MindsMirror
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Here are segments of waveforms from the HDTracks versions of Halestorm's The Strange Case of... and Trivium's Vengeance Falls, respectively.


In both of these examples it looks like the audio was clipped and then stretched to give an artificially higher DR score. The Halestorm album has DR9 compared to the CD version which has DR5, yet after replaygain is applied they don't sound noticeably different to me. I don't have the CD version of Vengeance Falls to compare.
I have listened to HDTracks releases that were clearly superior to the CD versions, such as the Dream Theater albums. These two examples look like they are derived from the same brick walled source as the CDs. I haven't seen a discussion of this anywhere else so I figured I'd post these examples. Perhaps some people are fooled into thinking their HDTracks albums with higher DR scores are better, when they may actually be just as bad as the CD.
In both of these examples it looks like the audio was clipped and then stretched to give an artificially higher DR score. The Halestorm album has DR9 compared to the CD version which has DR5, yet after replaygain is applied they don't sound noticeably different to me. I don't have the CD version of Vengeance Falls to compare.
I have listened to HDTracks releases that were clearly superior to the CD versions, such as the Dream Theater albums. These two examples look like they are derived from the same brick walled source as the CDs. I haven't seen a discussion of this anywhere else so I figured I'd post these examples. Perhaps some people are fooled into thinking their HDTracks albums with higher DR scores are better, when they may actually be just as bad as the CD.