Sevendogs wrote on Wed, 11 July 2007 02:49 |
I really hate the sound on new MUSE album also. Sound digitally clipped all the time. Have to stop listening to the cd after the fourth song.
What about the new Michael Buble album sounds like ? I think it is too loud also. I constantly changed the volume. When I turn up to hear enough vocal it is too loud.
Too bad
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That Michael Buble observation reminds me of some testing I did a couple of years ago.
On one of my rare 4 hour car trips, I took a variety of CDs with me so I could listen to how they sounded in the car.
One of them was an old Peggy Lee recording. While driving at highway speeds in a nice sedan with AC (not alternating current), all I could hear was the vocal. I wanted to hear the bass and the other instruments better so I turned it up but the vocal got too loud and piercing. Back in my living room I observed that it was a vocal heavy mix but you could still hear everything in a relatively quiet environment.
So I think the moral of this story is that the listening environments have gotten noisier which is ONE of the reasons why CDs are mastered the way they are. The other, of course, is the competition and the "HEY LOOK AT ME" aspect and that won't be reversed until it becomes bad taste and poor judgement to take buzz saw to mixes!
Because the listening environments are so unpredictable these days, I happen to believe there is a happy medium somewhere in the middle where music can be mastered to a decent level but still have a good dynamic feel. Of course the style of music greatly affects the approach but I don't believe we are ever going back to the "Old Days".