[Vic]

Can anyone explain why there are so many extremely badly recorded CD?
I don't mean just albums slightly compressed or a bit bright with faults revealed only by hi-end stuff, I am talking about CD that is really painful to listen to even from an ipod unumped with stock buds.

I do understand that the audiofile market accounts for about 0.000001% of sales of CD, but some albums are totally unlistenable to everyone.

For example "The Go Team", a British band which has received a lot of good review here; I have the album and can only imagine remotely that must be pretty good, but really cannot go past the first song because of the sound quality.

Can you please post the worst recorded albumm you have ever heard?

 

[Oliver :)]

Red Hot Chili Peppers - Californication
terrible throughout

Norah Jones - Come Away With Me
The clipping! Made me think my phones were broken. Broken!

Garbage - Bleed Like me
LOUD & comprssd


We should make this thread a sticky.

 

[Doc Sarvis]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vic Can anyone explain why there are so many extremely badly recorded CD?

Many pop music CDs are designed to sound best on ultra low-fi equipment (such as computers or boomboxes).

 

[boss]

The average MTV-demographic music fan doesn't care much about fidelity. I agree with you though, the Go! Team's Thunder, Lightning, Strike is way too loud and totally lacking in dynamics.

[edit:] Quote:

Originally Posted by Vic Can you please post the worst recorded albumm you have ever heard?

Here are a couple:

Iggy & The Stooges - Raw Power [1997 Remaster]: I believe this was proven to be the loudest album in the world. Californication is 2nd.
Panic! At The Disco - A Fever You Can't Sweat Out: Terribly harsh.. music's great, it's just incredibly tiring to listen to on headphones.
Dungen - Ta Det Lugnt: It's got this "recorded in a warehouse with a single $20 mic" thing going on.

 

[claymon]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vic For example "The Go Team", a British band which has received a lot of good review here; I have the album and can only imagine remotely that must be pretty good, but really cannot go past the first song because of the sound quality.

Yea, "Thunder, Lightining, Strike" definitely has poor production quality. It sounds so bright and distant, as if it were recorded on one mic in their garage. hmmm...
Great album though

 

[rextrade]

I don't mind lo-fi recordings like the Go Team at all, and Ta Det Lugnt doesn't sound that bad (certainly not $20 mic bad)--I think the raw quality actually adds to the music. I wish the Go Team sounded a little better, but there is a certain charm in the crap recording.

What I can't stand are recordings using expensive equipment with highly paid engineers that sound like overcompressed crap--Californication is a good example.

 

[ameyer17]

System of a Down - Mezmerize
(Especially the track "Radio\Video")

 

[claymon]

yea, haha, Californication always comes to mind when I think of bad recordings. Why oh why, such a sweet album.

 

[Mystyler]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Oliver Red Hot Chili Peppers - Californication terrible throughout

When I first listened to that album, I thought my CD player was broken!! Nothing fancy either, a D-173.

 

[gtp]

Metallica's St. Anger. The drums seriously sounded like trash cans. It was so horrible that I listened to it twice and never again.

 

[ScubaSteve87]

Guster-Keep it together has some weird bass stuff going on in the first few tracks,but overall its not to bad

CunninLynguists- A peice of Strange has sooooooo many crackles and artifacts. I think it has to be on purpose. I like the songs, its just half of them sound horrible. The background noise sounds like someone was playing a record sanded with 10 grit sand paper.

 

[JefferyK]

"The average MTV-demographic music fan doesn't care much about fidelity. I agree with you though, the Go! Team's Thunder, Lightning, Strike is way too loud and totally lacking in dynamics."

Um, it's SUPPOSED to sound that way. Ever listen to records produced by Phil Spector? He did the same thing: Flat-as-a-pancake wall of sound. On purpose. To get an effect.

Teenagers have never cared about fidelity, and they are the pop music target market.

I don't mind compressed dynamics per se. I mean, if you grew up listening to the radio, you grew up listening to compressed dynamics, and those Motown 45s sounded pretty great despite having zero depth to the sound. And classical recordings have to have compressed dynamics: You couldn't listen to them at home otherwise. Louds would be too loud and the quiets would be too quiet.

And engineers have always, always, always twiddled knobs to compensate for shortcomings in equipment. They did it with LPs, so it should be no surprise that they do it with CDs.

 

[Jahn]

i had my horror run-in with the Go-Team as well. i was going to get a track to sample from emusic, but then ALL of it was so horrible sounding i thought emusic messed up when they ripped the Go-Team onto their server.


nope. it just sounds like that. omg.

 

[JefferyK]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jahn i had my horror run-in with the Go-Team as well. i was going to get a track to sample from emusic, but then ALL of it was so horrible sounding i thought emusic messed up when they ripped the Go-Team onto their server. nope. it just sounds like that. omg.

I guess I'm the only one who likes it! I was standing in Tower and this song started playing and I was like, "What the hell is that?" It was The Go! Team. So I stood by the speaker and became completely fascinated: There are so many things going on. If you know pop music, it can be fun to pick out all of the samples, and the whole thing was just this wash of joyous sound. I loved it.

You know, there was another lo-fi band called The Go Team, in the 1980s, on K Records.

 

[gloco]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Oliver We should make this thread a sticky.

No, we shouldn't. This topic has been discussed to death and back. Do a search.