Pardon me for not be clear about those two screen prints…
The 1st is the compress mp3 files after extraction and compressed via EAC.
The 2nd is the original uncompressed wav.

As most of my CDs are from the mid 1990's, the Foo Fighter album is my first modern CD and the first time I have seen over 100.

Mike

tarsier,

No need to post any samples on my account, I see that you've already offered up sections of Vicarious.

Again, I offer up that the DAC you are using may be the culprit as there is no clipping to be seen in this track other than an occasional sample here and there. I am sure you already know that it is widely accepted that people do not hear clipping on occasional samples.

Please forgive me for re-arranging your quote. I don't think I'm changing your intent, but I want to make sure my point is communicated properly.

And it took me so long to write this, I missed all the other posts. Ah, well. Forgive me for posting it anyway.

Yes, the topic is about clipping, but loudness, peak limiting, and clipping are all related which is why I brought it up.

I'm not dismissing replaygain. Replaygain is good at giving an overall "loudness". But right in the replaygain spec, the author mentions that a manual adjustment might need to be made to the replaygain value to truly make the album similar in loudness to the rest of the collection that has been replaygain'ed. And in fact 10,000 Days is "louder" than both AEnima and Lateralus to my ears, than would be indicated by their respective replaygain numbers. You don't have to look at it in a wave editor, or replaygain analyze it, you just have to put on the albums one after another and listen. If you have the albums, put on "Ticks and Leeches" then put on "Rosetta Stoned" (which I chose as being the "loudest" tracks of each album). To my ears anyway, "Rosetta Stoned" sounds "louder" in general. And that perception was validated when I finally did put those tracks under the scope.

I fully understand that replaygain takes into account loudness perception. And when I first started investigating the sound of 10,000 Days one of the first things I did was compare its replaygain value with AEnima and Lateralis which are fantastic sounding albums. There wasn't much of a difference in the replaygain values, so I started investigaing further.

When I examined the unweighted RMS values of the albums, 10,000 Days was higher by about 2.5dB during the "loud" passages. (again, passages from Ticks and Leeches and Rosetta Stoned) The track replaygain for those puts them only 1 dB apart in loudness--and to my ears the difference in loudness is closer to the 2.5dB than the 1 dB. Thus I mention a deficiency in replaygain numbers. Based on that loudness difference, I posit that there is more peak limiting on 10,000 Days than the previous two albums. Which might or might not result in clipping or crackling.

I don't see the need, since the original poster already has, and on the Sonar forum I outlined similar sections from the album that have the crackling sound. I could outline them here if people don't want to wade through that thread. Anything I would upload would be similar to what the original poster supplied.

I tried listening on a few various players and sound systems and headphones. (again, outlined on the other thread which I didn't want to repeat here, since I already linked to it there. But I could if people want me to.) And I did listen to a cd rip with replaygain applied, so it's not due to any DAC being unable to handle full scale samples.

So back to the topic of the thread: Is there clipping?

Here we get into defining "clipping" which I'd rather not do in the context of this album. What I hear is crackling in the sound that sounds similar to clipping. You can't just load it into a wave editor and look for it, you have to listen for it. I don't know why it's there, I don't know whether it was introduced in the recording, mixing, mastering, or CD glass master stage, but it's there. Some of the only ones who would know for sure if the crackling is intentional are Tool, Barresi or Ludwig. To me it doesn't sound like an intentional part of the sound because of its inconsistency. Whereas the guitar and vocal distortion, and tape compression on the drums are consistently applied throughout the album and have a context related to this and the previous albums, the crackling just happens occasionally. It simply sounds bad.

Or Tool could just be playing another joke on us by releasing an album full of crackly sound.

When comparing Ticks and Leeches to Rosetta Stoned, I'd have to say that I much prefer the way Rosetta Stoned sounds during the loudest passages.

I'd be inclined to agree with you that it sounds louder, but I think this has much more to do with equalization than peak compression and I have grown to prefer music that doesn't have the midrange sucked right out of it, which may be one reason why Lateralus is one of my least favorite Tool albums(!).

Again, have a listen and a look at Hooker with a Penis and compare it with Rosetta Stoned. You'll find the equalization and loudness to be much more comprable. And as far as actual clipping is concerned, there is much more of it on this track from Aenima in the 20-second window starting at 4:00 than anything on the entire 10,000 Days album.

Perhaps a different limiting algorithm was used or like you said, other parts of the recording, mixing and mastering were different, which is why you prefer the previous albums better; I really don't know. But frankly, when it comes to comparing the quality of 10,000 Days with Lateralus, as a subjective matter, I much prefer 10,000 Days.