Recreating that Motown sound.

[drTStingray]

37 minutes ago, 51m0n said:

Motown was in a loudness war with the Beatles in the US matey.

I don't doubt that - however my understanding was the US recording industry at that time had more of a problem with the whole ethos of British Beat Groups - boy bands effectively - I think Dave Clark Five was also one of them - I think Motown was a slightly different audience. 

Record volume no doubt played it's part but only one element. 

[Hellzero]

To me, what makes the Motown sound is, of course, The Funk Brothers, but especially the great coherence in the mix that's makes everything out of the "factory" listenable on whatever source available at the time, which means poor radio broadcasting, poor low-fi record players, even poorer quality jukeboxes and ultra low bandwidth and quality radios, without forgetting the slightly becoming available car radios with even poorer sound quality.

That was the Motown tour de force : the coherent and clever mixes making their records listenable and enjoyable on whatever you used to listen to them.

[Maude]

In a similar vein, I think it was Rick Rubin who, back in the 80s, said he would always put whatever he was working on in the studio onto cassette and listen to it in the car on the way home, if it sounded good in the car then his work was done. He said the bulk of people, at the time, listened to music on crappy car speakers, not studio monitors. Nearly everything he worked on back then really did sound good IMO so it made sense to me. 

[chris_b]

In the early 70's at least 2 studios I recorded in had a small car/Dansette style speaker by the desk that they would run the mix through to check the balance etc in a "normal" listening situation.

[Lozz196]

We’ve always tried to get best results from both car stereos and mobile phones, working on the same premise as Rick Rubin - if that’s what people will listen to the music on, mix it to suit those systems.

[Hellzero]

I reworked their "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" stereo and mono versions, just for fun, using WaveLab, trying to get closer to that Motown sound using their final mix (certainly not the best way, but that's all I had).

Just let me know what you think :

Ain't No Mountain High Enough Mono treated.wav

Ain't No Mountain High Enough Stereo treated.wav

Listen to it with whatever you want, just for fun too. 😉

[51m0n]

On 05/01/2020 at 00:20, chris_b said:

Interesting video. Much cleaner than the original recordings. Also interesting that Motown high passed the tracks at 70hz.

They had world class songs and singers, but boil it all down, what really makes Motown sound like Motown? IMO it starts and ends with James Jamerson's bass playing.

 

On 05/01/2020 at 15:21, Lozz196 said:

We do something similar, but at a round 30/35hz. It really makes a difference, and we don`t use a lot of low-end in the first place. Maybe without doing it at 70 the Motown recordings - due to the amount going on - sounded muddy?

 

20 hours ago, 51m0n said:

They were in a loudness war with the Beatles. Loudest single sounded the best on a jukebox.

An HPF meant you could cut louder without the bass popping the needle out of the groove....

 

17 hours ago, drTStingray said:

I don't doubt that - however my understanding was the US recording industry at that time had more of a problem with the whole ethos of British Beat Groups - boy bands effectively - I think Dave Clark Five was also one of them - I think Motown was a slightly different audience. 

Record volume no doubt played it's part but only one element. 

OK so my post was an answer as to why Motown HPF'ed their masters at 70Hz, not what was the be all and end all of what made Motown sound like Motown. It was precisely because they were in a loudness war, and had been for some time, with the Beatles. They wanted/felt they needed their 7" singles to be louder than the Beatles singles on a jukebox. Its an absolute fact as to why they did this.

I am not suggesting its the only thing that defined their sound, far from it, I am merely pointing out why they did that particular thing to their 7" singles.

It is a testament to how desperate they were for that volume that they were willing to compromise the incredible bass work on the recordings in order to get that volume.

In any case it is a definitive part of the sound of all the Motown 7" single output at the time.

Again do some searching online for Bob Olffson, since he did a huge amount, if not all, their mastering in house for years. I haven't got time to find the specific article that mentions the particular Beatles singles that melted heads with the volume they managed to master to the vinyl, but it is out there....

No doubt the beatles did something similar in order to get that kind of level, they would have had to since the RCIAA curve wasn't enough to achieve it on its own.

[wateroftyne]

1 hour ago, Hellzero said:

I reworked their "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" stereo and mono versions, just for fun, using WaveLab, trying to get closer to that Motown sound using their final mix (certainly not the best way, but that's all I had).

Just let me know what you think :

Ain't No Mountain High Enough Mono treated.wav 56.61 MB · 2 downloads

Ain't No Mountain High Enough Stereo treated.wav 50.82 MB · 0 downloads

Listen to it with whatever you want, just for fun too. 😉

Wow... you can hear the difference straight away. Nice one. What did you do?

[Hellzero]

2 hours ago, wateroftyne said:

Wow... you can hear the difference straight away. Nice one. What did you do?

I firstly listened back to the original to be sure that I heard what was "wrong".

Just a few things in fact, and I only used the Mastering Rig in WaveLab with two modules (Equailzer and Saturator) as I only needed a few "things".

I started by attenuating a bit the frequencies at 6 kHz as they were really hurting my ears (that's the weakness of almost all modern recordings, just like as if people couldn't hear these frequencies anymore) with a very narrow Q (to be natural), then I slightly boosted the 120 Hz region (again with a very narrow Q) because it's the frequency of the low end and rolled off all the lows below 70 Hz and all the highs above 14 kHz in a nice bell form (to get in line with the bandwidth of those days).

After that I used a tape saturation simulation by large regions +3dB's in the lows, + 2dB's in the low mids, +1 dB in the high mids, and letting the highs flat, so emulating the way a tape can act in the real life when the view meters are going in the red, not necessarily back in the days. This saturation being part of the sound itself.

As I told earlier, it's all about ears and knowing what is "wrong".

They made a terrific recording and mastering work, but forgot how tapes were sounding and the poor quality of the reproducing material of the (late) 60's. In fact, they simply made a too modern mix.

Then I mastered it to avoid any peak and that's all.

I made it very quickly yesterday evening and listened back to it today (ear fatigue is a b*tch) and asked my wife to listen to it and she said : "Send it to these guys !", so I sent it here instead. 😉

In fact, it started as a challenge as I showed to my wife the work done by these musicians and this sound engineer telling her what was "wrong" and she simply said : "Make it better, then". So I had to...

Edited January 6, 2020 by Hellzero
Spelling

[Dan Dare]

3 hours ago, chris_b said:

In the early 70's at least 2 studios I recorded in had a small car/Dansette style speaker by the desk that they would run the mix through to check the balance etc in a "normal" listening situation.

Hence the dreaded Auratone mini-speakers (aptly nicknamed Horrortones) and later NS10s that cropped up in studios everywhere - to get an idea of what a mix sounded like on regular domestic gear. 

As far as Motown using a relatively high hpf goes, they had a living to make/records to sell. They had to make things sound good on car radios and the like in order to get radio plays and consequently for people to buy the records. Most people did not own high quality sound systems and still don't. The few who do are not going to keep a record company in business, especially as many of those will not be interested in mainstream pop music to begin with.. As a matter of interest, hpf at 70hz is still decently low.

[wateroftyne]

1 hour ago, Hellzero said:

I firstly listened back to the original to be sure that I heard what was "wrong".

Just a few things in fact, and I only used the Mastering Rig in WaveLab with two modules (Equailzer and Saturator) as I only needed a few "things".

I started by attenuating a bit the frequencies at 6 kHz as they were really hurting my ears (that's the weakness of almost all modern recordings, just like as if people couldn't hear these frequencies anymore) with a very narrow Q (to be natural), then I slightly boosted the 120 Hz region (again with a very narrow Q) because it's the frequency of the low end and rolled off all the lows below 70 Hz and all the highs above 14 kHz in a nice bell form (to get in line with the bandwidth of those days).

After that I used a tape saturation simulation by large regions +3dB's in the lows, + 2dB's in the low mids, +1 dB in the high mids, and letting the highs flat, so emulating the way a tape can act in the real life when the view meters are going in the red, not necessarily back in the days. This saturation being part of the sound itself.

As I told earlier, it's all about ears and knowing what is "wrong".

They made a terrific recording and mastering work, but forgot how tapes were sounding and the poor quality of the reproducing material of the (late) 60's. In fact, they simply made a too modern mix.

Then I mastered it to avoid any peak and that's all.

I made it very quickly yesterday evening and listened back to it today (ear fatigue is a b*tch) and asked my wife to listen to it and she said : "Send it to these guys !", so I sent it here instead. 😉

In fact, it started as a challenge as I showed to my wife the work done by these musicians and this sound engineer telling her what was "wrong" and she simply said : "Make it better, then". So I had to...

Well done - it's made a huge difference. It sounds much more authentic now.

[Hellzero]

Thanks again. 

[silverfoxnik]

2 hours ago, wateroftyne said:

Well done - it's made a huge difference. It sounds much more authentic now.

+1

Amazing what you can do if you have the 'ears' and the 'know how' ..