DLeeWebb
Headphoneus Supremus
"Fever Ray" - Fever Ray
Quote:
I am listening to that exact track, and that is a challenging passage because you have multiple instruments that are peaking simultaneously. It sounds beautiful to me, and doesn't seem too compressed.
But that lack of compression may be the problem for you. Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings, but is sounds like it's too much for your system to resolve without distorting/clipping.
Distortion may be wrong wordwise, and clipping definitely is.
It's possible we have different tastes - To me, the loudness is bad. The loudness is undeniable. I can say I was possibly exaggerating. It's possible that it's by design that the song sounds like it does.
I don't want to say your wrong, but to say it's the fault of my admittedly low cost system is really far-fetched. Maybe it can be sound good, but it *should* sound good even on my system if it was meant to or mastered right. Similar climaxes in songs that aren't mastered poorly sound fine.
Also:
Listening to: 'Bury Me With It' from 'Good News For People Who Love Bad News' by 'Modest Mouse' with Media Center 17
It's not far-fetched at all. Take a lossless rip of that song to a hifi shop or even better a headphone meet that will let you listen to it on some serious gear, and get back to me. You will be able to hear separate instruments instead of the "clipping" that you described in your post, and Cash's voice definitely doesn't "go to hell". At least not on my system.
Music can't be "mastered right" for all systems as they all have different needs and capabilities, most prominently at the polarized far ends of cost/performance. I consider my rig to be at the lower end of summit-fi, and I can tell that passage is challenging.
And that's what makes this hobby challenging, the fact that there is always another threshold of resolution or whatever to conquer. I really like my DAC, but it's the weak link in my system and when I move up I believe that I will be able to resolve passages like that even better.
Seriously, I'm not making this up. Do you know anything about the "loudness wars"? Lot to read there, the wiki is a good starting point.
In a nutshell, popular music is typically over-compressed to sound better on inexpensive portable rigs and mini-systems because that's what 95% of popular music listeners use these days. When it's not compressed like that recorded music sounds much better the better the gear gets, but at the cost of being almost unlistenable during intense busy passages on more inexpensive rigs. Jazz and classical music for instance is mastered much differently than pop/rock, and sometimes pop/rock for vinyl is mastered differently than it is for digital.
I'm just trying to help, as you were complaining about something that isn't present on my system. Go to a summit-fi thread and see what they think of that passage, then go to an entry-level thread and do the same and you will get very different answers.
I would be happy to continue this discussion via PM if you like.
Rediscovered this amazing album recently. That particular version of that song is tied with the original in my eyes. So good. KD Lang has a pretty fantastic version as well.