Here's a question. Is there any way to tell if it's the mastering or the recording itself? I've read that many times nowadays the recording is recorded loud and the damage is fine before mastering even occurs. I didn't know if clues in the recording could be analyzed to tell you which it is. I love the music I grew up on - 90s rock - but damn I would love to hear some albums with some dynamic range.
Have lurked on this forum for a while and just wanted to state an example of recent turnarounds in brickwalling. Just got the new Bowie box and, from the few tracks I've checked, previous annoying brick walls have been removed. EG Almost all the tracks from the original 1995 "1. Outside" have major compression / cutoffs whilst the tracks in the box have really good peaks and troughs. So that's hopefully a good sign.
sure many tracks on the multi's can have compression applied to them sometimes a bad mixdown can be made worse after mastering.
I think rather than "say", they have a choice: do the work the way they're asked to, get paid. Don't do that? Don't get paid.
I’ve noticed in the last couple of years that labels seem to have received the message that for vinyl buyers, cut the crap on mastering with too much compression. I’ve been hearing notable differences now on vinyl VS other formats. Not always, but in most cases. The only way to really stop it is stop buying the offenders and letting the labels know that’s why you passed. Yes, hard to know before you buy it, and most of us wouldn’t go through the trouble. What I don’t get is why the artists aren’t kicking and screaming. Geez, they know how they sounded in the studio. I stopped buying The Mavericks and all Carrie Underwood albums because they are simply terribly mastered, and Carrie’s actually hurt my ears so much I couldn’t get past two songs. Just tossed it in my sell pile. The new ABBA album on vinyl is better done than a lot of others, but even that has some kind of weird stuff going on with the mastering where it just sounds off to my ears. Can’t these guys just leave it alone instead of adding things just because they can? I understand what their trying to do with so much being consumed via streaming and digital, but on vinyl why not leave the dynamic range alone?
In “fairness” to some music in the 3/4/5 range, the extreme loud/flat/compressed sound is practically a feature of the recording, not a mistake in the process. I don’t think that music by, say, Electric Wizard or Death Grips would sound right without it.
Yes, I need to reiterate not every label is getting the memo, but in general vinyl mastering is giving us a much better listening experience than digital. I just bought a first press Marley album for a pretty good chunk of change. I really thought the recent Abbey Road 1/2 speed was outstanding, and for the most part it is. But this original is much better. The nice thing is, however, that the compression issue isn’t the problem at all. There was a clarity and huskiness in his voice in the 1976 mastering that is now gone from the master (Abbey is disclosing the master tapes are being used). I’m guessing from age and/or being over used. But no undue compression.
Well, that’s the real issue, right? Of those that can even hear the difference, how many care? And while the statement above is a nice piece of likely sarcasm, it isn’t that far off! If you raised a stink with a Target clerk, attempting a return over that issue, you probably would get tossed out if you made a big deal about it. With “defective” album in hand (that isn’t necessarily a joke either…Target is prickly about vinyl returns). Aside from one friend who I turned on to vinyl a few years ago, I don’t know a single person who cares. My youngest daughter of three can, but as she said, she doesn’t care. My other two can’t tell. And my wife thinks I’m nuts. That’s why the labels don’t care.
It's the default today, and there's nothing you can do about it other than not buy new albums or anything marked as "remastered." What's even worse is the tracks on streaming services are continuously remastered by labels and keep getting more and more brick walled over time. I have multiple tracks I bought from iTunes and downloaded and are lovely, but if I download a new copy from iTunes today they're massively brick walled. CDs of course are also horrid - you have to find the original CDs of many albums made in 1989 or so. As an example, the 1989 CD of The Best of Naked Eyes has wonderful dynamic range. The later remaster is brick walled. The version of the album on iTunes is barely recognizable as the same tracks.
Really, it's usually not the artists, it's their record producers. They want the same "compressed loud sound" that other albums in the top 5 have. Sadly the artists themselves often aren't aware and if you actually ask them, they'll say they just defer to the producer and engineers as they're the "experts," they're "just" the artists. One in particular I talked to and thanked for their latest album not being compressed reacted with a "Ha!" and referred me to her husband who acted as the producer for the album, as they had long arguments where he felt her album needed to be brickwalled.
As we age the higher frequencies are the first thing to go with our hearing, Mick and Keith’s would probably make things even worse.
That cd is the worst case of brickwalling I've ever heard and I'm usually not too bothered. Never even liked the album until I heard the ole vynilz because of the atrocious DR. For once that most Hoffmanite-esque of tropes is most fitting: unlistenable.
You could say the same thing about the Duophonic fake stereo process from the '60s. Or the Haeco-CSG system from the latter part of that decade. Or the over-compressed "wall of sound" production used by bands like Wizzard and the Raspberries. Or the bright, thin sound of '80s pop. Most pop/rock music was never recorded with audiophile considerations in mind. At various points in history, it has been mixed to sound good on AM car radios, Dansette record players, Walkmans, cheap earbuds and Bluetooth speakers. That's just how the majority of people listen.
In general, with today's major label releases, vinyl is just as bad as digital. I find the Barry Diament CD masterings sound better than the Marley remastered vinyl. My go to is the early 1980s box set, but that's irrelevant to this thread.
This was Bob Ludwig's complaint when I had an e-mail exchange with him about Chinese Democracy...and he is clearly not alone as this video from Friedemann Tischmeyer (and mainly Alan Parsons) demonstrates:
Voting with your wallet doesn't work very well when there is no suitable alternative on the market and/or you are one of a small minority. Searching out older releases with better dynamic range can be a good idea though. I've been able to find most of the original Queen EMI CDs used and cheap. The Hollywoods generally suck.
That's the problem. "I can tell you, Mr Record Label that neither I nor any other audiophile will be buying this CD!" "Oh. Well, I'm sure we can cope with selling 587 copies fewer and the remaining 49,413 buyers will have no complaints".
Just accept that - like the common cold- it's here to stay, and try to enjoy your life in spite of it.
Must admit I encounter it little. Almost never on LPs and in general the sort of music I buy on CD does not suffer from it or I'm buying older CDs that haven't been remastered since the mid 90s. I only noticed this issue around 2000 and it was a widespread problem for about a decade. Less material tends to suffer or it is more subtle in application. Certainly modern CDs are still cut louder than in the 80 and early 90s. Since I buy the vinyl version of new releases which these days are almost always a different mastering I am probably avoiding the worst examples of brick walling.
