Does Heavy Metal sound bad or is it my speakers?
Reply #46 – 2013-09-12 09:17:56
...I will take, for example, a modern Whitechapel album over an older weak sounding Testament album for those very reasons. When using something with low output such as a clip+, the louder albums work better as opposed to having to crank up the volume on a quieter one to the point of noise/distortion. What bugs me is the FIRST THING somebody did when Black Sabbath put out the single 'God is Dead?' for their new album is run it through an analyzer and proclaim it sounds bad. The song isn't even a loud song other than a few parts, I doubt there is even anything remotely audible IN the song to make it sound 'bad' 'compressed' 'brickwalled' or whatever. Not trying to be a wiseass but has it occurred to you that it's impossible to illustrate what we individually hear over the internet? The analysis helps convey what we're talking about. It's not perfect. We all perceive things differently, but it's as close as we can get without uploading samples and having polls. You're making an awfully unnecessary assumption when you say that someone just proclaimed it bad after running it through an analyzer. Rick Rubin produced that album and there's a pretty general consensus that he's been messing up and brutally clipping albums for some time now. As a person who's been listening to Testament since their very first album I can tell you that I'm glad they didn't remaster stuff like "Practice What You Preach" to sound loud at low-volumes on your Clip+. I still listen to that at least once a month and I turn it up and enjoy the dynamics. I don't believe you are alone in your opinions about loudness-mastering though. A lot of people don't care about the dynamics and want everything to be the same volume as everything else is these days. If that were not so we wouldn't be having this discussion about the Loudness War. (I would really like to know how you think turning up an "old" Testament album is causing noise and distortion. I'll bet I could pick out plenty of distortion from your Whitechapel album at moderate volume.)