I actually bought Death Magnetic on GH3 before the album was available so my conception of it wasn't tainted or predefined by anything. My GF at the time got the CD version of it shortly thereafter that I got the chance to listen to in the car on a few occasions, and never had any issues. But you'll probably think I'm as bad as Lars for passing my judgement from this perspective
I'm well aware DM is considered an overcompressed abomination, but at no point do I consider it painful to listen to, it hasn't harmed me, and it has some pretty rockin' songs on it.
Well, yes, a car stereo is not exactly the ideal listening environment when trying to detect sound quality. Besides that... Clearly you're one of the lucky ones who isn't affected by it. But I think it's important that you acknowledge that some of us are. I listened to the CD version of DM a total of once. I know the album pretty well from having heard non-CD versions, and agree that the songs are good, but for me and for a lot of people, the CD version is nigh unlistenable as is. And for some people it isn't, and good for them.
What I'm really questioning, is what bothers you so much about clipping issues if that's the one that's gonna be the focus of our concerns? It happens sometimes, perhaps it's not always desirable but it's sometimes not noticeable and believe it or not, it can even be an effective way to deliberately distort a sound.
Okay,
1) As the comparison video in my last post demonstrates pretty soundly (and that's YouTube audio quality!) a highly compressed album just sounds worse than one that hasn't been highly compressed. Usually the difference in this area is minor unless it's a hatchet job of
Death Magnetic proportions, but it definitely does.
2) It causes, for me and other people, fatigue to listen to a whole album of highly compressed music. I don't know the reason for this, something to do with the constant loudness or something, but it definitely does. I experienced this with
Systematic Chaos before I hardly knew what clipping was or that SC was considered brickwalled. That's a long, brickwalled album, and by The Ministry of Lost Souls I would typically feel some discomfort in my ears, and in some cases a headache. That has gone away since I've switched to the HDTracks version, which is a far less compressed master.
It's not noticeable to a lot of people, yes. It's not noticeable in some instances, yes (
Falling Into Infinity and Metallica's Black Album are both somewhat compressed, though not to the degree of DM or SC, and they sound pretty good). But in instances where it is taken to a certain point (I would say SC is to this point, and DM way way beyond it), it can cause that type of fatigue and discomfort for some people, myself included. I could not imagine it being a way of "distorting a sound," because it literally changes the entire album, not just one part of it. And even if it's not noticeable for you, it is noticeable and even painful for other people, so why not say "Okay, I don't experience this, but clearly it's a problem for others and it doesn't hurt me if they change it, so let's go ahead and agree, it should be changed."
Also, you have quite a bit of a preconception about how you interpret and filter the 'art' don't you? Alright, if you want, I guess it is like saying you should appreciate the Mona Lisa through a blurry lens, especially so if Leonardo DaVinci specifically says that it a valid and alternative point of view to experience the art.
Okay, but my point with the DaVinci example is that it's not optional. It's like they blurred up the original Mona Lisa and every single print, giving no one even the option of looking at the better quality version.
Maybe there's something you'll miss if you can't get passed your own impositions and truly believe it's not being expressed 'correctly'. I would respond to some specific parts of your posts, but I don't think I need to because overall you're just demonstrating how strong your expectations are and to me, you're not really questioning them which is all I'm encouraging. You don't have to accept the things you don't prefer, but you can't impose yourself onto them.
I'm sorry, but I don't consider ear fatigue and headaches to be something that I should just "get passed" in order to realize John Petrucci's true artistic vision of a shitty master. It's not just a preference, it is avoiding discomfort and pain just from listening to a damn album.
Are the people that take issue with this really being physically harmed and in pain from headaches induced from the compression levels of the music?
Yes, some of us are. It's not like a severe migraine headache, but it's bad enough to make me not really want to listen to the album again anytime soon.
This seems bizarre if you're doing this to yourself.
We like the band, we often like the music. It's just this side-effect. I liked DT12 but found it hard to listen to; once I got the HDTracks I listened to it a lot more. I don't like having to deprive myself of listening to music that I like just because someone decided to do the stupid loudness trick.
Or are they pretentious snobs that want everything to conform to their point of view and probably complain about anything that slightly bothers them? That last part is probably only a select minority.
Yeah, and even if those people do exist, that really should not discount the totally valid complaints of many people.
And I certainly wouldn't limit it to the things I mentioned, there's probably heaps of reasons why someone would feel this way. It's just at the end of the day, we're responsible for the effect the art has on us; not the artist.
Okay, but I would argue that mastering is not the art, it's the medium. It's like someone making a movie that's intentionally blurry and saying "don't blame me for how bad the picture quality is, you're responsible for the effects that the hatchet job done by my technicians has on you, I'm not."
They're just reflecting aspects of ourselves for us to interpret and inspect; and the reason for this is we can only ever see things from our own subjective point of view. That's why objectivity really is only a collective illusion if you actually consider it from all angles, because you'll realise that there's always observational and environmental bias even when considering collective agreements (objectivity) that are taken for granted. I would take this a step further and say that even 'facts' are a type of belief, because you can't determine them to be true until you believe something to be true about them. And if something changes, the fact would need to be updated or discarded not unlike words in a dictionary. They're not absolute but that's getting into an entirely different discussion.. Although certainly related to my point.
Disagree, but that's way outside the scope, so I won't go into it.
Am I making any sense here or ?
I get what you're saying, though I still don't totally understand even calling into question the simple idea of "stop doing things that fuck up the sound quality for no reason."
#lastminuteedit:
I agree 100% with rumbo, Hef, Prog, Skeever and Blob.