Rant - Hot Mastered CDs

[Modular1]

Grr... Im fed up of buying cds and finding they have been mastered so loud that they distort. Do the artists know how these cds sound? If you don't know what i'm on about have a quick read of this  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

Why is there not an industry standard sound level for cds? The distortion on the cds is bad enough but now my cd player (A £250 Nad model) has decided that when the level is too loud its gonna start clicking too! I thought it was the cd player at first before i discovered its only certain cds it does it with.

3 cds in point:

Slayer - Christ Illusion. Distorted like hell all the way through. I bet its not like that on the master tapes. All the dynamics of past classics (reign/south/seasons) is gone.
The White Stripes - Icky Thump. Good album but i cant bear to listen to it cos all i hear is the crackly bass drum etc. It also makes the recording sound as flat as a witches tit.
Mastodon - Blood Mountain. This one doesn't distort as bad as the others but its still so loud it $%&#s my cd player up.

id rather have a great sounding cd and use my own volume control. I didnt fork out loadsa cash on a decent hifi system to play broken cds. grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!

[TwilightOdyssey]

A must-read:

http://www.geekrants.com/articles/mastering.html

[Modular1]

i was just reminded of another awful mastering job.

rush - vapor trails this cd sounds hellish.

[sgmypod]

heard a few of these overly loud cd's..think calafornication is about the only one that works well

[Will]

An interesting read. Hmm, will have to search my music and have more thought into this.

[phlip]

I couldn't agree more with all of this having dabbled in the mastering process myself, it's blatently obvious when your pushing the final limiter way too hard.

The Mastering guys over on the Sound on Sound forum hate this as much as we do, mind you if they're paid to do it they will!!

It's not guitar based (The odd bit of nice twanngy Grestch aside) but if you take a look at this http://brianstagg.co.uk/p_t_a_clipressed/ about the difference between the CD and Vinyl versions of Depeche Mode's Playing the Angel.

We now have a medium (Digital) which can take deliberate errors in it's production. Not wanting to sound like an old tw@t but if you tried this with Vinyl you would end up with unplayable scr@p plastic which would do nothing but jump.

[Modular1]

Not wanting to sound like an old tw@t but if you tried this with Vinyl you would end up with unplayable scr@p plastic which would do nothing but jump.

an inherent quality control in the medium. it proves vinyl was better. :)

[dave_mc]

^ :lol:

this is annoying. i'm more annoyed that often you can't get the volume to a low enough level (e.g. if other people in the house are sleeping).

they do a similar thing with adverts on tv, to try to catch your attention. needless to say, i just turn the sound off or switch channel. but apparently a lot of people don't.

[HTH AMPS]

Iggy Pop's Raw Power CD is an unholy-loud CD, but sounds $%&#in great for it.

otoh, Lamb Of God's 1st album remaster is a real arse up - the bass end is distorted all the way through the album which is a shame since the album totally rules.

[_tom_]

I hate it when I listen to a cd and it has loads of clipping on it. I never noticed it til I got some decent headphones though so maybe I'm better off with low quality speakers :P

[Philly Q]

It's something I've noticed a lot on remastered CDs.  "Remastered" always seems to equal "louder".

Having said that, some older CDs suffer from the opposite problem of being extremely quiet - I don't know if it's just the volume levels or something in the mastering process, but they seem to seriously lack dynamics.  An example would be the MCA CD of Wishbone Ash's Front Page News, which is ludicrously quiet.  And even when you crank it up to ridiculous levels it sounds like there's a blanket on the speakers.   

[indysmith]

I don't really have anything to say on this topic, as there's nothing we can really do about it or the rest of the music industry, but I've got to say that YES, it is the most annoying thing. It's getting harder and harder to find a decent mix that isn't clipping every couple of seconds. I think that CDs should come with the bare takes and let you mix it yourself. That'd be far easier.
I've also taken to buying the vinyl of albums I really like, because the mix is for some reason usually a lot better on the vinyl release (not always though). That way you can record it on the computer and change it into Apple Lossless with all the other music. Voila, a digital recording with decent mastering.

EDIT: I haven't heard the Slayer and Mastodon albums Modular1 is referring to, but I do have Icky Thump by the White Stripes, and for some reason I'd never listened to it until just now. OH MY GOD - it's absolutely AWFUL. I've never heard such blatant clipping ALL THE TIME. What kind of a retarded producer created this monstrosity? Seriously, who heard this and thought "yeah, that's good! Take it to print!"!?? I'd heard that The White Stripes were making good sounding albums aswell :? maybe the earlier ones were better?
EDIT 2: The actual music ain't too bad though! Really sad that it's butchered. Might need the vinyl. In fact knowing the White Stripes that's probably what they're trying to make yu do - buy the Vinyl, thus bringing back the old analogue ways.

[AndyR]

Interesting what Indy says. Just made me realise that I fell into the trap myself.

Wife's family clubbed together to get me a USB turntable last christmas. After the initial "wow" of being able to listen to my extensive vinyl collection again, I found myself spending increasing amounts of time compressing and editing peaks to try and get my "home-made" CDs as loud as modern CDs. Eventually, I ended up putting it all "on hold" because it took so much time and effort -and the turntable has been gathering dust for a few months now...

D'uh!!! What a pillock (especially seeing as I was aware of much of the above) :oops:

Many thanks - I think you've freed me up again!

[phlip]

but I do have Icky Thump by the White Stripes, and for some reason I'd never listened to it until just now. OH MY GOD - it's absolutely AWFUL. I've never heard such blatant clipping ALL THE TIME. What kind of a retarded producer created this monstrosity? Seriously, who heard this and thought "yeah, that's good! Take it to print!"!??

The issue is not with the Artist, producers or engineers, although they should speak up about it, but are too afraid of the people with the cash.

A final mix down is produced to be as great sounding as possible, bearing in mind the various mediums it is created for.  The Vinyl and CD editions have the exact same mix, the difference comes when that mix is sent off to the mastering engineers. The record company will ask them to supply press ready finals for the various mediums. The vinyl mastering will be treated sympathetically with careful stereo imaging and bass balancing, as if they don't the result will be unplayable and possibly unpressable.
With CD they can compress and limit the hell out of it as it will always play but will sound shiteee, and the record company will be sitting there shouting make it louder so they do.

On the album in question there should be NO digital clipping at all as Jack White is a retro fiend and uses analogue tape. So any digital brick wall clipping you hear happened after the final mix.

[Modular1]

Iggy Pop's Raw Power CD is an unholy-loud CD, but sounds $%&#in great for it.

i HAVE to disagree. hehe! its another proper clipped to $%&# cd. digital distortion sounds horrid!!!