RHCP - Californication

[Blue Bear Sound]

WHAT THE FUCK IS UP WITH THIS CD??????????????

How did this leave the mastering house in this condition????? Playing it in the studio's consumer CD player (Sony) is an exercise in distortion!!!

That unit has -10dBV outputs and it's still causing the VUs to read at +4 -- a good 14-16dB above its nominal rated output value!

Crimony................. what a friggin waste of good songs!

[M.Brane]

-Nigel Tufnel

[Blue Bear Sound]

I actually have a burn another copy of it (with lower levels) to play it clean on other players...!!!

It doesn't distort the Masterlink or the computer's CD-RW drive...

Unbelievable! Sad really...........

[M.Brane]

It would be nice if they could at least put out another version of the disc for those of us who appreciate sanity in mastering. Unfortunately considering the state of the biz I don't see that happening.

The volume wars will likely continue, while the majors blame their poor sales on file sharing.

It couldn't be the quality of the music, could it?

[Track Rat]

I have to believe it's a fade that's been developing over the last 5-10 years. To have your record play louder than the last one and so on. It's just about hit the wall (unless you like pink noise at -.02dBFS. It's gotta swing back the other way. I did a demo for a local band and put a lot of time into it AND I knew they'd want it loud so I stepped on it for them untill it was JUST under audible distortion and they still whined "cause it ain't as loud as my Weeser CD".

[Son of Mixerman]

I recently bought the Audioslave cd..even after Brad Blackwood warned me about the mastering was done by Vlado the Impaler.
I really, and honestly had no clue to what crushed, maximized and tree trunked meant till I got that CD. I have a pile of about 10 cd's at work and I could rotate everthing from 80's Ozzy to Steave Vai without touching the volume knob on the playback..till I got the Audioslave cd.. It literally made me yank the headphones off until I could reset the volume...down about 6db at least. Even then I had to take breaks to finish the whole disc.


SoMm

[Blue Bear Sound]

I can picture the band in the mastering house:

RHCP -- "...but it's distorting...!"
Vlado The Impaler -- "...no that's not digital distortion, that's the mix 'warmed-up' by an analog simulator..."
RHCP -- "... oh well - as long as it's not that harsh digital distortion, I guess it's okay then....!!"


Yikes....

[Chris Tondreau]

That's okay.... I'm getting totally bored of RHCP anyways. How many times can they deliver variations of "Give it Away" and get away with it before the mass public finally figures it out? Live, they sounded great, but they did NOT engage the audience in the slightest. I'd pay to go see Flea on some sort of spoken word/bass workshop/shred-fest, but I'm not spending another dime on RHCP.

Chris

[knightsy]

Surprised no-one has said anything yet about the fact the almost the whole album is mixed in mono!

[BrettB]

Originally posted by Son of Mixerman
I recently bought the Audioslave cd..even after Brad Blackwood warned me about the mastering was done by Vlado the Impaler.
I really, and honestly had no clue to what crushed, maximized and tree trunked meant till I got that CD. I have a pile of about 10 cd's at work and I could rotate everthing from 80's Ozzy to Steave Vai without touching the volume knob on the playback..till I got the Audioslave cd.. It literally made me yank the headphones off until I could reset the volume...down about 6db at least. Even then I had to take breaks to finish the whole disc.


SoMm

Am I the only one who hasn't got a problem with Audioslave cd? I think it's a great mixing and mastering job.. maybe a tiny bit too compressed but hey.. and music like that may sound loud..


btw, I know shit about mastering, but when you guys master, what is your highest peak? I mean, when I 'master' a small demo from myself with fe the waves ultramaximizer, I set -1 dB maximum output, because I notice some CD players have difficulties with a higher output.. That's the distortion you talk about on RHCP, right?

[Blue Bear Sound]

Originally posted by knightsy
Surprised no-one has said anything yet about the fact the almost the whole album is mixed in mono!

I did notice a certain lack of imaging... but I was too much in shock over the huge distortion that I hadn't paid great attention to other aspects!

Is their latest one just as bad??

[knightsy]

Surprised by a lack of imaging?

To quote the engineer "Mono helps to keep things loud".

Well all you acheived was to give me a headache mate.

Same with the last Foo Fighters album. Gave me a headache after about two minutes.

[Blue Bear Sound]

Originally posted by BrettB
...I notice some CD players have difficulties with a higher output.. That's the distortion you talk about on RHCP, right?

Yes... it totally trashed the output stages of the consumer-model CD player in the studio.

The car did better with it, and the studio computer and Masterlink handled it without problems.

The thing is - most people will be playing it back on consumer players, so youd think labels would get this through their fat heads and get off the volume war bandwagon!

[BrettB]

sorry for my ignarance, but what do you consider a safe limit of your multiband compressor output when mastering? -0.5dB..-1db?

[Blue Bear Sound]

To be honest - it's not tied to a specific number....

You can have the max peaks at 0 dBFS -- it's the average RMS output level you obtain that dictates whether you're blowing the output stage headroom or not...

[Track Rat]

Right. The RMS or total power going through the circuit that's the percieved loudness, not where the peaks are hitting.

[BrettB]

True, I allready figured that out. But to give an example with my question:

I recentely purchased the waves bundle with the L2 maximizer. When I recorded a demo with my rockband, I used it because I thought the music could use some extra final compression. The maximizer asks how much dB you set your output to. when I set it to -0.5 dB the recording distorted on some machines, when I set it on -1 dB I didn't have any problems.

[Chris Fallen]

Originally posted by Blue Bear Sound
I can picture the band in the mastering house:

RHCP -- "...but it's distorting...!"
Vlado The Impaler -- "...no that's not digital distortion, that's the mix 'warmed-up' by an analog simulator..."
RHCP -- "... oh well - as long as it's not that harsh digital distortion, I guess it's okay then....!!"


Yikes....

You mean more like...


I LIKE DA VOL-UME BUT THE DIS-TOR-TION IS LOUD NOW
THE SONGS ARE GOOD BUT THE BIRDS ARE IN THE CLOUDS HOW
WHEN I WALK I LOOK LIKE A SKINNY SCHNOWS-OW

::WAVES HANDS WILDLY IN THE AIR::

I HEAR A CLIP BUT A CLIP IS ON MY BELT

::FLIES AROUND IN CIRCLES::

[dafduc]

Originally posted by Chris Fallen
You mean more like...


I LIKE DA VOL-UME BUT THE DIS-TOR-TION IS LOUD NOW
THE SONGS ARE GOOD BUT THE BIRDS ARE IN THE CLOUDS HOW
WHEN I WALK I LOOK LIKE A SKINNY SCHNOWS-OW

::WAVES HANDS WILDLY IN THE AIR::

I HEAR A CLIP BUT A CLIP IS ON MY BELT

::FLIES AROUND IN CIRCLES::

WAHAHAHAA!

Thanks for the laff.

[Blue Bear Sound]

[scottboyher]

I get complaints from my friends all the time about my recordings being to quiet. They listen to Korn then throw mine in and turn their nose up because it is TOO quiet for them.

So I am jumping on the LOUDER IS BETTER bandwagon. joking.