You're just no friend of trash cans.

Last week I borrowed the CD "Eagles - Hotel California", a new digitally remasterd CD transfer. (www.warnerremasters.com is printed on an adhesive label on the CD)

The CD sounds ugly overcompressed to my ears.
Replay Gain confirms my claim. An Album Gain of -7,5 dB is quite a high value for a rock album which was originally recorded in 1976.

I've gotta chime in about Oasis here. Number one, that is most definitely the sound they want. On the Definitely Maybe DVD they actually claim that the producer or whoever it was is the first one to do 'brick wall' mastering, which works beautifully on that album.

Another thing i see alot in this thread is people complaining about the distortion and guitars making your ears bleed on a rock album. YES! Thats what its all about.

It brings me to What's the Story Morning Glory, and the dynamics that DO exist on that album. I will never forget, I bought that cd, like so many other people, for Wonderwall when it came out. I will never forget putting it in, hitting play, and hearing much to my surprise, Wonderwall as track one, only really quiet. So I turned it up really loud to what sounded right and then that BLIP BLIP followed by the wall of Marshalls from Hello completely blew me away, and I had just cranked it. Leave it up that loud. That is beautiful in my opinion.

edit: to make this post on topic, I do think Heathen Chemistry from Oasis is mastered pretty bad.

I'd imagine there's a few Depeche Mode fans here, yes? Well if you haven't bought their new album already, think twice. I wish I'd saved my money. I've read a lot about over-compression but never really appreciated what a negative effect it can have until I listened to Playing The Angel. It just sounded flat from beginning to end. Being used to previous albums such as Violator or Black Celebration soothing my audio senses, I wasn't prepared for what was about to be inflicted on my ear drums. To say I was disappointed is an understatement.

There's digital clipping within the first second of track 5, Precious (released as first single from album)...



And it doesn't get any better towards the end...




Zoom out for an overall picture. Looks flat, sounds flat...


Aargh! Make it stop!

As a long time DM fan, I'll want to get to know these songs, but I can't imagine I'll enjoy listening to this album

Wow...pretty ugly.

replaygain_album_gain = -9.70 dB for Falling Into Infinity. It's actually louder than any of their newer ones, which are also too loud. The music's good though so I do my best to overlook it I suppose.

Uh well I listen to a lot of progressive metal and a lot of it is newer so a lot of it is mastered too loud anyway. Not sure of any particular one that sounds worst.

I had a roomate who downloaded that song, i thought it was some crappy 96kbps encode or something, but thats how it sounds on the CD...

im no audiophile like the other people on this site, but i just recently listened to metallica - 'and justice for all' again. that album is a production debacle. the guitars are thin, there are no dynamics, the bass guitar doesn't exist, and the drums have little kick. just the sound of the album gets tiresome after a while. couple that with songs that are too long, and justice is one of the most boring, hard-to-listen-to albums i own. the songs are good on an individual basis, but to listen to the album the whole way through is a struggle. metallica's first 4 albums (and st. anger) severly need remastered by an expert.

Yeah, metallica - st anger. All instruments were recordered all in one (in live). Original CD sound like SBR 80 kbit AAC. Some new bands have no money to record their first CD at high quality and may be audio tecs of 80´s weren´t good but metallica has made a lot of tours in America and Europe during 20 years. Producer of Metallica Bob Rock was a bass player and man who mixed all material at the same time. . Bad job.

My "newest" badest release is Anita Baker's "My Everything", distorts all the way through. Very unusual for a "jazz"-album.

(http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=23534293&s=143456&i=23534275)

Really? are you sure you didn't get a remastered version?

Over here it sounds just fine, in fact I think the sound is quite clear. The drums do sound with little kick if compared to current beat recordings, other than that I believe that's the sound they intended.

About the length of the songs I too think it is fine, as long as they are fine songs that do not fall into the repeat over and over again the same shit, just try to imagine listening a 5 minute song by Britney Spears!!, much less listening to epic songs like Estranged (GNR) or Orion (Metallica).

Just my 0.02

Type O Negative -- October Rust
Remy Zero -- Golden Hum (love the album but it's badly mastered and overproduced)
Suede -- Dog Man Star (also like it, but it doesn't exactly sparkle sound-wise)

I had one that stands out from fifteen years ago (I was a youngish teenager): the self-titled Firehouse album -- it had exceptionally awful production, even to someone who didn't know what the word meant.

There are albums that have *weak* production, but it's not necessarily compressed/clipped production. High compression is just frustrating...

check out Finedisc, they don't have much content but want members to tell them what they want remastered. Free to join too. They say if they get lots of requests they will try and get permission to remaster .

some local band (no idea who did the mastering job), sounds horrible in more than one sense (track RG is tipically -20 dB).

Sadly I can't stand it because of the sound. I really like Sleater-Kinney, but I don't think I have listened to "The Woods" more than twice.

It was produced by Flaming Lips' Dave Fridmann, and it really hurts to see these people comitting such horrible crimes.

ugh, i second that one too. what a letdown. rush, as previously discussed - vapor trails has some okay songs on it but everything is so smashed

one album i haven't seen mentioned is Keane - Hopes and Fears ... being a piano based band one would at least have some small hope there'd be some dynamics in the record, but nope, it's a complete 2x4 when viewed in an audio editor.

sucks that label management and the people pushing the money are the ones who decide how it sounds, in the end. as an avid music fan and audio engineer myself, just like everyone here i'd love to see dynamics come back into music, but all the labels care about is selling more records to kids picking up the latest my chemical romance album, or what have you. clipping is trendy!

i'd say "it can only get worse" but at this point mix engineers might as well just put the master section through a distortion box and have it overwith.

I'd like to add the Megadeth Remaster of "Youthanasia". It just sounds totally bad. I wish they'd just kept the original sound. Another thing is the EMI copyprotection, but that doesn't belong here.

You should definitely hear it before buying it.


Cheers


micmac

I posted about this on a Depeche Mode forum, along with this LINK but it seemed like many of the their fans, having been starved of new material, were delighted with the album. They couldn't hear or see (looking at the flattened waveforms) anything wrong, and were excusing it as deliberate....apparently DM were going for a new harder sound, the clipping was 'intentional' distortion! Real cutting edge stuff If the masses can't appreciate what they loose through squashed dynamics the situation can only get worse. It's becoming essential to audition new music - even if it's by a favourite artist - just to ensure the recording is of a quality worth paying for. Or at least keep the receipt....the CD will probably be copy 'protected' and you can claim it won't play on your system

worst in my personal collection is Evanescence - Fallen

"Bring me to life" clicks and pops almost like it was recorded from a crappy MP3

"My Immortal" has lots of background distortion

Other than that, all my Staind albums disappoint me, along with SOAD Toxicity and Mesmerize

anything by the offspring(come on for the most part the cd's listed have nothing on the crap sound on the offsprings albums)

worst offenders are ixnay on the hombre and smash, but the older self titled and ignition albums are rather crap aswell(but they were tiny tiny releases). Their newer stuff is kinda better sounding but not by all that much, but ofcourse the new songs are just crappy songs anyways.

I updated my article, to show a comparison between the CD and vinyl editions of same album...

p_t_a_clipressed

thats why i think we should support this new company Finedisc. They tell me if their members request a remaster of a CD and there is enough interest they will look to do a remaster version... but they need to know it will be worth the time and effort to do it. so lets join them and support this and get CD's we want to hear in good qualityformat.

http://www.finedisc.com/

By reading the first page of their site, I'm not too convince. Basically they make is sound like they are leaving out the mastering phase all together. This is NOT a good thing.

Yeah, it sounds reads to good to be true. They describe it as some sort of magical one-pass DSP that will remaster a finished recording. Ain't gonna happen. Maybe they can slightly 'enhance' a recording, but...

The type of blurb you'd expect from an audiophile snake oil salesman But they do say "Hearing is Believing!" so perhaps I'm just being too cynical.

There are CD's that are just loud, but the Guilty Gear XX soundtrack is an example of a CD (well, in this case two CDs) mastered in so many wrong ways. It's obvious that there was no actual work done at all when transferring the songs from the game to two CDs, as not only are the tracks still in the order they appear in the sound test with no regards to arranging them in an album-listening fashion making a large portion of them flow extremely awkwardly with each other (it's so bad I have to re-arrange the tracks in order to listen to it all the way through), but the volume levels fluctuate all over the place (something which shouldn't be happening in-game either). And the louder ones are, as you might have guessed, too loud. Looking at the waveform it's obvious there was no limiting or compression done at all; the tracks just hard clip (like on quite a few other CDs, see: Manowar - Louder than Hell). On some songs (notably "Momentary Life" (Baiken) and "Suck a Sage" (Chipp Zanuff)) the clipping is so frequent you can hear audible crackling in the sound. To make matters worse, they often max out way below full-scale, making the effect even more severe.

Here's some auravisual picks from the CD's worst offender, Biaken's stage (click the image to see the full, vile shot):



30 second sound sample (listen closely!)

Obligatory ReplayGain stats:

Again, note the major discrepancies in gain values considering that most of the tracks are similar in arrangement, and that some of the more intense tracks ("The Midnight Carnival", "Meet Again") have absurdly low gain values in comparison to other tracks.

A completely abysmal rush job. A great game like GGXX deserves better than this.

FAKE EDIT: Also take note that the last three tracks are remixed versions of the ending music tracks from Guilty Gear X, none of which appear in GGXX itself, gameplay or sound test. While this is a nice treat in itself, mysteriously enough three story mode-exclusive tracks ("Fatal Duel", "No Mercy" and "Still in the Dark") that DO appear in the gameplay and the sound test (though in their original, non-remixed GGX forms) are absent from the OST, despite there being plenty enough space left on both discs to hold them.

EDIT: For an audible example of the OST's severe track volume discrepancies I made two clips from the game's battle music tracks:

Dizzy stage ("Awe of She")
I-No stage, Arcade mode final battle ("The Midnight Carnival")

EDIT 2: I also forgot to mention the obscenely long silences between all the tracks, like the "mastering engineer" put all the tracks in Nero and didn't bother to remove the preset 2-second pre-track gaps.

Perhaps the worst mastered CD's are Sony/BMG with their hidieous DRM. just a thought

For crushed dynamics
Banco da Gaia: You Are Here (2004)
Porcupine Tree: Deadwing (2005)
Röyksopp: The Understanding (2005)

For bad sound:
Brian Eno: Taking Tiger Mountain by strategy (1974) [even the 2004 remaster is brittle and nasty]
801: Live (1976) [the 1999 remaster was done poorly with uneven track volume and EQ, and an inexcusable master fade chopping off the last climactic seconds of the final song]

new album of korn has a lot of clippings, but dynamics aren't totally squashed.

Buy the DVD-A and rip the 5.1 mix! +1.08 albumgain

It hasn't been even released yet...

but you can download it

Some of the worst mastering i ever heard was done to the song "Wyclef Jean - Industry" from the album "The Preacher's Son". Whenever the bass line comes in, the overall volume decreases for a short moment, like with the peak limiters they use on radio stations. Very unpleasant to listen to, mastering-wise (i like the song!).

One I haven't seen mentioned is Van Halen III. Yeah, the songwriting's not up to par and most people don't care for Gary Cherone, but the production and mastering is just crap. It would be much more listenable if they hadn't killed it in post.

As far as Oasis, I haven't listened to them in years, but I know exactly what people are referring to - and I definitely believe it was intentional, and is part of the appeal... the first track of What's The Story just blows your head back with the aforementioned "wall of sound".

Yeah, Porcupine Tree has some loud albums. I'm going to get both In Absentia and Deadwing on DVD-A to compensate, as they are both award winning masters.

I don't know how many people listen to fantasy/power metal here, but man, those are some compressed CDs. Rhapsody comes to mind. Their CDs have no dynamics whatsoever. Demons & Wizards is bad too with a -10 dB on "Chrimson King." It is such a shame since many of these bands have incredible musicians that would benefit from good recordings.

As I just posted over in the metal topic I think Kamelot's The Black Halo sounds pretty good... but I've never been a big Rhapsody/Dragonforce/Sonata Arctica/anything that's not Kamelot guy.

Edit: On-topic, Cold's 13 Ways to Bleed On Stage is probably the most well-composed nu metal album I've heard (not that that's saying a lot) but its dynamics are home to more squash than my lunch last Thursday and it features the world's first clip-solo.

Edit: I apologize for the squash joke.

Soad's Hypnotize.

AG -11.91db

Totally wasted record. Shame for such a great band.


/edit: Added a screen of Kill Rock'n'Roll

Kyuss - And the Circus Leaves Town

Terrible

God, Hypnotize by a long shot. Great songs but I can't listen to them, all the clipping is driving me crazy.

that's strange....my copy of Hypnotize RG's at -11.47dB and peaks at 0.999969

Honestly, I'd consider SOAD to be one of the few bands where loud, distortion-filled sound actually fits the music. It's kind of hard to explain, really; you just kind of have to "get" what the band is about to understand.

Maybe so, but clipping is NEVER good.

What about U2's Beatiful Day? It's totally awful!

I really liked Daft Punk in the past, especially the stuff on the Homework album and what they did in and around that time (great singles & remixes). Discovery was ok, but nothing special and then not that long ago came the huge dissapointment that was Human After All. Since this is a mastering thread let me just say that whatever good musically was on it (not much really) got destroyed by the awful mastering. In my book too loud is always too loud and with that necessarily a bad thing, but coupled with DP's heavily (re)sampled, filtered and processed sound it's even worse, as all the otherwise barely if at all audible processing artifacts become very loud and you find yourself swimming in an ocean of distorted noise - yuck. Definitely a tiresome listen if there ever was one.

I'm guessing this last album didn't sell all that well (not surprised at all if that's in fact the case), since they're already coming out with a collection titled "Musique Vol.1 1993-2005" to be officially released in april (if nothing else this collection is a nice showcase of how they've gotten progressively & considerably worse with each album). Fortunate enough to have a copy already, I compared the first track on it also titled Musique, with a copy of it from a single released in 1996. I decided to do this because the trax on this collection lifted from their early releases which I like and own all on cds and/or vinyls sounded considerably worse than I remembered. As you're able to see from the screenshots, my ears and "audio memory" didn't play any tricks on me...

Musique in 1996


Musique in 2006


Screenshots are of the same point in the track, the clipping is so bad it's obvious even in the thumbnail. A real nice going from DP... finally they release some good tracks even if it's only a re-release, but then they have them destroyed by poor (re)mastering. And then the music industry has the audacity to complain that the sales are dropping

The mastering on their Human After All remixes disc is very awful, too. Track 1 has a RG value of about -3, the next track -10. I almost destroyed my speakers

hmm, I think the vast majority of albums mentioned here are absolutely *meant* to sound the way they do. An obvious exception is Californication - surely the band didn't want the kind of clipping we end up with?

Audioslave? yeah meant to be overloud. sad? perhaps.

Oasis - we can blame this all on Oasis, I do remember from back in the day being shocked by how much louder their CDs were than everyone else. I think they sound fine for what they are.

Lenny Kravitz. hmm i only have his greatest hits and i can't say i was ever bothered by the sound, but if people tell me the distortion wasn't their on the orignal albums, then that sucks i guess, but hey at least the fans are getting something *new* for their money

Metallica ...And Justice For All - this is just poor production, not bad mastering. The album has always been noted for having no bass guitar etc.. I can't comment on St. Anger as i don't do new metallica.

Sleater-Kinney, the Woods - I love this album and all its distortion.

The Strokes? surely that distortion is part of their signature sound? people would probably whinge if they released a clean sounding record.

Someone mentioned Pearl Jam Binaural - are you seriously whinging that they decided to record some binaural songs rather than normal stereo?! My ears tell me it's nicely mastered.

Whatever...

Look their best customers are the ones who shun P2P to ensure that they get the best quality. I am one of those. Probably I am mad spending money, but I do not care. However I take no shit. I bought one Audioslave CD. The self-titled one, and I can tell you that that was the last one. The same goes for the Strokes. In fact to save myself disappointment I avoid hearing anything they put out. Not that difficult since I shun the radiostations, whose demise will be my best day of my life. I hate their 10 song long playlist.

Triza

Seconded. I thought there must be something wrong with my setup when listening to it. Awful.

All Black Metal albums

Yes, i was wondering why did't anyone mention it. Especially early BM like Bathory, Mayhem. Yesterday i was listening to Zyklon B - Blood must be shed. Man, awful band, awful music, awul mastering, just a waste of time and material used to print this piece of sh*t.
But poor mastering here is used mostly to hide the lack of abiltity of these 'musicians'.

But newer black-metal (symph-black) like Dimmu Borgir is not so bad (i mean the mastering, the music is still horrible )

U2 - How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb - So very loud, mp3gain minus 12.00 on some tracks