What are some specific, obvious examples of clipping or lack of dynamics? I don't just mean an album name or even song title, but possibly even time value.

I was reading a thread about poorly mastered albums and the one which seemed to get the most criticism (until the last page or so, anyway) was Californication. I'm not going to defend the album at all, but I personally don't hear what's so poor. I suppose it's just my imagination, but for example, Scar Tissue seems to get louder with every chorus, Other Side seems to gradually get louder...but perhaps that's psychosomatic perceived loudness based on how the performances sound? Perhaps a 20 or 30 second clip from one of those songs and then the same 20 or 30 seconds from the unmastered MP3s (which don't seem to be in torrent form anymore) would do me well.

When I think of something over-compressed, I think of my cassette dub of "Holy Wars" by Megadeth where the intro (guitars only) was very loud, but then the volume ramped down quickly and became very quiet as soon as the drums and bass hit. The mix in Californication doesn't seem to disappear like that when, say, a kick drum hits. Or maybe I'm just not trained to hear it yet.

My primary concern here is the new Beatles remasters. I realize there's already a thread about them, but I haven't heard much about how they sound to the "audiophiles" of the other thread, just "they're limited but not disgustingly so". I happened across the "loudness war" entry in Wikipedia and saw the animated graphic of different masters of "Something" used as example of the loudness war....and have to admit I've never heard a difference between the 1987 masters, the "blue album" masters (which might also have been 1987), and the "1" masters. "Love" seemed slightly better, but I attributed that to better mixing. These new remasters do sound better, especially comparing them to the 1987 ones back to back, but looking at that graphic and realizing I can't hear the difference between them makes me doubt my judgement. Methinks placebo is afoot, perhaps -- or more accurately, the new masters sound "better" to my ears when they're actually technically worse and even louder than the last image in that graphic. I don't want to delete my collection only to have them replaced with inferior masters. I would just use the needledrops and be done with it but I've heard they were "smiley face EQ'd", so even they're not pure.

Over-compressing is one thing...but I assume some of you have also heard "Last Licks Live", which is basically a bootleg of the Abbey Road rooftop concert. Listening to some of those makes a very good argument for compression. Listen to "One After 909" and then listen to the Let It Be...Naked version. The LLL version almost makes them sound like bad performers, given the vast unintended differences in dynamics at times. Surely removing that degree of dynamics isn't bad mastering?

Point being, does anyone have any advice on any of the three topics covered here? I'd like to know I'm not being suckered into enjoying poor masters with these, I'd like to understand why Californication is so awful (though I did just fire up Death Magnetic and wince at the now glaringly apparent distortion...ugh), and in general, I'd like to better be able to recognize poor mastering so I don't do some of it in my own composing work. Also sorry for being incredibly verbose.

A good mastering job has:

*A good frequency balance (Bass, mid-range and treble, should sound even. I especially don't like bright recordings as they tend to 'flatten out' and make it hard to get a sense of depth from the recording)

*Dynamics appropriate for the style: Some rock music is not very dynamic to begin with so can't be expected to match an orchestral recording. Percussive sounds should have 'punch' and not sound weak, and certainly not 'pump' other sounds. That is, when a percussive hit occurs the other sounds get quieter. Note: sometimes this is intentionally used by the mix engineer for artistic effect. Also bad, is non-percussive sounds sometimes causing pumping. My pet hate is when vocals cause guitars to reduce in level.

*Instruments should sound like separate instruments and not a big wall of noise, each instrument should exist in a 'space'. Again, sometimes a big wall of noise is for artistic purposes. Also, for Choral music identifying individual voices is not what you want, they should be an ensemble.

*No distortion on the master, low noise levels.

This is my 2 cents.

I suggest you look and listen to this very explanatory video on youtube, which explains the difference, the loss of punch and impact, and the loss of loudness for emphasis or surprise that comes from making things as loud as possible all the time.

• "In the short term louder can seem better"
• "But you own the volume control"
• "When there is no quiet there can be no loud."

The original video in high quality AVI form is also available somewhere on Bob Katz's digido.com website.

This is actually a surprisingly deep topic and from what I can tell is the subject of ongoing research. Visual waveform plots are indeed a very poor method of evaluating perceptual mastering quality, but it's unclear at the moment what kind of perceptual metrics are useful.

Aggressive limiting/clipping is surprisingly inaudible for transient stuff like drums, but is extremely audible when it affects periodic signals like all tonal instruments. This is because the limiting causes intermodulation between tones. As Iain points out, excessive limiting (or multiband compression) can reduce spectral contrast. When you look at the loudness war poster children, like Californication, Death Magnetic, Vapor Trails etc, most of them have this sort of thing going on one way or another. So this is one thing to look for.

It's much harder to get a good clean bass tone out of a hypercompressed track, although for most pop genres this is not a problem, since they don't employ clean basslines.

One point which might be worth considering is that hypercompressed music is greater in clarity in very low dynamic range listening situations (like eg in a car) - but is commonly considered fatiguing at "normal" listening volumes in a home listening or high dynamic range situation.

I tend to think you are right in believing that the difference between the Beatles 2009 remasters against the 1987 remasters is far less perceptually than people tend to think, but I have no concrete proof on that. The audiophile bellyaching regarding limiting is baseless. The music didn't really have all that much dynamic range to begin with.

Another point about over-use of dynamics compression to boost loudness is that it has a tendency to reduce stereo separation because in-phase full-scale sounds from both speakers are louder in unison than the same sound from just one speaker. Some of the feeling of spaciousness (ambience) can be restored by delayed echos at much reduced levels with different timing/phase between left and right channels, but that doesn't solve everything. It's not often a big drawback on its own because bass and vocals are almost always centrally-positioned in the mix and are also expected to dominate the volume.

Thank you for all the lengthy responses. I was a little worried I'd posted a "noob" question.

I watched that Youtube video. When I heard the volume-reduced "loud" playback, it reminded me of listening on "bad equipment" that couldn't handle the bass, or listening with the volume up louder than the speakers were happy with. I've become accustomed to compression (see: making tape dubs of things in first post), but "professional" compression like that is less obvious (at least tape-dub compression faded in and out) and uglier.

I think this whole thing came up because I don't always trust my ears. Not all "bad" mastering is as obvious as that video. Referring again to the "Something" animation, each frame looks significantly different but I can't say I can -hear- the difference; I'm not sure whether that means I'm not fit for my audiophilia or that the difference between each frame isn't to "ZOMG WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO THE GLORIOUS MUSIC" levels.

Basically, I'm trying to find good examples to train my ears with. I want to get in a more "professional" mindset as far as production and try to teach myself how to achieve those sounds with my current equipment. Some of the examples people cite (like Californication) are things I really enjoy, so I guess I'm wanting to learn what specifically is "wrong" with them well enough that I can hear it when I listen, too, and not repeat the same things with my own work.

Thank you for the description of what makes a good master. I'm sure that will come in very useful.

Bob Katz had a list of good CDs he considers good, and a brief description for each CD, here: http://www.digido.com/honor-roll-of-dynamic-recordings.html

It's good to keep a few reference CDs handy when you are mixing/mastering to bring your ears back to reality.