[MCImes]

I agree with Califirnication. But I Love that album...can you re-master a master? (excuse my ignorance, im sure thats a dumb question)

On the other side of things, I think James Blake's Overgrown is mastered beautifully. Probably me new favorite album both for music and SQ.

 

[patsyleung]

I'll have to look that up, thanks!

Ps. Way to reply to a 3yo comment

 

[bustersgotavmax]

I don't

But I do take an interest when music sounds terrible from the CD, especially if it's music I enjoyed on vinyl or cassette or older CDs but which now sounds worse than ever in its "improved" form. When I see the word "Remastered" on non-classical music I tend to read it as "Ruined!" or "Avoid This!" or "We Hate Music But Love Money!".

I tend to think the same as you about REMASTERED meaning ruined. All in all,I'm becoming more and more interested in vinyl to get away from ipod mastering. It seems soo much of mainstream music is mastered with the portable mp3 -ipod in mind and not for stereos or systems with ample power amps in mind.

 

[Prowler]

Rage Against The Machine - Renegades... album replay gain: -11.98 dB

All RATM sounds like it suffers from the loudness war, but Renegades is unlistenable, it has obvious clipping.
 
What's perhaps interesting (but maybe not surprising) is the album gain progressively gets higher with each studio release (from 1992 to 2000), I never noticed that until now.

 

[bustersgotavmax]

Thanks for the comment and additional information.

I think it's safe enough to assert that any file with a 0dB peak but which is theoretically unclipped, as you describe, will be clipped if subsequently encoded with a lossy encoder*. Which means any CD or lossless audio that matches the "0db peak but unclipped" description already probably sounds horrible is going to be really ugly by the time it's converted to mp3/ogg/m4a as is commonly done.

*the only exception I can think of is opus as recent versions of the libopus decoder attenuate the level on decode/playback to avoid clipping. I did a quick check with a suitable retail CD derived wav, and lame, ogg vorbis, fraunhofer aac and wavpack lossy all produced a file with many clipped samples while the opus file produced almost none. Top image in each pair is regular Audacity view, bottom is clip analyser result.

wav:


m4a:


opus:


And here is a lossless file from CD (I ripped it to flac from my own CD). It's the same file I mentioned in an earlier post, Jimi Hendrix's First Rays Of The New Rising Sun, track 1 Freedom:



It sounds as bad as it looks.

I agree with you. I have music that shows very high gain levels that approach 0db,but don't necessarily clip. Still, when I play them on my home system or headphone system, getting anywhere near a listening volume,it just sounds like it's on that ragged edge.

 

[Cobaltius]

Metallica - St. Anger (Muddy, Raw, disgusting) I like the album for some reason lol 
Metallica - Death Magnetic (Distorted due to Loudness war >_<)

 

[Karnoffel]

Yeezus - Kanye West. I love the music, especially Blood on the Leaves and Black Skinhead but it sounds pretty muddy and distorted. I can't help but feel that it's intentional for some reason though :/.

 

[Radioking59]

I think I have found the winner based upon recording, not the mastering.

Ray Charles - The Genius of Ray Charles

I got the mono Mofi SACD for $2 on Amazon and this recording is abysmal. I'm sure Mofi did as much as they could with the tapes, but it is still really bad. Such a shame as this is a great album.

 

[TJ Elite]

  Yeezus - Kanye West. I love the music, especially Blood on the Leaves and Black Skinhead but it sounds pretty muddy and distorted. I can't help but feel that it's intentional for some reason though :/.

I think you are right on the money. I believe the album is intended to sound both musically and sonically off-putting. Were it remastered one day to sound different, I believe it would no longer represent Kanye's vision. It is up to each listener to decide how he or she feels about this, but whichever the case I frankly doubt Kanye gives a damn.

 

[alcyst]

I posted it on on this thread's good looking and happy sibling "The Best audiophile tracks to test equipment" & its worth repeating here. With a combination of something like Qobuz and something like Sonos you can call all these excellent recommendations and listen from the comfort of your own listening chair.
Yesterday I had a happy day working through -The Best audiophile tracks to test equipment-. Today I have struggled through a series of Worst recorded/Mastered Albums. What an hour! Good way to get an education. Thanks for all the suffering that has been gone through to make this possible. Some of it is in the so bad it is...worth listening to.

 

[aabeba]

Song: Miles of Machines by Jeff Loomis.
 
Sorry, haven't listened to the rest of that album.

 

[immtbiker]

U2 - How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb
 
Norah Jones - Come Away With Me

 

[xsk3l3t0rx]

yes - 90125, big generator
the smashing pumpkins - machina, machina II
 
 
im sure theres more, i just cant think of any off the top of my head

 

[DecentLevi]

This WORST MASTERING WOULD DEFINITELY NOT BE COMPLETE WITHOUT A MENTION TO THESE (ELECTRONIC MUSIC) ACTS:

Burial (everything he has ever put out seems to be of super low quality samples, improper use of compression or none thereof, no saturation and a seemingly intentional insertion of an amazingly annoying pop-crackle of a dusty vinyl effect over everything)...

Flying Lotus (most all his songs are FAR FAR too overcompressed to the point that the overall dynamic range is reduced, too much use of sidechaining to control the other sounds from the beat and the treble is usually piercing)

plus the almost supernaturally striking thing is that it there'ye becoming super famous in the electronic scene but it seems nobody else notices - neither of these 2 artists have ever come up on my online searches for poor mastering.

 

[Cobaltius]

Honestly, anything with mass amounts of clipping and distortion and would be on the list of poor mastering/worst mastering