Album gain -10.83dB

"Broken Box" (track 12) track gain, wait for it ........... -12.21dB!!

Got 2 tracks into it (headphones) and gave up.

And that's it - no more new-release "popular music" CD's for me, *ever*. Universal et al can KMA.

R.

edit - and BTW, having paid less than £7GB at a clear-out, I stll feel like I've been fleeced.

Headphones can be very unforgiving with cd's like that.

This is thru HD580's, about as forgiving a set of cans as ever was. I'm not even going to bother trying the disc on my in-room system.

R.

Yeah. I would love to listen to QOTSA. I bought their well the red album. I like what they do, but as you see I do not even remember the title of the album because I do not listen to it. Precisely due to low quality. I am trying to get into jazz and classical and the whole rock scene can **** themselves. Same goes for rock concerts. Last time I was in T-in-the-Park (many years ago). It was so atrocious, that I made a pledge that never again. Funny thing is we are fed rubbish, but the general public seems to be deaf to this fact.

Triza

It's almost beyond belief that's it come to this - that so much music that we know we want to hear is effectively denied to us by the bastard "music industry" and it's philistinism.

I could just about put up with the levels of compression/clipping on "Songs For The Deaf", it was actually quite 'skillfully' applied, but this latest is just beyond the pale.

Snow Patrol's Final Straw was ruined for me by its mastering. I wasted $20CDN on it.

This is why I download. The worst I'm out is 300MB of monthly bandwidth. Plus, if the CD turns out to be really great, I'll pick it up. I've several CDs that I've never opened, instead listening to my downloaded copies.

If you'd like to hear what a really great pop-mastering job sounds like, check out BT's Emotional Technology album. IIRC it album gains at around -11dB, but it's never distorted by the loudness. There are even points where I was shocked by the dynamics BT pulls out of so little head room. Be warned, though, it's unabashedly both pop and electronic.

"Songs For The Deaf" How ironic. It is a shame because they are very talented.

I have a good laugh these days on folks who ammounce that I have a budget for 300 dollar sound card and 3000 dollar speakers. What is the point. I think the optimum point is way below that.

It is killing me knowing that there is some good stuff out there, but you can only imagine how good it could be. It seems I have to resort to sex and food to get a kick these days. No wonder my now ex-girlfriend had a pretty good leverage on me. I had to behave :-)

Triza

Is everyone here sure that it's their ears telling them the music sounds bad, and not just the replay gain levels? Modern studio compressors can go stupidly high before damaging audible sound quality (the Waves L3 Multi Band is a good example).

I know it can damage tracks - I have many examples of this, but if used correctly you can make a track very loud and still sound good.

Haha, I only trust my ears. Snow Patrol's album is that bad. And BT's album is that good, despite the huge dynamics compression (although knowing BT, I'm led to believe that he'd have done manual dynamics compression, rather than leaving something that important to machines).

I always use my ears to make a judgement, never the replaygain values. I've heard some stuff with insanely high replaygain values that still sounds good, and also stuff with more "normal" replaygain values that sounds very crappy.

And I agree that "Lullabies" sounds absolutely awful. What a shame, the songs are so good...

how about that:
Oasis - [Don't Believe The Truth #09] Keep The Dream Alive [5:45]
replaygain_track_gain = -12.08 dB
replaygain_album_gain = -11.55 dB

that even tops QOTSA

click

it sounds like terror. it's burning in your ears, even at very low level.
the songs are so good

haha that's nothing... my records

The Losers

highest track peaks:

3.236415 : Sun Kil Moon - [2005 - Tiny Cities #04] Space Travel Is Boring
2.253706 : Isan - [2004 - Meet Next Life #05] The Race To Be First Home
1.806860 : Deerhoof - [2003 - Apple O' #12] Adam+Eve Connection


worst track replaygains:

-16.16 dB : A Place To Bury Strangers - [2005 - A Place To Bury Strangers #03] Don't Think Lover
-14.92 dB : The Hara-Kee-Rees - [2003 - Explode! #10] Certain Words
-14.53 dB : Tuxedomoon - [2000 - No Tears - What use - Remixes & Originals #04] What Use (Heinrich Mueller Technik Mix)


worst album replaygain (bootlegs excluded):

-15.01 dB : A Place To Bury Strangers - [2005 - A Place To Bury Strangers]
-13.19 dB : The Hara-Kee-Rees - [2003 - Explode!] (<- they're dead serious with that)
-12.87 dB : Sleater-Kinney - [2005 - The Woods] (actually leads my subjective hitlist as the worst sounding album ever)


The Winners

lowest track peaks (only real songs, no silent tracks or very short songs):

0.072451 : Art Zoyd - [1992 - Marathonnerre #10] 2. Zwischenspiel
0.112082 : King Crimson - [1970 - In the Wake of Poseidon #01] Peace - A Beginning
0.155853 : PJ Harvey - [2004 - Uh Huh Her #11] The End
(Haha, an intermezzo, an intro and an outro... most low peak tracks fall into to this category. Many of them are ambient tracks, too.)


highest track replaygains (live recordings excluded):

+9.81 dB : Brian Eno & Jah Wobble - [1995 - Spinner #07] Space Diary
+9.80 dB : The Legendary Pink Dots - [1995 - Chemical Playschool 8 #10] Andromeda Suite
+9.33 dB : Gentle Giant - [1973 - In A Glass House #05] A Reunion


highest album replaygains (live recordings excluded):

+5.35 dB : The Orb - [1992 - U.F.Orb]
+3.82 dB : Shadowfax - [1983 - Shadowdance]
+3.75 dB : The Legendary Pink Dots - [1989 - The Golden Age]


EDIT: from the single tracks I removed those entries that are from same album

I love The Woods.

But one thing with The Woods is that it wasn't the mastering that ruined the sound - it was recorded from the start to sound like that.

I don't care if it was intentional or not, I just can't stand it...
I'm very tolerant with limited music, it's usually not an issue for me and I don't notice it when I use replaygain. Seeing that rp won't help a lot with this album, shows me that they did a good job with what they had in mind. Ironically "Jumpers" (a song about suicide) is the most limited song of the whole album... figures.

Sorry, I think The Woods just sounds like crap and because of that, I've never listened to more than 2 songs in a row. If it was intentional and if the girls actually like their new sound so much like I've heard, then next time they release a new album I'll definitely need a close listen to it before I even start thinking about buying it.

"The numbers all go to 11. Look right across the board: 11, 11, 11 and..." -- Nigel Tufnel

Fandango is right. If this is their intention, then my intention is to shy away from them. QOTSA is a good example in hand. I liked their music, but there is no way I buy anything from them because no dynamics and clipping are the kind of artistic impressions that I do not want to hear.

Funnily enough probably the discernible bunch, like me, who would rather buy a CD for perfect quality then download it illegaly and who earns money but has little time are turned away. Making is sound shit will take away the guaranteed quality that a legal CD provides. It is not legislation that makes me buy CD-s, but the drive for the guaranteed and best available quality.

yeah ditto. I love The Woods, despite being a stickler for good sound quality. It was blatently *meant* to sound like it does, and it sounds great to these ears. Intentional distortion on something *very* heavy i can handle. Obvious clipping is irritating.

Infact the first song I loved on The Woods was Modern Girl, which is probably the most distorted song, as it progresses it just gets louder and louder with more and more fuzz. fuzz isn't necessarily bad. My Bloody Valentine/Kevin Shields made a career out of it! Loveless is a masterpiece of an album.

IMHO there's a time and a place for absolute clarity and also a place for extreme distortion.