f13.net

All their music sounds the same; O'rly I hear you say...

but I came across these two blog posts where some musical people have messed around with some Linkin Park songs, analysing them and the similarites are rather spooky.

http://www.hometracked.com/2007/05/29/all-linkin-park-songs-look-the-same/

http://www.deadparrots.net/archives/music/0406this_is_how_you_remind_me_how_bad_your_music_sucks.html

the interesting clip is this mp3 (http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~paymer/mer/all_linkin_park_songs_sound_exactly_the_same.mp3)  :grin:

Sorry if this was posted before, it's a little old, but I couldn't find any references to this topic, and thought it was somewhat interesting.

Heh.. I love when folks mix songs together.  The local rock station used to have a mix of "Back in Black" that meshed with "Master of Puppets" pretty damn well.  (Crap, at least I think it was Puppets.. it was something from Metallica.. )

Anywho, I see no point in criticizing musicians on "oh all your shit sounds the same."  Gee, if it's the same folks writing it, that shouldn't REALLY be surprising.  I'd have to see comparisons of "good" established artists on the same level before I put it down as more than the "wah, they suck ass but are successful and I'm a creative genius and I'm not!" bitching that oozes from all creative industries.

...

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/17777619/the_death_of_high_fidelity/print

Rolling Stone, The Death of High Fidelity

You might find that an interesting read. Kind of on the same topic, except being about all music, not just Linkin Park.

Eh, there's a big difference between having a recognizable style, and literally using the same drum and vocal intros and chord progressions and beats. I mean, at the very least, use the same chords, but change the progression more. Even the most boneheaded band ever (their own words) -- the Ramones -- used A, B, D, E power chord progressions almost all the time, but they at least changed them up in a variety of ways. AC/DC and CCR are some other ones, with many uses of E, D, A, G -- but I swear, Fogerty and Malcolm Young had almost infinite variety with that stuff.

While they are fun and interesting reads, this whole subject is only good for the interesting results not the critique itself.  Nobody ever gets down on a visual artist for developing a signature style and using it often.  Besides that were dealing with pop music, which is a far fucking cry from high art.  Anything that links me to new mashups is a win+ in my book though.

Nickleback is fucking awful music to be sure, but the Linkin Park guy did go off to do his own solo project (fort minor) which I actually enjoy less then the predictably sometimes fun uncreative stuff he did/does w/ LP.  My lil brother likes both though so I've listened to enough to feel qualified to talk about it.

Anyone getting their panties in a wad */em looks at Stray, whose post he made a point of not reading* over this should take two deep breaths and two steps back.  Art can't be ruined by artists, only by consumers.   :-P

Art is actually more often ruined by Agents, Producers, Radio Stations and the artists themselves.

Consumers just make art annoying. They can't ruin it.

When I went to the sistine chapel there were people everywhere. A sweaty mass of humanity taking endless photos (and getting constantly reprimanded for the fact) that was so noisy and crappy that I left the room quick smart. I would only say they ruined the experience though.

It's prety hard to ruin something, but pretty easy to ruin people's experience of those things. Though, given we live through experience, I guess it can be ruined for us...


Do you mean that these things stop the art happening to begin with, or that it's there and then gets fucked over?

Hmm. It's strange how often my panties are supposedly in a wad at this site. Even more strange, it's supposedly in a wad by someone who says time and again that he goes out of his way to not even read my posts. Someone who's taken that kind of measure obviously has his panties in a wad more than I ever could. He should just air out his grievances instead, either be the bitch that he is or shut the fuck up, instead of pulling off handed moves like the above.

I simply talked about mixing variety with chord progressions and song parts. Which is usually a given even with the most basic garage bands. Ooohh, I'm such a raging cunt.

Can go both ways.

People who aren't used to having opinions often think that when others have them they invest them with deadly importance, probably because they do so themselves. Consequently, they get horribly offended when you disagree with them; they seem to think it implies some kind of personal threat or insult.

Well, that's the funny thing. I don't even disagree with Hoax. I think I...umm.. directly corresponded with him once when MxO came out. We both thought it sucked. That was that.

He just doesn't like me for whatever reason. Aww.

/sorry for the derail guys.. my panties are in a bunch. I lose at the internet or something now, right?

Carry on.

I've been harping on about this problem on various music sites for several years. It reached a crisis point for me when I bough Rush's Vapor Trails and found that not only was it a solid wall of compressed noise, but it was clipping all over the place. Just about every album in the past few years that's been mastered by Howie Weinberg at Masterdisk is over-compressed and unpleasant to listen to. And he's just one of many culprits, albeit a high-profile one who is apparently too deaf to notice what he's doing. I'm glad to see that there's a campaign against it now.

http://www.turnmeup.org/

We were just talking about the other day, in fact (I still disagree on the particular band we were discussing.. since they were compression laden to begin with, at least in gear).

I agree in general though -- but I think I have a bigger problem with Antares Auto Tuner than any other current trend.

That doesn't work though, even though artists may use compressors and limiters to provide certain audio effects, they are not typically applying dynamic range compression across the stereo pair. You have a nicely compressed choppy funk guitar sound, being played alongside bass and drums that aren't limited to the same degree. You mix them to find a nice balance, and then you send it off to the deaf mastering engineer and he works his 'magic'. Hack job compression and level boosting, and you're missing some of the sound because he ignored the bloody great warning signs and went over the red line and lost it, and all the punch in the song's delivery is washed out.

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/lofiversion/index.php/t42376.html

Look at how much better the LP looks. Oh the irony.

Maybe it's just me, but I don't hear what everyone is bitching about this album for.  Sure, it's got a solid wall of sound on the guitars with high gain and echo all over the place which leaves absolutely no quiet parts in the song nor much bass coming through at all, but how do I know that isn't what the artist was going for to begin with by experimenting and being "an artist?"  Obviously it isn't what they wanted as the new album is much different (and less intense) in sound...  I'm giving it another listen specifically to hear what all the discussion is about, but quite honestly I'm not hearing anything that doesn't make me think that it wasn't intended to sound the way it does (sonic explosion as opposed to quiet and melodic).

But then I listen to everything on volume 1 of 10 because I have sensitive hearing and it bothers me to listen to loud music.  The only time I have ever noticed clipping in my MP3s is when I used to use the Plugger+ DOS encoder on a few albums way back when and I've just been too lazy to re-rip the album again.  If it is too loud, I just turn it down to barely audible for most people ;-)

What do you listen to it on? CD? MP3? It sounds like you're listening to in in some compressed form due to the ripping reference.

Part of the 'logic' of this stupid production is so that the sound translates better to compressed formats (read the article I linked above) and plays better over the radio. If you're used to listening to music in a compressed form them you're not going to notice the difference as much as someone who's used to listening to it uncompressed on quality equipment.

The whole "it's too loud so I turn it down" thing is very odd. Wouldn't you prefer listening to music that is loud when it makes sense and quiet when it makes sense, rather than being always too loud and forcing you to turn the whole thing down?

Hmm yeah, sent you a pm about vinyl versions earlier.. That's interesting though, I need to check out a version of that album.

I listened to CDs for years (my Discman is from 1991 and still works after 16 years of playing on volume level 1 ;-) ), but recently it's just easier to use MP3s (I make my own from the CDs, no downloads for me).  I noticed some slight differences in CD and MP3, but on the car stereo it doesn't sound any different so out go the CDs and in comes the MP3 player.

Which I can definitely tell a difference in the radio mix vs. a CD.  The radio sounds like they ran it all through an equalizer to make everything 100% the same volume (convenient, but definitely sounds shitty on a ton of songs).  And yes, I did read the article and have read many articles on the subject so I understand what people are saying on it, I just can't hear it.  And getting out my fancy sound system with quality 5-way speakers does result in a nice experience, I just don't hear *that* much of a difference in the two formats to warrant all of the angst, much less retreat into the backroom of my house where the stereo system is just to listen to a CD.  I guess I am not much of an audiophile.

I don't like loud music in general honestly.  I like to be able to hear it, but the other half goes nuts when we are in the car because I listen to everything so quietly she can't hear 90% of it yet I can.  Of course when the soft parts are soft and the loud parts are loud it is good and definitely contributes to the song.  I am just not sure how much is the sound engineer forcing everything to be loud for the sake of his laziness in just turning everything up to 10 and letting it roll and how much of it is the artist not being as creative or utilizing soft\loud passages.  I don't exactly know how the music recording industry functions with regard to how much say an artist has in their final album product, so that part may be me just overanalyzing the situation and giving the artist more credit than they deserve.

I am finishing Vapor Trails now, and I don't hate the album.  I do feel that it is still a wall of sonic explosion which does make me not necessarily desire to turn it back on, but that may be due to the fact that I don't find any of the songs to be overly catchy nor do I find many of them to be distinct from each other (almost like I've been listening to a single 60 minute track vs. 12 individual songs).  Quite a few albums I am supposed to explode in my pants over according to society I just don't care for nor do I care to hear them again.  Although my ears do feel slightly tired as it is definitely a busy album ;-)  I'm just not sure if that is what the artist wanted or if we have a case of a sound engineer thinking "10 is good, 11 is better" regarding the overall mix of the album.

From my understanding a lot of it seems to come from higher up than the engineers. They're usualy smart enough to know what they're doing to the songs, but they get told to produce a certain type of salable product.

That's my main prob with Vapor Trails at least (the actual songwriting). It's why I can still appreciate Stadium as well -- the songwriting is good. And for a double disc, it's surprising how many tracks I like. Changing the production would ultimately not change my opinion of either, but I'm curious to hear alternative mastering.

And like you, I jam out mostly on the road these days anyways.

All Signe's posts look exactly the same:

Sample 1a (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=1955.msg417205#msg417205)
Sample 2a (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=12271.msg414282#msg414282)

Sample 1b (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=12186.msg413881#msg413881)
Sample 2b (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=12440.msg417163#msg417163)

Wow, that's pretty good.   :uhrr:

When I think of  bands who sound the same I think of Everclear. Especially anything that got airplay.

(http://www.invision.smileyville.net/smilies/disdain%20(27).gif)

As far as the ones that got airplay go, I agree.  I still think Sparkle & Fade is one of the best albums written though and World of Noise was pretty good in that time of my life.  I never bought anything after that though, mainly out of laziness.

And unsurprisingly, I feel that the best move for LP would be to ditch the talentless hack Shinoda. Can't sing or play any instrument well, every time I see them I imagine how much better they'd be if he weren't there.

They also suffer from Modern Rock-ism. I love Amy Lee's voice, and most of Evanescence's music is good until they start churning out those generic modern rock riffs.

I believe that the band members have acknowledged that there were 'problems' at the mastering stage and that the final result is not what they wanted. If you want that compressed sound, buy a pre-amplifier with a loudness button on it. Its easy to add dynamic compression, its impossible to remove it.

Mastering is a skill - it takes a good understanding of audio, of quite complex equipment and of the final media. The first generation of compact discs were unsatisfactory because they were simple transfers of music which was mastered for vinyl. Vinyl has a high noise floor and a significantly smaller available dynamic range. The recordings didn't use the available range, but you could at least turn the amplifier gain up to compensate. However, dynamic compression had been applied to constrain the transients within a narrower range and to boost quiet levels above the noise floor inherent with the mechanical noise associated with playing records. The simplest 'remasters' which just boost the levels don't undo the previous mastering. When the mastering engineer has access to the pre-mastered tapes, he can use the full dynamic range available on a compact disc and make a very dynamic and engaging recording. While its a mistake to leave lots of unused range on a CD, its also a mistake to compress the music such that there is no dynamic range left. Most mastering engineers want to be given the freedom to use dynamic range again, and record companies (and artists) are the ones pushing to have 'loud' CDs - but beyond the first impact on compressed radio or myspace, it doesn't help make for engaging, lasting music. If you've ever heard somebody with a pleasant voice and good pitch who sings without any dynamic range, you'll have a sense of how important dynamic range is to sounding musical.

edited to fix quote nest.

On the subject of Linkin Park, I have a friend who considers their music "everything that is wrong with modern engineering."  They over-compress their music to the point that there is absolutely no dynamic to it whatsoever, it's all at a single volume.  This has always been done to an extent for radio broadcasts (to save on bandwidth), but the fact is that there is no need for it in modern systems other than to allow for it to be played loudly.  That Rolling Stone article is spot-on.  Not to mention the fact that a well-mixed album can sound absolutely nothing like the band itself.  They just taught us how to use auto tune and elastic audio with pro tools to fix timing and pitch errors in just about anything.  Now every record can be a perfect performance, no matter how shitty the band.

Regarding MP3s and digital formats, Bruce Swedien (who engineered Thriller) made an excellent point.  MP3s still sound better than most cassette tapes, and we're lucky to be able to fit so many songs on one little player.  And while we have the capacity to make super-high-quality audio (SACD, DVD-Audio, HD formats), consumer trends are probably going to lead in a (temporary) reduction in general audio quality.  Engineers are still mixing at CD levels, but many are being mixed with MP3s in mind.  I've taken the liberty of cutting the first 30 second of Don't Fear the Reaper by Blue Oyster Cult into 128 and 64 bit MP3s for comparison.  I've also taken the audio that was cut out of the MP3s and put wav files together with that.  It's funny what you don't realize you're missing.

Original WAV (http://www.awesometime.org/Media/ReaperHigh.wav)
MP3 (128) (http://www.awesometime.org/Media/ReaperLow.mp3)
MP3 (64) (http://www.awesometime.org/Media/ReaperUltraLow.mp3)

Lost at 128 (http://www.awesometime.org/Media/128Loss.wav)
Lost at 64 (http://www.awesometime.org/Media/64loss.wav)

(edit for grammatical errors, etc)

What's lost with VBR? I encode all my crap with a high VBR, so I'm sure it's significantly less.

No, I know VBR isn't the industry standard, but it makes MY stuff sound a whole lot better and I'm sure I have more discriminating ears than most.

I had to turn my speaker volume up about halfway just to be able to hear anything on the 128k loss, and it wasn't completely killing the song.  The 64 was more obvious, but then we all knew that it would be ;-)

VBR is the way to go, it does the best job of maintaining overall song quality.  Of course, we could all just use Apple Lossless compression and save ourselves the headache... but it only compresses around 50% of the file size.  Run through the same test I used on the MP3s (compressing the file, inverting the MP3 and lining it up with the original to cause cancellation) it's absolutely silent, hence pretty much perfect.

And the point is more that you lose coloring and flavor to your music when you use file compression, much the same as with the general wave compression discussed earlier.  MP3 in particular is known for axing your high end past a certain point.  There are better algorithms out there, but we have our standard to deal with for the next few years, hooray!

Also, I think the change would be more noticeable if I'd used something recorded digitally versus an old analog tape recording.  Say what you will about either medium, digital is simply cleaner(before the engineer gets his grubby little hands on it.)

Hey, as long as I can still hear the cowbell, I'm fine.

An example of modern over-compression/clipping (top), when lined up against Don't Fear The Reaper (bottom).

Link (http://www.awesometime.org/Media/Compressionnnnnn.JPG)

I rip stuff at 192kbps VBR AAC. I can definitely notice cheaply mastered/mixed CDs. I was going through a heavy phase the other night, listening to some of Zakk's live stuff, then some Mercyful Fate, then Deep Purple came up. The DP stuff is from the fiancee's collection, she doesn't research CDs quite as much as I do (LOVE ALLMUSIC), so she doesn't always get the best sounding discs. It was an awful Best Of comp, just garbage, I have stuff pulled from the goddamned 20s that sounds better!

Of course, the downside is I can't fit my entire CD collection on my 30GB iPod...not even close.

I now hear cowbell  when that song plays on the radio.

There's cowbell in the actual song, it just usually gets faded out of the radio mix and the old worn vinyl tended to drop it off too ;-)

And I totally agree with Sky.  I seriously research a CD before I go out and buy it.  Some of those old "Best of" or different generations of CDs just flat out sound terrible or cheap (like listen to ANY Venom record put to CD by Deadline\Cleopatra\etc compared to Neat - complete ass).  I can definitely appreciate the difference between the old cheap Judas Priest CBS CDs vs. the new remasters (on Victim of Changes you CAN actually hear the bells in the interlude!).

I'm just wondering what sort of new CDs people think are mixed well, and properly.

The article mentioned the guy who worked on Paramore's stuff, for instance. Are their albums mixed to "a high sonic standard"? I'm just not sure I know the difference, because I've never listened with this issue in mind.

For the record, I do the vast majority of my listening either in the car using the original disc, or at home or on a mp3 player, using at worst a 192kps mp3 rip.

There are albums from both sides of the mastering spectrum that I think are good.

The YYY's "Is Is" EP is loud and nasty, but it works for me. I wouldn't want it any other way. Down Boy (http://avmusicmag.com/mp3s/bestof2007/02%20Down%20Boy.mp3)

As I was telling Righ, I think it's a positive sometimes when a band is loud to begin with (a specific type of loud at that, i.e. punk or garage), then that sound just plays to their strengths. I'd like to see some older albums remastered this way too (one that comes to mind is the  Stooges' Raw Power -- which Iggy did himself, no one came in and "messed" it up. And yes, it's fucking nasty sounding -- but in this case, that's good).


Some of my favorite "modern" albums that are more traditionally dynamic are alt country.. Shawn Colvin, Neko Case, Wilco. Too many examples to post. I know there are many others, experimental stuff like Tortoise or proggish Rock like Porcupine Tree -- but I don't like the songwriting in those bands, whether they're engineered well or not.

Funny that you should mention them. I hate the Judas Priest remasters. They did some dithering that cleaned up some noise (that is present on the CBS CDs but not on the UK vinyl), but other than that it was a very savage case of compression. Yes, you can hear the bells in the interlude - everything quiet is loud when you compress that heavily.

Recent CDs that are done well? They're few and far between - even the indie companies are following the loudness trend to try and keep up with the major labels. As for Paramore - I couldn't tell you. Download a copy of Audacity and import a song or two. If it looks like a solid block of noise, its compressed as hell. Obviously you shouldn't expect to see everything sitting in the center third of the track window with just snare hits peaking on a heavy metal record, but you shouldn't see a block of noise either. I would imagine that a band like Paramore should have plenty of level changes. You can tell when compression has been applied to make something loud but they've stopped short of washing out all the dynamics. In the noisy passages, there will be a lot that is hitting an invisible ceiling a few pixels shy of the window border, but elsewhere in the music, there will be peaks that are much shorter. Of course a first glance isn't the be all and end all - certain type of music such as guitar drones won't be as obvious and you may need to zoom the track to see if anything has been cut, clipped or unduly compressed.

The best way is just to listen critically. Some albums are more obvious than others. When somebody is singing along to a lone guitar at a certain volume level on your hifi, and then the whole band kicks in and they thrash out, but the volume of the singing goes DOWN, thats a clear sign of extreme and shoddy compression. When you get to a quiet passage and suddenly background environmental noise becomes foreground (I have an Iron Maiden remaster where you can hear loud distracting amplifier buzz in quiet passages) then you've got extreme compression again.

One major label CD that has great dynamics and that hasn't been remastered badly yet - Massive Attack's "Mezzanine". Try that for an example of what a CD can do, and why it should outperform a vinyl record if good mastering is allowed.

And compression should be applied when making the music, not making the media. Just because an album is thrashy, doesn't mean that the CD should be a compressed copy of it. Raw Power has fucktons of dynamics, don't kid yourself. Compress it yourself and listen again if you don't believe me. I have two copies of it on vinyl (Bowie and Iggy produced versions). The mastering of the vinyl is great. The 1997 CD remaster sounds okay, and yet while it is very loud, its also pretty obvious that little (possibly no) compression was needed to boost the levels. However, the remix is fucking terrible.

I'm not gonna say that I found it forgettable (it's still a good album either way), but I really liked that album a lot after the remix. To me, that's what the Stooges are supposed to sound like. Just completely fucking horrible and in your face. Haha. Another album I'd like to see done the same way is the New York Dolls two LP's. They're just begging for it.

On the flipside, the first two Stooges LP's were fine as they were. They're almost psychedelic albums in a way. Williamson changed the Stooges' dynamics though, and I think Iggy was aiming for that remixed sound all along.

I wouldn't disagree that the 1997 remaster is more along the lines of what Iggy wants today, but the Bowie produced original was masterful. As for what Iggy originally wanted... we don't want that at all. You can get Rough Power and listen for yourself. Urg.

What I mean is, he wouldn't have gotten Williamson to begin with if he hadn't wanted to sound any other way. That guy had a ferocious sound, but he sounds a little tame in Bowie's mix. And the way they were known to play on stage wasn't reflected in the previous two albums. Iggy was still looking for something that did that. Whether the remix was exactly what he wanted, I admit, I don't know, but I do think he was shooting in that harder direction. All of the elements point to that. The explosive songwriting, Williamson's riffs, him being less studious with the vocals, etc..

I don't think David knew what to do with it. It's been known that he was trying to "groom" Iggy into a cleaner, more radio friendly sound throughout that time (which he finally accomplished with those solo albums), but Raw Power was not up his alley at all. And Iggy kept saying that afterwards. So at the very least, we do know that he didn't want what Bowie did.

[edit]
Oops. I misread that as "we don't know that at all". My bad. I'll leave the original post though.

As for what Iggy actually wanted, heh yeah, you might have a point.

I don't hear the extreme compression you mention, and I've listened to those CDs for hours and hours on end (maybe I just suck, a VERY definite possibility).  Any particular examples so I can do an analysis and not feel like such a tone-deaf moron?  The original CBS albums I have are terrible (Killing Machine in particular, can't really hear shit on that one).  And the CD copies I have are the ones from the UK when they came out which I do believe are different in at least the packaging (since I wanted the box set that they released at that time).  I'm not going to track down scratchy 30 year old vinyl that went delete 25 years ago (this is sort of reminding me of the old CD vs. vinyl discussion ;-) ).

Yeah, its a bit like the vinyl vs. CD debate, except that when it comes to dynamic range, CD should win every time, so when it doesn't its just silly. Though I'm no fan of the Priest remasters, they're preferable to the original CDs, which just have no bass worth speaking of. The trouble on the remasters is most noticeable in the drums - there's a brightness in the snare & cymbals that's an artifact of clipping - and I suppose the reason I find it irritating is that Priest's drums during this period were poorly produced to begin with.

Its not always bad - most of the AC/DC remasters sound better than any previous version of the albums.

I can agree with you on that, I find that it really depends on the drummer.  Sin After Sin sounds pretty good to me, but Stained Class and Killing Machine suffer from very poor drum production (which Unleashed In The East didn't suffer from, but being a live recording the drumming definitely is recorded differently than the studio albums).  I assumed it was just the studio method of recording\mastering that caused the problem and that the remasters were at least trying to improve on what was probably a poor master track to begin with.  I guess I didn't really notice much difference after 1982 on their albums on the originals vs. the remasters.

Are they worth grabbing?  I have the 1994ish era of "remasters" but have noticed alot of complaints from music review sites that absolutely nothing was changed except the packaging and making it slightly louder on the actual CD for the 2002-2003 era of remasters.  I was a huge AC\DC fan in high school, but that was a long time ago and haven't really been that into them lately.

edit: spelng ist gud

If You Want Blood You Got It is the best album ever.