Faces of The Loudness War

Who can can beat this one?

This is a cap of part of a waveform from "Kiss From A Rose" from Seal's second album which came out in 1994. It sounds really, really bad. Didn't think they were already destroying music this bad that early in the 90s. You could ski off those sloped peaks!

Square waves, brickwall limiting, clipping, sloped peaks - Let's see 'em! Let's show everybody the ugly face of The Loudness War.

 

Unfortunately you are only showing the people who cared in the first place - hence why we are here.

 

There's always the morbid fascination value.. Plus newbie education.. And there are rumours of record company bigwigs lurking about..

 

True, but we can find far worse examples. Newbie value is fair. I know there are (were) engineers hanging around here, hadn't heard about execs but I hope so! Though, I am more interested in catalogues than new releases. My current benchmark for great remasters and releases are the Depeche Mode Collector's Editions. You hear that?!?!?!?! SACD hybrids, well mastered and packaged!

 

Maybe I'm not seeing it, but that doesn't look all that bad to me. I have that CD and I would consider it one of the better sounding ones in my collection.

 

Let's see them!

Screen caps! I want screen caps!

 

Hmm.. Maybe this was a remaster.. Now I'm not sure.

 

My personal favorite, the Men at Work Cargo remaster - track: Overkill. Look at how dynamic it is!



Depeche Mode's "Stories Of Old" from Some Great Reward remaster:

 

I don't believe it's ever been remastered. I also have the CD/DVD-A package and the CD is a clone of the original 1994 pressing.

 

From the incredibly horrible sounding Jon Anderson- Animation CD:

 

Here's a clear winner.

 

Wow. I think that does win. The Cargo album looks dynamic next to that.

 

At the Yes forums I was told I was crazy for not liking the sound of the CD. What's worse is it's from a needledrop and is heavily EQ'd on the top and bottom end.

I told them not to pollute the air around them with it and suggested they should find a brick wall and throw the CD at it as hard as they could until the smallest piece was no larger than a Corn Flake.


Fantastic job!

 

This is exactly what I did when I saw that.

Let's see some zoomed in so we can see the damage to the peaks.

Also, pre-remaster and remaster comparisons are awesome!

 

Wow. Who mastered that? I appreciate the heads-up as I am a Yes listener myself--but not of something like this!

Jerry F.

 

There are TONS and TONS of CDs that look like this.

 

Level-matched waveforms of RHCP's "Wet Sand" from Stadium Arcadium (CD on top, Steve's LP on bottom):

 

Now that puts it in proper perspective.

Well then folks, would this product and the endless list of products like it offer the sonic advantages of digital and CD media that people are supposed to want to buy? Is this the "state of the art" the music industry still pays by the millions to high pressure studios for?

Records had superior dynamics in 1950

 

wow... it's really dramatic seeing these waveforms

thanks for posting them

 

Here's one that's actually done right! Very surprising for something that came out in 2001. The EQing they did is a bit bright, but that can be fixed and is besides the point.

This is "All Right Now" from the Island remaster of Free's Fire & Water album.

Seems like they only compressed the very tippy top peaks, which is more than I like but, still, like I mentioned, surprising that the whole thing wasn't maximized to heck.

The first image shows the whole waveform and the second one is a zoom-in of the first bit of the song.

 

To me, it looks like a good amount of compression has been used, maybe in the analog stage while mixing the album, maybe while mastering the CD. The "over the top" loudness maximizing hasn't been used here. That's the difference to the other examples. BTW, apart from the wave forms I like the sound of the remaster.

 

I gather you haven't really been around here much. We've been doing this for a long time.

 

Wow,what great mastering! I'm speechless