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Topic: Dream Theater - Systematic Chaos bad mastering (Read 7979 times) previous topic - next topic
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Dream Theater - Systematic Chaos bad mastering

Hi there people
I just bought the last Dream Theater album and went home to listen to it. I liked the album, it's better than their last two
And here we go, about the bad mastering...the tracks that i could listen to previous to the release of the album were mp3 and i said..well, let's hope the album will sound better. But what i found was that the sound was so flat, no punch, nothing...The album gain is -10.35 and some tracks go even to -11.something (
The mastering engineer for this was Vlado Meller, that i heard some people don't really like much. Now's my turn to hate him.
Dream Theater is ne of my favorite bands and i really didn't want to hear their album sounding like that cheap crappy hardcore stuff...but that's the truth. This album if will ever be remastered will make a very interesting listen. But unfortunately one cannot enjoy the music without being annoyed by their stupid compression...
And I was thinking that all these tech advancements in audio equipment...for what? ..to ruin the music...The world's gone sh*t!

Dream Theater - Systematic Chaos bad mastering

Reply #1 –
Quote from: smeagol on
Vlado Meller

Ow, the RHCP mastering guy. Actually I think it's a bit better than Octavarium, soundwise.
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.

Dream Theater - Systematic Chaos bad mastering

Reply #2 –
ha, Vlado Meller is the worst.

Dream Theater - Systematic Chaos bad mastering

Reply #4 –
Quote from: molnart on
Does the DVD version sound that bad too ?

Hmm, it's only in Dolby Digital 5.1 so there are totally different problems. Music with such fast and heavy parts never sounds very good in DD.
The surround mix, that is quite good, makes partly up for that.
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.

Dream Theater - Systematic Chaos bad mastering

Reply #5 –
Quote from: smeagol on
But unfortunately one cannot enjoy the music without being annoyed by their stupid compression...

Well, in my opinion the quality is pretty good on this album. I was particularly happy that they'd kept the compressors at bay..
Or maybe there's something wrong with my hearing

Dream Theater - Systematic Chaos bad mastering

Reply #6 –
I've heard worse than Systematic Choas sound quality wise but I've definitely heard better.  It's a shame really since I like Dream Theater quite a lot.  Really their last album that didn't suffer from being completely dynamically squashed IMO is Awake.  Oh well, I like the music so I listen anyway.  Unfortunately, it's not just their music that suffers; most every band I really like has all their CDs sound like that now.
Nero AAC 1.5.1.0: -q0.45

Dream Theater - Systematic Chaos bad mastering

Reply #7 –
Hey, thanks for pointing the finger there--I really, really didn't want to blame Paul Northfield for SC sounding as crap as it does because I can't imagine how someone who's worked with Rush for thirty years could do such a crappy job. Having it be the RHCP guy makes much more sense. They really should have known better, hah.

Song-wise I honestly can't stand the majority of the album--I liked Repentence, Constant Motion is fine with the solo edited out (as is the case with the majority of DT songs), and Profits of War was great.

Sound-wise, though, it is rather crap--obviously there's basically no dynamic range (except on Repentence, but even then it's too loud) but what I also notice is that the kick drum is louder than everything else.

It's rather a shame really as both Jordan and John (Myung) substancially updated their gear; Jordan's patches especially sound much better, the difference between it on Chaos and any DT release to date is like night and day. He still needs to ditch the terrible '80s synthpop guitar wannabe lead sound but obviously I can't have everything in life or I wouldn't be making this post because i'd be busy having a threesome. It's about friggin' time though, that 128MB of sample memory in the Kurzweil is seriously lame--sorry, was seriously lame ten years ago. Le sigh.

That said it is... how to say... different; it's "drier," I guess you'd say. Six Degrees and Octivarium have so much limmeting you practically drown in it but it did make for a nice sort of echoy effect; that's gone now, but it still sounds like crap.

Meh. I'm sorry, I've been spoiled by David Bottrill's mixes of Scenes From a Memory, which sound f-ing beautiful. Looking back this post probably wasn't worth the time it took for me to write it out; not that that'll stop me from posting it, but, you know.