Way too loud!

In light of this thread I'm now going to sell all my modern remasters of classic albums on eBay and replace them with the originals.

Does anyone know a website which names and shames bad records, or awards good ones?

God it drives me crazy. People like myself spend hundreds on expensive Hi-Fi gear only to have the entire experience crushed.
 
Last edited:
OK. This is disgusting.

I decided to do my own experiment. I picked two songs.

1) Teenage Kicks (Ripped to lossless from The Sound Of The Suburbs, 1991)
2) Just Abuse Me (Ripped to lossless from Air Traffic's Fractured Life, 2007)

Both songs are loud and relatively heavy.

I'll let the pictures speak for themselves :(

Teenage Kicks: (Note: even this isn't the best example I could have picked to illustrate the difference between these two tracks)


Just Abuse Me:


The latter makes me want to line up and execute the people behind the album one by one. It would have been a great album.
 
Tommy B said:
I just read this review on a competitor's website and it got me thinking.



I completely agree with him. Is anyone else fed up of awful quality recordings. I for one only buy CDs as I want a high quality source to play on my Hi-Fi and rip to lossless on my PC. However, I'm finding myself increasingly dissapointed by awful recording jobs of modern record labels. If I were going for a demo in a Hi-Fi shop there's no way in a million years I'd take any album released in the last few years.

The other thing they do is digitally process the recordings. The latest White Stripes album was ruined by digital distortion. I like my music to sound raw and pure, not processed and ruined. Kings Of Leon's last album was an example of a well recorded album. The bass guitar sounds absolutely awesome on my Hi-Fi.

Anyone else agree or am I being ridiculous :D
Click to expand...

Totally agree... Some recording quality is awful these days. Some records sound like they haven't been mastered while others sound like they've been over-compressed and sound awful. This means huge disparities between volumes and constantly tweaking levels to get an acceptable sound.

Worst culprit for me in recent memory was Damien Rice's 'O' which has such a treble heavy mix that I'd rather put my ears through a meat grinder. Which is a shame as I love a lot of the songs.

Why don't you like QOTSA's SFTD? I know it's a very thick/on off sound but I think it sounds well. Mosquito Song sounds great imo.
 
Last edited:
I just don't understand it.

It's a bit like washing/polishing your car to perfection and then pouring tomato soup on it.
 
A dynamic expander can help if it is a good quality one - I agree with the point tho - Audio engineers, turn those dynamic compressors down! They aren't exactly new, and it may be fine to have dynamic compression on the radio, but we don't want it in out own home!

Also, some modern stuff isn't overly compressed (mars vollta and squarepusher spring to mind). :)
 
Tommy B said:
I just don't understand it.

It's a bit like washing/polishing your car to perfection and then pouring tomato soup on it.
Click to expand...

A better analogy might be polishing your car to the point of seeing the metalwork underneath.
 
Wholeheartedly agree.

In fact just reading this thread has made me skip the current song.

would have thought in this day and age.. bloody digital stuff trying to hard :-(
 
Tommy B said:
"I remember" is really gentle and quiet, and then he starts screaming and it's so loud it makes you jump.
Click to expand...

That's exactly the song I was thinking about. Damien Rice's half of the song has a bit of top end distortion where it's loud, I think it adds to it. :)
 
I love the sounds of Led Zeppelin albums..

Ramble On is always a song i love the sound of through good hifi.

Not exactly sure if its the an actual good recording.. but it sounds awesome to me...
 
Mindriot said:
Tool: Lateralus - bucking the trend by being a modern rock album with attention paid to the mastering
Click to expand...

Such a shame the royally screwed up 10,000 days though. The loudness levels and compression artifacts are horrendous. I mean some of the "rice krispie" artifacts sounded like an extra instrument at times.

Another fairly recent example is Aghora - Formless. I really liked this album but the levels of clipping and over compression is beyond funny. Their debut album was amazingly mastered, you could turn the volume all the way up and still hear the drum kicks, cymbals etc perfectly fine with plenty of punch; the new one just turns into a mushy mess with no definition whatsoever. :mad:
 
cleanbluesky said:
I'd always thought that was deliberately artistic rather than a cheap gimmic.
Click to expand...


deliberately artist? maybe. still sounds like cack though. thanks but no thanks, i dont want my music so overdriven that it actually clips at the source. whether it was intended or not, it sounds awful.
 
cleanbluesky said:
TRACKS AND TIMES PLEASE
Click to expand...

No point giving any specific times because they're everywhere! Some tracks sound worse than others, but I would say Vicarious is the worst culprit.

Listen to Vicarious at 2:40 when the drum roll kicks in. You can clearly hear clipping/distortion that sounds very much like the crackling heard when eating a bowl of Rice Krispies. :p That's just one example, nevermind the dire levels of dynamic range and near non-existant instrument separation. One thing I loved about Ænima and Lateralus was Danny Carey's immense and powerful drumming presence, which is sadly not found on 10,000 days.

Also, it's not done for "artisitic effect". You can clearly hear why these compression artifacts are occuring and it's definitely not a part of the music. On the other hand, Ænima is a great example of distortion used for artistic effect, where the added grain and muted effects on some of the instruments add to the dark, gritty nature of the album.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom