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Originally Posted by GoldfishX
On that note, I agree with both you and Jorm about the sound on orchestral albums...the London DQ Suites sound amazing, most other VGM orchestral albums I'm familiar with...well, don't. I've lost track of how many times I've attempted to sit through the Shining Force 2 Symphonic Suite.
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This has much more to do with recording/performance quality than with mastering. Most orchestral VGM albums I know are mastered like classical albums (or at least like movie scores). There are plenty of problems with the Orchestral Game Concert albums, but they are in the realm of arrangement/performance rather than recording/mastering, which is fine, if not exceptional. Symphonic Fantasies is a high-profile exception, mastered far more like a rock/pop album with hard limiting.
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Originally Posted by GoldfishX
I'm not as familiar with the mastering on classical/orchestral albums as I am with pop/rock albums, although switching to analytical IEM's have made them far easier to listen to. Most classical/orchestral albums need little to no volume adjustments though, they seem to naturally clock in around 89-90 db.
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It's not naturally, though, as much of classical music has a dynamic range reaching above digital full scale. The adjustments are just less obvious. It's very rare to find an example like the following (my benchmark for what orchestral music should sound like):
Full scale is reached only twice in the entire 30 minute track (the finale of Mahler's 6th, performed to perfection by the Berlin Philharmonic under Claudio Abbado on Deutche Grammophon). In fact, the engineers scaled the entire album to fit those exact points, so it never gets close to that level at any other time, and it's not a quiet piece by any standard.
But here's the thing: that's not even desirable with most types of music. This is a very particular, extreme example that you really can't and shouldn't extrapolate any kind of rule from. Decisions on production and mastering are discretionary and should be bent to fit each particular case.
Although certain VGM albums are caught up in the trends of the loudness war, there are a good many that have passed them by entirely, for one reason or another, and if you find you enjoy 80s-early 90s VGM more than almost anything out there today, that implies that the musical style of those games is what attracts you more than anything relating to production/mastering.