What are the best and worst sounding CD's you've ever bought? What's the best sounding CD you've bought that was mastered in the last 5 years?

For me:
Best: Tron Soundtrack (Mastered 2001/Copyright 1982)
Worst: Poodle Hat by Wierd Al Yankovic (Mastered/Copyright 2003)
Best(mastered in last 5 years): See best.

Best: Dream Theater - Images & Words (1992)
Worst: Athena - Twilight Of Days (2001)
Best Mastered in last years: Stratovarius - Elements Pt 1 (2003)

Best: Dave Brubeck Quartet, Time Out (released 1959, remastered 1997)

Worst: Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers Last DJ (2002)
Rush's Vapor Trails (2002)

Best mastered CD of past 5 years: none. Most of my CD's were purchased 10 years ago...with music going the way it has, I haven't bought any new releases for some time.

One of the worst: The Darkness (2003) Permission To Land. So much crackling

Best (at least one of the greats): Talvin Singh & Rakesh Chaurasia (2002) Vira. Most of Talvin's stuff sounds great with the exception of Anokha Soundz Of The Asian Uunderground.

worst: India.Arie - Acoustic Soul
best: many. some that come to my mind are mike oldfield - tubular bells 2003, allan taylor - colour to the moon, sara k - water falls, norah jones - come away with me, dire straits - brothers in arms (original release, a classic cd for good mastering)...

Some of the best that come to my mind now:

Mark Knopfler - Sailing To Philadelphia (2000)
Steely Dan - Everything Must Go (2003)
Terry Callier - Speak Your Peace (2002)

Some of the worst IMO:

Beyoncé - Dangerously In Love (2003)
Placebo - Sleeping With Ghosts (2003)

This is a subjective statement and my personal assessment of sound quality, of course.

Mine are more recent CD purchases although they are not current releases.

Best: Police "Synchronicity"
Purchased to replace my aging cassette, surprisingly uncompressed

Worst: Slayer "South of Heaven"
American label '94 release - too loud and overcompressed, perhaps a prior release sounds better

Best mastering in last 5 years: ?
No winner = my own recording projects + not many new purchases + lack of interest in current releases + all the new rock/pop releases I've heard are still way overboard

/ot - at least I offer 2 versions of the mixes I make: regular and non-compressed Hopefully the record companies will steal my idea...

Recent listens:

Best: Steve Coleman & 5 Elements (2002) On The Rising Of The 64 Paths
Steely Dan (2000) Two Against Nature
Goldfrapp (2003) Black Cherry (squashed dynamics, but still holds up well considering)

Worst: Pat Benatar (2003) Go (her older early 80's albums sound great though)
Janet Jackson (2001) All For You (obvious distortion on some tracks)

Worst: ZZtop - Mascalero. Only distortion and clips

Best : Edgar Varèse - Orchestral Works (1993) and Blind Guardian's "A Night At Opera"

Worst : Transilvanian Hunger and Preparing for War (a collection of early demo tapes) by Darkthrone....but they seem to be proud of their "lo-fi" recording style

Hmm. Very strange. Blind Guardian "A Night At Opera" CD I listened I would rate as bad mastered. May be different pressings?
I can't remember right now what is the worst but I very disliked Iron Maiden's "Seventh Son of the Seventh Son" and Metallica's "St. Anger"
Also I can't say what is the best but I think it would be either one of Pink Floyd's or Jethro Tull's album despite I am not a big fan of them.

Good:

Sinéad O'Conner - She Who Dwells in the Secret Place of the Most High Shall Abide Under the Shadow of the Almighty (2003)
Sinéad O'Conner -> Sean Nós Nua (2002)
Die Ärzte - Geräusch (2003)
Barbra Streisand - The Movie Album (2003)
Mike Oldfield - Tr3s Lunas (2002)
Dolly Parton - Halos and Horns (2002)
Dolly Parton -> Little Sparrow (2001)

Bad:

Alice Cooper - The Eyes of Alice Cooper (2003)
Iron Maiden - Dance of Death (2003)
Liza Minnelli - Liza's Back (2001)
Lenny Kravitz -> Lenny (2001)
Sarah Brightman - Harem (2003)
Bangles - Doll Revolution (2003)
Dido - Life for Rent (2003)
(List could be a lot longer, but I delete crap as soon as possible, and have forgotten most titles).

mmm...maybe, IIRC they released various version of the same album with a different bonus track dunno if they also changed the mastering....what kind of "mastering errors" you found? I've checked 2 tracks now and they appear to be not (too) compressed (only some isolated spikes reach 0 db).
i've listened a couple of times to the title track of St. Anger but i can't stand the sound of the drum....seem he's playing an empty gasoline tank

Here is a bad cd

replaygain_track_peak = 0.98779297
replaygain_track_gain = -11.26 dB
replaygain_album_peak = 0.99182129
replaygain_album_gain = -10.98 dB

This is from The Pillows - FLCL OST 1 Addict, the new one that just came out. With out replaygain I can't listen to it. Also System of a down is VERY loud..... too loud.

I have not found any good cds yet.

I didn't studied Blind Guardian's "A Night At Opera" CD in Cool Edit. I can't explain what was the matter (I didn't riped it) but maybe sound was mmm... distorted. And it is only my humble opinion.
And listening to Metallica's St. Anger I was shocked. I could not expect so bad mastering from Metallica. Or may be it is some ultra modern style of mastering and I lag behind lie? :-) . I remember when I listened to Bathory's "Hammerheart" first time. The sound was distorted very very much. It was like a s**t! I thought that time that mastering cost about $30! But it was not the same case as Metallica. It becomes very listenable after 3rd-4th time. It is one of my lovely albums now.

Just for the fun of it, I had a chronological look at the releases of my favorite artist, Glenn Danzig.

(Year) - album : peak value after replaygain

(1982) The Misfits - Walk Among Us : 0.64
(1983) The Misfits - Earth A.D. : 0.81

(1984) Samhain . Initium : 0.80
(1985) November Coming Fire : 0.65
(1988) Final Descent : 0.62

(1988) Danzig I : 0.55
(1990) Danzig II-Lucifuge : 0.62
(1992) Danzig III-How The Gods Kill : 0.41
(1994) Danzig IV-4p : 0.46
(1996) Blackacidevil : 0.39
(1999) Satans Child : 0.39
(2002) I Luciferi : 0.35

Hammerheart is a masterpiece, One Rode To Asa Bay is one of my all time favourite songs ...the production is crap (and Quorthon way of singing was orribile for me the first time i listened to it) but i can accept it because was done with little money and so on....
I hate when i buy a new cd and you can barely hear the bass and the guitars make a costant hiss (@de Mon did you listen to 1349's "liberation" ? ) and they did this to be "underground".....
Metallica are even worst....they've no money excuse nor extreme-underground attitude to justify a garage-style production


edit:typing

Okay a little off topic, here's what I did to aleviate many of my issues with Metallica's St. Anger

Take the bonus dvd and rip that.

Now burn a cd of that

I much, much, prefer the sound of that. I can actually get into the songs.

What you guys can say about the album - Foo Fighters (2002) One by One - ?
Good or bad ?

Pretty bad, especially with headphones. Overcompressed like hell.

Too bad, since the songs are actually very good.

@dreamliner77: What a coincidence, I was about to post the same thing. Since I ripped the St. Anger companion DVD and burnt it to a disc I stopped playing the original CD.

The audio on the DVD is substantially less loud, has almost no clipping and the drums actually sound good (no ringy "garbage can" sound). It sounds a *lot* better, even with the AC3 compression (and the slight equipment hiss and hum you can hear during quiet parts).

And about my best and worst sounding CDs, that's easy:

Worst: Metallica - St. Anger (the CD version I don't play anymore - see above)

Best: Pink Floyd - The Wall (1992 edition from the Shine On boxset)

I can't check right now, but The Wall has an album gain that's very close to 0db, and it's the prime example of how a properly mastered CD should sound.

This may be an interesting link:

From the Digital Domain website, the Honor Roll of Good-Sounding Pop CDs.

Don't know about the best (maybe both the Donald Fagen ones) but worst in the last 5 years has to be The Transplants self named album. I downloaded it before buying but assumed I just had a crap ogg. Not so.

A couple of the best:

Dire Straits - Brothers in Arms
Tool - Lateralus

A few of the worst:

Metallica - St. Anger
Rush - Vapor Trails
Audioslave - Audioslave
Linkin Park - Meteora

One of the best mastered newer albums is The Beatles - Let It Be... Naked. Very clear, and no clipping that I'm aware of of. Unfortunately it uses CDS200, but I ripped all the same and have no clicks on the tracks (used a LiteOn). Anyway, getting towards worse is Cherry Poppin' Daddies - Soul Caddy which is pretty loud, which once again is unfortunate because they have some excellent music. As mentioned in the other thread, Red Hot Chilli Peppers - Californiacation is extremely loud and almost unlistenable.

Another awesome production IMO is Tower Of Power's 1992 album "Monster On A Leash" ... Sky-blazing horns and very good dynamics with no noticeable clipping.

I totally agree on Donald Fagen & Steely Dan overall production quality ... these are awesome recordings (on a very high musical level) I just love to turn loud

Today's albums often seem to be specially mixed down for some kind of Boom-Blaster/Micro HiFi system usage ... which is an absolute P.I.T.A. in my opinion ...

Sheffield Labs in general does excellent mastering. Their Sonic Detour CD (performed by the Freeway Philharmonic) really stands out as one of their better recordings. Classics, performed by Sarah Brightman, is also a very well mastered CD.

As for worst recordings, one simply stands out immediately, no question. Rush's Vapor Trails CD takes the cake. This CD is so bad that it is literally painful to listen to even at low volume for more than a couple of songs. It is hard to believe that any competent engineer would put something like this together, much less put his name to it. I truly regret having spent money to purchase this CD.

I think that my best CDs are the TELARC' ones. With such a good sounding and dynamic.

But one of my oldest CD is also astounding.
It's Varèse Sarabande's " North by Northwest" conducted by Laurie Johnson. (It's not the original soundtrack of the movie)

It was recorded with a simple Stereo microphone (Calrec Soundfield) directly in digital in 1979. On good equipment it is very impressive.

But you might find the sound quite low.



The TELARC CDs exhibit the same big number of positive gains, but not as high.

As for my worst CD Well I've just got a problem trying to re-rip my only Copy Controlled CD "Sarah Brightman's Harem", my Plextor drive cannot read track 12 anymore.

Maybe a scratch, but I don't have the envy to fix it for the time being, and it is not an audio related problem.

Vapor Trails so far seems to be the clear winner for the worst sounding CD. I agree with this, but bear in mind that there are loads of other CDs (also mastered by the same engineer) that are another 3dB louder (ReplayGain SPL measurement), but sound nowhere near as bad, so I'm a little skeptical putting all the blame on the mastering engineer - perhaps some of the distortion was introduced during recording or mixdown, although considering the top-rate work Paul Northfield usually does, this seems even less likely.

[An example of one of those louder CDs is Oasis's (What's The Story) Morning Glory?, 1995 - it's 3 dB louder than Vapor Trails, mastered also by Howie Weinberg, and while it does have extremely bad clipping on loud sequences, it's generally much much better than Vapor Trails.]

</ramble>

As for the better ones... well, there are lots. The remastered version of Dire Straits's Brothers In Arms, mentioned several times here, is definitely very good (no imperfections whatsoever), and even more so compared to the original master which sounds very harsh and bright to me.

The best recent mastering I know is Mark Knopfler's The Ragpicker's Dream (2002), album gain just -4 dB. There are probably many more, but I don't listen to much recent stuff...

Couple of rock records I think fall inot the good catergory, even though I haven't ripped em, or checked em yet, just by the way they sound

Jane's Addiction - Nothing's Shocking
Anthrax - Sound Of White Noise

Think it's a coincidence they were both produced by Dave Jerden?

Speaking of Sheffield Labs ... There has been a Tower Of Power recording with Sheffield Labs as well ... the album is named after the recording technique ... Direct

It is a live studio recording with excellent dynamics and lack of effect devices ... totally uncompressed ... sounds great but can kill your tweeters

GRP recordings are also known to be very good ...

I'd like to add to Volcano's comment about the guy who was in charge of mastering Rush's Vapor Trails. My comment on the producer was not meant to question his technical expertise. Rather, it was meant to illustrate that sometimes the engineer has little word over the mastering he's responsible for, and often has less say than a marketing executive or some other who craves radio airtime like a drowning man craves oxygen.

This CD is a great illustration of recording labels' obsession with making tracks louder and louder to make them stand out during radio play, at the expense of the music's integrity. Often times, what keeps many records listenable while accomodating unreasonable loudness requirements made by the recording label is skilled production work. But that can only go so far - Vapor Trails smells of some eager beaver young MBA saying "Hey! If a 10 dB boost is good, then a 20 dB boost is even better!" rather than engineering folly.

Truly ironic that Rush's "Spirit of the Radio" commented on just this sort of thing.

All I can hope for is that, as Rush has always done, they will listen to the fans. Maybe when the initial pressing runs out, they will go back and remaster. Hell, even Atlantic should see how many more copies a "Remastered" version would sell...

Best: Secret Garden - White Stones
just outstanding quality, check it out:
http://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000...0559178-2537616

Best: Peter Gabriel - So
Can't belive noone has mentioned this yet.
This album must be MADE for my stereo, sounds so good.

Worst: The Darkness - Permission to Land
Totally agree with the others. Too bad, since I like the album music-wise.


It's really a shame how many CD:s have gone the wicked path of over Compression.

I thought the original CD release of that was very mediocre but the remastered version is excellent, great album too!

Hmmm ... the original pressing was always recommended as some kind of "reference CD" during the late 80's - alongside with Dire Straits' "Brothers In Arms" which is also an excellent recording.

What I do not like (soundwise - music is excellent IMO) are the newer Stevie Wonder Remasters - the album "Songs In The Key Of Life" sounds like there have been no tweeters in the monitor speakers ... the original sounds much smoother and pleasing to me.

For my part, I don't listen to classical music.

The best and worst sounding CD might depend on what you mean with "good". Does it mean "good sounding" ? Or with much dynamics ?

Ironically, the most dynamic pop music CD I own is from 1997 ! You may argue that it is not really "pop" music, but if you find a store selling it, it will definitely be in the pop section, instead of jazz or classical.

This is XVIIe Vie - Llewella. Here's an exerpt of track 5 - L'enchanteresse

It is a french band published by a french record label, with a very small audience. Another irony is that I live in France, and to get their CDs, I have to buy them from a californian online store !

I've got some CDs with very few dynamics, but since I don't listen to rock, I can't compete with your Rushes or Red Hot Chilli Peppers...

Now if we talk about the sound quality in itself, I can think about Dead Can Dance, with the Spleen and Ideal (1985), and Within The Realm Of A Dying Sun (1987) albums. I have them in vinyl since 1989, and I've always considered them as one of the best example of pure vinyl analog sound. I was amazed when I got the CDs, to hear that not only the sound was perfect, unlike most CD releases from this period (Cocteau Twins, This Mortal Coil...), but they sound even more "analog" than the vinyl !!
Here's an exerpt of Persephone-The Gathering of Flowers, from Within The Realm Of A Dying Sun.

I think also about Idir - A Vava Inouva. (Exerpt). I'm not used to guitar and vocals, so I don't know how this record stands compared to good guitar recordings. The original is from the early 70's, but I think that this is a 1991 recording. The CD is dated 1991 anyway, and I can't believe that this is a remaster from 1973.

Maybe you'll find that these two CDs are just averagely recorded, and that in fact their sound quality is due to the very beautiful keyboard sounds of Dead Can Dance, and to the loud and nice reverb of Idir... Opinions are welcome.


For bad quality, I've got some, but everyone of them has a good reason to have a bad sound (1952 recording, demo recorded on tape, etc ). No real shame in my collection...

Coldplay's first album, 'Parachutes', sounds terrible... but in contrast, their second, 'A Rush Of Blood To The Head' sounds very good.

In my opinion Metallica's St. Anger album is definitely the worst production I ever heard.
First I wondered where those crackling noises came from, then I investigated and found this out:

st-anger.gif

I was shocked. "Raw" sound is one thing, but this is simply crap.

Edit: The original and unscratched CD was ripped with EAC in secure mode with a high quality drive to uncompressed WAV. So the picture is not a result of compression or bad ripping.

de mo wrote:


Why is that. Obviously it's not too loud, here's the log when decreasing the rms to 89dB:

Analyzing...

Gain | Peak | Scale | New Peak | Track
---------------------------------------------
-2.13 dB | 32766 | 0.78 | 25640 | 01 Iron maiden - Moonchild.wav
-2.62 dB | 32766 | 0.74 | 24234 | 02 Iron maiden - Infinite dreams.wav
-3.02 dB | 32471 | 0.71 | 22935 | 03 Iron maiden - Can I play with madness.wav
-2.20 dB | 32767 | 0.78 | 25435 | 04 Iron maiden - The evil that men do.wav
-1.90 dB | 32550 | 0.80 | 26155 | 05 Iron maiden - Seveth son of a seventh son.wav
-1.21 dB | 26899 | 0.87 | 23401 | 06 Iron maiden - The prophecy.wav
-1.64 dB | 30962 | 0.83 | 25635 | 07 Iron maiden - The clairvoyant.wav
-1.41 dB | 25112 | 0.85 | 21349 | 08 Iron maiden - Only the good die young.wav

This is from the original 1988 release.

Best: Sonata Arctica - Winterheart's Guild (2003)

Wort: The Offspring - Smash (1994)

Best in 5 years: same as Best

Best: Van Wagner - If Time Could Stand Alone, recorded and mastered by George Graham, naturally recorded folk with just enough artistically used compression.

Worst: Johnny Cash's American IV. When I saw the Hurt video I thought the loudness and distortion on Johnny's vocals at the end was the fault of the TV channel. I was wrong.

Nice thread...

In my mind at the moment:

Good albums

Pink Floyd - Delicate sound of thunder (live 1988 album great clean and warm sound for being a 15 Yrs. old album!).

Almost every Steely Dan's album, even remastered ones, in particular '74 Pretzel Logic who is a must in sound definition and clearness. (30yrs. old album!).

Whitesnake - Starkers in Tokyo (an acoustic 1997 Japan only release...its't not easy to make a goodsound album even with a voice and an acoustic guitar only...)

Dream Theater - Images and Words (1992 but thumbs down for triggered drums. Stupid producer...)

Some old Toto's album from the 80's.

Beatles - Revolver (1966. I named it for "the sound of the sound".)

Good singles

Dinah Washington - What a difference a day makes (1959 release. Try to learn something from the past!)

Alan Sorrenti - Figli delle stelle (1977. I'm talkin about long original version with beautiful real piano intro.)

Not good albums

Anastacia - Freak of nature (2001. It seemed to clip in my stereo if I remember well.)

Many Cream album in the 60's. (There were already floating 'round better products at that time..)

My two Empty Tremor albums: Apocolokyntosys (1997) and Eros & Thanatos (2000). You should listen to the premix-releases made with an analog Mackie...their sound was sooo better...
Bad way of intending music-sound engineer..

I believe he may have been talking about one of the remastered versions

I may be wrong here, but I do not believe that there are any triggered drums on this album (mmaybe an occassional replaced snare hit). As far as I know, Mike Portnoy has never recorded using electronics or triggers. There are two possiblities I can think of.... Kevin Moore may have programmed some of his keyboard parts with percussion sounds or what you are thinking is triggered is actually Tama Octabans.



Add some more to the lists:

Bad: Queensryche - Tribe (has anyone been able to listen to the DVD-A release of this)

Questionable: Dream Theater - Train Of Thought (Loud and lacks alot of dynamics, but from casual listening today, I haven't picked up too much clipping, might run it into SF tomorrow.

Good: Def Leppard - Hysteria

I found the Digital Domain article posted by Poison Dan interesting:

http://www.digido.com/portal/pmodule_id=11...der_page_id=93/

...and laughable and self-serving and irritating and ignorant. It probably lead me to write this post, simply because it put me over the top regarding the emphasis placed on loudness and the ability to deem a recording high or low quality based on looking at (Replay) gain levels.

Of the author's stated claims, he says that (paraphrased):

- The absence of [many] post-1990 CDs on the CD honor roll points to the casualties of the "loudness" war

- The position of the monitor control is often indicative of sonic quality of a recording

To the first point above, the main reason for lack of inclusion of post-1990s CDs would be more correctly attributable to the fact that he is trying to promote a bogus idea (i.e, that good post-1990s CDs don't exist!!) or that he has a very limited collection of CDs available to him.

As far as the second point above ("monitor" position having much to do with sonic quality of a recording), that is only a small part of what makes a recording excellent. Some of the older recordings he sites may well be "good" recordings, but they are only good when qualified by the fact that they were recorded 30, 40, 50 years ago. These recordings cannot possibly compare with the best modern recordings for other sonic qualities. I have an extensive collection of old jazz recordings remastered in limited editions and although enjoyable to listen to, the enjoyment is mostly about the historical value of the recordings. Someone might say, "Wow, that was recorded in 1959?! It sounds so good for being so old", but they wouldn't simply say, "Wow, that sounds great [without the age qualifier]". The same is true of even 60s and a lot of 70s recordings. I cannot listen to any Beatles recordings on true high-fidelity equipment because it sounds rather dull and, well, recorded. I'm sure the Replaygain profiles look beautiful, but that doesn't change the sonic failings in other areas.

As for the GENERAL claim often made here that mid- to late-80s CDs are superior to post-1990 recordings runs counter to what most in the hi-fi community have acknowledged and lamented for years...that most recording engineers botched the transfer of analog recordings to digital in the 1980s for a number reasons, some of which were related to a rush to get the recordings onto the new format as quickly as possible without regard for quality, some attributable to the new generation of equipment not being up to par (DACs, etc.), and some attributable to the engineers simply not knowing how to effectively use the technology to get the best sounding transfer. Then there is the issue that I mentioned in the companion thread to this one...that almost all popular music genres are recorded in such a way to sound best on the lowest common denominator equipment (the latter is not true in general for recordings of jazz, classical, etc.). This is a truism that goes back well into the analog age of recording and has continued to this day. High gain values is simply an extension of this "lowest-common-denominator" recording philosophy...it is not really new in that regard. High quality exceptions can definitely be found regardless of genre, and no less frequently now than in any other decade (it has always been difficult to find good recordings).

Other things that can impact a recording as much or more than loudness levels:

1. Microphone placement
2. Stereo (multi-channel) mix - the placement of the instruments / vocals in proper spatial proximity to the other instruments
3.Translation of room acoustics into the recording
4. Capturing the timbre of the instruments / voices so that they actually sound like the instruments / voices as they would live (piano and vocals are exteremely difficult to accurately record)
5. The list of items goes on and on, gain levels among them

I think this bandwagon about gain levels being so important, to the exclusion of mentioning anything else about recording quality, is promoted by the fact that anybody with some freeware can look at a *.wav profile and easily see this one aspect of the recording. Listen to the recording on some good equipment and I guarantee you that some of the recordings deemed to be good because of nominal gain levels will actually reveal themselves to sound like cr*p.

Here are some screen caps of the first track off of Queensryche's Tribe.

Screen Captures

Oh boy... WTF should be this tread about? I just wonder, how many of you were ever in studio Has anybody of the "critics" here ever produced a song? I seriously doubt it...

...your point being?

So, by your logic, we are not allowed to judge the quality of CDs before we produced a CD ourselves ?

Great, so 95% of all music critics (from Rolling Stone, AMG, NME, etc.) should just stop what they're doing. They are not allowed to do it.

Oh crap, I guess this means I won't be allowed to judge movies either, since I've never directed a movie before. I'll keep that in mind whenever somebody asks me what I thought of a particular movie.