Linkin Park

[Selby]

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!).

[Strazos]

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.

[stray]

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

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.

[Righ]

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!).

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.

[stray]

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.

[Righ]

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.

[stray]

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]

we don't want that at all.

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.

[Selby]

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.

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 ;-) ).

[Righ]

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.

[Selby]

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.

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.

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

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

[Sky]

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