Has the mastering increased again?
 

I bought The Cure's new single yesterday (The Only One) and I made a Cure compilation featuring the song, anyway, one of the songs after the song was from the 2006 remastered Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me album and it sounded a bit quieter than the new song, which is quite annoying.
Does anybody know if the master volume level has changed recently?
And what is the point of remastering an album if they keep altering the mastering level?

recording engineers have, for the past 8 or so years, been mastering most new albums at a very high level, and doing so to re-issues as well. This is done to make the music sound "better" whne played through shit-ass ear buds or shitty MP3 players. Essentially, mastering everything at such a high level helps (they think) to maintain the "oomph" that is lost when songs are scrunched down into an MP3 format.

whatever software you use to burn cd comps should have a setting or a button where you can "normalize all levels" or something to taht effect. this sill try and match all the songs on your burn list so you do not have to keep raising and lowering the volume.

the same thing used to happen with mix tapes depending on the source.

It doesn't, though. It increases distortion (that's not supposed to be there - ha ha) The subtleties of the original recording are sometimes lost when they do that crap.

The mastering war started before the widespread advent of mp3s, but instantly-transferable digital formats have compounded the problem.

Wiki article



This (from this) illustrates perfectly how the dynamic range is lost in ridiculous mastering.

Article

I think Savage Clone knows a fair bit about this subject.

Personally, I have problems with records that substitute dynamic range for surface 'loudness'. My problem with metal, in my desire for 'loud' sounds (when I was at that naif-sociopath stage of teenhood where you want aggression in sound), was that once they peaked, that was it, just a drilling constant 'loud' that went no-where. I turned to noise, which quickly bored me. Nowadays, I'm of the opinion that if you want dynamic range (which is, on an acoustic level, more affecting than sheer 'loud') you'll have to look to the classical world. I have a recording of Babi Yar by Shostokovich which goes from unbelievably quiet to absurdly loud - pop/ rock/ noise [or whatever] artists don't seem to understand that dynamic range is much, much more aggressive than sheer volume. The whole of the musique concréte world, your Xenkises, Penderecki (of 'threnody...' fame) or even Beethoven or Tchiakovsky can be much, much more devastating than a record which is mastered to 'industry standard'.

dynamics are crucial in songwriting.
too many bands want to just pumel you but unless there is a contrast, an aural contrast, the "loud" pummeling seems flat.

Sigh..

You know this isn't the same argument as the mp3 one? I agree, in part, with your opinion on that. Some other sigh? Help a brother out, yeah?

yeah this is not about the MP3 suckitude. it is about mastering music to be listened to on SHIT EQUIPMENT

I think this is only really an important issue in stuff where even the volume on the really really quiet stuff has been increased to fit the loud stuff. It's not so much a problem if the volume has been increased period, it's an issue if there is a total lack of dynamics -- that everything has been "normalized" in the mastering to be the same volume. But can anyone even list any specific examples of albums like that, where there is a complete lack of dynamics? I haven't really noticed it in any albums when listening to remastered stuff.

most remastered stuff cuts off the high end and the low end of whatever sounds it is boosting. the actual loudness to softness of the dynamics is not the issue . it is the inability to maintain the crisp high end and the rich low end when one re-masters something and pushes the levels all up to 11

Oh okay.

plus MP3's suck! In yr face!!!!


;)

Remastering does not affect the frequency range, it is all the dynamic range that is affected, this however can give the appearance that the frequency range has been affected. Normalisation increases the whole level of a sound source until that sources loudest peak hits the normalisation threshold, this does not affect dynamics musically, it does however raise the noise floor. All the problems discussed in this thread are due to what is called brick wall limiting and this does affect the actual dynamics of the music and can and does on ocassions become incredibly destructive.

Hmmm let me think.... ok... say you have a hydrolic lift in a room with an incredibly solid roof 10 foot above this, and a series of different height plynths. You move the floor up two feet and the top of the highest plynth sits touching the ceiling. Now, move the floor up 2 feet again, that highest plynth is now being squashed, but what is happening to the lower plynths?, the tops of the lower plynths are now getting closer to the tops of the highest plynths making them look very similar in volume.

This is where brick wall limiting starts decreasing the dynamics of the music and the dynamics of the audio for sheer volume. i am with Glice, if you want good listening experiences you really need to find good classical recordings.

Itzhak Perlman and Yo Yo ma playing Beethoven is fucking DOPE

concrete example of the loudness war on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ

miley cyrus/hannah montana shit is super loud, probably louder than most metal. it comes down to whatever is being marketed.

and that thing about dynamics being crucial to songwriting is complete bollocks; dynamics are arrangement tools and absolutely not "crucial" in the list. tell that to the ramones, the fall and neu! to name only three bands that do without much dynamism.

Well, it's mainly important in stuff like jazz and classical music, not loud rock bands.

the ramones do not have much dynamism, and by virtue of that, their songs start to sound the same and get very very dull to hear for longer than 20 minutes at a time.

the same can be said for most hardcore punk too, it works best in short blasts like small 6 songs EP's

dynamism is CRUCIAL in music, and yes, even the ramones and the fall and Can have some levels of dynamism.

it's still about arrangements, not songwriting.

I'm a bit of a yes and a bit of a no to this. I was absolutely flabbergasted by Shuji Inaba when I saw him live - on paper, without volume markings, his songs aren't much different to a Dylan or whomever. In fact he goes from super-quiet whispers to screaming. His screaming isn't as loud as your Napalms or whoever, but it seems moreso because of the extreme dynamics.

The Fall are a pretty good example, as Mr Smith seems to have quite a good control over drum sounds (I'm thinking of Blindness' intro particularly). Maybe it doesn't make that much difference, but the over-mastered trend annoys me quite a bit - I like 'loud bits' to seem loud. Perhaps I'm deluding myself, but I like to think I can tell the difference. I never listen with a VU display, so maybe I should.

i didn't say i was for or against dynamics, just pointing out that it's more an arranging tool than songwriting and that it's not crucial.

dynamics can certainly make or break a song, sometimes doing without them is not such a bad idea but that's painting yourself to a corner, in a way, and you should be able to really do some badass graphics on that corner.

dude, the core constituents of a song, any song, from time past to the present, are
rhythm, dynamics, melody, harmony

one can pick and choose of course, but it does get old to hear music without dynamic range, or music with no rhythm, or music with no melody, just harmonies (that shit makes me ill!) etc.

i wish the big black backcatalogue would be "remastered" by pushing the master volume up a few notches,.. those cds are soooo quiet!!!!!

and trumans waters milktrain album, and in fact the majority of shellac releases......... there is a few more but hey..... my stereo goes up to 11

just tutrn up the volume, and check yr EQ

http://www.audioasylum.com/cgi/t.mpl?f=digital&m=133575

that stuff is kind of bogus. in fact, i think that guy has taken an mp3 as an example. when wav files are compressed into the mp3 standard they tend to do that kind of shit (clip out badly). mastering is intended to fill out the sound and make it round and nice to listen to. overcompressing sucks the big one. but a nice mastering adds to the quality of the release.

no i am on glice's side with that one, a ltiny bit of internet research doesn't show shit. i can rip qotsa's songs for the deaf at higher quality than cd and i can show you waht it looks like with 192khz sampling rate at 24bit depth. you are stating something that is not true, in fact i can say completely false. i.e. wav files tend to clip out when converted to mp3, sorry but that is absolute and utter garbage, you either don;t know what clipping is or you are using the wrong language... sorry, don't mean to sound harsh and nothing against you max, however, yes nice mastering should add something, it is not easy to find

ok and just as an example the picture that says "And finally, this is what Audition (clip restoration) reckons it should look like, given 6dB of headroom to play with" is actually limiting at 0db, check your sources dude....

edit: ok sorry i'm a bit drunk but i can convert a say daydream nation to any mp3 bitrate and sample rate and take screen shots for the compariosns, because really this topic has come up many many times and is kinda getting tedious, who's up for it

lots of ignorance being tossed around as knowledge.

thisd is not about ripping music
it is about the original MASTERS being over compressed

completely different subject