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

But if that's the case how come they don't crush vinyl too?

 

To those of you saying "don't buy the crap"... well, how do you know how it's going to sound unless you buy it??? I mean, yeah, we can come here to see if there are any reviews first, but otherwise, how do you know?

To the OP. There are some things you can do with editing software to make it... um... less harsh. It will sound better, but it'll never be audiophile. Obviously, lowering the overall volume will help. But in my Goldwave software, under the Volume control (I think), there is a Reduce Loudest Peaks. This takes the edge off and does smooth out the waveform some. Again, not audiophile, but it sounds better.

 

I have given up buying remastered cds because of the awful sound quality of so many of them. I rather scroll through ebay etc and buy an original issue. If i already own an album i now stop myself from buying a new remaster. I Just end up feeling unhappy with reissues. As for new releases, i seem to stick to LPs rather than cds. I love both formats by the way!

 

I knew full well going into that James-Laid box set it would be massacred, but the sheer amount of extras that weren't previously released made it worth the pain and suffering
The excellent B-Side The Lake for good sound can be found on the Laid single and B-Sides Ultra, they compressed it on the Destiny Calling single.

 

There's plenty of old 'new' music for anyone to explore. It doesn't have to be a 'contemporary' release.

I find so many old, great dynamic cd's of every kind of music I can imagine...that I don't have a problem with new masterings. Not one bit. Well....I have to admit there are a few items of contemporary lineage I have that aren't mastered great...but...it's infinitesimal compared to my predominant acquirings.

 

I think it's become another instrument, or effect, for lack of a better way of explaining myself. Outside of being just louder, these recordings have a certain sonic signature to them (maybe it's clipping). Kind of like 80's music tended to be a bit thin, or had a certain keyboard or drum sound, this current sonic signature is a trend. Hopefully it plays itself out.

Just got the most recent Weezer CD 'Pacific Daydream' just because I like the song "Beach Boys" and it came in at a DR5 with said song at a DR3.

 

I think that signature sound you're referring to is 'mush'
Band of Horses latest carries that dreadful sound. Shame as there's some good musicianship on it, same goes for BNQT's latest.
Great albums destroyed by poor mastering decisions

 

Too bassy and flat at low volumes regardless of formats delivered? Have noe fear, be patient, keep an eye on the DR database for circa reference, the buy old & used LP's, CD's whatever format. And don't do anything before there has been an epic thread in a certain "SH Forum" about the issue

 

Mogwai's "Atomic" and "Every Country's Sun" are two examples where I'm almost absolutely certain the band has chosen to use compression and the sound of low DR as an instrument and as a way to achieve an overall sound and effect that they want. I'm not even sure if it's possible to achieve the sort of dense sound and achieve the way that density affects tonality if the albums were audiophile DR. In cases like that the low DR and the way that low DR is achieved and how that sounds has become an instrument that is integral to the sound the band wants. How do you tell a band not to use an instrument that they really like, especially when that instrument has a sound they really like?

 

For CD I just stick to the mantra that has served me well over the years. Older is better.

When they started producing CD's they had it right from the beginning. Then they had to find a faster way of replication to meet the overwhelming demand. This is where sonic quality started to take a hit around 1985. Then came the complaining by Walkman CD and other lower end playback enthusiasts "damn it, we can't hear it!" so the response was to start tipping up the treble frequencies, around 10 kHz, audiophiles be damned and slightly increase overall volume. Another problem with some of the older CD's is the Vinyl production master being used. Lack of bass anyone? Then came along the DAW [digital audio workstations] which provided much increased speed in the manufacturing process. Then production speed increased from real time to four times that which was beneficial to the bottom line for the music business in general although people with moderate to very high end systems could tell, but it still wasn't that bad yet although less than ideal. This was around 1988. Then the peeing contests began for louder is better and we are where we are today based on this and listening through much less than adequate playback chains. As a Gort previously mentioned Vinyl is not exempt from these digitally sourced monstrosities either. My take and no criticisms of others opinions as this is just mine.

 

Alabama Shakes is another band where I think this is intentional, both releases.

 

I'll admit I have edited your post but I believe I've kept the essential quotes without taking things out of context. But let me get this straight - are you saying that CD production was initially done in real time? As in a 35 minute program took 35 minutes to produce a single CD? Seriously? What is your source for this claim?

And that with a slightly increased production speed - you mentioned four times - the quality of the product declined? How is that supposed to be possible? What is your source for this statement?

 

I agree with everything that has been said as far as "vote with your wallet" and also "buy the old lps/cds" but I think we should follow the example from our sister community in the home video world (like blu ray releases). If any of you participate in those forums, you know that they are just as crazy and nitpicky as we are. In that world though, home movie products are generally but overwhelmingly getting better rather than worse. You can find almost any movie you like now in a bluray or UHD edition that looks better than any home-video format that has come before. Why is that? Why are our CDs and LPs getting worse? I'm not sure, but here are some things that are different about the videophile online community:

-they agree, generally, about what they are looking for from a "videophile" perspective more than we do regarding audio. While they argue A LOT about the merits of one release versus another, it's usually about minor issues, like color correction and encoding. They are on the same page about some of the fundamental issues. Like contrast, for instance, which is the video equivalent of DR. If a blu ray release has crushed whites or crushed blacks (even just a bit!) these people jump on it right away. But with us, it's like, "oh, it's just a little compression. At least it's from the master tapes." For the music that most of us listen to here--rock and pop--nothing should ever pass through our speakers that has a DR of less than about 10, and that's only for releases that were already compressed historically during recording and mixing, like stuff from the 60s. Otherwise, there's no excuse for a modern rock or pop release to have an average DR of less than about 12 or 13. For those of you that say "yes, but DR isn't the whole story," that's true, but it is a MINIMUM STARTING POINT for good sound. A relative loss in DR--just like white crush and black crush in video--is a loss of audio information and audio detail, always, and it often leads to a more dramatic, noticeable, and *measurable* degradation of SQ than, for instance, mastering from nth generation tapes, wonky EQ, or the use of noise-reduction. Also: DR is all we have. It's the only quantitative measurement that we have other than "it sounds bad" to demonstrate the effects of compression and brickwalling. We all should be on board with DR measurements (for digital releases anyway) and talk about DR more, not less.

-the video community takes it right at the people that create blurays. They talk with them directly in forums and on facebook. They tell them about problems (some of which are very minor compared to brickwalled audio!) and often the problems get FIXED--in the shortterm by disc replacement programs and in the longterm by better and better releases of the same titles by competing distributors. This line of communication doesn't seem to exist in the audio world.

 

Yeah, that's how I feel when I listen to those LOUD remastering. It's like: is all that loudness really NECESSARY?

THE WORST, OF COURSE, IS WHEN EVERYTHING IS BRICKWALLED.

 

Do not buy cds you know are bad

If you bought it inform us here. If you bought in Amazon or other online platforms write a negative review informing on the issues.

Rip the CD and extract the DR numbers. Upload results to de DR database. This will be useful for other people.

 

But isn't there a risk that the record company will just think (to use the OP's example) "Oh, I guess this didn't sell because there's not much demand for James reissues"?

I suppose you could not buy it but then also contact the company and let them know that you're a huge James fan but you are not buying the new reissue because of the mastering and that on catalog reissues perhaps they should cater to the tastes of us older folks, since a James reissue is more likely to appeal to someone in their 40s or 50s, who was a fan when Laid (actually, I prefer Stutter and the earlier stuff a little) came out.

 

It is hard to know whether a box set will sound bad before I buy it. Many of the CDs I buy are deluxe editions of niche bands, and are not on Spotify.

 

That's relatively easy to do with older releases, but anything new is you get what you get.

 

I did this to Fulfillingness' First Finale for Stevie Wonder. It less muddy than the 1990 reissue but way too much treble and bass for my liking.

 

The mastering to CD replication speed ie: pressing speed, yes. My sources will never be known publicly because they insisted I never discuss it because it can hurt their careers as they're still employed in the industry.

Definitely it declined. The higher the speed the less accurate the results. One excellent representation of this is the Rush Moving Pictures album. The very first W. German Green Arrow CD pressing from 1983 is easily the best sounding digital version of this album. After this one came the 1985 Atomic CD's. I don't believe it was actually 1984 as claimed by some although if anyone can offer proof I'm open to changing my mind. The W. German Atomic CD's, both for Europe and the USA arrived and they still sound decent as does the 1985-86 1st Canadian releases, identified because there are no bar-codes on them, but no where near the sonics of the 1983 pressing. After this sound quality on this album continued to decline even when MFSL did it in 1992 from supposedly better tapes. FWIW this isn't the only album to show this industry decline.

 

I'm afraid that the only message we are sending to the record companies by not buying is that we don't want to purchase physical releases anymore. That is the part of our protest they will listen. Anything beyond that is likely to fall on deaf ears.