http://www.loudnessrace.net/
This pisses me off. Today I ripped both "Seventh Son of a Seventh Son" and "Dance of Death" to MP3's, and excepting the fact that "Dance of Death" is quite horridly produced (less so than "Brave New World," though) the mastering job is absolutely atrocious. Recently, it has become a trend to make the volume of CD's as loud as possible because "everyone else does it", so what people (mastering engineers) do is compress and limit the fuck out of the sound which results in a total loss of dynamics. On old CD's, when someone hit a snare drum hard, it would actually come off as a loud hit because there was room in the sound for loud transients, but today all dynamics are gone. One needs just listen to "Dance of Death" -- from start to beginning it's one loud fucking blur of compressed guitars, compressed drums and bass. "Seventh Son", on the contrary, actually has dynamics. The acoustic guitar parts are soft and emotional, loud drum hits are actually loud, and, well, it sounds alive instead of squashed to death, emotionless, dull and drained of all life. Illustration:
The first pic is a sequence of "Moonchild" (heavy part) and the second of "Montsegur." The difference is clearly visible. "7th" stays within -6 to +6 dB, with headroom above for loud transients like sudden drum attacks and such, and anyone who listens to the record should clearly hear that it sounds "alive." "Dance of Death," OTOH, is fucking squashed to death with maximum volume ALL OF THE TIME. It can't be normalized further -- the levels are at 100% more or less all of the time; the audio actually has digital peaks that distort the audio -- it does NOT have all audio information intact. Sounds lifeless, dull, and is very tiring to the ears after long periods of time. This is how pretty much every major label CD looks nowadays (more info on http://www.loudnessrace.net/ -- Opeth "Blackwater Park" is another metal disc that's affected but there are plenty of others)
So the major-label record industry is trying to make us pay $20 for discs that 1) are copy-"protected" and thus more sensitive to scratch damage and won't play in certain CD players 2) sound like fucking SHIT compared to CD's from 1985-1990 because they're compressed to all hell. And then they wonder why people download music instead of buying it.
As a last note, I know we have Rush fans here. There is a detailed article on how Rush releases have become gradually louder until the peak with "Vapor Trails" where the sound is so loud and distorted that it's practically unlistenable (to people like the article author, anyway) that's very interesting, and should be even more interesting to Rush fans who can actually confirm that what he says is true.
</rant>
This pisses me off. Today I ripped both "Seventh Son of a Seventh Son" and "Dance of Death" to MP3's, and excepting the fact that "Dance of Death" is quite horridly produced (less so than "Brave New World," though) the mastering job is absolutely atrocious. Recently, it has become a trend to make the volume of CD's as loud as possible because "everyone else does it", so what people (mastering engineers) do is compress and limit the fuck out of the sound which results in a total loss of dynamics. On old CD's, when someone hit a snare drum hard, it would actually come off as a loud hit because there was room in the sound for loud transients, but today all dynamics are gone. One needs just listen to "Dance of Death" -- from start to beginning it's one loud fucking blur of compressed guitars, compressed drums and bass. "Seventh Son", on the contrary, actually has dynamics. The acoustic guitar parts are soft and emotional, loud drum hits are actually loud, and, well, it sounds alive instead of squashed to death, emotionless, dull and drained of all life. Illustration:
The first pic is a sequence of "Moonchild" (heavy part) and the second of "Montsegur." The difference is clearly visible. "7th" stays within -6 to +6 dB, with headroom above for loud transients like sudden drum attacks and such, and anyone who listens to the record should clearly hear that it sounds "alive." "Dance of Death," OTOH, is fucking squashed to death with maximum volume ALL OF THE TIME. It can't be normalized further -- the levels are at 100% more or less all of the time; the audio actually has digital peaks that distort the audio -- it does NOT have all audio information intact. Sounds lifeless, dull, and is very tiring to the ears after long periods of time. This is how pretty much every major label CD looks nowadays (more info on http://www.loudnessrace.net/ -- Opeth "Blackwater Park" is another metal disc that's affected but there are plenty of others)
So the major-label record industry is trying to make us pay $20 for discs that 1) are copy-"protected" and thus more sensitive to scratch damage and won't play in certain CD players 2) sound like fucking SHIT compared to CD's from 1985-1990 because they're compressed to all hell. And then they wonder why people download music instead of buying it.
As a last note, I know we have Rush fans here. There is a detailed article on how Rush releases have become gradually louder until the peak with "Vapor Trails" where the sound is so loud and distorted that it's practically unlistenable (to people like the article author, anyway) that's very interesting, and should be even more interesting to Rush fans who can actually confirm that what he says is true.
</rant>
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