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Was reading some compression/mastering articles tonight, and stumbled upon a few good reads. Nothing new to me, but some of you may find the following eye opening, and quite sad whats happening to the music out there...

http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/09/does-metallicas.html

and
http://www.austin360.com/music/content/music/stories/xl/2006/09/28cover.html

Compressing to death is a crime.

A few years back I bought Level 42's new album Retroglide and the mastering was... horrific. If I weren't the Level 42 fan I am I would have returned the CD. Awful.

You want a louder mix? Turn up the volume.

pretty scary looking at that metallica wave envelope. scarier still to think it was the result of 'professional' minds and was intentional. i love hard rock as well as soft stuff, but man - that's ridiculous. looks like it's on permanent redline.

Makes you think twice now when you see "remastered edition" CD's in the local music stores...

That Metallica example was quite sad to see, I heard one song from it and thought "this sounds horrid!" and damn was i right!

I remember buying and plugging in my RHCP - Californication cd when i first got it back in 1999.. sounded great. Loud, etc.. then i plugged in my headphones.. and couldn't help but notice "static" and "clipping" on most if not all the tracks. First i thought something was wrong with the cd, but turns out the "pro audio engineers" decided to take compression to a whole new horrid level.

My thoughts exactly. There's nothing wrong with 70's style mastering or technology. I run into "digitally remastered" versions of older songs every now and then. I should probably buy one to see if I'm right.

I found this the other week:

http://www.turnmeup.org/

Same thing with the Beatles release a few years ago - The red one called Beatles 1 - all their #1 hits from over the years - remastering did nothing for some of them, but ruined a few of them IMHO.

I don't think it's so much the audio professionals doing this...it's the guys that sign the paychecks...the greatest mastering engineer in the world is limited to what the boss thinks of the CD for better or worse...in this case mostly worse


IMO it's also the fault of the bands...it's one thing for a no name band's record to sound like this because they probably didn't have much choice...it's totally different for an established artist to allow this to happen...this also may be a plot by the industry to lessen the difference between CD and mp3 so they can eventually go to an all profit no investment product....again just my opinion.

Interesting point. I'm 100% with the consensus that loudness has won the war Vs. sound quality. A shame, but I think Jake's got the right theory.......let me add to the conspiracy theory...... have any of you seen a "super audio" or "HD audio" CD in a store? I personally haven't, but I've heard of them for years. Now let's say you can download the ishty version for $15, OR!! if you want it to sound good you can buy it on one of the other two formats for $30........The files would be too big for most people to want on their ipod/zune, and I don't think they could even play them without some sneaky work-arounds. Hmmmm.... I'm goanna go put my tinfoil hat back on so the satellites can't read my thoughts on this.

It sometimes seems as though this abuse of compression stems from the same kind of mindset as that of some movie directors, who still seem to think that there's nothing quite as exciting as an explosion . . .

Uh...there isn't, is there?