NEWS: Backlash against 'too loud' albums
You know those people who're always grizzling on about how modern albums sound rubbish, and that they're nothing but noise? Seems they may have a point: an article in The Times recently talked to some producers of classic albums who bemoaned the current use of compression and boosted levels in the quest for impact.
It seems some modern albums not only sound horrid when played on a decent hi-fi system, but could actually be bad for you; the lack of dynamics, the clipping and the distortion can make some listeners feel nauseous. And it's not the fault of the bands: the compression is usually applied at the very last stage before mastering, the intention being to make the music sound more exciting when played over the radio or heard in-store.
It's all done with peak limiting, which is also designed to make tracks 'cut through' better against road noise in cars or when played on the jukebox in noisy pubs. This technology was originally designed to ensure the stylus stayed in the grooves of LPs when huge dynamic shifts occurred - the classic example being the cannon on Tchaikovsky's '1812' Overture! - but now it's increasingly used to change loud and soft parts of a track to a similar level.
One of the most notorious examples of this trend is Red Hot Chili Peppers' Californication disc (above), the subject of a long-running online petition calling on the band and Warner Bros to remaster it into a more listenable state.
Peter Mew, senior mastering engineer at Abbey Road, worked on classic David Bowie albums such as Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane, as well as with artists such as Deep Purple, Free and Hawkwind. He told The Times, 'Record companies are competing in an arms race to make their album sound the "loudest". The quieter parts are becoming louder and the loudest parts are just becoming a buzz.'
He went on: 'The CDs induce a sense of fatigue in the listeners. It becomes psychologically tiring and almost impossible to listen to.'
His views are supported by Geoff Emerick, who worked on The Beatles' Sgt Pepper and has recently been re-recording the songs from that album on the original four-track equipment with artists such as Travis, Kaiser Chiefs (below), The Killers and Razorlight.
Emerick told the paper: 'A lot of what is released today is basically a scrunched-up mess. Whole layers of sound are missing. It is because record companies don’t trust the listener to decide themselves if they want to turn the volume up.'
So do you have any unlistenable CDs? The ones that drive your system mad and make you feel rough? Let us know - post a comment below…
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Comments
I agree that "Californication" sounds rubbish. It sounds rubbish on my ageing JVC mini-system and equally bad through my KEF/Sony seperates. Hardfi's CCTV sounds similarly bad. There are still some good new albums out there, however: "Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace" from the Foo's and "Because of the Times" by the Kings of Leon sound amazing.
I have a decent Arcam system and decent record play RPM 9.1 and some new CD's and albums do sound rubbish - particulalry one of my favourites - HardFi. Older Dylan, Pink Floyd etc blow the new stuff away sonically. It annoys me record companies do this.
And I thought poor recording was only prevalent in developing nations. Bloated lower frequencies. Screeching upper frequencies. Just to make the material sound more "musical" on low-end systems.
I used to have a hard time finding well-recorded albums. I have to say whereas in Audio world things have improved by a huge margin, videos continues to come out as if they were compressed material, even on DVDs.
I do most of my music listening these days on my iPod - especially my nano at the gym. Those compressed albums - including Californication, oddly enough - sound really energetic when you're exercising....
It's not unknown in the classical market, either - too many CDs mastered for maximum excitement, but ending up just fatiguing
There seems to be a difference between real music and background noise, what people listen to on earpieces is background noise, anything that keeps a beat will do. Proper music ie the music as it is produced will need to be felt as well as heard to give the ultimate experience. Only those privelidged with proper sound reproduction equipment and an ear for perfection can enjoy this. The rest will listen to any mass produced rubbish they are directed to, by the media. Hence Magazines such as this are here to serve the diserning.(even if they cannot spell correctly)
God I'm so happy! So often have I thought there was something wrong with my system while listening to this particular album - Californication... Even to this day I was unsure as to whether it was my system's fault (unable to cope or something) or whether the CD itself was 'defective.' So it is the production! What a shame! And this is mainstream music with impact in its day - who knows how many more albums have similarly cynical rubbish production?! Is this what some people spend over a grand for a CD player for?
I definately notice the bad sound of Californication. I'd like to see a list of albums that people have found sound poor because of being too compressed and clipped. These would be my additions:
Weezer-Maladroit
Almost impossible to listen to
Maximo Park-Our Earthly Pleasures
Sounds good at first, but fatiguing.
The System of A Down song "Aerials" has the kick drum clipping during the really loud guitar in the second chorus.
These are albums mentioned in the Wikipedia article (each is supported by a citation):
Christina Aguilera - Back to Basics
Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
The Flaming Lips - At War with the Mystics
Los Lonely Boys - Sacred
Muse - Black Holes and Revelations
Queens of the Stone Age - Songs for the Deaf
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Californication
Santana - Supernatural
Sting - Brand New Day
The Stooges - Raw Power (1997 remix)
Lily Allen - Alright, Still
System Of A Down - Hypnotize
Sir Paul McCartney - Memory Almost Full
I've also read complaints about:
Paul Simon - Surprise
Joy Division - 1995 Remaster
Depeche Mode - Playing The Angel
Led Zeppelin - Mothership
Rush - Vapor Trails
Two modern albums that consciously bucked the trend:
Los Lonely Boys - 1s album
Jeff Buckley - So Real (Remastered best of collection)
Does anyone know of a web page that is collecting this kind of data on albums in one place?
I'm surprised anybody who is on this site can bare to listen to Californication at all, but their is an "unmastered" bootleg on the web that sounds excellent.
You'd think some albums were recorded with blasted mobile phones.
I use a freeware tool called ClippingAnalyzer (www.geocities.com/.../dl_clipping_eng.html) to find clippings and compression. You can analyse several songs at once (e.g. a CD) and get a table with all results and some nice graphs.
An example for recent ugly mastering is Madonna's Hard Candy (img398.imageshack.us/.../batchclipresultio5.png
img398.imageshack.us/.../resultrg3.png)
I don't agree at all that over-compressed and clipped material sounds more "musical" on low-end systems.
The distortions are easily audible even there. Good recordings sound much better whatever system you use.
Some amount of compression (but not clipping!) is certainly helpful for portable players in a noisy environment, but this should be done by the player itself.
Likely the decrease in CD sales is related to worse and worse sound quality - at least that's my reaction. The music industry still seems to believe the opposite. Let's hope they become wiser soon when we raise our protest.
U2's How to Disarm an Atomic Bomb sounded just fine on my Denon mini system and sounds absolutely awful now I have that same CD player running through my AV4306's DAC's connected by optical digital.
Bob Dylan's Modern Times has also been mentioned as a properly mastered recent album.