Pretty pictures of bad mastering. (1 Viewer)

[Philip Hamm]

See my other thread about how I've given up on CD. I'll be buying LPs for anything I can from here on out. I have a very good pro quality sound card and I can make CDs from needle drops that sound better than most mass produced CDs.

Here are some examples using SoundForge to demonstrate:

Metallica "The Memory Remains" from ReLoad:

Here's what my rip of the CD single looks like:

And here's a rip of "The Memory Remains" from the CD I made from the vinyl:


Heinous.

Paul McCartney's "Dance Tonight" from "Memory Almost Full".

This is the record that put me over the edge. This whole CD sounds horrible, it is one of the worst victims of the "loudness wars" I've ever encountered. Nothing but horrible noise, fatiguing to listen to after a minute. And I'm a huge Paul McCartney fan. So I bought the record, the same track looks like this on the CD I made from the record:


The Latest record I've gotten is U2's "No Line On The Horizon". I didn't buy the CD, the rips are from a CD burned through Itunes from the Itunes version of the cd. This CD is actually not that bad, it's compressed to hell, but it's not nearly as brickwalled as the others. U2 must care, and their last record is often cited as a victim of the loudness wars.

Itunes "Get On Your Boots"

LP "Get On Your Boots" (with the next track a little also....)


Itunes "No Line On The Horizon"

LP "No Line On The Horizon"


Nice, huh? We have this great format CD which is capable of really good audio when it's done well. I have a lot of well mastered CDs which sound really wonderful. And I'm reduced to an archaic noisy format of LP if I want better fidelity. The "No Line On The Horizon" disc brings back all the things I didn't like about vinyl. It claims to be a 180 gram disc which I suppose should imply that it's well manufactured. The discs sure are heavy. However, while side 1 sounds wonderful, sides 2,3, and 4 have fairly distracting sibilance problems, most apparent on Bono's voice. Other than that it does sound very nice.

So there you have it. Spin it on. My mid-90s Denon DP7f with Audio Technica cart:

 

[ChristopherG]

Fascinating -

Really a shame that this is what the digital age has brought us to. I have several 180 and 200 gram audiophile LP needle drops that sound FANTASTIC compared to the OTS CD...

 

[Lee Scoggins]

Sad to see such poor mastering. :frowning:

 

[lukejosephchung]

It's even more painful to HEAR it, Lee! As an industry professional you would know...

 

[MielR]

Is this a fairly recent development in the world of CD mastering? I don't have many recently-recorded CDs. Most of my CDs from the 1980's and '90s sound decent, in spite of the fact that the technology wasn't as "mature" back then.