The Award For Most Distorted Album Goes To....

PMI

at number 2: Metallica's Death Magnetic

but we have a new winner....... for all you Incubus fans......

1: Brandon Boyd - The Wild Trapeze

Holy **** guys it makes death magnetic look clean

Theres lots of lo fi and distortions used on kits etc.. but then mastering wise it got screwed so there was no real point in spending anything on the mix cause its FUNKED !

fitz

Reading up on it, it would appear to be the mix that was the problem, not the mastering.

PMI

which is what they said about death magnetic too, that it was brickwalled when it arrived for mastering

fitz

It was mixed/produced by Dave Fridmann, also responsible for mangling Low, The Flaming Lips and MGMT.

I had a listen. It's not artistic. It sounds like it's being played through a broken speaker.
I can't wrap my head around how this can be seen as a creatively interesting direction, but apparently it's what Boyd wanted. Shame really, the song I listened to sounded like there was a great melodies in there, I just couldn't hear them. Awful.

PMI

Yeah its a bit all over the shop !

jiltloop

I think the best lo fi or distorted album has to be My Bloody Valentine's Loveless. Lovely stuff so it is!

PaulBrewer

There was a lot of talk on Gearslutz about Metallica with contributions from the guy who did Master it, as I recall.

ebaysellerrob

some one argued that you could make out what was being said on my bloody valentines loveless personally if I can make out 5 words a song thats good what you think can any of you make out the lyrics.they claim they wanted the vocals as just another melody instead of a lead

Paolo_M

ebaysellerrob wrote: »

some one argued that you could make out what was being said on my bloody valentines loveless personally if I can make out 5 words a song thats good what you think can any of you make out the lyrics.they claim they wanted the vocals as just another melody instead of a lead

There's nothing wrong with using punctuation, it helps everyone understand what you are saying.



So Metallica brick walled Death Magentic at the mixing stage? Why?
Who mixed it?
Why didn't the mastering house just send it back?
Seems bizarre that a multi-million production could get it so wrong.

It's a real shame, there's really good tunes on the there. A little more fat trimming and expansion of the good ideas, and a much better mix and master and it could have rivalled MOP or even The Black album.

I remember the day I bought the CD. First I though my stereo speakers were on the blink, the I went to my laptop but assumed the ****ty sound was the problem so then I went for a drive in my car. Only then did it dawn on me that the CD was the problem, then I saw all the complaints on-line.

eiresurfer

ebaysellerrob wrote: »

some one argued that you could make out what was being said on my bloody valentines loveless personally if I can make out 5 words a song thats good what you think can any of you make out the lyrics.they claim they wanted the vocals as just another melody instead of a lead

This does my head in. I had not idea what you were talking about until I managed to "translate" it.

I assume what you meant was:
Someone argued that you could make out what was being said on My Bloody Valentines Loveless. Personally, if I can make out 5 words a song, that's good. What do you think - can any of you make out the lyrics? They claim they wanted the vocals as just another melody instead of a lead.

ebaysellerrob

Yup thanks for fixing it.

PMI

Metallica's album is clean, listen to the brandon boyd one, its horrendous !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

TelePaul

Did anyone get around to reading 'Perfecting Sound Forever' by Greg Milner? I think it offers the best explanation as to why overly compressed music is hard on the ears. Of course the real question is whether any of this matters - how many million copies of Californication were sold? I still cringe when I listen to that album, but seemingly the songs and musicianship were of a high enough quality to excuse the brick-walling.

TelePaul

Paolo_M wrote: »

So Metallica brick walled Death Magentic at the mixing stage? Why?
Who mixed it?
Why didn't the mastering house just send it back?
Seems bizarre that a multi-million production could get it so wrong.

Well Rubin produced it. And he produced Californication. And Stadium Arcadium (more of the same). And all the recent overly-compressed cash stuff. So yeah...I blame Rick Rubin.

krd

Something I don't get - I've been listening to some dance records. They are very loud - but the sounds are crystal clear and never sound burnt. I have no idea how they're doing it.


Brick walling useful for removing spikes. It's how low you take the Brickwall.

There is some technique for making your mixes incredibly loud without burning the sound. The burnt mixes are actually perceptually quieter. Which I don't understand either.

DamagedTrax

krd wrote: »

There is some technique for making your mixes incredibly loud without burning the sound.

yup. good use of compression all the way thru the mix. you have to remember that gain reduction is cummlative. say if i have a kick drum and i compress it by 2/3db on the channel, drum buss and master, im getting more compression that just slapping a compressor/limiter over the master and hacking off 9db, its bringing the RMS up rather than just getting loud peaks. plus you'll get a much more transparent sound with multi-stage mild compression.

another trick i like is parallel compression on the master. IMO a mix with a decent dynamic level and intact transients will sound louder than a smashed mix even if its peaking at a few db less.

loud doesnt always mean loud if you know what i mean.

DamagedTrax

ted jensen mastered death magnetic and publicly stated that the mixes were already smashed. his reason for not sending them back? you dont turn down a job like metallica!

jtsuited

To be fair ,with Death Magnetic, the artists and the producer were more than satisfied with the result.
It might sound like sh1te, but that seems to be the way the artists intended.

splitrmx

PMI wrote: »

1: Brandon Boyd - The Wild Trapeze

I like how the last track is called "All Ears Avow!". Just remove the "Av" and you'll get a good review of the album's sound quality.

PMI

krd wrote: »

Something I don't get - I've been listening to some dance records. They are very loud - but the sounds are crystal clear and never sound burnt. I have no idea how they're doing it.


Brick walling useful for removing spikes. It's how low you take the Brickwall.

There is some technique for making your mixes incredibly loud without burning the sound. The burnt mixes are actually perceptually quieter. Which I don't understand either.

I think alot is to do with your not dealing with many dynamics to begin with.... ie: samples and softsynths, where as real kits etc.. need more treatment and if you get it wrong it really shows

jtsuited

krd wrote: »

Something I don't get - I've been listening to some dance records. They are very loud - but the sounds are crystal clear and never sound burnt. I have no idea how they're doing it.

which dance records we talking bout here???

A huge part of it is that in electronic music, you can strip every sound down to it's core, smash the entire thing with a limiter but because you've created so much space, it doesn't sound squashed even though you've completely crucified the dynamic range.

PulsW

Most popular modern electronic music sounds squashed to no end, with DnB to be the worst culprit by far in my opinion. I haven't listened to much new DnB that doesn't give me an extremely tiresome experience.

As for the most distorted albums, I have a Distorted cognitions album on my external that makes my ears bleed

novarock

the new Alice in Chains album was pulled up on this also:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Gives_Way_to_Blue#Loudness_war

its bonkers loud to listen to...

JaymzN

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned that the entire album "Death Megnetic" was in the game "Guitar Hero 3". The game developers were given a copy of the album that hadn't gone through the final mixing phase and sounds like the holy grail in comparison to the retail version.

Observe (overlooking YT compression of course),

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRyIACDCc1I

Oh hello high-hats! Didn't see ya in there

jtsuited

JaymzN wrote: »

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned that the entire album "Death Megnetic" was in the game "Guitar Hero 3". The game developers were given a copy of the album that hadn't gone through the final mixing phase and sounds like the holy grail in comparison to the retail version.

The game developers were given the stems afaik.