LOUD Remasterings - Why do they keep doing it? What can we do about it?

I listened to a super deluxe edition of James' Laid/Wah Wah today. Oh my god it's loud and it sounds horribly distorted in parts. One of my favorite songs from that era ("Jam J") just sounds HORRIBLE on the super deluxe remastering, but it sounds perfectly FINE on my original CD.

So WHY do companies keep remastering albums so LOUD? Especially deluxe editions, which are [in theory] aimed at private listening rather than "competitive" listening (radio, clubs, etc.)?

Why was the latest Jazz Butcher box set so horribly distorted? Why are so many recent CDs so painful and fatiguing to listen to?

Whenever I see DRs of less than 10, I groan, because I know it's probably gonna be a rough listen. Again and again and again.

So why do they do it?

And how can we fix it?

Are there ways to tweak our setups so that really LOUD CDs don't keep clipping? I listen to everything via my computer (and a headphone amp) so I'm hoping there are some silver bullet "de-clipping" plugins for foobar or WMP which can take the edge off. Please tell me my hopes aren't pipe dreams!

Are there ways to fix these horribly compressed files, or at least trick our ears into think they they're fixed?

Or could it be a simple manner of experimenting with different volume/gain levels on different devices (Windows sound, sound card, headphone amp)?

Anything? Anyone? Any hope?

 

I think that all we can do about it is not buy overly loud and compressed cds and lps and hope someone gets the message one day.

 

Oh, how many times I’ve asked myself this. I don’t have an answer, although applying Audacity’s Clip Fix function occasionally gets great results. All I do know is that it’s one of the factors that has driven me to vinyl. Which I’m sure is what they want...

 

Don't buy them.

 

I think the many complaints here and elsewhere have had some effect. In the end I guess we should return the worst offenders as faulty.

Tim

 

I agree with you Tim. I believe there are many artists, producers and engineers out there without cloth-ears.
They read the forums here and elsewhere.

 

Keep on protesting, keep on writing and talking about it, keep on debating - never give up, never accept it, never get used to it!

 

I think that "not buying them" is half of the solution. The other half has to be to contact the record companies and tell them WHY you're not buying it.

If they don't know why you haven't bought it, how will they know what they need to do to get your custom in future?

 

"Garbage in, garbage out."

 

That's not particularly easy. Posting here is probably more effective than trying customer service.

Tim

 

I bought the The Residents Preserved re-master of Meet The Residents. It sounded awful, with a DR of around 6. I wish I had sent it back now. I wrote to Homer Flynn, the sole remaining member of the band, and told him how badly remastered it sounded. He said he thought it sounded good, but thanked me and told me that he'd pass my comments on to the team.

You can do nothing if there are still engineers who still want to do this to their client's music, despite all the discussion and complaints. For whatever reason they do it (they may like it), they are going to keep on doing it despite everything.

Steal the music, listen to it and then buy it, if it meets a reasonable acceptable quality of remastering. If not, delete the files. If you want new versions, I can't think of another way. Else, buy the old LPs and CDs.

 

Just "vote with your wallet" and don't buy them.

 

Look for either the artists, or the distributors, on Twitter. Be courteous, but also determined and relentless in your efforts to emphasize your concerns. I'm suggesting making their time reviewing these concerns a living hell, acting within Twitter's TOS, of course. It's a powerful medium.

I don't think anyone here would mind if members posted links to their accounts for quick reference either, as long as those links are not posted with the intent to troll them. I'm not suggesting trolling, to be clear. There's a difference between that and nagging/pestering... which seems to be well within the limits of the TOS and can be very effective.

 

I LOVE your use of CAPITALS. Its like you're SHOUTING certain WORDS

 

They do it because it's the norm. Most don't even think about it. The artists still wants it. What can we do? Nothing short of becoming major-selling artists and record executives.

 

One of the reasons they do it is to make us keep buying the same albums over and over. To keep us hoping that the next remaster will ‘get it right.’

 

It is very frustrating buying CD's now, latest releases and many reissues being compressed to hell and sounding awful compared to the originals. I have ripped all of my approx 700 CD's through EAC and done a DR of every one of them and have a great data base of all of them. As we know, the 80's and early 90's CD's were generally pretty good as far as DR is concerned and if I need to buy any of those older CD's it is good to look up the DR Database site and look for those that have decent DR and try to source them somewhere. This doesn't necessarily mean they sound the best, but it is a starting point to know that at least they have decent DR and I can then compare them to any later reissues if they are compressed. Generally, anything that is overly compressed sounds grating and harsh especially in the midrange. Luckily, I have basically all the CD's from that era I require but there are a few that I still want to get. Interestingly, labels like Telarc, Sheffield Lab etc generally have huge DR and which is also interesting is that they generally sound *superb* which tells part of the story. I am very disappointed in the later versions of CD's from XTC, one of my favourite bands, as they are compressed to hell and sound awful, IMO. I really wish there was an answer, but it seems that there really isn't and it is just so disappointing. Disappointing to me to the point that I rarely buy modern music unless I can confirm it is not overly compressed or that I can at least confirm sound decent. However, I must say that I do have some low DR CD's of some modern releases that don't sound too bad.

 

Or to acclimate us to the sound new artists' releases that are mastered that way by rote.

 

Good points. The frustrating thing for me is that while the 80’s and early 90’s cd’s are mastered better, many of them don’t sound that good IMO. Newer remasters of the same albums sound better but they are mastered too loud. Ideally, I want a remaster that gives me more detail, warmth and clarity but is also mastered well and not overly compressed and limited. The only example of this I have in my collection at the moment is the Beatles In Mono cd box.

 

That. Don't give them your money. There's plenty of ways to do that and many are even legal.

I tent to see this line of thinking as forum induced wishful thinking.
The population of buyers of physical product is shrinking, plants are closing, QC going down the toilet. The trend is clear.
How many of the remaining buyers are doing it as a habit ("aging" demographic) and how many are actually demanding good sounding mastering? Last time I checked, audiophiles were a strict minority. You can complain as much as you want, but if we're talking about a major artist with tons of fans, forget it.
BUT - That minority is actually exploitable with limited editions deluxe/boxsets. In that specific case, a bad mastering is an issue 'cause it could impact sales and complaining or boycotting can send a message. Maybe.
Digital (non physical) is the future, no matter how much nostalgics complain about that. Streaming means optimizing for a variety of devices most of which are not hi-fi. The "sweet spot" for youtube should still be DR9. Most services out there use some kind of normalization stage, making the extreme loudness-wars-style overcompression in the end. But that doesn't mean getting back to the good old days.

Of course, multi-mastering (one for stream, one for CD, one for BR/HD, maybe one for vinyl) is possible but not always worth the bother in many cases, according to who makes the decision at least. Certainly not cost-saving.

 

As for the software. Search the forum.
Audacity has been mentioned. Audition has a good clip/distortion correction filter. There's free stuff as Re-Life ad other plugins or standalone software I forgot. They correct clips and restore Dynamic Range.

But keep in mind, this software is just guessing an original waveform starting from a messed up one. It's not giving back the original, that is lost. Sometimes, the end result is still more desirable than the butchered starting point, sometimes the gain is not worth the hassle.
And if EQ is part of the problem, none of that software is automatically fixing that.

 

Buy LPs.

 

You are probably correct with your assertions. However, it is a crying shame that we are destined for mediocrity with everything simply because it makes good business sense and a good bottom line rather than striving for the best that can be had. I mean this with all forms of things we buy and how we live, not just limited to music.

 

It's about that simple.

 

A: Because greedy marketing men with cloth ears are more concerned about perceived income than respecting an artform.

A: We can't fix it. We can only buy the original CDs and remasters by those few mastering engineers we can trust.