Red Hot Chili Peppers New Album - I'm With You - Out 8-30-2011

If you are interested in the best sound quality, get the original CD releases. The remasters are heavily compressed, but they do have some good bonus tracks.

Also the remaster of Freaky Styley fades out way too early (by about 25 seconds!) on the track American Ghost Dance which I have always found annoying.

Here's a comparison of True Men Don't Kill Coyotes from the original CD (top) and remastered CD (bottom):

 

I'm listening through it now, I actually enjoy this a lot more than Stadium Arcadium.

 

The I'm With You CD is the second loudest RHCP album:

 

musically or from the mastering point of view?

 

I think it's a specially designed anti-ear-bleeding drug which you insert into your ear canal BEFORE listening.

 

in the future, we may need a a thread for sonics and mastering and a thread for the music and songs...

 

Has anyone made a graph for RHCP vinyl? I'd love to see how the records stack up. (No pun intended. )

 

Mastering is only a topic for me if it detracts me from enjoying the music.

 

It's not easy to do a fair comparison of the vinyl and CD levels because it partly depends on the level the vinyl transfer is captured at, and any limiting occurs during the digital conversion. But here I've updated the chart to compare the Stadium Arcadium CD and the best digital transfer of the vinyl that I have. As you can see it is a huge difference, even if the actual figure for the vinyl isn't perfectly accurate.

One thing to note is that the vinyl version has great variability of loudness across the songs, whereas on the CD they are all very similar.



From this we can say that the Stadium Arcadium vinyl was mastered basically the same level as the Blood Sugar Sex Magik CD, which doesn't seem to have any limiting at all.

 

I bought the SA records, "laser-dropped" them, and listen to those exclusively.

I was amazed at how much better the records sound than the CDs - jaw-droppingly better.

I will NOT buy the new release on CD as I will no longer subject my ears to another Vlado Meller abonination.

If any of the powers-that-be visit this site, then I'd like to tell them that I will not purchase any more over-compressed nightmares.

(BTW, has our host made any mention of working on the vinyl version of "I'm With You"? Here's hoping he is!)

 

Yeah S.A. vinyl V CD is a really good case studying in what good and bad mastering can do.

Here's what Dani California looks like from the CD (top) and LP (bottom) when they are matched to the same average loudness:

We live in the digital download era right? Why can't they release TWO download versions "Radio Version", and "Audiophile Version" with, say half as much compression, then let customers decide which one they want to buy?

It isn't like they would have to pay to produce two different types of physical media, but at least they would give consumers a choice of which version they want to buy. Hell, some people may buy both versions and realise that they have been ripped off with crap sounding CDs.

 

Welp. Killed that idea dead.

 

As soon as Rick Rubin gets involved in anything, the production ends up sounding like ****.

John Frusciante was the most "audiophile" type in the group and he's no longer there.

 

Don't know if you can necessarily blame Rubin. a lot of stuff he has produced in the past sounds great like The Cult's "Electric", Danzig, Johnny Cash's American Recordings, even BSSM. I think it is more of the "industry" and the standard of mastering CD's louder for some reason.

 

There's loud and then there's LOUD.

One Hot Minute (mastered by Steve Marcussen) is a loud CD by the standards of the mid 1990s, but it still actually sounds good, and it isn't full of clipping like all the subsequent RHCP albums.

That's the difference here. I read a Greg Calbi interview where he said that mastering engineers have always tried to cut records or make CDs to sound loud, but that was never considered more important than making the music sound as good as possible first.

Quote from here:
http://www.sfxmachine.com/docs/loudnesswar/loudness_war.pdf

 

See, this is why I think all music reviews should include a photo of the waveform. Put that at the top of every Rolling Stone review, and heads will quickly turn. And the double-whammy is when you return the brickwalled, "loud" version to the same volume level as the non-smashed version.

The thing that really gets me is how the public gets blamed for the Loudness Wars. "This is what the kids want," so the excuse goes. But there is no evidence for this. Prove it! I see that CD sales have collapsed 68% over the last 10 years, and digital downloading has failed to take its place; if anything, digital appears to be stagnating.

That's a point that needs to be made, repeatedly. And I think the best way to start is to include waveforms with every review. I'd also like to see this done with LP releases, so I'll know if the vinyl version is a classic, like Stadium Arcadium or Icky Thump, or a hack job.

 

Woah! Easy there! Before including waveforms, what about reviewers saying SOMETHING about sound quality, and when a CD sounds like rubbish, saying so, even if the review of the 'content' is positive? If reviewers start trashing the sound of the CDs and downloads that record companies distribute, then maybe something will be done about it?

I've read dozens of reviews of CDs that I know sound like absolute rubbish, but either sound quality issues aren't mentioned at all, OR the reviewer says the CD sounds great!

 

I don't blame Rick Rubin for the godawful sound of the RHCP's CDs. That onus falls squarely on Vlado Meller's shoulders.

Listen to the SH-mastered "Stadium Arcadium". That LP's actually got some nice, subtle moments. It's not all ear-shattering bombast.

Hopefully, the new album's vinyl release will be mastered properly. If not, I'm gonna speak with my wallet and pass on "I'm With You".

 

Which is a glaring example of major label stupidity--plenty of folks on this forum would've gladly ponied up a fair chunk of cash if Steve & Kevin had been allowed to master Californication properly IN ANY FORMAT!!!

 

The word you want is "distract", not "detract".

 

It's definitely Rick Rubin's fault, after everything I've read about the Death Magnetic affair... of course S/A was mixed brilliantly, but it's still up to Rubin that the CD was destroyed.

 

I know I've bitched about the sound quality of I'm With You, but I have been listening to it a lot too (well I can only play it once through on headphones).

I have written a review of the album which you can read here:
http://www.thebarefootreview.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=280&Itemid=124

 

I saw the DR on the unofficial dynamic range database
http://www.dr.loudness-war.info/

Those RMS figures are bloody ridiculous.
I like my music in the -16 to -18dB average RMS range. I think a fair few of SH's DCC albums are a little hotter than that (The Eagles - "Hotel California" & "GH vol2" @ -14dB?), but not because of compression (he didn't add it), just that the max peak is 100%. A lot of the CD's I listen to are from the 80's and the peaks don't always go right up to 100% or 0dB FS, and so the overall music is quieter - great I can turn the amp up if I want it louder. There's so little noise in a CD playback anyway, I see no problem in keeping things quiet.

Now, I have some Roxette from "Don't Bore Us Get To The Chorus" and that needed around 7dB taking out of it. P!nk albums needed around 8dB knocking out, as well as a load of EQ in the low end to remove the fake bass thud sound. Same issue with Newton Faulkner "Hand Built By Robots" requiring EQ and a lot of negative gain. This still wont get the dynamics back, but at least I can have the volume on the amp set and just swap CDs, no having to keep fiddling with it all the damn time.

Is it so hard not to set a standard for volume like they did with TV/film? I'll answer - no it isn't, but they won't, because the industry is hell bent on wrecking music. If they kill it (they have in some places) then we'll only have white noise and the spirit of the people will be crushed. No music, no arts, no rebellions. Hmmm, starting to sound like a communist conspiracy!

 

Yes, it's quite sad that this new album is brickwalled. The music is great (RHCP's best in over a decade...maybe more). It is obvious that they spent a lot of time on the dynamics of the music and to see a lot of that work disappear in the mastering process is disturbing.

BUT I love the new album so much that I refuse to let the mastering ruin my listening experience...