Badly mastered commercial CD's 2005

[kylen]

OK - that does it. I know there's a lists floatin around here and there about great mastered CD's and poorly mastered CD's but now, in 2005 with all of this miraculous technology at our disposal what the hell is going on!

I've got recent CD's that are a bit squished, clipping, and really clipping but this one really pisses me off - this one sounds just like the sound you get over the FM radio full blast! The wife even looked at me and said - "that thing sounds like the radio , not a CD. I didn't need to buy that I could just turn on the radio!."

Ladies and gentlemen I bring you the first CD I have actually had to turn down! With no mastering credits - but Brendon O'Brian produced it, and mixed it - it's on your nickel pal...I bring you:

THE WALLFLOWERS - Rebel, Sweetheart

That's it...bring on some more - we don't have to put up with this crap. I'm going to unmaster this thing just so I can listen to it! Congrats to the idiot who mastered this...

Save me some money - add yours to the list and why...many of you are much better than this!

 

[TheDewd]

Fortunately, the volume war is just about over. Mastering engineers have reached a point where -8 dBRMS and even -6 dBRMS are possible while maintaning a "listenable" album (*cough* *cough*). As time will go on, these engineers will produce CRAP because they will try to get more than what is possible on the media. This volume war has nearly reached an end. The customer ain't going to buy louder records if they sound like poop (even that is not sure...).

Anyway we choose to go, the current media format has it's limits and we just about reached those. On my side, I enjoy records that are mastered between -14 and -10 dBRMS. Louder than this and it becomes mushy, undefined, pumpy and you clearly hear which frequencies the ME shifted in order to gain some loudness. More often that not, the pro ME is going to sacrifice bass response for more mids (mostly high-mids) to gain appearent loudness. At least, that's the trend I've seen in 2004-2005.

 

[kylen]

This volume war has nearly reached an end.

Let's hope so! This one caught my attention because the CD was obviously squished in such a way that it mimic'd FM radio pumping and MB squish! I couldn't believe it - I've got a lot of sorry CDs that are squished so they'll sound loud but to mimic the pumping - haha that was the last straw...I expected more out of a commercially mastered Wallflowers CD...

Here's a great example of why you don't want a multi-band comp/lim on a master...