I can't even force myself to listen to I'm With You by RHCP. It sounds like being played through Boss Metal Zone effect pedal - constant distortion.
The old Alternative Tentacles CD of Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables sounds so thin you'd think it was anorexic. The UK Cherry Red Porky Prime Cut vinyl, on the other hand...
RHCP - Californication definitely high on the list. I actually bought the limited edition remastered 2012 vinyl - sounds like a different record. come to think of it, most of RHCP's albums post-Blood Sugar sex Magik sound like distorted crap - the magic of Rick Rubin I supposed.
Not entirely fair since he was the producer of the much better sounding LPs as well. That being said, in the digital realm, the mastering engineers he works with like Vlado Meller often lay the digital limiting/compression on hot and heavy.
Kenny Rogers-A Love Song Connection sounds horrible. It was supposedly flat transfers of the original master tapes.
Boston's Third Stage on CD. I don't know who mastered the original MCA CD from 1986 but it sounds dull and lifeless and the MoFi CD from 1993 is no better. The Masterdisk Ludwig mastered LP is the way to go for this album.
The original issue of Level 42's Retroglide was a distorted, brickwalled mess. I believe it was re-mastered correctly a few years later.
Chicago 16 is one of the lowest level cds I think I have ever run across . The remaster does not look to good . Anyone know what compilation of Chicago 80's albums has the best sound ?
For all of Boston, unfortunately. Out of my huge horde of multiple formats, Boston for me retains the biggest difference. I love all formats SA, trust me i'd love to find a disc that mimicked the EQ and soundstage of the lp's.
The last half dozen Jeff Beck records are unlistenable. Brickwalled so badly that the bass is all up in everybody else's business and distorted to boot. Wretched.
That’s a purposefully lo-fi album, it’s in the recording and mixing, not the mastering. It’s not even that loud (DR8) and the original and remaster score the same dynamics and sound pretty similar, the remaster maybe just having a little more bass and depth (probably due to a fresh modern tape transfer). I’ve never had a problem with it, it always seemed quite deliberate. Now the mono mix is very loud, and even more lo-fi, even on vinyl where it was done entirely analog. The CD’s DR values reflect this (DR5), but it’s mainly in the mix, though limiting on top doesn’t help.
DR has (almost) nothing to do with overall loudness, it's a measure of dynamic range. Yes, low dynamic range makes it easier to increase overall loudness, but the relationship must be understood and respected.
I’d say there’s an extremely strong correlation. Not EXACTLY the same thing I suppose, you could, concievably, have a bricked album normalized to a low volume and score a low DR while not playing back loudly/having lots of headroom, but this would be very odd in a professional recording and would defeat the purpose of doing that sort of limiting/compression. When people talk about “loudness” they generally mean that it’s dynamically compressed, rather than anything to do with the hotness of the RMS levels. To pick it apart is being quite pedantic.
A DR of 8 is pretty awful, actually. Not as bad as most of the unlistenable garbage released today, but still distorted to heck. You typically have to hit a DR of 10 or more before a record stops sounding like a distorted annoyance and starts sounding like good music. There's a reason why record sales and purchases have tanked over the past 20 years, and Napster was only part of it.
Is a DR of 8 amazing? No. Is it “awful”? I personally don’t think so relative to a lot of what’s out there, but the standards have been direly lowered. If that album, with its industrial, muffled, noisy production was released today it absolutely would be a 6 or worse. The original mono vinyl, even with the inaccuracies introduced in trying to apply the meter to that medium, still only scores an 8. You do have to remember the album in question is one where distortion and compression is part of the music. If you can’t listen to anything below a DR10 you must not have listened to much of anything released in the last 25 years... or just vinyl/needledrops, which I can understand.
I would give the "worst sounding award" to the Sammi Smith CD entitled "Help Me Make It Through The Night: The Memorial Album," which claims to have been released by the UK label Acrobat in 2011. The tracks are amateur vinyl transfers and I wouldn't be surprised if they were done on a suitcase record player made for children. If Sammi were here with us now, I seriously doubt she would approve of this horrific release. Not to mention, it's a grey market CD-R release/borderline bootleg which is probably one of the worst sounding reissues I've heard in recent years. For more information on this title, you can visit the Acrobat Music website. Acrobat Music > Albums A-Z » Catalogue Number: ACRCD237
A DR of 8 is awful. The only thing I can think of that wouldn't sound awful at that DR is dance music - deep bass isn't quite as annoying when constantly pumped to a high volume. At least it won't make your ears bleed. Anyhow, a lot of speakers and headphones can't reproduce it, anyhow. The fact that most stuff released today also sounds awful just proves the point - it has similarly crushed dynamics, or worse.
It doesn't measure dynamic range (though it is an indicator) but rather the crest factor. How to use the TT 'Dynamic Range' Meter - and where to get it - Production Advice
It really depends as there are many aspects to good quality sound. I have heard several DR8 CDs that sound great, for example the double 10cc Greatest Hits and More sounds far better than say 10cc's Bloody Tourist CD which has a DR of 12. In that example, the DR8 CD is certainly louder than the the DR12 (though not offensively so) but it is also much cleaner, clearer, detailed and has a lot more presence to the sound.
The original US CD of The Fall by Norah Jones is a stinker. Even my wife complains, and she's not "a sound quality nut."
The obvious Vapor Trails and for me anything by Oasis - seriously did they actually want it(everything) to sound like that. I'll also add that I actually thought Chinese Democracy is quite well mastered. His voice sounds artificial I agree but I dont think the mastering is a problem.
