Lately I’ve been enjoying buying CDs and Vinyl again and getting back to some more conscious music consumption rather than letting the algorithms serve up whatever the algorithms set up.
It’s been good!
Except…recently I bought the CD of the High Violet by The National and it sounds like it’s been mastered horribly.
I’m no audiophile. I listen to CDs with a Fiio
DM13 plugged in to Sonos speakers but the sound of this CD is truly abysmal.
Baffling since it sounds much better on the streams. Why is it so?
So, any other what can only be sonic turds from a mastering perspective to avoid buying?
Warnings welcome!
A subject so good it is worth repeating five times.
https://dr.loudness-war.info/
…currently lists over 190,000 albums.
This uses an objective measurement of Dynamic Range. High numbers are good. Exactly where the ‘shit’ threshold is depends on a number of factors but, as a general rule, is about 10.
High Violet on CD scores 5 or 6. High Violet on vinyl scores 9.
Metallica’s Death Magnetic on CD scores 3.
Interesting site that, cheers. Because I had some time spare I ordered the list on ‘LP DR score’. My first ‘pop’ LP appears on page 7.
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, ‘Architecture & Morality’, with a DR of 18. Beat that!
For comparison Talk Talk’s ‘Spirit of Eden’, a record I thought would be near the top, comes in at 12.
I played Architecture & Morality (and Dare) at one of my Sunday afternoon hi-fi in the cafe things a few years ago. It sounded fantastic.
It also still sounded properly weird – bagpipes, music concrete, chorus-less tunes, songs about air bases and Joan of Arc…
In (partial) defence of Death Magnetic, an album I’ve never heard by a band I’m not really a fan of, when it comes to the type of heavy metal that Metallica play, an immersion in loudness is a large part of the attraction. And brickwalling, or at the very least shoving all the sliders all the way up (I’m not as technical as Fents) would help achieving this, I guess.
At the same time, I can easily believe they overdid it with that one. I seem to remember Metallica fans complaining about it when it came out, but to be honest Metallica fans seem to complain about every one of their records since the mid 90s, so who knows?
The delete button…it does nothing!
I’ve messaged the mods. Don’t post many posts and then six it seems of the same at once!
Very handy link and info about Dynamic Range mastering, thanks.
A low DR score does not always mean rubbish sound – it is that way to the Steve Hoffman forum. And a high DR score does not always mean good sound.
But a good-sounding CD is more likely than not to have a higher DR score.
Coldplay are a good example of this. The first two albums sounded alright (DR scores of 10ish). Third album onwards employed more ‘modern’ mastering. You might see the first two CDs in charity shops, you *always* see the third album.
High Violet? I finally put it in the local street library after several years of its baleful presence in my CD library. It must be good, the Afterword says so. But every time I tried – monotone downbeat vocals, limited range, sludgy music and slack, falling apart rhythm – though I didn’t think that was anything to do with the mastering.
Another example of “Afterword-friendly” being neither accurate nor all-encompassing…
I think Afterword-friendly to me means at least one person writes enthusiasticaly about a band/artist and others chime in with assents and further corroboration. Further, there is little counter-criticism, so the posiitve impression remains.
In my case the lack of counter-criticism would be because I am ambivalent about a lot of music others like – I don’t adore it, but neither do I abhor it. I imagine others are similar.
I think this is a good thing, because this place at its best is a place of passions. Plus, it builds my sense of other AWers’ taste – nobody else will like every piece of music I like, but if there is enough of an overlap, I’m more likely to give something they suggest a try.
So keep on pushing VdGG – as Afterword-friendly as the rest. And now, bugger me, High Violet is starting to get earwormy on me….
An interesting interpretation – but, reductio ad absurdum, it would mean that literally all music falls within the definition. So it ceases to be useful as a definition (roughly my own position, I suppose…)
Well, it would if everybody who had ever listened to music and liked it was a Afterworder. But they’re not, as Afterworders are a small and self-selecting group, with a fairly broad range of taste, but not unlimited, as Black Celebration’s universally disliked music thread showed, I think.
As with the NME/NM in the 80s, where there was a fairly clear consensus on what was indie cool, but the likes of Steven Wells, Dele Fadele and Edwin Pouncey* trawled for the exotic and the exceptional, it’s those who go beyond Americana and heritage rock** who keep things vital for me. Still Afterwor(l)dly, though.
*How do I still remember these names?
**Not that there’s anything wrong with those two venerable genres.
Perhaps I should change my Afterword handle to Hideous Bill Gangrene…
Maybe. As I wasn’t reading the NME at the age of 8, that name means nothing to me.
Yikes! That makes me feel old!
You are The Lone Groover and I claim my ten-bob note.
Now that is a name that lasted into the eighties.
Afterword-friendly shorthand some round use assuming some kind agreement on the type of music we like, rock music from a certaun era or new music that reminds of that era, a bit grown up compared to pop for teens, the kind of stuff Mojo get excited about I guess. Maybe Van Morrison or Elvis Costello, soul and country rock, singer songwriter. But it doesn’t hold up because there’s always someone who demurs or praises Dua Lipa or Madonna or Taylor Swift. It’s meaningless but it kinda lingers as the old song goes.
In a nutshell…
Sorry about the sloppy typing.
I tried liking The National even buying 4 albums of theirs because I apparently was supposed to like them. I baled out because I just couldn’t see what the fuss is about.
Say five Hail Hepworths and mark the sign of the Ellen on your forehead while washing your ears out!
When I was first blown away by The Dawn Chorus, people kept telling me they sounded like The National, but I couldn’t see it myself.
TDC were much better, I only wish they’d had the same level of success.
That comparision between bands, oversimplified as – “if you like x, then you will like y”, denies the multiple reasons why people like different music . What appears on a superficial listen to be a similarity could emerge, from a Tigger half dozen, to be quite different in substance, timbre and sound.
Ironically, listening to High Violet today, while I work, they seem to have frontloaded the album with the worst songs. As it moves through the tracks, it gets a bit melllower.. Or maybe I am being bludgeoned into submisssion by the pummeling of the drums and the wafts of raising and falling vocals.
I have a strange relationship with The National- I think in small doses they can be very good but I struggle to sit through a whole album. That said the following tracks would make a cracking E.P. :
Slow Show
Ada
Bloodbuzz Ohio
Rylan
Mistaken for Strangers
I very much adore The National. But I support your right to find them a bit dull.
Exactly this!
When the industry lumped on CDs forty years ago, it didn’t take long for the quality of the vinlys to go downhill.
I wouldn’t be surprised if new CDs go the same way now as there is clearly a much bigger mark up on vinlys.
I’m sticking to quality reissue labels (e.g. Ace) and second hand product, so I shouldn’t think it’ll affect any of my purchases.
It’s generally more of an issue for CDs than vinyl as @fentonsteve explains. The digital files are compressed to sound louder as that is apparently what appeals to the younger generation. Seems it appeals to some here too, as often reissues are praised for being “cleaned up” when actually they have much less dynamic range than the original CD release in the 80s or 90s. As always it also depends on your listening equipment/environment
Thankfully the pernicious practice of “brickwalling” is extremely rare in classical and jazz releases. If it’s present in classical it seems to be confined to the “Best of ” compilation end of things (shudder) and in jazz it does occur in some more recent releases in the fusion end of the market but infrequently.
Everyone has the right to like/dislike any music and post about it here imo. I enjoy reading all views, personally. I like The National up to a point although can understand why some don’t.
Sometimes music by a particular band/artist hits differently at a certain point in life depending on what’s going on as well, in my experience.
Interesting observation some CDs are still being mastered loud since the youngsters prefer this? I did think the Loudness Wars were mostly over now jukeboxes in pubs are a rarity.
Do radio stations source music to broadcast from CDs?
I would think it’s only specialist radio programmes that use CDs and vinyl these days. And even then only if digital files in broadcast quality aren’t available or the show’s USP is that they play only vinyl and/or CDs.
Digital files are just easier to deal with for mainstream shows.
Funny you should say that Mike. Just home from doing a specialist radio show with records , cd’s and a couple of streamed tracks.
Yes digital would probably be easier if I bothered to learn how to master it but I’m old school and I reckon they sound better as the station used 128 mP3 for its files which in Oz is regarded as broadcast quality for radio.
A friend who for several years and still very occasionally presents shows on a student-run non-commercial US college radio station (WXYC Chapel Hill, N. Carolina*) very much liked but wouldn’t play some 128k mp3s I provided her with once, early 2000s, because it was station policy to play nothing lower resolution than 320k. They occasionally played vinyl then but mostly they played CDs. Not sure what they do now.
*In November 1994, WXYC at the University of North Carolina became the first radio station in the world to rebroadcast its signal over the Internet.
On a slightly related point, my CD player broke down the other day, after about fourteen or fifteen years, and so I have been looking for a replacement. What has surprised is me that the cost of a fairly standard model doesn’t seem to have changed much since I bought the last one, or even the one before that – about £300-350. The specifications seem to suggest new technical features, but I not much of an audiophile and so I don’t know if they would make any difference.
I know you have to allow for inflation, but other electronic items, like microwaves or computers seem to have got progressively cheaper as the initial research costs have been recouped. TVs might have stayed about the same price, but you seem to get much better sound and picture quality these days.
As Junior said you can use DVD or Blu-ray players. Second hand could be the way to go for a dedicated CD player. I just looked very quickly on Facebook marketplace and there were a selection of “working” models for around $50 (~30 quid), I would think they would be just as good as a new one and probably built more solidly. People are generally not interested in them any more so there is a something of a glut of them available
I’m guessing if you’re looking at s dedicated player then you’re considering something like a Marantz or similar. These are specialist manufacturers that don’t have the same economies of scale that people like Sony and Philips had when they were manufacturing Cd players. TVs have stayed the same price, but unlike CD players, the underlying technology has completely changed in the last 30 years, going from cathode ray tube to plasma/LCD. TVs are just giant computer monitors these days as far as I can see and I expect they’ve benefited from the developments in that industry.
Anyhow, I agree with Dai, there are usually a good number of second hand CD players going cheap and that could be the way forward. These things tend to be pretty robust I think.
Thanks for all of the advice. I was in fact referring to Marantz. That is the make of my current CD player, and I also have a Marantz amplifier. As I have always found the sound quality good across a wide range of music, I thought I’d buy the latest version as a replacement. I’m lucky enough to be able to afford it, and something that will probably last another 15 years is good value at £350. It was more curiosity about the reasons for the static price level
I would think the reason is that not many are made these days so parts for manufacturing will be bought in smaller quantities, some will need to made specially and they will cost more
I would warn against using a Blu-ray player as a CD player, unless it has a second (red) laser for reading CDs. CDs are burned with red lasers and expect to be played back by red lasers. A blue laser produces a much smaller dot than a red laser and can struggle to reliably read CDs. Any old/scuffed/scratched CD can be unreadable by a blue laser.
Any Blu-ray player which does have a second red laser is likely to be as costly as a dedicated CD player.
The days of the 20 quid supermarket CD player are long gone. You’re better off looking round charity shops now.
Out of curiosity, what is your current CD player, and what’s gone wrong with it? It might be worthwhile getting it repaired.
It’s a Marantz. The problem is that all of the sound comes out of the right hand speaker. Whatever processor works out which channel certain sounds should come out of has stopped working and it is sending all of it through one channel to the right hand. I’ve tried it with CDs I know well and nothing is missing, it is all just coming from the one speaker. It is not an amplifier problem, as the tuner (built in), turntable and streamer both play properly through both speakers.
That sounds annoyingly difficult to bug-fix!
Does it have a digital output you could connect to something with a digital input and a DAC? Or a friendly local hi-fi shop you could take it to? Where are you based?
I’m in London. So if you think that it might be fixable – I thought it wouldn’t be – I will google to see if I can find a reasonably local repair shop.
Might be worth dropping this chap a line. He’s just off the M11 in Cambs and seems to be able to fix everything.
https://www.mrtechguy.co.uk/
I would take a look on YouTube, there are many channels where they fix electronic items. Even if you wouldn’t want to take it on yourself it may give you an idea how easy it would be to fix. If you need to pay someone for, say, 4-8 hours to work on it then it becomes too expensive to be worthwhile.
Now that’s interesting, @fentonsteve. Are there similar implications for so-called Universal Disc Players? For example, the Cambridge Audio CXU (asking for a friend…)
I know the R&D fellas from Cambridge Audio in a professional capacity (we go to the same test place). Their universal players are built around the MediaTek reference design and SDK (as are similar devices from Oppo and Arcam).
The laser & lens assembly is a multi-format affair. You can buy a replacement on eBay for about 40 quid, should it ever show signs of fatigue.
That’s good to know – I have the Oppo 205 and now they have stopped making them (and even repairing them) I do sometimes ponder what I will do if it starts to have issues. It’s a fantastic player.
Thanks for that, Mr Fenton. I’ll file that away for future reference…
some people use blue ray dvd players
There is no shortage of CD players on the market across most price points. I’ve tried using a DVD player and a couple of games consoles as a temporary solution when cash has been short and they are ok, not bad but not great. Up to a certain point in audio you get what you pay for after that diminishing returns kick in but a dedicated CD player is worth it if CD is your format of choice. Take a look at a some of the Chinese brands such as Shanling who are making extremely good devices for very reasonable money.
Ones by manufacturers you have heard of are available from around £270 upwards. About the same prices as 20 years ago. There are plenty of cheaper ones with weird names, but they almost certainly won’t be as good audio-wise or for reliability.
Slowing of European and US demand has kept prices up. Economies of scale in reverse.
Some of these “weirdly” named companies have been manufacturing audio/visual components for some years including Shanling a company that produces players that are very well regarded by the audio community. The bias around Chi-fi reminds me of the old bigotries that were trotted out about Japanese companies back in the late sixties and into seventies. Many well respected names in audio are now either Chinese owned or have their products made by Chinese companies. Those same companies by making products for major hi-fi brands have been learning by doing and are now taking that knowledge and making very high quality products badged with “weird” names. It wasn’t so long ago that Japanese manufacturers such as Luxman, TAD, Kondo, Air Tight or Accuphase were considered to be inferior brands with “weird” names now they are justly regarded as top-tier hi-fi manufacturers. I own a few Chi-fi products headphones, iems, a streamer amongst other bits and pieces along with Chinese built speakers, amplification and a CDT. They are all beautifully built and perform wonderfully which is more than I could say about some pretty expensive Irish built Sennheiser iems I had to return for replacement not once but twice in the space of a week before I gave up on them and bought a set of Chinese iems which work perfectly, sound wonderful and cost me a two thirds less than the Sennheisers.
Interesting, and if they have a digital output (they should) then you are not reliant on their internal DAC should that be inferior to, say, the one in a Marantz player. Of course you then need an external DAC either standalone or as part of your amplifier/receiver
I bought a few albums by The National back then, and “High Violet” was the one I preferred. But it’s not music I’ve returned to and I can’t say that I was surprised when I learned that Matt Berninger have been fighting depression for years…
To be honest, I’d much rather listen to Tal National !
Got another example.
‘Something Else’ by the Kinks – CD player in another room – ‘Alexa play Something Else by the Kinks’ – all going fine until Tin Soldier Man and Situation Vacant… both with no vocals.
Triffic. I know… get the CD. I got a copy last year for 50p.