Fuck Brickwall Mastering

In the last few weeks I've been going back and re-purchasing a lot of my favorite DJ'ing tunes in .wav format. When re-acquiring my Eskmo collection, I stumbled upon a new Eskmo remix of a Spor tune. Excited about the prospect of a delicious new Eskmo tune, I purchased it after giving a brief listen on the site's shitty lo-fi audio player. Listening to the tune today, I noticed it sounded fuzzy every time there was a bassline note or a sub bass hit. I opened it up in a wave editor to see this:

Fucking outrageous. The audio is in the red for about 95% of the entire song. There's a lot of brickwall mastering these days where people put a limiter RIGHT before it peaks and crank the gain way up so it's not quite peaking but it sounds OMG SO FUCKING LOUD & HARD HITTING, effectively ruining dynamics and sound subtleties in the process. This, however takes it to a whole new level. It's just peaking...for most of the tune. It sounds fucking horrible. Listen...

It's not something like Clark's crazy sound auteur idea of using compression & limiting as a type of dynamic instruments in the song, it's straight up ignorance on the part of sound engineers and the producers who just say "yeah that sounds heavy, bro, awesome"). Why doesn't anybody realize that a DJ or a home listener CAN EASILY JUST TURN THE VOLUME KNOB UP IF THEY WANT IT LOUDER without the track having to be totally butchered before it even gets to the consumer?

This is why all the DJs and clubgoers are deaf anymore.

I hate that kind of mastering! I even had to sell a CD because it was totally unlistenable.

Sounds like its live, and not in a good way

the best example of this is the iggy pop 'remaster' of raw power. hilarious.

Some times I like it, some times I don't. I like it in the tune you posted though.

OMG not this thread again.

Reply to this post if you feel like getting a long-winded rant loudness wars rant that will inextricably school you for life. Please don't though, I'd rather not waste an hour replying than try to impart some truth acquired the hard way and, of course, get called a troll.

In other news, haters gonna hate.

Bryan Adams - "Cuts Like a Knife" 1983

Ricky Martin - "Living the Vida Loca 1999

http://ozzgod.com/dynamicrange/death.html

Gotta love it.

This is why I buy vinyl.... only to find that half of modern vinyl pressings use (close to) CD masters

hmm, interesting. I like that you brought up Clark, because I agree that his style of mastering is creative yet heavy. His mastering on Lorn's album is a good example of this, the beats hit hard but never lose their shape or weight.

i own an album where it simply distorts at the loud parts, and this enrages me because this is not acceptable in this day and age.

On the other hand, I have a fondness for some types of beats where the kick and snare distort a little from hard compression. Not massively, just a little. There is something nice about that.

This bothers me also. Most of the modern albums are mastered like this and I find that I simply get tired listening to an album made like that and turn down the volume to make it somewhat bearable. The same goes for these "remastred" versions of old albums, most of the time it means they just made it louder to cater to the masses who wouldn't know dynamics if it slapped them in the face. There is a fucking volume knob, it's there for you to use it! Fuck this noise.

teenager moblie school of mastering, you gotta love it

  On 9/7/2010 at 6:24 PM, soundwave said:

teenager moblie school of mastering, you gotta love it

It's too bad that todays kids will listen to music that is made to sound "good" on crap headphones attached to mobile phones and miss how a well mastered record sounds on some dedicated equipment. I remember seeing an article about how today's producers keep in mind that the tracks need to sound good on shit headphones and work well as ringtones. It's all a bit

In the DJ/dance music world it's even more evident. The thing that originally sparked my nads and caused me to make this thread is that Eskmo is a damn fine producer, and this song would be totally badass without that clipping that makes it unlistenable for me (I'm certainly not gonna drop it live either). I didn't realize it till I had already shelled out the money for a .wav

With modern DAW technology, a whole shitload of otherwise awesome producers are limiting/brickwalling their tunes, before the initial mixdown even leaves their computers. I get quite a few dubs and tell people "take off the limiter and lower the whole song by 2db and I'd love to spin this one"...usually met with a "huh? why?"

Futureimage raises a good point, too. I've had a few friends tell me about the superior sound quality of vinyl, play some dubstep, and every time the kickdrum hits it sidechains the fuck out of every other sound in the song. It was a neat effect when it was intentional in electro house a few years ago, but it's kind of headache inducing when it does that to the sub bass/melody/hihats/midrange breakbeats.

  On 9/7/2010 at 6:49 PM, chimera slot mom said:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

nobody really gives a shit.

 

There's enough music around for me to not worry about the unlistenable tracks or albums that come my way. They just tend to no longer get my support or recommendations.

And for the ones that like this angle of mastering it's ok because they're listening to it through their iPods, iPhones or ipads which are all iPoor quality.

  On 9/7/2010 at 7:02 PM, azatoth said:

  On 9/7/2010 at 6:49 PM, chimera slot mom said:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

nobody really gives a shit.

 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

*gives a shit*

 

  On 9/9/2010 at 7:01 PM, xxx said:

 

That's why physicians are decrying the iDeaf effect from earbuds and screaming iPods that play music that's already fatiguing and damaging for the ears even at modest volumes. The Aphex Twin Classics days were really fun but even Pritchard has kicked the bricks out of his sound over the years.

 

 

physicians were decrying the iDeaf effect in the days of walkmans as well...

not to say that I agree with the brick wall mastering approach.

my peaks max out at .3 , and if i use a brickwall, it's fucking subtle. I like having dynamics in my tracks.

I have a few iPods and I think they sound pretty good. Obviously you have to fill them up with lossless files, but I don't think they sound any worse than any other personal music device at that point. I like 'em.

Ah, the 'wall of sound' mastering. I think it works well for music that is supposed to be loud and forceful, like the typical metal or hard rock fare, but music with more subtleties definitely won't sound good mastered like that.

Then again, I don't know what I'm talking about.

I pride myself on NOT taking part in the loudness wars. It has cost me clients in the past, but I'd rather work with artists who are interested in sound quality more than LOUDNESS!!! What's really painful is when you receive tracks from a client, and they are ALREADY brick-walled. Mixing into a hard limiter is killing music. With digital recording at 24bit we now have more dynamic range than the human ear can hear. Why cram it all into those top two bits? Use that dynamic range! I've actually returned masters that were quieter than the original files I received.

  On 9/7/2010 at 6:50 PM, autopilot said:

In the DJ/dance music world it's even more evident. The thing that originally sparked my nads and caused me to make this thread is that Eskmo is a damn fine producer, and this song would be totally badass without that clipping that makes it unlistenable for me (I'm certainly not gonna drop it live either). I didn't realize it till I had already shelled out the money for a .wav

 

With modern DAW technology, a whole shitload of otherwise awesome producers are limiting/brickwalling their tunes, before the initial mixdown even leaves their computers. I get quite a few dubs and tell people "take off the limiter and lower the whole song by 2db and I'd love to spin this one"...usually met with a "huh? why?"

 

Futureimage raises a good point, too. I've had a few friends tell me about the superior sound quality of vinyl, play some dubstep, and every time the kickdrum hits it sidechains the fuck out of every other sound in the song. It was a neat effect when it was intentional in electro house a few years ago, but it's kind of headache inducing when it does that to the sub bass/melody/hihats/midrange breakbeats.

did you get this Eskmo file directly from his own webstore or from a 3rd party mp3 distributor? Im not a big fan or anything but it would surprise me if he put out a song that had digital clipping in it. Sometimes companies like itunes will fuck up a master wave file