Is this an example of bad remastering...

M

Mr songwriter

New member
..Or is there actually something wrong with the CD? - I'd heard this album (presumably a different pressing of it?) a few years ago and liked it, so when I saw it for only £4 the other day I bought it. It has been quite a while since I heard it but I was pretty shocked by the amount of distortion I was hearing, at first I thought it was deliberate, but it's on pretty much every track on the album, I ripped a section of it to WAV as an example:

Distortion?


Has anyone got any idea how this happens? surely they shouldn't be putting albums out with this kind of quality.

I also opened it up in Audacity to look at the WAV, and I'm no expert, but it looks like it would be clipping to me.
 

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No, that isn't clipped. It's way too bassy for my tastes, but in terms of modern extreme limiting, that is actually rather conservative. Roll off the bass, and it opens up nicely.
 
:confused: I've played that CD on my PC, 2 portable CD players and a fairly expensive Hi-Fi and the bass levels weren't boosted or anything, but to me it sounds like his voice starts distorting once it gets above a certain level. I tried rolling the bass off a bit like you suggested which helped a bit, but it still sounds like it's clipping to me. A couple of other people that I played it to commented on it too, so I doubt if it's my ears that are the problem.
 
Mr songwriter said:
:confused: I've played that CD on my PC, 2 portable CD players and a fairly expensive Hi-Fi and the bass levels weren't boosted or anything, but to me it sounds like his voice starts distorting once it gets above a certain level. I tried rolling the bass off a bit like you suggested which helped a bit, but it still sounds like it's clipping to me. A couple of other people that I played it to commented on it too, so I doubt if it's my ears that are the problem.
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Well, I don't know what to say. The .wav you posted is not clipped, period. Clipping is not the only kind of distortion!

In the case of the vocal, it is dubbed heavily, there are probably 3 of 4 voice tracks there, and at least one of them is distorted. Presumably that was an artistic decision :confused: Distorted vocals are popular these days.
 
Yup, you should seriously roll the bass off. The drums are a bit too bassy compared to the vocals. You could also EQ the vocals a bit to achieve some high end.
 
That's weird. No question the distortion isn't program distortion, it's deliberate on one of the vocal tracks. The weird thing is the song they used it on, which is why it sounds like it shouldn't be there. It just doesn't fit the mood of the song at all to me.
 
I think it's the effect you have going on on the vocals or soemthing. Try lowering the levels of the supporting vocals a touch (I think you have the track doubled up or maybe tripled) and rolling off the bass.

I quite like it. :)
 
(Note: it's not Mr. Songwriter's song. It's a track from Ian Brown's first solo album.)

I agree the distortion is just on his voice. And like you, I don't remember it being there in the original. Did the sample you posted come from the remixed CD he released last year? Maybe the drugs have finally rotted his brain.
 
Phew, someone agrees with me, I'm not going nuts...or deaf.

You're right it's the Ian Brown song, I wish I had written it though, it's an awesome song, in spite of the distortion. That version of the track is from 'Unfinished monkey business', not 'The Greatest' which I assume is the album you mean. I wasn't trying to pretend it was my own track, it was just that I'd heard quite a few people on here going on about how so many albums had been ruined by boosting the gain too much at the mastering stage, and I wondered if this could be what had happened here, I was also wondering if this would be grounds for getting a refund - the people in the record shop didn't seem to think so.
 
Mr songwriter said:
it was just that I'd heard quite a few people on here going on about how so many albums had been ruined by boosting the gain too much at the mastering stage
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That track was not loud by modern standards. Mastering couldn't screw up the vocals only unless they were doing something like remastering from stems (separate stereo submixes of the band and the vocal), which is possible. The other option is it was a full remix.

I was also wondering if this would be grounds for getting a refund - the people in the record shop didn't seem to think so.
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Heh, good luck with that. Maybe if you complain to the label, people will start to pay attention.
 
I played it through my studio monitors,sounds like crap. I hear distortion,too much bass 200-400HZ, something like that. Something is messed up. I dont "see" clipping on the wave. It was not intended to be that way for sure.
 
The re-mastered Operation:Mindcrime is so bad that it's painful to listen to for me. :mad: I haven't checked out the waveform.
 
Maybe clipping was the wrong word, I don't know, but this is a major label release by a well known artist, I can't believe it's supposed to sound like that.

I just tried to Email them about it, but I couldn't find a working Email address, presumably they don't put one on the net to avoid being spammed up by loads of bands.

It's not so much the money because it was pretty cheap, I just want to have a decent copy of the album.
 
Mr songwriter said:
That version of the track is from 'Unfinished monkey business', not 'The Greatest' which I assume is the album you mean.
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Actually, he re-released UFB in 2005, I assume becuase of his new deal with Koch Records. Amazon touts the re-released CD as "enhanced", so maybe the crushed vocal track is just one of the enhancements :)


Mr songwriter said:
but I couldn't find a working Email address
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There's a phone number for Koch on this page: http://www.kochent.com/contact.htm
 
mshilarious said:
That track was not loud by modern standards. Mastering couldn't screw up the vocals only unless they were doing something like remastering from stems (separate stereo submixes of the band and the vocal), which is possible. The other option is it was a full remix.
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I'm with ms on this, if you're only hearing the distortion on the vocals It's doubtful that this was caused during the mastering stage unless mastering brought out some of the details of this distortion that might have buried or masked in the original.

According to the credits here
http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/store/artist/album/0,,3310505,00.html#credits

Ian was responsible for some of the mixing, so maybe it was intentional. There are no credits for mastering on this page. Do you have any on the album? I would compare that ME's work with others he has done, that should tell the tale.
 
Masteringhouse: I can't find any credits for mastering on the album, though it does as you say, credit Ian himself as producer and mixer of most of the songs, including that one. What you said about the distortion is logical too - if it had been introduced at the mastering stage I guess it would have affected all the sound sources on the track.

DM1: thanks for the info, I can't find any mention of Koch records on the sleeve (though I am in the UK and that listing is for Amazon in the US) but I did have a look round for different versions of this CD the other day, the only difference I could find was that one of them had a barcode sticker on it where mine has the barcode printed on the back of the CD insert, all the numbers were the same. Thanks for taking the trouble to find the phone number, but I have a feeling that Koch might only be able to provide me with another identical version of the album, I'll just get a 2nd hand copy from Amazon that will hopefully predate the "enhancements".*

*Amazon's definition of an Enhanced CD doesn't mention anything about remixing or audio quality though:

Amazon.com Buying Guide
Music CD Format Descriptions

Enhanced
Enhanced CDs are music CDs to which data tracks have been added. Designed to be read by the CD- or DVD-ROM drive in your computer, these tracks often include music videos, photos, liner notes, Web features, and other such content. The music portion of enhanced CDs should play in all CD and DVD players
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If it sounds like that straight off the cd, it was an artistic decision. Maybe the point was to disturb the listener. There's no way in hell that happened by accident and went by unnoticed. If you're that concerned over it, why don't you contact the artist?
 
Have you ever listened to a "lo-fi" recording streamed over the internet? It's lo-fi because the file is reduced. It's missing a lot of digital data in the streamed file. It has that scratchy, thin sound to it. That's what the voice in your song sounds like. It's like the voice track is missing a lot of the digital data that should be there.
 
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