Really? I had no idea not even the same tracks? why would they do that? I knew something was off but I had no clue they were different recordings!

Why can't I know information like this before throwing my money away?

Here is comparison of the wave forms for three songs from the Red Hot Chili Peppers album Stadium Arcadium.

The top waveform is from the mastering performed for the vinyl version. The bottom waveform is a comparison of the same tracks to the CD version.



I am a huge RHCP fan, and am very happy that at least the vinyl version has been mastered properly! If only the same treatment could be provided for Californication and By The Way as well

For more information see the original post by the vinyl mastering engineer Steve Hoffman here.

first thread i read here and it makes me realize how little i understand mastering

since the mastering of the latest chili peppers cds are so bad, i must ask, has anyone checked out the remasters of all their 80s albums they released a couple of years ago?

that could be a whole other thread right there, worst remastered cds...

If you are interested in the 1980s RHCP albums, I recommend finding the original CD versions. The 2003 remastered versions have just been compressed heaps.

Here is the ReplayGain by album for most RHCP albums and compilations. As you can see the 2003 remastered versions of the 1980s albums require a much larger correction factor to get the sound back to 89 dB, which means they are much louder.

The Mars Volta's albums are compressed to hell, but they don't really sound bad. Almost fits the music, although it is overdone.

I did the same thing with Sade's Lovers Live. Lovers Rock (the CD) is so awful I can't imagine the reasoning behind mixing and mastering it the way they did. Audible clipping aplenty (the opening of King of Sorrow especially), and a generally harsh, thuddy sound that would be better suited to rap than Sade.

On the flipside, Lovers Live sounds incredible. It's very clean and natural sounding, and plenty of snap and impact when necessary. I don't care if it's using a lossy compression scheme, it's WORLDS better than the CD. Thank you Dolby Labs for mandating levels and headroom.

Lizz Wright's Dreaming Wide Awake is a disappointment too. It's a jazz/pop CD and it is grossly overcompressed. Stop, the second track, has very noticeable compression on the drum kit and/or the bass. It's a wonderful record, but the questionable mastering definitely mars it.

I myself also made a cd out of the DVD of St. Anger. Much more listenable in my opinion.

I recently found a copy of an original (1984) CD pressing of Sade's first album Diamond Life, the first track Smooth Operator has a peak of just 60%! Surely this counts as bad CD mastering as well, becuase it is using hardly any of the 16 bit resolution of the CD format.



Sadly, the remastered version is probably the opposite extreme...

While that could definitely worsen the S/N ratio, I think it's still easier to deal with than overcompressed/too loud. If you have a decent setup with a low noise floor it should sound OK. There's no accounting for the mix though...

I wonder if older CDs used the same master as an LP. That might explain their insanely low levels.

Hardly any? Actually, it's using somewhere between 14 and 15 bits of resolution of the 16 available, which isn't all that horrible.

-brendan

And besides, maybe there's a peak closer to 100% somewhere else on the album. In the old days it wasn't assumed that every track on an album should peak at the same level.

Title track to Steve Miller 'Fly Like An Eagle', first CD issue, versus the newly released 'anniversary edition' (not the worst by any means, but oh so typical)::



Fly Like an Eagle

Without a doubt Slayer - Christ Illusion. It's possibly the most clipped album ever produced. It is really unlistenably bad and I really like Slayer . There's clipping *everywhere*, every singly drum beat is horribly clipped as are all the heavy passages. Here are two random examples:




check out the RG values on this baby



And they're just random examples! There's about 4,000 instances like that in all the songs on the album :-/. I'm sure I could find one where the whole screen is filled up with clipped samples if I wanted to . I truly hope they release an audiophile's version of this album because I cant listen to this.

This one gave me a shock. Hypocrisy - Warpath (2005). The ReplayGain track gain is -13.41 dB. Album gain is even more insane: -14.09 dB.

What is that? Music, or noise?!?!

I guess they call it metal, deathmetal actually (listen yourself, not that song but some others: http://www.hypocrisy.tv/)
One could think they know what they are doing, one of those guys is producing some well known metal bands: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Tägtgren

Metal is so often mastered like crap it's not funny. I know some friends that can hear the clipping distortion in metal and believe that it's just the musicians performing so loud that it distorts and see that as a desireable thing in music.

So true. That's what really spoils this genre for me. Metal (or generally music with a thick layer of distorted guitars) is really prone to compression-related sound issues while electronic music is far less affected.

I wouldn't necessarily say that about metal, not any more so than any other genre. Obviously anything as popular as Slayer will probably be affected, but there are tons of great metal recordings. Ulver's Bergtatt for instance has this faded and distant sound but on a mastering level is not overcompressed at all and, for what they tried to do, is fantastic. Many others like Arcturus' The Sham Mirrors or Opeth's Still Life are of the loud-but-good variety.

Then there's Darkthrone, but, you know...

A lot of random small band demo tapes are pretty damned bad.

I've heard that the Electric Light Orchestra 2 CD was poorly remastered...anyone have proof of this? I don't actually own it yet, so...

Personally, I think Rage Against the Machine is kind of badly mastered. I noticed it is consistent in every album, so most likely it's just the way they want to sound like, but I kinda don't like how it's set up even though I love Rage Against The Machine. I think their guitars, drums, and bass are too loud compared to the vocals. Sometimes I have a really hard time making out what the lyrics are because everything is louder than the vocals.

Pulse Demon by Merzbow has an album gain value of -18 dB, the loudest CD I know of.

Haha, I thinks someone should point The Register to this thread.

Surprised nobody has mentioned Monster Magnet's Powertrip album

I love the music, I hate the clipping.

Sheryl Crow's self titled CD had poor dynamic range, to my ears. That spoiled the enjoyment of some truly great music to me.

how about the new mastodon record? like i said earlier, i dont really know much about mastering or recognizing bad mastering or whatever, but i think im starting to with that. so many points in the album where it distorts, and actually kinda hurts to listen to. shame since the music is great.

My collection of CDs span from original purchases in 1984 (I have several hundred from that period) to the present day. It's amazing how much "louder" the CDs are today from the ones from 1984-85.

I think at the time the mastering was so important so as not introduce distortion (and returns) of then still relatively rare CDs. Most of the earliest CDs in the USA were made and imported from Japan and Germany and there were difficulties of high-rejection and "waiting in line". CDs had to compete against half-speed mastered records and other high quality analog sources and were mastered so that there weren't problems that would cause still-skeptical audio reviewers to say: "see there! CDs are worse than records". The point of all this is that at the time the music companies cared about ensuring the CDs were problem-free.

Even so, companies discovered how inadequate the production masters were for many CDs - thus the "rematered" term over and over. One great fallout of all of this is that many record companies finally organinzed, properly stored, and used the original precious masters.

As 45's were usually mastered to sound "good" in portable and car radios, I suspect CDs are mastered to sound "good" (loud) when imported into low-powered portable devices.

Just my opinions.

I hope The Breeders - Last Splash gets remastered somewhere in the near future. I recently found this CD again after not listening to it for over ten years.

I had forgotten that it sounded so bad and at first couldn't believe my ears. I actually listened to a friends copy and downloaded one to hear if it wasn't just my copy. It wasn't.

Just got an amazing CD recently. Thing is, the mastering is horrible. The Music's self-titled album is simply impossible to listen to without ReplayGain.

One track, "Float", is particularly bad. ReplayGain's track gain is -13.07. The end of the track literally sounds like noise.



I also bought their second CD "Welcome to the North" but have not listened to it yet (I've only heard mp3 samples); hopefully it's better, seeing as I don't think you can get much worse.

depeche mode playing the angel... the worst mastered cd ever...
there is actually a vinyl flac copy in demonoid dot com...
the torrent has loads of warnings, protests, and texts on loudness war...
i just got one file of it and it really does SOUND MUCH BETTER than the cd

Depeche Mode - Playing The Angel



Quite interesting site - Playing The Angel CD vs Vinyl

My first post on this forum. I found this forum precisely because of this thread!

Let's get to it:

Anthrax, Greater of 2 Evils. The wave isn't as brickwalled as that monstrosity above, but still very loud and sounds terrible.
Rammstein--Reise Reise and I'm sure Rosenrot--just LOUD. Herzeleid is soothing in comparison.
Napalm Death--The Code is Red
Despised Icon--Healing Process
Any death metal, grindcore, extreme metal of the last 10 years

EXCEPT: Necrophagist, Epitaph, mastered by Bob Katz, Digital Domain. Sounds awesome!

Beth Orton's "Comfort of Strangers" CD from 2006. Dry, dead sound that only gets worse with good gear. Her other albums are clearly not recorded on state of the art equipment, but they sound musical. This one does not.

That's not the mastering, that's the way the songs were mixed.

I thought Rage Against the Machine's self-titled is considered a finely mastered CD. Sounds awesome to me, compared to everything since then. 1992 still had a lot of good recordings.

The loudest albums on my computer:

-12.53 - Oasis - Whats The Story (Morning Glory)
-12.19 - The Who - Ultimate Collection (CD2)
-11.96 - System Of A Down - Hypnotize
-11.94 - Oasis - Be Here Now
-11.71 - The Who - Ultimate Collection (CD1)
-11.68 - System Of A Down - Mezmerize
-11.62 - System Of A Down - Steal This Album
-11.50 - Oasis - The Masterplan
-11.41 - Stereophonics - Language Sex Violence Other?
-11.40 - Goo Goo Dolls - Gutterflower

Other stuff up high there is Out Of Exile by Audioslave, More Oasis, Slayer's Reign In Blood, Bon Jovi's Slippery When Wet (The fact it is a remaster comes to mind), The Black Crowes, Flaming Lips' At War With The Mystics, Godsmack, The Killers, Buckethead's Enter The Chicken, etc.

(Stuff from Nirvana - With The Lights Out ranks up there too, but it seems I have that on track gain instead of album gain)

Not sure if anyone posted this, but put this into the album list panel part of preferences to see your loudest or quietest albums.

%__replaygain_album_gain% | %album%

Really close to 0 change on replaygain is 'Layla and other assorted love songs', along with some Grateful Dead and Phish stuff.

I will share my list
10 Most Compressed Albums I Own
1. RHCP – Californication *-12.86db* (very obvious clipping, hard to listen)
2. System of a Down – Mezmerize -11.66db less of their ballads more loud metal
3. White Stripes – White Blood Cells -11.40db going for very grungy sound?
4. Third Eye Blind – Blue -11.23db very compressed pop music from late 90s
5. Audioslave – Out of Exile -11.18db worse than debut album
6. Jay-Z – The Black Album -11.11db
7. Snow Patrol – Eyes Open -11.10db anyone else surprised by this?
8. Killers – Sam’s Town -11.04db
9. 50 Cent – Get Rich or Die Tryin’ -10.92db "i compress like its my birthday"
10. (tie) System of a Down – System of a Down -10.87db
(tie) Killers – Hot Fuss -10.87db

I wanted to add that you must have the remastered version of Oasis - {What's the Story} Morning Glory? because my version is 9.02db above default replaygain volume.

I don't listen to much classical music or have many cds from audiophile labels, but
3 Most Dynamic albums I own
1. Paul Simon - Graceland -0.17db
2. Tracy Chapman - Tracy Chapman -0.42db
3. Jimmy Buffet - Songs You Know by Heart -0.58db

9 'Loudest' Tracks I Own
1. Red Hot Chili Peppers – Californication – Parallel Universe -14.17db WOW
2. Jay-Z – Black Album – PSA -13.37db
3. RHCP – Californication – Get On Top -13.29db
4. Dr Dre – 2001 – Let’s Get High -13.18db
5. RHCP – Californication – Otherside -13.07db
6. " - Purple Stain -13.05db
7. " - Easily -12.91db
8. " - I Like Dirt -12.88db
9. " - This Velvet Glove -12.75db

enjoying Regina Spektor - Begin to Hope now

Hi from Italy and sorry for my bad english.

One of the worst listening albums i have is Aerosmith - Nine Lives (original 1997 version) : It's non so loud as Californication, but it's sounds just like mud out of the loudspeakers ! High frequencies are the worst i ever listen !

I agree with you, I think it is a brilliantly mastered CD, by I beleive Bob Ludwig. I even think Evil Empire (1996) (also mastered by B.L.) is very good, even though it is considerably louder than the self titled album. It is around about as loud as I think a hard rock album needs to be.

Sadly Battle of Los Angeles suffers from bad mastering, including audible clipping, and the cover album Renegades is unlistenable because of hack work by Vlado Meller.

I listen to a lot of electronic music on vinyl, only 12" singles where there`s only one tune on each side and mostly thick vinyl. That, and the fact that this music isn`t mastered by any of the big names makes it incredible when it comes to dynamics. Cd`s of pop music really can`t compare; play them on low volume and they sound VERY boring, play them loud and they sound VERY annoying. Modern pop music is made to sound good on standard car speakers and portable radios. I kinda like the californication tune, it`s catchy, but i never listen to it because i don`t like the sound, i`m glad to see there`s more people who agree on this.

Does anyone have any idea if asian cd's or asian versions are mastered any differently?

Aparently Asians typicly like there music to sound clear and un distorted( in general as a people) where as us brits and americans much perfer loud brash distorted loud loud loud crap.

Watching the gadget show here in the uk on Five they testted a UK tuned denon amp and compaired it with a internation version the british version sounded like ( and you guessed it) like modern cd' masters basicly crap! The international version sounded an aweful lot better.

It seems that it's at least posable that western cd's may be remastered and unbuggered for the asian market.

I always thought those rumors were totally full of crap.

Japanese mastering engineers often like to turn up the high treble a whole lot.

Am afraid that Mastodon's latest album Blood Mountain album is a poorly mastered album. A good example on how it is badly mastered is Crystal Skull (Track 2) that got ruined by annoying clicks.

Badly mastered CD's i own:

System Of Down - Hypnotize
Drowning Pool - Sinner
System Of Down - System Of Down (Mastered by The kombucha mushroom people )
Mastodon - Blood Mountain
Slipknot - Vol. 3: The Subliminal Verses
Fear Factory - Transgression (Alot of clicks and the bonus live tracks were from a lossy audio codec source like mp3 @ 32 kbps)
Queens Of The Stone Age - Songs For The Deaf (Well the album title says all , but dam it is too loud)
Ozzy Osbourne - Blizzard Of Ozz [2002 Remaster] (Has to be the worst and well-known remasters ever)
Nine Inch Nails - Further Down The Spiral (Has some wired screeching noises mustly when there is vocals and some tracks are in mono)
Megadeth - Rust In Peace [2004 Remaster] (Had new recordings like the Blizzard Of Ozz remaster, but the sound is good)

Best mastered CD's i own:

Rage Against The Machine - Rage Against The Machine
Metallica - Metallica (It is a shame that Metallica went over-the-top with this album)
Metallica - ...And Justice For All (Sounds great with a good pair of headphones, it is a shame that you can not hear Jason Newsted playing)
Nine Inch Nails - Pretty Hate Machine (Sounds great with a pair good of headphones)
Nine Inch Nails - The Fragile

What annoys me most is the supposed remastering of classics and compressing the hell out of the dynamics. A while back when converting my cd's to flac i noticed a couple of track were damaged on my 1991 released "the very best of the eagles" which i was annoyed with but the cd was mistreated back in the days when the popular belief was cd's were almost indestructable and so it was left lying around most of the time ready for quick play, anyway i digress hehe

So I decided to buy the 2003 "the complete greatest hits" eagles cd thinking it might even sound better, how wrong i was. To show exactly why i have included the wave forms loaded into audicity (nothing altered, exact same scales etc) shows the problem with modern mastering.

Top image 1991 release, bottom 2003 release

I've heard at this but accidentally I bought the album "No More Tears" with Bonus Tracks and It sound very bad too. The Ozzy Osbourne "Remasters" are the worse RE-masterings that I've seen.
Bad Masterings That I Own:
U2 - How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb (2004) (4º)
Angra - Temple Of Shadows (2004) (3º)
Deep Purple - Purpendicular (1996) (5º)
AC-DC - Stiff Uper Lip (2000) (2º)
Ozzy Osbourne - No More Tears (1991) (1º: The Worse)

Less Than Jake - Borders and Boundaries

SKA is already loud thanks to piercing trumpets, but with an AG of -7.3 dB I think it's the most ruined in my collection. Too bad the songs are so good.

I think recalls should be issued for things like this.

I'm going for The White Stripes - Elephant
Almost all In Flames