life and life has no price.

And let me add the sound to The Hellfighters sounds like it was recorded yesterday.




Although part of me is starting to be concerned about my hearing. With all these claims of abnormalities and me not being able to hear them has me worried...

Complaints are often rooted in a sort of jealousy. For what it's worth, I consider Intrada the best label by far for American film music and have an appreciation for what you guys do.

Awhile back on the FSM board, someone posted as a 16 year old male who had recently become interested in film music and claimed there was a flaw on the Straw Dogs disc. This person gave the exact spot on the recording, I checked my copy and found nothing. Being the sort of person who has a serious contempt towards lyers, my disposition was not particularly sweet that day so I called it as I saw it. Suddenly I became the guy who bullied a poor, 16 year old boy. Like I said then, the person didn't exist. It was bogus and posted by someone who had registered the same day and never posted again with that handle. A punk who sat back and read the attack posts against me without having the decency of acknowledging I was undeserving of the candy ass wrath of a few, and in particular, some broad who wouldn't let go of my balls. Shortly thereafter I was banned from the FSM board.

What else? A forum regular who uses the handle LeHah, accused me of running people away from the FSM forum. A lie from someone reeking of a peculiar stench.

This is just a thought... The possibility I considered at the time was that the nonexistent 16 year old kid who was supposedly treated so badly by me, may have in fact been a self jerking shill from another label.

_________________
"I used to worry about losing my mind. Now that I've lost it I don't worry about it anymore." -Wavy Gravy