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Topic: Whats is the worst mastered CD [your opinions] ? (Read 449105 times) previous topic - next topic
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Whats is the worst mastered CD [your opinions] ?

Reply #150 –
Quote from: molnart on
Quote from: Sphix on

All Black Metal albums


Yes, i was wondering why did't anyone mention it. Especially early BM like Bathory, Mayhem. Yesterday i was listening to Zyklon B - Blood must be shed. Man, awful band, awful music, awul mastering, just a waste of time and material used to print this piece of sh*t.
But poor mastering here is used mostly to hide the lack of abiltity of these 'musicians'.



You may like it or not but Bathory's Hammerheart is a masterpiece of Black Metal. Do you imagine it to be lacquered and smooth like Mozart or Chris de Burgh? However I don't think it is mastered that way due short cash. That sounding is inherent atmosphere of that genre.
Ogg Vorbis for music and speech [q-2.0 - q6.0]
FLAC for recordings to be edited
Speex for speech

Whats is the worst mastered CD [your opinions] ?

Reply #151 –
this is an easy question: the remastered version of "Einstürzende Neubautens" Kollaps

it really ruins the album completely

Whats is the worst mastered CD [your opinions] ?

Reply #152 –
There are lots of bad ones, but the worst I think are the two latest System of A Down cd's. I just can't listen to either one all the way through. You know what we need? A database of cd replaygain values. Just replaygains, nothing else (well, you'd need to know exactly what cd you're referring to).

Whats is the worst mastered CD [your opinions] ?

Reply #153 –
Worst mastered...hmm..

Therapy? Albums are all quite loud, the loudest one i own is the newest one, 'Never Apologse, Never Explain', Albumpeak 11,32, loudest song: Rock you Monkeys, peak 12.21

There's only a single song in my whole therapy?-collection that's below 89 db, 0,65 below...

Ok, it's not the kind of music you usually listen quietly but hell, there's no need to produce music that loud...

There overall peak and track peak of the Album 'suicide pact, you first' is at 1.0, no headroom, not a bit.

I don't think that it's the band's fault but I think it's a hard piece to bite

Whats is the worst mastered CD [your opinions] ?

Reply #155 –
Well, I dont like latest Bob Marley`s delux editions.. Sounds kinda thin to me...

Whats is the worst mastered CD [your opinions] ?

Reply #157 –
Quote from: de Mon on
Quote from: molnart on

Quote from: Sphix on

All Black Metal albums


Yes, i was wondering why did't anyone mention it. Especially early BM like Bathory, Mayhem. Yesterday i was listening to Zyklon B - Blood must be shed. Man, awful band, awful music, awul mastering, just a waste of time and material used to print this piece of sh*t.
But poor mastering here is used mostly to hide the lack of abiltity of these 'musicians'.



You may like it or not but Bathory's Hammerheart is a masterpiece of Black Metal. Do you imagine it to be lacquered and smooth like Mozart or Chris de Burgh? However I don't think it is mastered that way due short cash. That sounding is inherent atmosphere of that genre.


Hammerhart is still black metal? I don't know that album, but it's folower 'Twilight of the Gods', was pretty far from anything called black metal and such a brutal album as 'Return...' was.
i've heard 'Twilight'  from some poor 128k mp3's but the songs sounded so bad, that it had to be several times transcoded or an extremely poor mix, i can't decide. (and i can't decide if i didn't liked it because of the bad sound, or is it just simply boring)

AFAIK 'Twilight...' is considered to be a well produced Bathory album, but again i didn't have the opportunity to hear the original. But 'Return...' sounded quite horrible

(yeah, i listen to a lot of music)

Whats is the worst mastered CD [your opinions] ?

Reply #158 –
@molnart
Funny thing i see your avatar here. I have many "The Mission" CDs and they are partial painfully bright mastered!
Children has that much high highs it bursts your ears listening on a hifi system with live characteristics.
Is troll-adiposity coming from feederism?
With 24bit music you can listen to silence much louder!

Whats is the worst mastered CD [your opinions] ?

Reply #159 –
Quote from: molnart on
Quote from: de Mon on

Quote from: molnart on

Quote from: Sphix on

All Black Metal albums


Yes, i was wondering why did't anyone mention it. Especially early BM like Bathory, Mayhem. Yesterday i was listening to Zyklon B - Blood must be shed. Man, awful band, awful music, awul mastering, just a waste of time and material used to print this piece of sh*t.
But poor mastering here is used mostly to hide the lack of abiltity of these 'musicians'.



You may like it or not but Bathory's Hammerheart is a masterpiece of Black Metal. Do you imagine it to be lacquered and smooth like Mozart or Chris de Burgh? However I don't think it is mastered that way due short cash. That sounding is inherent atmosphere of that genre.


Hammerhart is still black metal? I don't know that album, but it's folower 'Twilight of the Gods', was pretty far from anything called black metal and such a brutal album as 'Return...' was.


Hmm. To be accurate, I have to say it is a 'waypoint' between 'Return' and 'Twilight...' with lot of scandinavian mythology included. By the way, it seems to me 'Twilight...' you talk wasn't transcoded. While it is not Black Metal it still have coars sound.
Ogg Vorbis for music and speech [q-2.0 - q6.0]
FLAC for recordings to be edited
Speex for speech

Whats is the worst mastered CD [your opinions] ?

Reply #160 –
Quote from: Wombat on
@molnart
Funny thing i see your avatar here. I have many "The Mission" CDs and they are partial painfully bright mastered!
Children has that much high highs it bursts your ears listening on a hifi system with live characteristics.


i just simply love the cover art of that album. it's a really nice picture, nothing more.

in fact i don't really remember the mastering now, but i know 'carved in sand' sounded too quiet. and i haven't heard their other albums, so you may be right

Whats is the worst mastered CD [your opinions] ?

Reply #161 –
Has anyone heard the new Flaming Lips?  Yikes!  Is that bad mastering or an intention (both?)?  Anyone have comments on it as well?  They are considered Pop, so maybe that's why the mastering is so overbearingly loud to the point of in-your-face distortion?

Whats is the worst mastered CD [your opinions] ?

Reply #162 –
I can excuse the mastering of the new Flaming Lips album. Even though I'm sure the loudness race had something to do with the -11 dB Replaygain values, it doesn't completely ruin the sound as it would, say, a classical album. The Flaming Lips have used distortion artistically before, as in Slow Nerve Action:
http://beta.yousendit.com/transfer.php?act...D3DF7FD0A78BAE4

So the distortion doesn't worry me too much, but the dynamic range compression is excessive. Even the quiet tracks get a -8 dB Replaygain value. The compression is especially apparent in introduction of The W.A.N.D.. It's just clapping and guitar until 0:24, when the bass and drums come in, and you can hear the level of the guitar drop way down, an effect of the dynamic range compression.

Whats is the worst mastered CD [your opinions] ?

Reply #163 –
When I saw this thread bumped to the first page I thought, bingo! I'll post about the new Flaming Lips album. Seems I don't need to but I'll add my two penneth anyway.

It sounds awful and I'm absoloutely gutted. Yoshimi was such a great album. Not perfect sonically but nowhere near as bad as Mystics. Too loud, too much distortion due to bad engineering.
daefeatures.co.uk

Whats is the worst mastered CD [your opinions] ?

Reply #164 –
Yoshimi and the new album's loudness are actually quite similar:



The Soft Bulletin wasn't much better, either.

Whats is the worst mastered CD [your opinions] ?

Reply #165 –
Oh, Flaming Lips' Dave Fridmann did it again. He also clippressed S-K's The Woods to death before. This man's a threat! LOL

Whats is the worst mastered CD [your opinions] ?

Reply #166 –
LOL!  Yoshimi was actually tolerable in it's mastering (as a whole) since there were a few songs where not all of the song was clipped to death; this resulted in the mastering seeming very intentional and actually artful, especially since many songs dealt with machines (etc.).  But now, with the new one....sigh....  Every song is painfully distorted, not only with the low end, but in almost all places.  I listen to music where mastering gets a quite a few complaints often, from Glitch (but I love most mastering in the genre) to Industrial to old Jazz and Pop, and this is one that I just can't get through because of the mastering!   

Look at The WAND!!

Whats is the worst mastered CD [your opinions] ?

Reply #167 –
Here is a small sample from the album for your displeasure:
Yeah Yeah Yeah Song, sample
daefeatures.co.uk

Whats is the worst mastered CD [your opinions] ?

Reply #168 –
@komplexnous: Omg, what are those spikes at the beginning of the song?!?!

@evereux: sounds like their instruments are broken...

Whats is the worst mastered CD [your opinions] ?

Reply #169 –
Some of the worst are:

The Be Good Tanyas: Chinatown
Sarah McLahlan: Afterglow
Beth Orton: Comfort Of Strangers

They are not only subject copy protection damaged audio track but also have naff cd mastering/pressing by EMI. Run them through EAC on maximum repair settings then burn it back onto a CD-R to hear them like they should have been.

The bad mastering/pressing was confirmed to me when Nettwerk posted me a replacement non-CP CD of Chinatown which revealed to me that many of the errors on the disc were just down to poor mastering/pressing.

As for "Comfort Of Strangers" even after restorting it with EAC it sounds like you are listening to it with ear plugs in!, Califonication by the Chillis is awful you can hear clipping throughout most of the tracks and many Iron Maiden recordings have a tinny speaker sound. Did they really have to use a school kid who was on work experience to man the recording decks? Egad.


David

Whats is the worst mastered CD [your opinions] ?

Reply #170 –
Going back in time a bit here, but the first (AAD) CD release of "Foxtrot" by Genesis is an absolute horror.  Virtually no dynamic range, horrendous tape hiss, a general "muddy" quality with mushy distorted treble in fact it sounds like the CD was made from a badly recorded worn-out cassette. It's so bad as to be un-listenable - thankfully I still have my LP copy.

Other AAD CDs I've heard have no such problems - the AAD release of "Argus" by Wishbone Ash and early Tangerine Dream CD releases all have excellent mastering including live concert recordings like "Richochet" by TD.

The current fashion of "digitally remastering" older analog recordings for CD release just seems to compound the problem - most I've heard degrade rather than improve the original. Just like many new CD releases, far too much compression, overuse of  latest "kewl" effects plug-ins etc. Very disappointing.

Whats is the worst mastered CD [your opinions] ?

Reply #171 –
BRILLIANT THREAD! 

Gotta agree here...  ... most digitally resquashed ... eh remastered stuff sounds awful and the original album is lots better. I too paid about 10 bucks more for the Swedish original release of Bjorks Icelandic-language "Gling glo" album, and I must say I do not regret it! Soothing RGs ... (ok it's jazz and cannot be compared with "half deadly compressed" mainstream pop wares...)

My warmest thanks also go to that guy who showed me that I should consider buying a turntable again!! I was almost giving up that thought, because I regarded it as "old fashioned, " but recent album releases have shown that there CAN be a change in dynamics, by using vinyl!
Cool! The new DM album track has about the same spectrum like some song recorded back in 1993 - that's how it should be!

Something else:
No one who does not own the original CD or non-encoded rips [WAV] of a CD should EVER judge about replay gains!!
That's serious folks! With a good (!)(no, not winamp) audio playing and cataloging software like Foobar2000, you are able to MODIFY a replay gain to your own wishes! So that guy who just gets the album as a torrent or downloading it as a .rar/.zip archive might already get a version with *other* replay gains!
Moreover, do not forget that there is a less known option called --noreplaygain in LAME.
Kudos to all dev's not going like "Upgrade OS or f$%# off!"

Whats is the worst mastered CD [your opinions] ?

Reply #172 –
Quote from: pianoman on
[...] there is a less known option called --noreplaygain in LAME.

Virtually nothing supports LAME's replaygain info anyhow.

Whats is the worst mastered CD [your opinions] ?

Reply #174 –
very bad masters are
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Californication and Stadium Arcadium

Labels should put a warning sticker on albums mastered by Vlado Meller.
It's only audiophile if it's inconvenient.