It’s either a vinyl rip or somebody who has been playing with some sort of de-clipping software. I have no idea why people upload DR readings of stuff like this. It serves no purpose whatsoever.
Why, in your estimation, does it not serve a purpose? DR values are merely a guide, sure. They don't tell the whole story. A Moon Shaped Pool is not a clipped recording, either. There's nothing in de-clipping software that's going to cure something that's not clipped.
I like this album a lot, and even if it doesn't touch their best records (The Bends, OK Computer, Kid A and In Rainbows), it was still a nice bounce back from the merely solid King of Limbs.
I picked this up when new, after half a dozen listens, I decided all I really need from Radiohead is Kid A
yea unfortunately I didn't find Amnesic worked as an album. great singles, but not a solid listen in my book
Amnesiac is the very definition of a criminally under-rated album in my book. One of their very best.
It serves no purpose because the DR postings on the "Dynamic Range Database" are useful to guide people in cases where different masterings exist so you can get the more dynamic version if you like. DR readings of vinyl rips are notoriously unreliable and a record cut from a DR6 master can easily end up giving a DR12 reading so it doesn't tell you anything about how dynamic the record is or if it sounds good or bad. The only way to know if an album has a more dynamic mastering than the CD is to ask the band, label or the mastering engineer who did the mastering. The homemade "declipped" masterings that many are doing are also not helpful. All it does is confuse people and make them believe that a more dynamic exists when it doesn't.
It is true that most attempts to make recordings more dynamic have failed. It is also true that needledrops often give an unclear picture and should only be used as a alternate flavor for any particular recording. I guess I see your point with somebody posting a home brewed "version" on the DR Database since it's not like it's available to everybody. Moreover, there is no provenance that tells the reader how a greater dynamic range was achieved. Anyone who uses de-clipping software is actually making the files lossy. One is deleting data from the songs. Not good. Plus, it simply doesn't work (at least not to my ears). So, yeah, I know what you mean now. Thank you. There is, however, only one way to recover lost dynamics in a recording, and it takes a lot of math, finding the transients inherent in a recordings, as long as it's not clipped post-mixing. What's more, I find that the most misleading thing about the DR numbers is assigning a strict numerical value as acceptable, when really a recording most pleasing to the human ear is one that follows psychoacoustic principles, chiefly those which occur in nature as dynamic waveforms. I'm not so sure that amplitude/loudness has as much to do with it as the actual waveform, itself. I think I'll start a thread. I don't do that often.
Played the album again last night after a break of a few months. Still really like it. I can only listen to it in bed, in the dark, on the discman. It doesn't work on me anywhere else. In the car, in the daylight, I'm like, "wtf?" but in those dark hours after bedtime when I'm all alone with my thoughts it really hits the spot.
It’s become something I regularly listen to while on a long flight. Radiohead in general seems to make a good soundtrack for air travel.
