Opeth's music has fallen victim to the Loudness War

[JemGaarenstroom]

So, when people rip Opeth CDs onto their computer at rates of 128 kbps, that makes even more shitty, right? Cutting out even more range?

ANYBODY who owns ANY of their albums should listen to them on FLAC or WAV. ESPECIALLY if you have nice speakers, the highs (mostly in the cymbals) and the lows are absolutely amazing, especially on GR. They leave the mp3's for dead.

 

[demon of the moor]

This thread has confused me, but at the same time has been quite informative.
I was just listening to Meshuggah's Obzen and realised, was getting quite tired by it, and this has just explained half of the reason why.
I think the other half is just that, Meshuggah are a full on band and, that "sound" might be by choice.

(i dont fully get the sound war yet, so excuse my lack of knoowledge)

 

[tung]

ANYBODY who owns ANY of their albums should listen to them on FLAC or WAV. ESPECIALLY if you have nice speakers, the highs (mostly in the cymbals) and the lows are absolutely amazing, especially on GR. They leave the mp3's for dead.

I agree.. with disk space and bandwidth as inexpensive as they are now, really it would be a good time to start using FLAC if you aren't already.

http://flac.sourceforge.net

Lossless (like a zip file for documents) but for audio (because zip doesn't really shrink WAVs).

 

[Mantraschism]

When I was recording a song at my friend's home studio back in April or so, he mentioned the Loudness Wars to me, so this was a very interesting thread. I've noticed quite a few albums that are just offensively loud and compressed since then. But I'd like some examples of albums that don't offend in this way. What are some really good sound quality albums (metal only please)? Someone mentioned 'Nattens Madrigal' for its 'bad' production earlier, but what about 'Bergtatt'? I've always thought that album sounds really organic and dynamic, including the heavy parts. Anyway, examples of good-sounding albums please. =]

 

[Ozzloaf]

For organicness you can't beat anything done by Wolves in the Throne Room.

 

[Cyrosis]

ANYBODY who owns ANY of their albums should listen to them on FLAC or WAV. ESPECIALLY if you have nice speakers, the highs (mostly in the cymbals) and the lows are absolutely amazing, especially on GR. They leave the mp3's for dead.

You do realize that ripping a CD in any format, will never gain quality, it can only lose it, or remain the same.

 

[Anaon]

This thread has confused me, but at the same time has been quite informative.
I was just listening to Meshuggah's Obzen and realised, was getting quite tired by it, and this has just explained half of the reason why.
I think the other half is just that, Meshuggah are a full on band and, that "sound" might be by choice.

(i dont fully get the sound war yet, so excuse my lack of knoowledge)

Don't be sorry about your lack of knowledge! I think there's only one good thing about Metallica's last album, it's that more and more people, not just audiophile or audio engineer, become aware of the loudness race. It's probably a necessary step to stop it!

I agree.. with disk space and bandwidth as inexpensive as they are now, really it would be a good time to start using FLAC if you aren't already.

http://flac.sourceforge.net

Lossless (like a zip file for documents) but for audio (because zip doesn't really shrink WAVs).

How do you read flac audio files?

About audio good examples in metal, a lot of audio engineer really like Tool production and mastering, Lateralus or 10 000 Days. Not metal but Porcupine Tree work is also a great example of a good production, clear and not too loud.

 

[tung]

Don't be sorry about your lack of knowledge! I think there's only one good thing about Metallica's last album, it's that more and more people, not just audiophile or audio engineer, become aware of the loudness race. It's probably a necessary step to stop it!



How do you read flac audio files?

...

I use foobar2000 mostly - it has a great interface, and just a ton of features, like renaming files, modifying tags, adding replay gain, converting to other formats, visualizations, playing 5.1 channel tracks.. etc.

Winamp will also play flac.

Personally, I've ripped all of my thousands of CDs to FLAC and mp3, and whenever I need the original, I don't have to go back to CD but rather I just use the FLAC file.

I also use the FLACs for doing audio analysis or tweaking, etc.

 

[tung]

Although music is being compressed and brick-limited more and more (to gain attention), in Opeth's case it's not a bad thing (yet)

Yes, Their mixes are loud, but at what point have you EVER heard them clip? Or thought, wow that was TOO loud (for example when all the instruments kick in). It doesn't happen with Opeth.

It's standard practice to bring them up as high as possible, but so long as their mixes sound great I'm not going to complain.

I'll tell you what.. I just ripped some of the audio from the multi-channel DTS tracks from Ghost Reveries and Watershed, and what I am finding is that these tracks are not brickwalled and they sound really really gooooood!!! Supergod, even.

I'm having some issues where I'm not sure how my player is handling 5 or 6 channels and outputting as stereo to my headphones, but I'll see if I can get that figured out. My 5.1 channel home theater system has really lousy speakers, so I don't really use that for good audio, just crappy Hollywood movies..

I may have missed any discussion here before about the 5.1 DTS and AC3 DVD audio tracks (special edition of these albums).. the search function will not allow 3-letter words, so forgive me if I am repeating something from way back when..

Anyway, bottom line is that I would like CDs, in the future, to have the same non-brickwalled audio; only reason they're made louder is competition, but now that Death Magnetic from Metallica's hit the ceiling in a big and nasty way, we need to go back down and get back to good quality audio that rocks!!

 

[tung]

I'll tell you what.. I just ripped some of the audio from the multi-channel DTS tracks from Ghost Reveries and Watershed, and what I am finding is that these tracks are not brickwalled and they sound really really gooooood!!! Supergod, even.

I'm having some issues where I'm not sure how my player is handling 5 or 6 channels and outputting as stereo to my headphones, but I'll see if I can get that figured out. My 5.1 channel home theater system has really lousy speakers, so I don't really use that for good audio, just crappy Hollywood movies..

I may have missed any discussion here before about the 5.1 DTS and AC3 DVD audio tracks (special edition of these albums).. the search function will not allow 3-letter words, so forgive me if I am repeating something from way back when..

Anyway, bottom line is that I would like CDs, in the future, to have the same non-brickwalled audio; only reason they're made louder is competition, but now that Death Magnetic from Metallica's hit the ceiling in a big and nasty way, we need to go back down and get back to good quality audio that rocks!!

I just looked at a couple of the 5 and 6 channel files in Audacity, and I have to make a correction: the main L and R channels are brickwalled, but the remaining channels are not.. when you put it all together, it does not sound like a typical brickwalled CD, and still sounds better than the regular CD versions.

Much better sound, but I think we can do better on the regular CDs!

Personally, I think the DVD audio is smokin'!! :Smokin:

 

[Mr. Niel]

No need to look further than Mr. Niel's dumbass comment in the middle of page 3 for a clear example.

lmao

If you would've actually taken a few minutes to read any of that stuff, you might have proved that this wasn't another attempt at a shitty trolling thread disguised as a serious discussion, and you just might have learned something too.

But of course, you completely disappeared since hardly anybody was agreeing with your shitty troll thread.

Great job!

 

[steve.h]

The thing about metal is that, in general, a lot of the material is pretty solid-state in nature (meaning, all instruments all loud all the time). That's part of why metal is sweet! However, this also means it's quite difficult to record properly. The reason so much compression is used, is because when you're competing with a wall of distorted guitars (which, by the way, are compressed by the very nature of what distortion is), it's quite difficult to make a dynamic snare/kick cut through with any sort of consistency, unless they are compressed. Same goes for vocals; most great-sounding metal vocals are compressed to hell, which makes them consistently loud and awesome-sounding. (There's nothing more pathetic to listen to than completely uncompressed/eq'd screaming.) The bass guitar is usually compressed pretty decently as well, to make all notes consistently loud (something bass guitars aren't always great at doing themselves).

So now we're left with compressed kick/snare/toms, bass, and vocals. Pretty much the only dynamic content we're left with is the cymbals (which, when constantly bashed on, are pretty much solid noise as well). There's no real need to compress the final stereo mix at this point, as everything is already compressed and at a relatively consistent volume. Looking at the Opeth example, while the CD is obviously as loud as you can make it without really destroying all dynamic content, there really isn't much more 2-bus compression/limiting going on than on the LP. Records always have a much lower volume than CD's. Heck, you can't even listen to a record player without either a built-in or separate pre-amp for it.

Anyway, my point is, the "loudness war" typically has a much greater, and more destructive affect on other genres than it does metal. That said, even metal CD's can be WAY over-compressed, and sound like shit. But uncompressed metal CD's typically sound kind of crappy as well, hence most bedroom productions thrown up on myspace or whatever.