Adventure Thing #94 - "Punch Drunk Destiny" Mastering (Patreon)

First things first: Welcome aboard everyone who is just joining us! We've had a huge influx in the past couple of weeks, and we're very happy to have all of you join this adventure. Honestly one of the main reasons we did a Patreon was so that people could join us at any point and we're thrilled to have you as adventure buddies. Kick back and take a look through the 93 Adventure Things we've released up to this point, it's been quite a journey!

On that note - one last reminder that WE WILL BE RELEASING A PAID POST 7/31. This means that everyone's cards will be charged on 8/1, and we'll be releasing the digital version of the album to Patrons in August. Not on 8/1 since we still have a couple finishing touches to put on including finalizing sequence, but definitely by mid-August. On THAT note, the votes on sequence were split 47/50 after the last poll so we've still got some hard decisions in front of us!

Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming:

The last step in finalizing these songs now that mixing is done is mastering. I mentioned we're working with Howie Weinberg in a previous post, and he's done impeccable work. In fact, this was the most interesting and impactful mastering stage I've ever been a part of, and as part the adventure we want you to share the journey with us!

So why was it so interesting? Well we gave Howie our final mixes, and he sent us back a first set of Masters (marked Ref1 in the attached files) with 2 options: one done on Analog equipment and one on Digital. 

Now your reaction to these masters will go one of two ways: either you will be completely astounded at how different they sound (which we were), or else you will have the reaction my wife did, which was to say we reminded her of this scene from The Devil Wears Prada:

But give the two attached Ref1 files a listen: THEY'RE SO DIFFERENT. The Analog one is so present and compressed in a beautifully smashed way that is exactly what we were going for with this record. Honestly if he had just sent us the Digital one we probably would have been happy, but having heard the Analog versions we couldn't unhear them. 

Across the whole album, there were some points where the analog smashing was just a bit too extreme, but we loved it so much that we ended up asking Howie for a revision where he still worked his Analog magic but backed off just a hair on the (wondrous) smashery. 

So we got the Ref2 Analog masters, and just so you can hear the difference I've attached all 3 versions of "Punch Drunk Destiny" (and yes, you are hearing the final "Punch Drunk Destiny" here :)

Enjoy, and get yourself ready for the full album to come!