Okay, as you can see here: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....mp;#entry429026 - a sample from my rip of The Mars Volta's Frances the Mute, released in 2005. I know TMV overcompress their stuff like crap, but I haven't listened to the original CD - I don't like playing CDs before they're ripped. EAC reports no errors yet this clipping is on every track. It's really noticable and really spoils an otherwise brilliant album. I'm going with my CD drive (well, it's a DVD one really but EAC reccomended it for ripping and it's working fine for me up till now), but it's always best to check... can anybody else who has this album comment on it? Thanks

edit: to clarify, the clipping introduces pops. I think that's what it is, anyway...

I had huge problems with this CD. In fact I went and exchanged it for another copy because the first one had this horrible static sound. I don't know if it was clipping or just a defective pressing, but I didn't really get into the album much after that point.

Oh damn. There HAS to be a way to fix it, it's worse than an LP.

Edit: I got it from amazon.co.uk if it matters.

Edit 2: They've removed it now (replaced it with the entirety of their not-released-yet album now; madmen) but when it was on their myspace page (Mistitled as "The Widow" I might add) it sounded fine.

Edit: BREAKING NEWS - it's the mastering. I'm noticing that Inertiatic ESP, off their previous album, De-loused in the Comatorium, sounds the same. agh, my ears!

Why not?

1. If I played a CD a million times, the quality WOULD degrade a bit. I'm paranoid.
2. I like having stuff on my HD, with albumart, RG, etc.

A million is one thing, but ONCE?

No argument there.

It's because I want a perfect backup before anything else.

The quality would not degrade unless the CD developed unrecoverable errors. Which rarely if ever happens to a properly manufactered and handled CD.

You're beyond paranoid

...Just Elliott sez:
>1. If I played a CD a million times, the quality WOULD degrade a bit.

It might, but that would take you 76 years nonstop to find out. By then the damage caused by handling and heat/humidity would far outweigh any the (mythical) "digital wear".

It's a bad excuse, I know, but I just like having it on my PC before anything else happens

One word. Relax.

I can understand it very well when someones does it this way with a vinyl record, but with a CD? C'mon! And in case of such a horribly mastered album like Frances the Mute it won't make such a big difference anyway.

...Just Elliott sez:
>I know, but I just

As a fellow victim of OCD, I suggest you re-evaluate some of your routines, in particular those you cannot find explain or justify, except with the "I know, but ... just ..." construct.

You life could be a lot easier. =)

<a bystander begins looking around his apartment at half finished projects and sighs>

-brendan

nah, that's just their music.

Not a mars volta fan I assume?

Oh it gets better

Check this out.



Not only is there clipping during the mastering, but there is even more severe clipping much earlier in the chain! This is what a clipped waveform looks like after it goes through some sort of phase scrambler, for example a multiband compressor or maybe just an non phase linear EQ with the bass rolled off a lot.

Clipping at an early stage such as this adds absolutely no loudness - but it sure makes it sound all nice and pretty doesn't it?

Man what a crying shame, cause I actually like the song. (The Widow)

Hey there's a new term we could start using for this:

Seedy Quality

:-D

Wow, looking at that made my *ears* bleed in sympathy for my eyes...for taking the hit.

-brendan

...

I hate you, Universal.

Just hating isn't constructive, try to find and talk in a gentle manner to the responsible persons .

What's the point in talking to them when they are obviously deaf?

Well, one still can contact them in black and white .

For the record, changing "prevent clipping" to "apply gain and prevent clipping", and setting the preamp to a reasonable level made some of the more noticable clips become unnoticable for me. It's a bad solution, but at least I can listen to Cassandra Gemini without half of it being noise...

Wow!! Amazing! I've gotta do all that with all my CDs!!!!111



My dad once told me that way back when (in sweden) there was an april fools day joke stating that the contemporary black and white tv's would turn to colour if you stretched nylon socks across the front of the set.

My innocently naive self asked, "Did it work?".

He said, "No - but a lot of people sure cut their nylon socks!"

I have another solution: grin and bear it.

There's nothing you can do. Except maybe make friends with Cedric or Omar and try not to sound like a smartass when explaining why you think their music could sound much better.

Yes, what I did is likely the placebo effect, but I am sharing my placebo effect as it, at least, helped me

And, fandango, it hurts my ears.



EDIT:



AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHHHH
HHHHHHHHH!!!!!

The other major obstacle is the corrupted error-correction data. Again, the effect of this is dependent on the disc drive; some drives will be able to read the data without problems, but others will produce audio files with loud pops every few seconds. -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copy_Control

We have found our culprit. Any suggestions for getting round this?

Judging from the samples you posted, there aren't any errors from copy protection. These will sound like a scratched CD, and EAC will tell you there were errors when you rip it. The discs are simply clipped (like most today), and there's nothing that can be done.

It reported no errors, and I have some other CDs that do it too, and from my brief analysis they're copy protected too. :/