It drives me absolutely INSANE. And no, Dream Theater is not OKAY. The wave form on every album going back to and (broadly) including Awake spends more time with it's head smashed up against the wall than it does breathing properly. When you tap to music, you tap to it, you don't smash your head against the wall so hard your skull breaks in half and then occasionally pull it back ever so briefly so you can smash it into the wall again.
Ok, well, that would be an epic metal kind of thing, but then you'd be dead. : |
And yes, the difference can be heard, SIGNIFICANTLY.
If you can't tell, then your ears aren't working right.
I generally avoid studio albums at all costs after about 1995. If there's a vinyl rip available online i'll check that out. Otherwise it has to be bootlegs because frankly, at least the fans know how to not brickwall something most of the time... unless the radio station did it before hand in the case of a broadcast.
I'll grant you, if faced between lossy formats and brickwalling ... well, i don't even know. My head has spent so much time being smashed against the brick wall it's a miracle i'm still alive.
How is Amazon/Apple still charging 99 cents per track for the musical equivalent of a 1950's black and white TV broadcast in the era of HD? ...I'd never waste my money on that or contribute to it.
Artists should and do deserve to be paid for their music, but what do you expect out of me when the far superior copy of your music is the pirated copy? ...
Being that, i actually did buy DT's albums... all of them, but they're all junked in a box somewhere despite the fact i have a couple hundred of their tracks on my playlist.
As for what brought me to this old topic, well, i was just reflecting on the Six Degrees album, which has a VERY thin live culture, along with, Scenes. That whole period in DT history is infuriating, .. not because of the music quality, which was just superb, but because of the pains of trying to avoid the brickwall. Rough AUD tapes are nice for the completist perspective, but a good quality recording is really best.
The more mystifying thing is why artists who clearly have the intelligence to know better let this crap pass? DT for one has been in a position for many years to put up the stop sign to this kind of garbage. Rush is also especially bad, although at least they kind of wised up and remixed some of their later material after the fact.
This crap is not ok. It has never been ok.
If you want the music louder than you can crank it, GET A BETTER STEREO SYSTEM.
Smashing your head against the wall is not ok...