Whats is the worst mastered CD [your opinions] ??

I've noticed there has been a few post where people have complained about how bad some cd's are, so I've only posted this to find out the general opinion in the forums.
I am just curious thats all

Dok Lorenz

That's a tough one. But I'm going to base my answer partly on 'expectation' of the company producing the album.

Tierney Sutton : Dancing in The Dark

Not considering the annoying standard compresison on the vocals....this CD has many audible distortions(on headphones) on the peak passages of the piano/voice found in several songs. Inspection of the waveform after hearing these annoying static/fuzzy sounds revealed many clipped peaks. It's not like I have not seen/heard worse examples, but......

The real reason this poorly matered CD bothers me is that it is a Telarc release. I suppose I expect to never find such examples of distortion on a CD released by a company that specifically markets itself as a sound quality oriented one:

http://www.telarc.com/about/history.asp?ms...KPXGXUFJ81M2MPE

Here is a zip file(552kb) with a couple of samples(44.1/16 wave):

http://www.linaeum.com/downloads/misc/tsut...t10_samples.zip

-Chris

EDIT: Added samples.

I know there's a thread on the forums already dedicated to "slovenly" mastering.

Red Hot Chili Peppers - Californication is always on the top of many peoples lists.

I was really disappointed with how "Full Moon" from Brandy was mastered. I love her voice and i like several songs off that album, but this CD just sounds like a wall of noise, only interrupted for the song change every few minutes. It's not the worst mastering ever, but since i'd just love to hear it in better quality, it's the one i'm most annoyed with.

Deep Purple - Deepest Purple (Best Of)


They tried to remaster the tunes, and they sound so thin and crappy. My vinyls sounded better.

Tie:

Audioslave - Audioslave
Rush - Vapor Trails

Opeth - My Arms, Your Hearse
Opeth - Morningrise


These two Opeth albums are really good, but they could have sounded much better, and then (from what I've read) they really got screwed over during the recording the mastering (the producer kept turning down the acoustic guitars, which was against the band's wishes)

Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon (The newest release.. the Hybrid SACD one)

The CD layer on this one really ruined this album..

[Edit added one album]

Foo Fighters - One By One
John Mayer - Heavier Things

I don't know about the Audioslave (I havent listened to it) but Vapor Trials was easily the worst mastered album of 2002. Their albums have always tended to be poorly mastered but Vapor Trails was a new low.

Of all my albums, it's a three-way tie for horridness:

Rush - Vapor Trails (2002)
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - The Last DJ (2002)
Audioslave- Audioslave (2002)

2002 is really the last year that I was buying new CD's in any quantity until the past few months, when I acquired a SACD/DVD-A player. The only reason why I opened up the door for these questionable "hi-res" formats is for the better mastering (and to a lesser extent, multichannel capability), not the increased sampling rates. So far, the handful of SACD/DVD-A's I've bought really do sound great, but it's probably just a matter of time before somebody boinks the hell out of them, too.

It's sad how the industry suckered me into investing in the new format(s). They purposely screwed up a perfectly good product (CD) as to get people who actually care about sound quality to buy the latest thing. Luckily, there's still a ton of older releases on CD that haven't been butchered (yet), so I doubt my SACD/DVD-A collection will ever get very big.

Rush - Vapor Trails
RHCP - Californication
Audioslave - Audioslave

these are the 3 loudest/worst sounding cd's i have.

Their 2004 EP, Feedback is perhaps a hair bit better, but I'd say that it sounds pretty similar in terms of production/mastering to Vapor Trails. So, the trend continues

Nevermore - Enemies of Reality

It's a shame that such a great band would put out a cd that sounds so horrible compared to all previous releases. This album has the worst mastering of anything I have personally listened to. It even makes Animositisomina look good. Stick with their earlier (brilliant) work if you can.

Agreed, Audioslave is awful.

Probably the worst track I've heard in a while was Eminem's Lose Yourself. I think in the studio that snare drum was intentionally squashed just to the breaking point (why they didn't just use an authentic 303 eludes me), but after mastering it's all just painful. I think this may have been intentional--the white noise effect of the 'music' makes his voice sound more hypnotic. Replaygain_track_gain of -9.93 dB.

While Peter Gabriel's initial analog to CD transfers sounded amateurish at best, his recent remasterings have been excellent, as have his digital albums. The remastered Passion soundtrack clocks in at +0.87.

Hmm. Assuming the Rhapsody online version is the same as the CD version; I definately see why several people seem to think this album is a bit 'loud'. The track 'Show Me How To Live' reminded me of Soundgarden's 'Outshined' track from the album 'Badmotorfinger'. The voice and guitars are pretty similar - but the Soundgarden track did not seem to compress the voice or most of the instruments nearly as much as this AudioSlave track -- which BTW, this Audioslave track sounded to me like about the amount of cmopression used for TV commercials. IMO, it was horrid.

I remember when I was a kid and first heard a CD vs. the radio version of a song -- I remember myself wondering why the CD sounded so much better(besides the static, etc.). Later, I found out that radio broadcasts are typically heavily compressed. It's kind of hard to believe that today most of the CDs sound like the 'radio' version which I hated due to this hyper-compression. It's just unbelievable......



-Chris

EDIT: Added statisical analysis.

Red Hot Chili Peppers - Californication would have to be the worst mastered CD as far as volume goes for me. It clips like crazy and is way too loud.

Audioslave - Audioslave is up there with Red Hot Chili Peppers since it is distorted a lot.

Lamb of God - As the Palaces Burn was compressed as well, however, the compression was not all that bad and was not what bothered me about the album. The album just seemed flat to me. No real dynamics in the audio that gave the music life. I'm not talking about difference in volume I just mean the drums didn't stand out amongst the guiters, etc. The mixers could have done a bit better job with the equalizer on that album in my opinion. Now on their latest album, "Ashes of the Wake", the mixers did a much better job with the equalizer

What about Iron Maiden's "Dance Of Death"? I don't know how bad it is compared to the other albums mentioned here, but I still think it is bad. What do you folks think?

@Cygnus XI-- Feedback is louder than Vapor Trails, but I think the mastering was done a bit better and does "clip" as harshly.

@rohangc-- Dance of Death is horrible, but imo, Maiden has never had the world's best production/mastering. Kevin Shirley did do a decent job on Brave New World though.

Uncle Kracker - No Stranger to Shame: This one is the worst I've heard yet. I like the music, but the clipping is so bad that I just can't enjoy listening to it. In fact, it just makes me angry to think about how good it could've been.

Heart - Jupiter's Darling: This one sounds almost just as bad. Serious clipping. I can't listen to it either.

Well, I have a huge collection of local music that was recorded, mixed and mastered by non-professionals. =D Good music, but a lot of it sounds like junk. Probably the one local album that should have sounded good was 12 Rods - Lost Time. It is a loud album, but more offensive is the horrible EQing, presumably to eek out every last decibel. It's all mids, very little bass or highs. Sample.

And people actually pay huge money to record at their studio!

As for professional albums... Queens of the Stone Age, Songs for the Deaf. Worst album in my personal collection.

Has anybody listened to ***hole by Gene Simmons yet? It's really loud, -12 dB replaygain for the album and -14 dB on the title track. It's not that bad really, exept that they made it as loud as they possibly could. Quieter songs with piano on them sound strange and there's highly audible clipping everywhere.
I could try to provide samples if anybody is interested, but I'm on a 56k connection at the moment so lossless would be difficult...

I might have ears of tin now, thanks to all of that heavy metal in the 80s, but I didn't think Feedback was nearly as bad as Vapor Trails. I've only listened to it once or twice though and there was background noise.

I just don't get it with Rush...they must know that no one is pleased with the mastering on their albums and yet nothing changes.

Another vote for RHCP - Californication. The bad compression and clipping everywhere is really unacceptable.

I have to agree on The Deep Purple. Black Knight has a 'farty' clipping sound on one channel. I don't know what they were thinking when they remastered this.

Also, I agree with the guy who posted about the two Opeth albums - they sound bad compared to "Blackwater Park" . I wouldn't say it is the worst mastering I've ever heard, though - far from it.

Some other disappointments for me:

Nick Cave & Bad Seeds - Henry's Dream (Vinyl)
Cynic - Focus (CD)
All 'Cradle of filfth' albums (CD)
McCoy Tyner - New York Reunion (SACD)

Note, I'm NOT criticising the music here - I was just disappointed with the sound.

Actually, Just listening To "New York Reunion" again, its only the SACD layer that seems to have a problem - random super-low frequency (like several Hz) fluffing about on one channel of track 3. The CD layer sounds fine (actually it sounds great). So I guess it is not really a mastering problem, but perhaps a problem with the SACD encoding or my SACD player, So I would like to retract that one from the list. Thanks

I can't believe nobody mentioned St. Anger by Metallica yet. The drums sound like garbage cans, the guitars sound completely over-processed and very muddy, and all dynamic range is squashed. It's by far my worst-sounding CD.

Two other CDs from my collection come to mind:
Foo Fighters - One By One: the distorted bass drum sound is just awful.
Slipknot - Vol. 3: The Subliminal Verses: waaay too loud, lots of clipping.

I'm listened that crap and sounds horrible, lot of clip.
The 3 worst that I listened
1) Metallica - St. Anger
2) RHCP - Californication
3) Rush - Vapor Trails

I haven't buy a CD since 1998, but at job (I'm radio DJ) I listen a lot of CD everyday and all of then are poorly mastered, for me is a pain in the ears have to listen rock/pop in the last years.

Hahaha... you guys must be joking... or do you all know just those few albums and do you parroting one after another just to look being in?! You seem to know everything about nothing.
Just my 2 cents.

St. What? Metalli-who? Seriously, though, I don't know many old-time Metallica fans who actually bought that album (or anything after Load, for that matter), so that's probbaly why nobody is mentioning it. Or maybe people just want to forget about it? Metallica has bigger problems beyond crappy mastering, and despite the fact that I bought my first Metallica record in 1988, I don't plan on making St. Anger (or any other post-Black album) a part of my collection.

And actually, their history of bad mastering goes back much further than St. Anger......And Justice For All sounds quite bad, but for very different reasons.

St. Anger is bad...but not that bad.

forgot to mention another cd

System of A Down by System of A Down is also VERY loud/Badly Mastered

Erm... what's your point?

I did buy those three CDs I mentioned, and I did think they sound horrible before I read about them on HA. I don't know what you're insinuating...

I suggest getting the release that includes the DVD where they play the album live in the practice room, and making yourself an audio CD of that. Lars plays a much less awkwardly-tuned drumset and it's an overall better sound.

Yes, I know. I almost always play the ripped audio from the DVD instead of the original audio CD. But since the OP asked for badly mastered CDs, I had to mention this one.

Hi, for me this is the worst mastered album:

LENNY KRAVITZ - Greatest Hits

Dynamic range is extremely low, and the sound is very distorted.

I must admit I hate what they've done to black night on my Deep Purple - In Rock [1995 Anniversay Edition] it just sounds muffled, so I prefer to listen to the Vinyl my dad has instead. I'm not one of these vinyl is better than CD crowd but if they dont make the CD version any good i'll gladly listen to the vinyl version instead.

Dok Lorenz

I can't say as i've not brought the album yet, but since I have all the early albums I wanted upto Fear Of The Dark [exc. live ones] I'm happy with what i got since i more of the old stuff they did.

Dok Lorenz

Blame Atlantic....




After my first listen of St. Anger, threw the dvd and and was amazed at how much better this sounded. Made a nice little audio cd out it, and that's all I've ever listened too.

There was a parody of St. Anger going around on the 'net for a while. The funniest part of it was the picture that went along with it showing a metal folding chair miced up and used for the "snare drum" sound. =D

I only heard one track from that one, the new song "Again", and the distortion is awful. If you're saying they did that to all of the tracks, that CD would get my vote as well.

The worst one I own is "Honkin' on Bobo" by Aerosmith. I was realy happy to see it on the shelves because I think it is a good idea, but it is so loud and poorly mixed that I can't listen to it. There is no texture to the music at all. It just sounds like a wall of noise.

Anybody want it?

I have to agree in regards to Nevermore-Enemies of Reality. The album sounds like it was encoded with old school Xing mp3 and copied back to cd, i couldn't believe how bad it sounded when i heard it.

Metallica-And justice for all was an album that could've been done better, the bass is completely clobbered in that album, of course from what i hear its because the bassists wasn't present during post-production.

How about most old school black metal, Immortal coming to mind for there first 3 or 4 albums.

Flotsam and Jetsam - No place for disgruise, could use some work.

Emperor - Into the nigthside eclipse, such a shame, its so good

Covenant of Norway - In times before light, atleast until they re-released it

the list goes on....

I would like to add 2 albums to this horror show:

The Strokes - "Room on Fire": clipping, compressed to death => unlistenable
Oasis - "(What's the Story) Morning Glory": an early example (1995) of how to ruin music; very tiring "wall of sound"-sound .

I think there's a qualitative difference between the two albums. Vapor Trails sounds like a mistake--there's audible clipping and the 'dynamics' don't bear much relationship to the music. Feedback, however, is just intentionally loud--the dynamics have all been squashed, but there's little clipping and the loudness bears a relationship to the music.

Feedback is still particularly fatiguing to listen to, but at least it sounds intentional.

It could be been done better but on my current system I find it quite listenable (I love the album as a whole). It was hard work to listen to on my older (cheaper) system.



There was a documentary on the making of Definitely Maybe in the UK a few weeks ago. The producer was interviewed and claimed he was one of the first to completely ruin the dynamics of a CD and push everything into the red and seemed to be proud of that fact.

I didn’t realise until I bought the original 1993 Album Are You Gonna Go My way at the weekend and compared the title track. On the Greatest Hits the guitar doesn’t sound the same; the notes are a blurred mush. I have now ordered all his early CDs and may make my own version of Lenny’s Greatest Hits using these.

I thought Morcheeba Parts of the Process sounded flat and compressed. Probably OK in a noisy bar.

I also noticed they even try to Remaster full digital recordings from the 80s and 90s. MJ Bad and Madonna Like a Virgin were 16bit Digital recordings. I can’t see them squeezing anything more out of these tapes. I guess they just put them through a compressor and or turn the treble up.

Another DDD CD is Original Dire Straits Brothers in Arms. I prefer this to the Remastered as it has more life even if its slightly too bright (I sometimes turn the treble down 1 click on this CD). The remastered 1996 CD sounds like a noise reduced analogue tape. Am I the only one who prefers the original?

holy resurrected thread, batman!



...that is a pretty cool idea, tho, to make your own master of a best-of album using original releases (although, that could be pricey $$$ )


later

Is there anyone who has a copy of Jack Johnson -In Between Dreams? I haven't checked the RG value for this album, but it has to be the LOUDEST album I've ever listened to?...If anyone has it, could you post the value, thanks

I was gonna say the same... such a shame cause the songs are amazing... but the clipping is so bad I returned the album!!! no joking

Cool! What did you say? And how did they respond?

Interpol - Antics

Some tracks have -12dB w/ replaygain and just sound awful compared to hearing them live.

-Joe