seconded. i purchased the CD so i have no problems attaining this while still being able to sleep at night this is SO much better to listen to, thanks!

This one really surprised me:

John Lennon & Yoko Ono Double Fantasy
Originally Mastered by George Marino
All titles remastered by George Marino, Summer 2000

It's not overly peak-limited and compressed like more modern recordings, but the some of the tracks are totally clipped. For example, "I'm Losing You" has so much clipping, it's unlistenable:



I don't understand how a professional mastering engineer can be this sloppy.

A little OT- but bad ripping software can cause clipping

I ripped my entire collection with WMP (I figured lossless is lossless so no need for EAC) Most were OK, but a few of my CDs had HORRENDOUS clipping (to the point of hearing skips and squeaks instead of words- extreme clipping showed on wave editors for the unlistenable parts),but Google searches did not show any complaints about those albums. I saw a smudge on the "worst" CD, cleaned it with eyeglasses cleaner, listened, and it was fine. I re-ripped it (with itunes-not EAC but it does have some error checking) and it was fine. I guess I am not the expert I thought I was. Now I'll have to get EAC and re-rip everything again.

I feel like an idiot now.

I've always found it totally mind boggling. It's not like clipping is hard to detect, or that it's only audible to "golden-eared" audiophiles with super expensive equipment. I've never been able to understand how an engineer with pride in his work could be happy with such a defective product.

Maybe I could understand them overdriving metal or punk like that, but I've heard clipping on all kinds of music, even mellow pop these days. For example Tragedy Rocks by The Crimea (indie pop similar to Belle and Sebastian), has an albumgain of -9.56 and pretty heavy clipping (much more than I'd expect considering the loudness). Why would a mastering engineer choose to do that with music that isn't intended to be loud and abrasive?

I wonder how often it's a case of the mastering engineer making that choice, and how often it's totally out of their hands?

Recently I've been a bit obsessed with early 80s post-punk and new-wave bands and I've bought quite a few albums, including recent remasters. The loudness is very inconsistent, ranging from very quiet albums that could have been mastered in the 80s, to some of the most compressed and distorted albums I own.

One thing I found interesting is that the recent albums I bought from certain indie labels didn't suffer from clipping or excessive compression. Here are some albumgain values from CDs I've ripped to my PC:

Cherry Red Records:
Artery - Into the Garden (2006) -4.35db
Glaxo Babies - Dreams Interrupted (2006) -6.14db
Pillows and Prayers (label sampler) (2000) -3.13db

LTM Records:
Ludus - The Damage (2002) -2.49db
The Night Watch (label sampler) (2001) -3.79db
Section 25 - Illuminus Illumina (2001) -3.07db

The mastering credits are different for these CDs, they aren't mastered by a single in-house engineer. The question is why they are all less compressed than the average major label CD released at the same time?

I remember reading an interview with Scott Davies, about the release of the Artery compilation Into the Garden that he mastered. I seem to remember him commenting on the lack of label interference; they just sent him the masters, let him get on with it, and that's what ended up on the CD. Maybe that's the case with all the releases on certain indie labels, and if the engineer is left to do their job they'll typically master the albums with decent dynamics and no clipping.

In comparison, I've heard stories about major labels heavily tweaking releases after the mastering engineer has done his job, or insisting that he makes it as loud as possible. Based on what I know about the music industry, I'm certainly more inclined to blame the record labels for thinking that louder=better and not caring about defects like clipping, rather than blaming incompetent mastering engineers...

I don't think the ripping software per-se caused clipping. Instead, the codec used to encode the ripped wav introduced clipping. Check out mp3gain.

Yeah, I'm sure in most cases the extreme clipression is because of the labels, although I've heard stories about clueless bands specifically asking for a CD louder than x album.

I do agree.The bass in Heavier Things is really .....maybe should I call it noise?
Anyhow,the rhythm is still good...what a pity...

A recent really bad mastered album is Amy Winehouse's Back to Black. It's terrible, but it's great music though ...

Bad ripping cannot cause clipping, however bad encoding or normalisation processes can (which may or may not be integrated into the ripping program). A decent normaliser will have the option to dynamically compress the waveform if it clips which is always preferred to saturation, that is if you absolutely have to normalise. I use EAC to rip and automatically encode to FLAC and then I use foobar2000 to Replay Gain scan as an album (I don't think it's possible to scan album gain automatically when encoding tracks with EAC).

Back to Black does sound shockingly bad but I can't actually work out why. It's riddled with clipping but on inspection of the wave form it isn't digital clipping from the mastering process. I wonder if they used a rather harsh analogue distortion filter for the whole album as some kind of effect.

Edit:
I just read over at Steve Hoffman forums that Back to Black has been released in a well mastered form! http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=132410

However, I have listened and although there is less digital clipping there is still that distortion all over the album which I find sounds bad. But still, at least you can listen to this album at the same volume level as your other CDs now.

Eat To The Beat "Remastered" has to be one of the worst:
Hardest Part for example was -12dB replay gain!

see: Loudness Wars: Satan Is My Sound Engineer
http://www.giantpygmy.net/sections/pause/a...neer_large.html

and for comparison between remaster and pre-remastering:
http://www.giantpygmy.net/sections/pause/a...pare_large.html

"A visual guide to ruining back catalogues through "remastering" (read compressing the crap out of already well produced music to make it sound louder than the competition - an insane race to the top (in terms of dB) at the expense of the artists' creations)."

It's sad --- I'd like to see a trading/exchange with 2nd hand CD's buy, rip, sell on and only dealing in original mixes - no remasters.

There seems a common theme from the stuff I've heard - it's as though they think to themselves - if I can make the highhat as loud as possible then I've brough some digital clarity to the mix (cos, I know the Ramones were really big on the highhat ). It sounds horrible.

Leave Home Remastered & Expanded by The Ramones is another atrocity.


C.

Word

I have never herd anything so distorted, I'm not really an audiophile but too me it is just obviouse, I have herd albums that are even louder than that but they don't contain distortion like that, so I can't work out what went wrong there, or how nobody noticed there mistake.

The Klaxons - Myths on the Near Future, however that does respond well to being clipped, reduced and attacked! So do the Coldplay Albums


They should just show them that Youtube video, I think its the best easiest to understand explanation I have ever seen.


It is possible to tag albums on Amazon as "Victim of the Loudness war" I think more people should use it.

Okay, worst mastered cd ever is Clubland X-treme Hardcore 4. 2 out of the 3 CD's are horribly distorted, the other is fine..

Here's a sample of CD1.

I contacted the (much respected by me) producer/DJ who mixed CD 1 and asked how he could do this to his music, this is his response:

Here's a cool site, don't mind the Finnish as there's plenty of data and images.

http://kotisivu.dnainternet.net/anukaa/Lou...udness_War.html

http://loudnesswar.tiira.net/

Any chance that we could do a list of what is and isn't available at a hogher quality on Vinyl, ie I hear some records, the Vinyl is just as compressed as the CD like Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not, and others the Vinyl sounds much better like Californication. It could go in the Wiki.

I have to say that now that I have disconnected my Alto HPA6 headphone amplifier which the line outs from my Echo Layla3G went to. It then went to my SM Pro Audio M-Patch 2 which I have also disconnected. I use RCA cables (Canare L-2T2S cable, with TS adapters from the soundcard) straight to my Tapco S8 monitors and now I get crystal clear sound which I have missed for quite some time. All the records that before sounded dull and missed high frequencies are now the absolutely best sounding music I have. All the rest music I have now sound like they've put an 6dB high shelf EQ on it.

I guess that now when the sound is so much better the Pixies' Doolittle will be too bright and harsh. Wait, no, but the vocals in the beginning of Hey sounds a little sharp. Now, all music needs a de-esser.

Have a nice Christmas and a hopefully not too drunk New Years Eve.

We should do a poll and give out awards to the best and worst masterd CD's of 2007, we could have a thread for nomination, then anther for the poll, then I will print out some sarcastic looking certificate and post it to the record company!

Red Hot Chili Peppers - Californication

Welcome to HA!


Did you read the rest of the thread?

I'd have to agree with some of the earlier posts
Metallica - St. Anger is probably the worst mastered CD i've come accross though Slipknot - The Subliminal Verses gives it a good run for its money!

For me it has to be Madonna's "Confessions On A Dance Floor".

The processing is truly dreadful, the worst I have ever heard. Some of the songs have so much compression they sound like wishy-washy MP3s. I took the album straight back to the store and got a full refund.

Having watched Muse on 'Later' a few months back I rushed out (or rather, rushed to Amazon.co.uk) to buy a copy of 'Black Holes ....', pretty much knowing what to expect (the first mainstream release I've bought in over a year - the last was QOTSA's "Lullabys To Paralyze")..



Zoom, amplitiude scale at +6dB for clarity;


Yes. it sounds dreadful.

Surprsingly, album-gain is 'only' -10.15 (this track is -10.42), and given the massive amount of clipping that occurs throughout (at 0dB), it would appear that the album was probably well recorded and mastered but has simply been 'normalized' to a +ve value, somewhere around +6dB, immediately prior to glass-mastering to achieve the desired "loudness".


This isn't "mastering", it's an insult, and of course it's by no means unusual.

(edit >> BTW, the track is "Map of the Problematique", but they're all pretty much the same.)

That hurts my ears just by looking at it.

Where is this 'unmastered' mp3 version of Californication available from? Amazon or some other website or the more darker corners of the internet?

My vote would be Rhino's reissues of "Chicago 16" and "Chicago 17." My main complaint with these two reissues is not the sound quality, per se. My main complaint is that whoever was in charge of reissuing these CD's used the "radio edits" of a couple of songs instead of the original album version.

"The Best of Foghat" does the same thing. It has a 3:56 version of "Slow Ride" (less than half of the song's 8:14 length) with a fade-out/trail-off ending. They took the band's best-known song, a song known and loved for its powerful ending, chopped off the last half, and faded out what was left. Whoever put that song's title on the album's label should be in prison for fraud.

I think we have a winner:
Muse Black Holes and Revelations
?

I even notice excessive clipping when the video of "Starlight" is played on MTV.

On the other hand, the song is one of the most listened to tracks, according to last.fm. This shows that the "general public" doesn't care. Time to create some awareness!!

No, most people are unable to say exactly what is bugging them, so they take it as a placebo probably.

I don't think so. Ask a random person about the latest Muse album and they will say it sounds very good (loud and in your face). Nothing is bugging them. Been there, done that.

Depressing, isn't it?

Yeah. I've given up. Others seem more worried about me than my so called loudnesswar.

I think you hit the nail right on the head there thanks for that!

Although someone else reckons most people think it sound good, I cant speak for most people, but before I had herd of the loudness war I was wondering what was going on with the drums in modern music, and I would listen a lot more to stuff that I now know to have more dynamic range and often skipping tracks that didn't even though I like them automatically without thinking about it!

Even though someone else reckons most people thinks it sound good, this is probably because they have never herd it any better, so a good example is to play them an example of what I think Smells Like Teen Spirit would sound like if released today!

Anyone heard the new mars volta album "the bedlam in goliath"? The productin is awful and sound waaaay too much compressed. The sound also seem to lack high and bass. It's really irritating after a couple of songs.

I own plenty albums from Black Metal bands in-which the mastering sounds very raw and under produced, but then again that's how they wanted it to sound. The worst I own is easily Platters of Splatter by Exhumed. I don't even think they did any remastering on the album since it's just a compilation really of their early work from demos. Every song (around 50 or so) sounds like a tape demo does.

I'm pretty new to all this terminology, so could someone please explain exactly what is meant by 'clipping'?

As for really loud albums, anyone heard Illinois by Sufjan Stevens? I always have to turn my volume way down when listening to that album.

Digital music files are a representation of the audio waves which make up music.

There are only a finite amount of levels that can be represented by a given file. Clipping occurs when a part of the file is so loud that it has exceeded these levels and therefore has been clipped. When this does happen, part of the wave is flattened out and some of the audio data is lost.

You can visibly see where this has occurred for example in the picture of the Muse track a few posts up.
In terms of audio, it gives an unpleasant crackling static noise which makes tracks 'tiring' to listen to.

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipping_(audio)

ok, thanks a lot for clearing that up. I did notice the flattening on the Muse track.

I have noticed the crackling static noise but I didn't realise that was the cause of it, or that it was purposeful. Saddening really.

If you think that BHaR is depressing, take a listen to the leaked HAARP. Unless whoever ripped it did something intentionally stupid, then expect a lot worse.

I think more of you people should be active in reviewing stuff on Ciao, Amazon and iTunes!

What about the good, Franz Ferdinand's first album?

Surley HAARP isn't worse than BHAR, (big muse fan here) the first Muse live album had very little compresion on the CD, and the last DVD wasn't too bad, hopefully the DVD wont be too bad and I'll rip the audio off that.

The CD and the DVD each cover a different night. Oh well. I was there on saturday and the sound in the Stadium was shocking so the CD might bring back memories

I bought Oasis Definitely Maybe, the Dualdisc version (made in 2004), quite a while go. That was before I learnt abut the loudness war and what remastering really meant!

I saw this CD being mentioned a couple of times in recent posts and mentions the dynamic range has been compressed. For those who have the original 1994 CD, does it looks as compressed as this?

http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j228/lan...isrocknroll.jpg

It's the first track off the album and if the original 1994 isn't as bad as this, I might consider buying the original CD instead.

That's not compressed!
THIS:
http://img296.imageshack.us/my.php?image=s...rchanddenm7.png
is compressed!

It's occupying the whole screen!
So how exactly do you tell compressed? I thought it occurs when the volume of the track stays constant throughout the song?

Your sample is compressed, I was tongue-in-cheek.

Whats Oasis Vinyl like?

Someone mentioned raising awareness about the loudness war.

I'm hoping to do my part with this:



An audio processor for consumers - realtime equalizes volume levels and remasters spectral balance (through careful multiband compression) but also just happens to include an accurate oscilloscope to show people the squarewaves in what they're listening to

More info at this thread: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=62225

It's a long shot, but I'm hoping it'll at least help move us in the right direction a little bit.

///Leif

I have a question. Usually if a the CD is reissued, would it be a casualty of the loudness war?

For example, the stone roses
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Stone-Roses/dp/B00009YNGI
It says this CD was made in 2004 but the original was released in 1989. There doesn't seem to be any mention of remaster or anything so would it be safe to buy the newer pressing?

I would advice that you listen to the re-issue first and check for any clipping and/or over-compression.

By the way, the new R.E.M. album is also mastered pretty loud (too loud actually). Album gain -10.91 dB. There is a discussion about it on Murmurs.com, interesting to read people's opinions.

In general, people who don't know about the loudness war do not seem to care. It's loud so it is good right?

What program do I need to get an output like this: http://www.linaeum.com/images/audioslave.gif ?

So even though it isn't officially re-released or remastered (unlike recently re-released U2 Joshua Tree), there is still a chance of them modifying the original record to create compression and clipping?

Getting a bit difficult to buy CDs these days!