Anglagard's "Hybris" reissued!

This is GREAT news.

A date for Epilog ? Would be wise to order them both at the same time.


Edited by GosudO - March 25 2009 at 18:27

Negoba wrote: I'm calling Shenanigans. What do you mean by "flat and lifeless"? Generally, that descriptor is used for over-compressed music that lacks dynamics....that's a mastering level choice and has absolutely nothing to do mp3 encoding. If you turn off your EQ yet claim to be able to tell the difference, I'm skeptical.   I don't know about your portable player, but if was using FLAC instead of mp3, I wouldn't be able to carry my entire music catalog with me constantly, which is a nice thing.   There's an old story about a bunch of wine critics not being able to tell $20 wine from $2000 wine in a blind test......this reminds of that.     Edit: Seeing that you're using extremely high end monitoring, you obviously have some audio savvy. What is it that you're actually hearing? There are old prog works, "In a Glass House" is a good example, where the hiss in the upper frequency ranges is so loud that the decreased resolution in the upper frequencies that is the mp3 data loss would do nothing but change the nature of the hiss.

Ah, I was just about to reply and only just spotted your edit.

Being able to hear the tape hiss well can be rather distracting -- hearing imperfections better is a bit of a downside.

I generally describe overly-compressed music as "overly-compressed, too loud and lacking in dynamic range" rather than flat and lifeless -- Anekdoten's last album fits that bill to some extent -- but I see that that description would be apt there as well. I'm not sure I've ever come across anyone using those terms for overly-compressed music though.

This is the problem with music, trying to describe it without using woolly, ill-defined terms. By dull and lifeless I had in mind the lack of erm... I was going to say sparkle... high-end detail and clarity, that's better, in cymbals -- I find they usually sound a bit muddy, exactly like they've been run through a high-cut filter. Fine detail is often missing from breath sounds from either vocalists or close-mic'd wind players. The lack of high frequency detail in reverb tails can make some mixes sound shallower -- less front-to-back depth to the soundstage as the altered reverb affects depth/distance perception. All the sorts of things that are usually associated with "air" in a mix.

I don't see what my choice of EQ setting has to do with all this though. It's a choice -- I prefer to listen to music flat, with no hyped bass or other boosts or cuts to alter the sound to make it "pleasing"; I listen to all music this way and am used to it, plus I know my monitors pretty well with mixing on them as well.

As for my music player, I have the vast majority of my music collection on there and only have about 4 GB free out of 80 GB -- capacity is going to become an issue as my (currently small) collection grows, but I'm just going to have to live with it.

On topic, I've just received an email:

Hello,

Your order of Hybris was sent today.


Best Regards,

Anna Holmgren
Alvarsdotter Music & Production

Wow, Anna Holmgren! I think I need to go and sit down... I can't wait, it's nearly here!

Jorvik wrote: Negoba wrote: How many people even in a music-phile forum like this, actually can tell the difference? Most folks don't even have more than a 2-band EQ, let alone the ear to tell the difference between a 192k Mp3 and CD quality. I barely do and I've spend many many hours mixing and mastering music.   Isn't FLAC still 50-60% of memory usage as .wav? Which defeats part of the convenience of the mp3 in the first place. I daresay the MP3s streamed from this site are probably not very high bitrate so as to save bandwidth, but I can hear it – they sound flat, dull and lifeless. I still think one of the strongest arguments for lossless is "how do you know whether you're missing information if it isn't there to be heard". As for EQ, I don't believe in it and always turn it off: I don't want the music unnecessarily coloured by EQ or supposedly-pleasant sounding speakers – I prefer to listen to music as near to as the artist intended as possible, which is one reason for having studio monitors and decent in-ear monitors for my music player. Yes, FLAC compresses file size to about 50–60% that of WAV, but as I said earlier, these days with high capacity miniature hard-drives and flash devices and high-speed internet, MP3 is not so much a convenience as a pointless compromise. I agree with Mr ProgFreak about music being the most important thing, but the additional aspects of a physical medium and artwork etc still adds something to the whole experience which it would be a shame to lose. I don't like the idea of only having files though as they can easily be lost or corrupted (which I've had happen on occasion), with a CD it's always there as a back-up should the worst happen. Anyway, I'm really looking forward to getting Hybris as I'm looking forward to holding it and looking at the artwork (I shall say no more).

Negoba wrote: How many people even in a music-phile forum like this, actually can tell the difference? Most folks don't even have more than a 2-band EQ, let alone the ear to tell the difference between a 192k Mp3 and CD quality. I barely do and I've spend many many hours mixing and mastering music.   Isn't FLAC still 50-60% of memory usage as .wav? Which defeats part of the convenience of the mp3 in the first place.

There is no conceivable difference between a properly coded ~256kbit mp3 and the CD ... there have been many tests that proved this. I downloaded Mr. Wilson's album as mp3 from eMusic.com ... sounds great! And I can even play it from beginning to end ...

Negoba wrote: How many people even in a music-phile forum like this, actually can tell the difference? Most folks don't even have more than a 2-band EQ, let alone the ear to tell the difference between a 192k Mp3 and CD quality. I barely do and I've spend many many hours mixing and mastering music.   Isn't FLAC still 50-60% of memory usage as .wav? Which defeats part of the convenience of the mp3 in the first place.

I daresay the MP3s streamed from this site are probably not very high bitrate so as to save bandwidth, but I can hear it – they sound flat, dull and lifeless. I still think one of the strongest arguments for lossless is "how do you know whether you're missing information if it isn't there to be heard".

As for EQ, I don't believe in it and always turn it off: I don't want the music unnecessarily coloured by EQ or supposedly-pleasant sounding speakers – I prefer to listen to music as near to as the artist intended as possible, which is one reason for having studio monitors and decent in-ear monitors for my music player.

Yes, FLAC compresses file size to about 50–60% that of WAV, but as I said earlier, these days with high capacity miniature hard-drives and flash devices and high-speed internet, MP3 is not so much a convenience as a pointless compromise.

I agree with Mr ProgFreak about music being the most important thing, but the additional aspects of a physical medium and artwork etc still adds something to the whole experience which it would be a shame to lose. I don't like the idea of only having files though as they can easily be lost or corrupted (which I've had happen on occasion), with a CD it's always there as a back-up should the worst happen.

Anyway, I'm really looking forward to getting Hybris as I'm looking forward to holding it and looking at the artwork (I shall say no more).

Nice to see it's finally been reissued, I love Buried Alive so it'll be nice to finally hear some of the songs in their original form.

AT LAST!!!

Jorvik wrote: Mr ProgFreak wrote: I wonder why they don't simply publish the albums as downloads on the major platforms (iTunes, Amazon, Napster etc.). Personally, I couldn't care less about that – I wouldn't want to listen to their music at anything less than CD quality anyway. Plus, with a CD there's pretty artwork and should either my PC or my music player die, at least I'll have have a back-up and it won't be gone forever and have to be bought again.

Warning. There now follows a severely off-topic rant:

Jorvik wrote: Completely off topic, but did anyone see Steven Wilson on UK news last weekend, driving over an iPod in protest at the fact that MP3 is poor quality? Apparently his latest album of 10 tracks has been indexed as 100 tracks to discourage people from playing the album on shuffle!

...That's a bit of an overreaction, don't you think? Putting obstacles in the way of people who wish to listen to music on shuffle strikes me as a very negative and aggressive gesture towards the listener. Why shouldn't someone be allowed to listen to a song in the context of different songs, other than the original album tracks it was placed with?

I mean, last week I posted a couple of CD compilations to some friends, in an effort to try and get them interested in some new sounds. If I'd wanted to include one of Mr Wilson's new tracks I would have presumably had to have laboriously stitched together ten individual snippets after ripping the album before adding it to the tracklist.

I'm a great believer in listening to albums in full, and hardly ever put my mp3 player onto shuffle (only when I simply can't decide what to listen to), but to try and actively PROHIBIT it... Well, it just seems like such a petty, miserable thing to do.

We shall now return you to your scheduled discussion.





Edited by Trouserpress - March 23 2009 at 14:35