Worst mastered CD ever!

Yes, as I posted after listening again, the low bass is there, but the upper mid bass is still very different, which could be attributed to Ludwig or whoever mastered the cassette viewing the cassette market as more in search of a mid-bass hump. This would be a sophisticated view. Trouble is, many of us who enjoy tubes want that sound, even on our high end systems.

Oh, I fully agree about CD players.

 

Beatles 1 sounds exquisite compared to the Warner Special Products version of The Velvet Underground's Loaded...oooh my! Excessive tape hiss, loud distortion, volume surges....any beat-up LP found at Goodwill is superior. There's really hundreds of horrid CDs out there....it's easy to critique the remastered A Quick One, or much of Jethro Tull's catalogue....give a listen to some of those terrible mid 80's Country comps on Columbia. How they managed to destroy those songs is beyond me. Harsh, jarring sound, odd distortion, either hissed to death...or covered in a blanket, absolutely terrible. Ron

 

1.psychedelic furs- talk, talk, talk
2.the fall-live at the witch trails

the only 2 cds I ever sold JUST because the sound was so bad. The new fall remaster with bonus tracks is MUCH better.

 

the LATWT 24-bit remaster is more than just better, it's PHENOMENAL!!!

 

Kevin, yes I was a participant in that recent thread who crapped all over Collected Works based on my experience with it. I posted all the info I could on my very poor sounding copy. And you're right... that's why I qualified it with "some" versions.

Cheers,
Ivan

 

switch - greatest hits on motown

 

That was my first choice. The 2nd is the MFSL of AJA after I heard Steve's.

 

Steve's Night Moves does sound great. Also, the early US pressing of Stranger In Town (DCP 7 46074 2) sounds really good.

Best regards. Dave

 

In spite of the warnings I've read on this board about Hip-O, I recently made the mistake of buying the 20th Century Masters "Best of Madness". Yuck! Most of the tracks have that flat AM radio sound, especially Our House and my favorite song of theirs, Grey Day sounds garbled throughout, like it was taken from a bad tape. Fortunately I was able to find the OOP "Madness" cd on Geffen at Amazon.com and it sounds soooooo much better! Live and learn, I guess!

 

Nat King Cole - The Greatest Hits [Capitol]

The DCC version is far superior to the Capitol master.

 

John Denver's Greatest Hits Vol. 1 - the original pressings before they remastered it. Distorted, transistor radio sound.

Until the remaster, the only other places to find some of those remakes on CD were the budget Take Me Home Country Roads CD and a comp called Voice Of America. Only the latter was tolerable and not by much.

The original vinyl was no great shakes, but 10 times better than that corresponding first press CD. Truly awful.

 

I've half-jokingly suggested that RCA is part of the conspiracy that justified CD's being marketed to replace vinyl. Their surfaces are usually so lousy, I can live with any CD limitations, which thankfully are becoming fewer.

To suggest that the vinyl of John Denver (I own two Denver vinyl examples) is 10 times better than a CD issue speaks volumes about the CD's flaws.

Fortunately, I've had pretty good luck with other RCA reissues. None are Steve or Mobile Fidelity quality, but most are decent and some are even very good. The Guess Who and the Nipper Greatest Hits (by decade) series come to mind.

Too bad about Denver. He's got a significant catalog, and was surely well recorded and produced.

 

Emperor- In the Nightside Eclipse

Zero bass, no midrange, 100% treble, compressed 100%.

 

Dennis Wilson - "Pacific Ocean Blue". Man, is this one a horrid, muddy mess.
What really sucks is I love the songs.

Rush - Vapor Trails. I can't even listen to it and I love Rush. I listen to the "Rush In Rio" DVD if I want to hear "Vapor Trails" tracks.

Red Hot Chili Peppers - "Californication"

Audioslave - "Audioslave"

Metallica - St. Anger"

Oasis - "Definitely Maybe" & "(What's the Story) Morning Glory"

 

it's pretty bad, but there's definitely far worse as far as black metal goes...

 

The Chrysalis Jethro Tull - Orginal Masters always gets my vote. "Original Masters", they're so silly.

Honorable mention: Springsteen - Born to Run 30th Anniversary. This really chaps my butt too.

 

I disagree. I can take low production values, often intended, whether a bigger name like Darkthrone or lesser like Satanic Warmaster but it's a treble fest that gets to me.

Heh, the funny thing is the conventional music releases in this thread are nothing. Ignorance is bliss when it comes to the worst mastering.

Or is it worst mastering as an injustice to popular music rather than worst on an absolute scale?

 

While Unidisc has made many an extremely shrill disc, I'd have to say my award for "worst-mastered disc" has to go to the recent reissue of Mirage by Klaus Schulze. It's got heavy brickwall limiting to the point of distortion, yet doesn't peak above 33% on EAC. It's got harsh EQ. An alternate (and inferior IMO) mix of one side was substituted in place of the original. And finally, first pressings have numeroujs digital drop-outs throughout the disc (which apparently have been corrected on later copies). That last one is very odd given that it's an album from the mid-70s and obviously all-analog.

Easily the biggest disappointment in any CD reissue that I've ever come across. It was one of those times when I thought to myself "*I* could've done a better mastering job than this... a much better one!"

 

Flying Cowboys is bad? It sounds normal to me.

 

judas priest's sin after sin is truly awful. i haven't heard any of the other JP remasters and i don't need to. that's just one example of hideous mastering; there are so many others.

 

The Led Zeppelin remasters and MFSL Aja as one of the worst CDs ever mastered? Please, that is an absurd exaggeration. In both cases, better masterings do (arguably) exist, but they are not ruined by any means.

It is easy to cite maximized-to-death CDs from recent years or noise reduction disasters. I will give a completely different (and out-of-character) example of a very early CD with an exteremly poor mastering:
Who's Greatest Hits (1983).
The song My Generation has to be heard on this CD to believed.

 

Elvis Presley's Greatest Hits - Circa 1986. My first
exposure to cd's as played on a "consumer" stereo.
I didn't know if I should laugh or puke..
"Perfect Sound Forever", or something like that.
Might have souded good if they took off the
"cheesecloth" setting...

Anything on the Cleopatra lable.. It's hard to write
"lable". Just because anybody can do it,doesn't mean
that everybody should. Only bought one "set", long
time ago called "This Is Space", due to "Wind On
Water" by Fripp and Eno being included.
Also, looked like a great comp.

Brian Eno/Harold Budd - Pearl. This sounded like a
used tea bag that someone got out of the trash.
One of those record's that you know every breath
of, and it's a corpse.

 

Led Zeppelin - BBC Sessions

Painfully treble boosted, likely used to counteract the awful blanket use of Cedar NR.
I know the BBC tapes aren't fantastic, but I've heard them broadcast without the NR and it makes the CD sound like a crappy bootleg.

Anyone know if the Classic Records Lp set used the same mastering, or did they do it properly?

JJ

 

In terms of "worst" mastering by those who should know better, I will humbly submit Santana's "Shaman" (compressed to the breaking point) and the Stevie Wonder remasters (all sizzle and no steak). I heard Stevie's "Sir Duke" on the radio in my car the other day, and it was painfully obvious it was from the remaster even in that environment. The aural equivalent of chewing aluminum foil.

 

Huey Lewis and the News Sports Expanded Edition is one of the worst I've heard. It's muffled and dead.