Terribly recorded music I have know, pt. #531
Nov 4, 2005 at 2:15 AM Thread Starter Post #1 of 9
AdamWill

AdamWill

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I've liked Ted Leo since I saw a reference to him in a newspaper I found lying round a restaurant last year, and picked up Shake the Sheets. But for whatever reason - coincidence, I dunno - I almost always listen to his stuff on my portable setup. Well, I finally put Shake the Sheets in my home setup just now, and was a bit dismayed to find that it sounds like pants. Absolute pants. Loaded the first track into Audacity and, oh dear, here's why (see attached picture). In case you don't know why this is really bad, here's an excellent write-up by a Rush fan: http://www.prorec.com/prorec/article...256C2E005DAF1C

sigh. I hate bad mastering.
 
Nov 4, 2005 at 2:56 AM Post #3 of 9
Well, on the good side, I sent an email to the contact address on Ted's page and got a very nice and non-dismissive response from Ted himself a few minutes later. Now that's what I call service! Hopefully he'll have his stuff mastered better in future...he also suggested the vinyl pressing is better, which I can't confirm as I don't have a vinyl rig (after the living room speakers and the dac / amp upgrade, THEN i'll have a vinyl setup :>)
 
Nov 4, 2005 at 3:47 AM Post #4 of 9
Here's a more zoomed in example from track 2, The Angels' Share. Looking at it on a very large scale like this, I determined there's approximately one square wave (or a little family of them) every 0.4 seconds. About 500 audible clips in a single track. OW!
 
Nov 4, 2005 at 4:55 AM Post #5 of 9
This is actually turning out to be a fascinating evening.

The credit for mastering on Shake the Sheets goes to Howie Weinberg at Masterdisk:

http://www.masterdisk.com/howie.html

The man has an _extensive_ resume which just happens to include quite a lot of discs I own. So I'm doing a retrospective of his career. I'm a bit limited by the fact most of my physical CDs are still in England, so I can't check whether he actually mastered them all, or was involved in some other facet of their production. However, given what I have to go on, he seems to have a rather marked career trajectory.

He was involved in the production of Nirvana's Nevermind and Incesticide. Nevermind doesn't have a great reputation for recording quality - the MFSL version is highly sought after - but neither seems to have massive problems with compression or clipping, at least so far as I can see. Also in the mid-90s he did Ben Folds Five's Naked Baby Photos and Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner. Neither is excessively clipped, but Unauthorized Biography is rather heavily compressed. He also did both of the first two Garbage albums. There's a marked difference there. Garbage is very heavily compressed, and it _does_ clip, but it's not outrageous. Version 2.0 is pretty nastily clipped as well as being heavily compressed. He did PJ Harvey's Is This Desire?, To Bring You My Love and Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea. To Bring You My Love is probably the least invasively mastered album I've seen of his so far; no real detectable compression or clipping. Is This Desire is obviously compressed and clips a little, but it's not terrible. Stories... is heavily compressed and clips all over the place. (Starting to detect a trend here, are we?)

He did two Red Hot Chili Peppers albums, Blood Sugar Sex Magik and Mother's Milk. You could say RHCP recording quality has a reputation around here. He also did Rush's Vapor Trails, which is the exact album excoriated by the link I posted in my original post.

He did every major Smashing Pumpkins album, which provide a perfect career trajectory for him. Gish, Siamese Dream and Mellon Collie are pretty well mastered - not a lot of compression (except for effect, on Siamese Dream) or major clipping. Adore, particularly Ava Adore, shows obvious signs of both. Machina / The Machines Of God is a horrible mush, like all his recent work. He also did Zwan's Mary Star of the Sea, which is equally hideous.

I'd say the evidence for the prosecution is overwhelming. Howie Weinberg is single-handedly killing music, and must be stopped at all costs.
smily_headphones1.gif
 
Nov 4, 2005 at 5:50 AM Post #6 of 9
No-one interested in my careful research? Aw, shucks. Go on, look through the Weinberg catalogue, you're almost certain to own at least _some_ of the discs. Compare 'em. It's fun.
 
Nov 4, 2005 at 5:51 AM Post #7 of 9
It's sad but the that's the state of the current industry. Everything has this now adays. From black eyed peas, to Vanessa Carlton ( who'd have a lovely voice if it didn't clip (yes really clip) ). This type of soft limiting is not uncommon. There's just no dynamic range.

Most Vinyl doens't have this problem since being an analogue format it doesn't have a hard 0dB clipping level.
 
Nov 4, 2005 at 6:35 AM Post #8 of 9
Thing is, Weinberg is responsible for mastering a not insignificant portion of "the current industry" himself (just look at his resume). So I'd say he's one of the main culprits in _making_ it the state thereof. It only takes a couple of Howies in each major genre to make sure the entire industry is more or less screwed...

conversely, it'd only take a couple of Howies in each major genre to reverse the trend. So he doesn't get off with a 'but everyone's doing it'. Sorry.
smily_headphones1.gif
 
Nov 4, 2005 at 6:36 AM Post #9 of 9
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