As I was remixing the Beatles Sgt. Pepper album just for fun, I had a revelation. I found that I was able remix the 4-track stems to very closely match the actual album mixes, but that shouldn’t have been possible, at least without one more step.
The one more step being that generally after every mix session the materials are handed off to a mastering engineer. They adjust EQ and volume levels to correct for differences between songs. Then they dynamically compress the mixes in order and to make a louder LP or CD. However, I wasn’t hearing any additional EQ or compression. It wasn’t that Beatles’ engineer Geoff Emerick wasn’t using compression in the mix. The piano chord at the end of “A Day In The Life” lasts a whopping 45 seconds, which wouldn’t have been possible without a serious amount of compression. As Spinal Taps’ lead guitarist Nigel Tufnel once said, “Listen to that sustain.”
The lack of mastering compression and EQ might have been because, after all, it was the Beatles’ record, and no one wanted to do anything that might screw it up. The mastering engineer may have gotten a note from George Martin that said something like “Press Lacquers Flat”, meaning don’t do anything but a straight transfer of the tape to disc. I suspect that it was both of these, plus the fact that unlike today, recording artists in 1967 were not all in a race to see who could make the loudest record.
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