mj_frenzy;4269901 said:
Like I said before, at first they listened to the final mix of the vinyl test pressing (of the ‘Thriller’ album) which was even mastered.
You didn't say that. "Vinyl test pressing" first came into this thread with the video ("How To Make Sonic Sound...") you posted. (Or I'm blind.)
As I tried to point out before, that's an important detail to understand how the problem came to be, because from what Michael wrote in Moonwalk, it seemed like the problem only came from time pressure during mixing.
And of course a pressed vinyl has mastered sound on it.
The order of steps is:
Production studio:
1.) production including mixing
Mastering studio:
2.) mastering (for the specific sound carrier format)
3.) cutting music from the master tape to a soft 10" or 12" acetate/lacquer disc for testing (can only be played a few times before the needle destroys the soft material)
...if approved:
Pressing plant:
4.) cutting music from master tape to a soft 14" acetate/lacquer disc
5.) this is then used for the complecated production of metallic pressing stampers via electro plating (several steps of negatives and positives)
6.) test pressing
...if approved:
7.) final pressing
... I took the tapes to Bernie Grundman Mastering to master them and returned to Westlake Studios to play the mastered album ... and the sound on the LP was dog doo ...
This quote from Swedien now confirms, that what they listened to was not a test
pressing, but a test
cut. Bernie Grundman Mastering was not a pressing plant. And a pressing definitly can't be made within one day. A cut is not as precise for a vinyl-sound preview as playing an actual pressing, because the electro plating always decreases sound quality a tiny bit (adding background noise etc), so the first play of a test cut will sound better. But a test cut is always a good quickly done first vinyl-preview anyway.
mj_frenzy;4269901 said:
But, an aspect of mixing has to do also with removing unnecessary sounds, which can lead to cutting minutes of playing time.
Try to see it like this:
The mix is a "horizontal" thing. When a sound within the mix is changed (for example a snare drum is made louder or gets a reverb effect added), it is one setting on the mixing desk that will apply dynamicly to all snare drums in the whole song from start to end. That is the original meaning of mixing in music production.
Editing / Cutting is a "vertical" thing done to the multitrack tape that the music is on. Cutting something out of a song only applies to that specific small section of the song.
So again: No, mixing will not lead to a song getting shorter.
Changes in the mixing might somehow trigger the creative decision to also edit the song. But it's far fetched to see a direct correllation there. The idea to edit usually comes from song composing aspects or from being forced to make a song shorter for whatever purpose.