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is it just me, new Steely Dan cd's too brite snare

I've had this debate on a Steely Dan webpage

several of the latest dan albums
Two Against Nature and Everything Must Go
and the new Donald Fagen album
seem to be recorded beautifully, all the nuances, close mixed horns, incredibly lush mix

everything perfect except for the snare drum which is way up in the mix and headache inducing

it isn't my sytem and it's worse on Two Against Nature
especially the title track and West of Hollywood
it's so bad I have to listen in the next room

EMG recorded in analog is a little less bright
and Don's new spectacular Morph the Cat (MtC) has some hot snare in the mix

the last two albums feature Keith Carlock who is an incredible drummer, but Don has him in tight snare timekeeping with little room for fills on most of MtC

has Fagen lost his upper frequency end of his hearing?
is he mixing things hot for jumpy mid fi reproduction?
or am I hallucinating?
128x128audiotomb
ghostrider45
449 posts
 
One other thing - Becker and Fagan love tight rhythms and are big fans of drum machines (often augmented by human drummers). 2AN uses drum machines on almost every cut. Gaucho, Nightfly, and Kamakiriad also use them extensively. I need to listen to Morph again to see if this is the case here. Drum machine snares tend to be pretty bright and might account for your perception.
24phun
56 posts
 
I am a lonnnngggg time Dan fan, and I haven't cared much for the recording of the past two. The snare is just the start.
Not to hijack, but I'll bet most of you would like Steve Winwood's recent "About Time" on SCI Fidelity. I have turned many Audiophile heads with this one!
audiotomb's avatar
audiotomb OP
1,112 posts
 
ghostrider - the Dan don't use drum machines but they do sometimes sample the drum track and get it right on the millisecond (Gaucho had Werlin a prototype drum machine on in and so did Walt's solo, but not those you mentioned)

24phun - yes that Winwood album is killer, I saw him perform that and old traffic last year, great show
ghostrider45
449 posts
 
Audiotomb, I politely beg to differ. Automated drum tracks are all over the later Steely Dan works. One example that's really easy to hear is towards the end of the final vamp on "West of Hollywood" on 2AN. You can hear the unmistakable sound of an automated drum track playing solo for the last few bars after the musicians drop out.
onhwy61's avatar
onhwy61
5,137 posts
 
In a recent issue of Recording magazine they had an interview with Keith Carlock about recording "Morph the Cat". He states that Fagen distributes a demo track for each song to the musicians a few days before the recording session. The demo is either a DAT or CDR with Fagen doing all the parts via computer software. Carlock says he's expected to humanize the computer generated drum parts. He also says that Fagen is open to the musicians' input, but that he has a strong sense of what he wants before the session starts and is quick to say what he doesn't like. In an article sidebar the recording engineering says that the drums were minimally processed during tracking to 2" analog tape which was then transferred to ProTools for mixing and song assembling.
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