It's too freaking loud !!!

Clarity is not my forte 

Hawkwise wrote: As someone who doesnt really buy CD's very often (being a vinyl freak ) i have come to notice the last few CD's i have bought have  been mastered so freaking loud ,  Yesterday the new KT Tunstall album droped through the letter box , so i took out the lovley re master of Coltrane's Giant Steps , Popped in the Tunstall didnt touch the Volume control  pressed play booooooooooooom holy sh*t man that;s freaking loud !!! The album has next to know real dynamics to the sound  which is such a shame as  Miss Tunstall does write good songs and i am big fan of her previous albums (specially acoustic extravaganza ) but this to me because the way been mastered is almost UNLISTENABLE   . I also found the same with a CD of  Zepplins Houses of the Holy , which now has been relegated to the car stereo as i find cant listen to it on my hifi it does my ears in. does this happen to many of the Prog re issues on CD ? also do they do the same to the new prog albums out there ?  Why is this being done ? anyone else find this damn annoying ?

I would recommend you not play CDs with your turntable.

But as someone who grew up with LPs and totally embraced CDs even though many were really crappy at first.  Have you tried the volume control? 

It's really a bit of an odd complaint, but you are on record as hating CDs in the first place, so I applaud you for your consistency.  And of course no disrespect intended.

I don't mind the loudness of some bands which started their work in digital era - The Mars Volta and Muse made an art form of it. However, remastered old recording sometimes can be awful: instead of a big homogenic lump of sound I have a feeling I'm listening to a pile of very thin layers  - for example early Bowie albums, or Tull's Aqualung. There's an extra 'oomph', but acoustic guitars are horrible.

topographicbroadways wrote: i did an experiment once importing files of songs recorded in different decades from the 70's up to the 00's into a DAW and found when i got to about 1994 a lot of digital clipping started emerging and as you move forward from that point dynamic range disappears more and more.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

All I know is the loudness war turns me off new music. If I like new music it's in spite of the bad mastering. I want to hear something with more dynamics than my MIDI keyboard.

I could heavily agree  that the loudness war turns me off to new music.  Even later King Crimson...I put in on and its just so f'ing compressed that is retains absolutely no dynamics.  It certainly helps to go live with bands from this era.

I believe it's the "Loudness War"
I assume if I read this thread before I posted this many people have probably brought it up already

Yeah, labels keep cranking up the volume (because what's more awesome than being louder!?) and many albums sound like crap thanks to it. Especially remasters of older ones.

WalterDigsTunes wrote: Loudness: Another symptom of post-89 degeneracy. Whereas tape benefited from natural compression and early digital recording exhibited judiciousness when dealing with the increased dynamic range, modern attention whores can't help but turn everything into a loud pile of digitized tosh. Take a gander at a waveform for some current atrocity then compare it to a pre-89 treasure. Not only is the music itself a piss-poor imitation, but the sonic properties reflect the muddied frenzy of this aberrant age.

So are you suggesting that the post-89 albums of pre-89 bands are crap?  Old bands have adopted new technology.

1) A lot of times vinyl records these days are pressed from CD masters because vinyl is a good way to get unwitting people to spend a lot of money to feel superior. Sometimes if the band really cares and they have the money, it will be a separate master.

2) The loudness war is mostly a result of radio airplay. Human perceive something that is louder as being better, at least if it's slightly louder and the things being compared are similar. So slowly the song waveform became a block. But things don't have to have cavernous gaps in the waveform to be good (http://soundcloud.com/warp-records/brian-eno-2-forms-of-anger-small-craft-on-a-milk-sea) Example of good modern mastering. But you have to figure there's a lot of variety in the instrumentation here. Too much really loud distorted guitatrs will just be a wall of piss, to me. (re: Modern Heavy Rock/Post-grunge)

3) Remasters are often louder than the originals, but it is equally about getting a good stereo mix down, too. These days in 5.1 or maybe 7.1. Case in point: Nine Inch Nails's Pretty Hate Machine remaster. Granted, if you like the really 80s sounds-so-distant-it's-from-another-room goth production, you might not care for the remaster. But the mixing is so much more interesting. The songs actually have presence now. Seems to me like some people long for the days of mono and weak recordings. Why?

stonebeard wrote: 1) A lot of times vinyl records these days are pressed from CD masters because vinyl is a good way to get unwitting people to spend a lot of money to feel superior. Sometimes if the band really cares and they have the money, it will be a separate master. 2) The loudness war is mostly a result of radio airplay. Human perceive something that is louder as being better, at least if it's slightly louder and the things being compared are similar. So slowly the song waveform became a block. But things don't have to have cavernous gaps in the waveform to be good (http://soundcloud.com/warp-records/brian-eno-2-forms-of-anger-small-craft-on-a-milk-sea) Example of good modern mastering. But you have to figure there's a lot of variety in the instrumentation here. Too much really loud distorted guitatrs will just be a wall of piss, to me. (re: Modern Heavy Rock/Post-grunge) 3) Remasters are often louder than the originals, but it is equally about getting a good stereo mix down, too. These days in 5.1 or maybe 7.1. Case in point: Nine Inch Nails's Pretty Hate Machine remaster. Granted, if you like the really 80s sounds-so-distant-it's-from-another-room goth production, you might not care for the remaster. But the mixing is so much more interesting. The songs actually have presence now. Seems to me like some people long for the days of mono and weak recordings. Why?

Great post Stoney, and the first phrase is pricesless