Right, the original CD- fatboy- is awful. My reference was a public library-borrowed 70's press dubbed onto a cheap cassette from a crapy turntable. That cassette dub sounded like a holy grail compared to the CD.
I haven't found anything of his that I thought sounded good or even decent. Even Vlado Meller and Howie Weinberg have great sounding CDs behind them (CBS Rolling Stones and Nevermind, respectively). But Marcrushen? Well, Good As I Been To You is, uh, not really all that bad, I guess... though I probably could do better with Audacity...
Having just listened to - or at least tried to - the latest Residents editions of Meet The Residents and Third Reich and Roll I think I've found a new winner. Just when the trend is moving in the opposite direction this is the most unlistenable brick-walled noise I've ever heard. The 'band' and the label should be ashamed by what they've deemed acceptable to release. I won't be buying any other titles in this series and am thinking about sending them back as unfit for purpose. Absolutely stupid.
Stephen Marcussen did the original Virgin Records CD mastering of Roy Orbison's Mystery Girl and that is a great disc.
I don't know about the worst, but when I put it on my CD player, I couldn't believe how bad and how much of an ear-bleeder it was.
Okay. Thanks for pointing that out. That was '88 or '89 right? Before people knew how to %$#@ up digital audio efficiently. Actually, I don't know if that's entirely true, as this is a waveform from a CD released in 1990:
How about Rickie Lee Jones’ Flying Cowboys from 1989? I seem to remember that one being pretty good when I listened to it in the last 6 months.
1&1 is 2;2&2 is 4 etc...We're all right, its that BAD! I can't believe the remaining Beatles allowed this inferior piece of junk to hit the market under the great Beatle name. And the vinyl is just as bad(maybe worse).
I'll provide some examples of how terrible a mastered CD can sound by brickwalling the audio itself. With Extreme Noise Terror's Another Nail In The Coffin track from my original Hardcore Holocaust Peel Sessions CD released by Strange Fruit to the BBC Grind Madness at the BBC released by Earache Records being a prime example: Below is from the Hardcore Holocaust Peel Sessions CD version. DR 10. And below is BBC Grind Madness at the BBC released by Earache Records. DR 5.
The 1997 remasters of 10cc How Dare You, Deceptive Bends and Bloody Tourist. These are the most unnecessary remasters ever made, since the previous ones sound amazing and are without errors. Even more sad is that those faulty remasters are still the current ones and on Spotify. A crime. ... and then we have all the thousands that are more or less brick walled, have boosted bass and treble, are NR'd and so on, that replaced wonderful dynamic original CD's - those would fill this whole forum.
Too many to name, but a lot of those seem to have been resurrected in some way. Annoying to the t was the fact that Borboletta by Santana was an atrocious sounding redbook up until recently. A lot of their catalog was upgraded on digital a while back.
Okay, put it this way: I have not heard a Marcussen master from 1994 onwards that I thought sounded good.
Thank you! These awful brickwalled masters are after all extreme noise terror to people who care about dynamic range in music and is another nail in the coffin regarding how bad the loudness wars has become.
Of course singles were sometimes boosted- Depeche Mode-Enjoy The Silence (7 Inch), 1990 US DR 9 The 3 inch DADC Austria maintains a DR12
Oh yeah, I recognize that. Bought it the first year I started collecting CDs. Mulled that purchase over long and hard before I pulled the trigger. Sucks on toast. The only earthly good it served me was in 2002 Pete Best played a gig in a city 55 miles away from me and a friend that I was going with me told me to bring something because Pete would do signings after the gig. The CD was easier to carry and conceal than my 2 LP Star Club set. So now it has some value thanks to Pete's black magic marker sig on the front cover.
I bought a new CD copy of Church Of Anthrax by Terry Riley and John Cale. [Columbia, Culture Factory, C 30131, 850703003200, CFU0320]. Sounded awful. It had a dynamic range of around seven. Made in 2013, nearly 15 years after the loudness wars. No kidding.
The Doobie Brothers ~ Southbound. Total piece of brickyarded crappola! I heard "What A Fool Believes" on the radio and was impressed by Sara Evan's voice as I'd never heard her before. I bought one of her recordings as impressed with her voice and her range. I bought Southbound and immediately went to the track "What A Fool Believes". I was NOT happy when i heard it at all. Her voice is LOUD but has no range on the recording - it just goes from loud to LOUDER. Too bad the CD has a hole in the center as I can't even use it for a coaster .....
