So for some reason I was listening to Californication by the Chili Peppers (Red Hot) today, and all I could think about was how fucking ungodly loud and distorted it is. What the fuck were they thinking when they turned the gain all the way up until the clipping indicator glowed a nice healthy red throughout the whole track?
I don't know guys, what happened to the eighties when CDs were mastered properly, and... more quietly?
Loudness Wars
Yeah, it is unfortunate. Even stuff that sounds good, such as the latest Saul Williams and Nine Inch Nails records, could be so much more amazing if it had more dynamic range.
I've all but stopped listening to rock music lately and I think this is a large part of the reason.
The problem is that people value convenience over sound quality and so they are listening on laptop speakers, iPod earbuds, to low-bitrate MP3s and so on, and to best optimize the music for these situations, you have to compromise it for everyone else.
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/17777619/the_death_of_high_fidelity/print
In the end, listening to recorded music is just not that interesting a thing to do, at least by itself. Music is fighting an uphill battle competing with other forms of entertainment, and is at constant risk of being ignored or tuned out -- that's why "loud" is emphasized. The bright spot? This is a vicious cycle: Music that's mastered for the lowest common denominator encourages the idea that music is disposable, and makes people less wont to pay attention. As more music producers get this through their heads, I think we can expect the situation to get better. (I would add that it'll get worse before it gets better, but at this point, I think it's virtually impossible for it to get any worse.)
Actually, I think the trend is starting to slightly reverse as of late, at least in some cases. The biggest pleasant surprise last year, mastering-wise, was the Beastie Boys' The Mix-Up, which is quite a bit more dynamic than most stuff lately, and sounds great. Short of revolutionary but still good by today's standards: 65daysofstatic, John Vanderslice, New Model Army. Even Powderfinger got a little quieter than before.
It could just be my music taste, but it seems like there was less music so overdriven it's completely awful. Smashing Pumpkins, QOTSA, and the Arctic Monkeys notwithstanding, of course.
>>3
My roommate listens to all his music on his shitty MacBook speakers. When Mogwai comes on, it makes me want to strangle him and shout, "At least buy some decent headphones or something!"
Clipping? Weren't you listening to a bad ripped MP3? Most albums are usually ripped at a very high gain ...
I don't think press companies let you release CDs with clipping since it can damage your speakers. But it's true that they compress and distort the songs to hell.
Most albums are not "ripped at a very high gain" and they do indeed put out CDs with clipping. Here's some for you to download in FLAC (or rip the CD uncompressed) and check it out, with examples of where some of the worst clipping occurs:
311, Soundsystem (Evolution 0.30)
Aphex Twin, ...I Care Because You Do (Acrid Avid Jam Shred 150.02)
Bjork, Volta (Declare Independence 212.30)
Brian Eno, The Drop (Dutch Blur 102.63)
Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Tschaikowsky: Ouverture 1812 (Ouverture solennelle 1812 op. 49 894.94)
Chumbawamba, Tubthumper (Amnesia 0.01)
Eminem, The Slim Shady LP (My Name Is 20.80)
Fear Factory, Obsolete (Edgecrusher 136.17)
Garbage, Garbage (Queer 249.43)
Green Day, Dookie (Basket Case 41.01)
Iron Maiden, Fear of the Dark (From Here to Eternity 136.01)
John Vanderslice, Cellar Door (Up Above the Sea 203.00)
Linkin Park, Minutes to Midnight (Shadow of the Day 231.59)
Nine Inch Nails, Broken (Last 273.11)
Nine Inch Nails, With Teeth (The Line Begins to Blur 220.42)
Nine Inch Nails, Year Zero (The Warning 127.89)
Nirvana, In Utero (Rape Me 28.15)
R.E.M., Monster (all over Star 69; WTF, Kenneth)
Red Hot Chili Peppers, Californication (Parallel Universe 149.67, Otherside 242.91)
Saul Williams, The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust! (Convict Colony 195.38)
Smashing Pumpkins The, MACHINA/The Machines of God (The Everlasting Gaze 6.44)
Warren Zevon, Life'll Kill Ya (Porcelain Monkey 203.08)
Various, The Ultimate Demonstration Disc: Chesky Records' Guide to Critical Listening (Johnny Frigo - I Love Paris 263.57, 271.19, 295.86, etc.; track 29, 62.35-62.36, 69.47, and throughout)
It is true that MP3 encoding can also add some level of clipping, but it's unlikely to be significant unless the music is already heavily (dynamic-range) compressed. Anyway, all of the above is based on lossless copies, and the fact that there's clipping on ambient, classical, and stereo test discs should give you an idea how bad the problem is... it also goes back as far as 1992 (NIN's Broken).