Dry Mixing in Today's Rock Music

[overcompressionsucks]

okay who here is annoyed by the dry, low reverb levels in rock today? I understand that reverb doesn't compress well, so they began to use less of it as the loudness wars progressed, right?

its very funny, I was listening to the brickwalled Bon Jovi's One Wild Night live album (2001) the other day. The tracks are mixed very dry. The Slippery When Wet and New Jersey material sound very wierd with dry drum and vocal tracks. This makes for a boring live album if you ask me. then I listened to Ozzy Osbourne's 1993 live album Live And Loud which has great hearty reverb all over. it sounds big and alive and has that spacey atmosphere, something every live album should have.

[jNive]

these days they want to make it seem like people's ears are right next to the amp - hence the loudness, pain and dry sound
Oh and it removes a few variables from the mix that make it quicker, easier (and therefore cheaper to hire someone with the neccesary set of skills) and more efficient to make an audio product! lol

[soulburner]

I recently heard some songs by a band called Donkeyboy - they make music with a strong vibe of the eighties. I love it, but... not only it's too loud, it's too dry. There's absolutely no reverberation on the drums and vocals and it's kind of painful for the ears. I've been experimenting a bit and simply adding a gentle reverb to the whole song makes it a gazillion times better

[overcompressionsucks]

I know it drives me nuts!!! I have this album Through Painful Lanes (2008) by a french metal group Alkemyst.They play a breed of melodic speed metal in the style of Helloween and Blind guardian. the songs are bloody great. I love everything about it except its dry as HELL!!! the main vocal tracks, drums and lead guitar tracks are in need of proper reverb.

[soulburner]

A thought came into my head today - would it be possible to apply a reverb (or other) effect to the drums only, or vocals only, etc? Like... I don't know, apply the effect to specific bands only? Damn, gotta experiment

[jNive]

yes indeed - in fact it's partly what I did when doing the youthanasia re-mix (feeding in the dry master, applying EQ filter in mid/side mode, output to reverb chain, and mixed back in with the wet/dynamics processed chain and then send for 'mastering compression/loudness' stage etc)

You could also get more wacky and start producing a reference track by producing some sort of differential track between the original, and one passed through dominion, and then applying EQ possibly plus reverb to that!!