[andy42g]

I got my copy of The Hold Steady’s new CD “Stay Positive” and (although it’s a superb album) I immediately noticed just how ‘muddy’ the sound is on it. Tried it on my home HiFi, in the car and it’s definitely muddy. There's 3 bonus songs on my edition, for some reason all on the one track so I ripped and loaded the track into an editing program to split the songs up.
It was then I saw just how loudly this disk has been (I presume) mastered. The waveforms are meant to have points and stuff (they do on other stuff I’ve edited), but with this it’s just wacked right up and all the points chopped off. The result seems to be no dynamics and just a wash of guitar – and it distorts my PC speakers.
Not good. I checked a few more recent rock album purchases and it seems that this seems to be the trend. Not great IMHO.
I am guessing that this is one of the reasons why vinyl is still popular – you cannot master vinyl as loud???

[skippy the wonder dog]

This is definitely a trend.

Google "loudness wars" and you'll find more than you ever wanted to know on the topic. The tendency is to compress the shit out of everything so that all dynamics are lost. This is driven in part by a desire to make music audible for people riding the subway with their iPods. Try listening to an album with huge dynamic range (e.g. Roger Waters' Amused to Death) on your iPod on the subway and you'll see why.

It does make music sound like shit.

[MAverick]

Roger Waters' Amused to Death

What a GREAT album

[mojo_mattv]

If I'm not mistaken Alan Cross dedicated an entire episode of the Ongoing History of New Rock to this. If you can find it check it out, a good listen.

[Tthip]

What a great show.

http://odeo.com/episodes/16607543-Loudne...on-Podcast

http://odeo.com/episodes/16607623-Loudne...rs-Podcast

[skippy the wonder dog]

Roger Waters' Amused to Death

What a GREAT album

Indeed, a great album.

and thanks muchly, Tthip for the Alan Cross podcasts. That guy is always a great listen.

[andy42g]

Cheers for the info. I did note on the Hold Steady web site forum the guitarist had noted a couple of complaints about the mastering, clipping etc, and posted, stating that the album was produced and mastered 'exactly how the band wanted it'. Ho hum.