My Machina Ramblings
Has anybody ever had the feeling that Machina sounds a bit plastic? Like the guitars for the Sacred and Profane, or if some of the drumming sounds a bit synthesized like on Try, Try, Try,? Did they even use a drum machine for anything on Machina? As far as I know it wasn't recorded on hard drives, but it kinda sounds like it's been over-processed. I really don't lie the idea of recording on computers, unless it's something as complicated as NIN's The Fragile. It becomes to easy to mae sound, and you take all the effort out of recording it. Personally, if I were recording something like an album, I would preffer to do everything on analogue, becauseI would get more satisfaction from putting in more effort, and just being plain old-school.

yes! i personally think that it sounds REALLY clean cut as opposed to gish which sounds a bit murky? i prefer gish- its my favorite album.

gish was recorded for about 10 cents i thought pretty much all music was recorded on comps these days...

thats why MOST music these days sound like shit

most music these days is shit cos its uninspired crap it has nothing to do with the recording quality recording quality theese days is about the only thing most music has going for it... i think the problem with machina is the music itself, not the recording equipment

I said the only bad things about recording with comps is the ability to over-process and that using comps is too easy. I just thought Machina sounded to \\"clean and perfect\\", I'm not saying that the the pumpkins are so good that their bad, but there needs to be that element of imperfection, otherwise, music looses all uniqueness. Recording on hard-drives just kinda takes all the effort out of recording, and thus takes out the satisfaction of recording. Machina is a very good album, it's just a little tiny bit plastic.

yeh but i dont think it has anything to with wot they recorded on even in the old style u could still overproduce

MACHINA was the first pumpkins album I ever bought and I still listen to it quite often. I personally enjoy it and think the songs are in great form.

Joe said: MACHINA was the first pumpkins album I ever bought and I still listen to it quite often. I personally enjoy it and think the songs are in great form. I agree with you. I have always found Machina to be a good recording as far as that goes. I have also noticed that this particular album, when encoded badly, sound horrid that way. I have my portable files in Ogg ~192 Kbps (Q6) and it sounds spectacular with my K81DJ headphones. But I used to have it in mp3 and I just couldn't listen to it for very long. So I would say it depends on how you encode it. I also have Machina in .wavs on my computer and it doesn't sound a bit too perfect or anything like that. How do you encode it?

I'm listening to them straight off the cd. The .wav files shouldn't be any different. Maybe it's just my perception of it or something, though stumbleine seems to understand what I'm saying.

we are just on different wav lengths I guess...

There is a general concensus that Machina indeed was overproduced and suffered immensely from it. I happen to be quite a fan of the album, though I rarely listen to it because I find it to be too emotionally charged for me personally to be able to enjoy it in casual listening, but I do value the songs on it. It doesn't have my favorite \"sound,\" overall, but I think the music is of high quality.

Yeah, I still do quite enjoy it though.