Dream Theater: The Astonishing (now with moment of betrayal!)

[Kotowboy]

Mangini seems like everything has to be so exact to his specs - I would not be phased at all if he said he has slightly different sticks for left and right hands

[Enigmachine]

Did you already read/post this?

(Found on reddit)

I have. It's basically saying that the drum sound on the album is designed to fit in with the rest of the mix and not how he would listen to it in isolation, which makes sense.

This is a very important point that most people are missing. It seems the majority (at least how I've seen the argument) of people don't like MM's drum sound, which is a preference.

It does annoy me when so many people talk about it like they are surprised that DT don't 'hear it', that it needs 'fixing' or when there is discussion about who should be 'blamed'. Like you said, it's just preference and I'm ok with people not liking the sound but it is not an issue when everthing is captured well, it sits well in the mix etc. Beyond that, it's the engineer's / producer's decision to get a specific sound out of the kit and I quite like what I've heard and am sure DT do as well even if it's not the exact sound MM wants.

[ToT-147]

I know Bosk (I think it was Bosk) said it would be a very divisive album, I didn't know the animations would be as well.

B.Lee

I don't think so.. No one's saying the animations are good.. There's only negative opinions about it..

I prefer to concentrate in the concept rather than in the animations.. Well, the story was divisive from the beggining, with that whole Ravenskill against Empire thing..

[rab7]

I can't wait to blast the CD in my headphones whilst on a long walk . I always import into iTunes as WAV and I have a good set of headphones so looking forward to it.

Just wondering, how does importing as WAV make a difference compared to mp3?

[Enigmachine]

I can't wait to blast the CD in my headphones whilst on a long walk . I always import into iTunes as WAV and I have a good set of headphones so looking forward to it.

Just wondering, how does importing as WAV make a difference compared to mp3?

It's a higher quality file and converts into AAC which doesn't sacrifice that quality.

[cramx3]

I can't wait to blast the CD in my headphones whilst on a long walk . I always import into iTunes as WAV and I have a good set of headphones so looking forward to it.

Just wondering, how does importing as WAV make a difference compared to mp3?

WAV is not compressed audio, so better sound quality

[BlobVanDam]

I can't wait to blast the CD in my headphones whilst on a long walk . I always import into iTunes as WAV and I have a good set of headphones so looking forward to it.

Just wondering, how does importing as WAV make a difference compared to mp3?

WAV is a lossless format as opposed to mp3 which is lossy, which means WAV is higher quality and closer matches the original CD. In practice there's not much difference between a high bitrate mp3 and the lossless file though.

edit: Myung'd

[The Curious Orange]

OK, my 2 cents:

The Drum Sound For my money, the drums have always been too high in the mix. That's part of the trademark DT sound for many of us. With ADTOE I think they put the drums back to where they "should" be, and to many of us they sounded too quiet. On DT12 the drums are much better, except for the fact that album is badly mastered. As a result the drums sound clipped and flat.

The Trailer It made me laugh. Is it cheesy, bombastic, slightly ridiculous and totally preposterous? Hell yes! Am I stoked for the new album? Hell yes! Did it therefore do its job? Hell yes! 

[rab7]

I can't wait to blast the CD in my headphones whilst on a long walk . I always import into iTunes as WAV and I have a good set of headphones so looking forward to it.

Just wondering, how does importing as WAV make a difference compared to mp3?

WAV is a lossless format as opposed to mp3 which is lossy, which means WAV is higher quality and closer matches the original CD. In practice there's not much difference between a high bitrate mp3 and the lossless file though.

edit: Myung'd

In terms of size, how does a Wav file compare to a 320 kbps mp3?

[Mark Levinson Jr.]

I believe in the past albums Portnoy had a greater influence during the mix, so the drums sounded a lot better, but that made the remaining instruments worse (again, mostly the bass). I.e., I´m listening to the official bootleg Tokyo, Japan 10/28/95, where Portnoy had a lot of influence mixing/mastering, and I can´t believe how high are the drums on it. It almost kills the album.

I always thought the drums on Awake were the most load and prominent drums I've heard on an album.

[Kotowboy]

Wav files are at least 30MB per song.

[BlobVanDam]

In terms of size, how does a Wav file compare to a 320 kbps mp3?

A WAV file is 1411kbps, so about 4.5x larger. It's about 10-11mb per minute of music.

[Kotowboy]

I believe in the past albums Portnoy had a greater influence during the mix, so the drums sounded a lot better, but that made the remaining instruments worse (again, mostly the bass). I.e., I´m listening to the official bootleg Tokyo, Japan 10/28/95, where Portnoy had a lot of influence mixing/mastering, and I can´t believe how high are the drums on it. It almost kills the album.

I always thought the drums on Awake were the most load and prominent drums I've heard on an album.

The drums on Falling Into Infinity sound the most natural.

[Enigmachine]

The Trailer It made me laugh. Is it cheesy, bombastic, slightly ridiculous and totally preposterous? Hell yes! Am I stoked for the new album? Hell yes! Did it therefore do its job? Hell yes! 

It is quite endearingly cheesy, I did smile and come away with a positive impression after watching it the first time. Plus, like many have said, there were some VERY promising snippets of the album in there (even if it is a misrepresentation of the general style).

[TAC]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkSuGV0Zhsg

New-ish Mangini Video.

Around the 7:00 mark he proves Tom Brady's innocence! 

[TL]

One thing I'll say about the concept/trailer.
If I see anything that suggests that they're just having fun with this, rather than it being super self-serious, it'll improve my opinion of the whole thing drastically.

[erwinrafael]

My only issue with the drum sound that I have heard on TGOM is that the cymbals are still quite low, especially his ride sources.

[Kotowboy]

One thing I'll say about the concept/trailer.
If I see anything that suggests that they're just having fun with this, rather than it being super self-serious, it'll improve my opinion of the whole thing drastically.

I really hope so. DT aren't a super dour serious band. The worst thing they could possibly do is take all of this seriously.

[rab7]

In terms of size, how does a Wav file compare to a 320 kbps mp3?

A WAV file is 1411kbps, so about 4.5x larger. It's about 10-11mb per minute of music.

That would make the album around 1.4 GB

[BlackInk]

The album is really the most important,  not the trailer.

Yes. Obviously. No one is arguing that. But that doesn't make the trailer better or worse.

It isn't as bad as you put it.  I think your overanalyzing it.

All my comments with opinions on the trailer:

"A cheesy mess." It's most definetely that. It's cheesy, and the way they mixed the narration over the music makes it messy and hard to focus on.

"It's funny." I and several others found it funny. Some say in a good way, I say bad. Not too harsh.

"A bit cringe-worthy." Because they seem to be taking it all so damn seriously that when it's presented in this funny way, it makes me cringe a little.

"Music sounds fine."

That's everything I've said about the trailer. More negative than positive? I guess, but not at all what I would call "overanalyzing". And I liked the actual music in it, which is what counts as you yourself and everyone else here has stated as well.

[shadow1psc]

The only thing that ever bothered me about Mangini's sound was the snare on DT12. I think everyone can agree something went awry there. Not quite St. Anger wrong, but it was an odd production choice (and make no mistake, it's a post production thing).

Do the HD Tracks of DT12 sound better in regards to this? I haven't bothered with ever downloading an HD Tracks version of anything, but I have a nice headphone DAC/AMP setup, so I'm a little curious....

[mikeyd23]

Then why wouldn't someone (engineer) properly identify that and inform the band.

Because there's nothing objectively wrong with the end result.

This is a very important point that most people are missing. It seems the majority (at least how I've seen the argument) of people don't like MM's drum sound, which is a preference.

I love MM's drum sound. When I see videos of clinics his playing sounds full, dynamic, etc... I don't always love the sound of his drums on the DT albums he has played on.

[Kotowboy]

In terms of size, how does a Wav file compare to a 320 kbps mp3?

A WAV file is 1411kbps, so about 4.5x larger. It's about 10-11mb per minute of music.

That would make the album around 1.4 GB

I just checked and ADTOE in AIFF ( Apple's own Wav format ) is 820MB.

The Astonishing will be around double that.

[King Postwhore]

The album is really the most important,  not the trailer.

Yes. Obviously. No one is arguing that. But that doesn't make the trailer better or worse.

It isn't as bad as you put it.  I think your overanalyzing it.

All my comments with opinions on the trailer:

"A cheesy mess." It's most definetely that. It's cheesy, and the way they mixed the narration over the music makes it messy and hard to focus on.

"It's funny." I and several others found it funny. Some say in a good way, I say bad. Not too harsh.

"A bit cringe-worthy." Because they seem to be taking it all so damn seriously that when it's presented in this funny way, it makes me cringe a little.

"Music sounds fine."

That's everything I've said about the trailer. More negative than positive? I guess, but not at all what I would call "overanalyzing". And I liked the actual music in it, which is what counts as you yourself and everyone else here has stated as well.

The video itself was a little cheesy but the narrative was what I expected.  I understand your impression but that video in no way lessons my expectation of the album.  You can never really know anything until that album is in your hands.

[noxon]

If you're importing it to itunes anyways, why not import it as ALAC? Half the space, same quality.

[shadow1psc]

If you're importing it to itunes anyways, why not import it as ALAC? Half the space, same quality.

+1. I actually rip my CDs in Foobar directly into ALAC instead of FLAC or WAV as well. Great format, and compatible with my many iOS devices in a pinch.

[Implode]

In terms of size, how does a Wav file compare to a 320 kbps mp3?

A WAV file is 1411kbps, so about 4.5x larger. It's about 10-11mb per minute of music.

That would make the album around 1.4 GB

I just checked and ADTOE in AIFF ( Apple's own Wav format ) is 820MB.

The Astonishing will be around double that.

I just checked the size of my HD tracks version of ADTOE. It's 1.6GB.

[mikeyd23]

It does annoy me when so many people talk about it like they are surprised that DT don't 'hear it', that it needs 'fixing' or when there is discussion about who should be 'blamed'. Like you said, it's just preference and I'm ok with people not liking the sound but it is not an issue when everthing is captured well, it sits well in the mix etc. Beyond that, it's the engineer's / producer's decision to get a specific sound out of the kit and I quite like what I've heard and am sure DT do as well even if it's not the exact sound MM wants.

Sorry to annoy you there brother. Not sure if this is directed toward me but my previous comments in this thread regarding MM's drum sound were in response to this:

I'm not a production guy so I don't really know what I'm talking about, but I think I remember an interview with Mike where  mentionned that they had a hard time setting up the mic for recording his drum for A Dramatic Turn of Events. I'm guessing it's because there was a lot of sound leakage where it shouldn't.

If that's the case, maybe this drum sound and production is the way they found to make reduce this problem.

I don't know the interview source, it just got me thinking that if they "had a hard time setting up the mics" for ADTOE maybe the engineer wasn't able to capture the drums exactly how he wanted to and changes were made that later effected the drum sound. Once again, for the record, I really am not that critical of MM's drum sounds. But like you said "when everything is captured well" comes into play here. All I'm saying is that his kit set-up might have negatively effected how things were captured. In fact MM's comment in that interview (once again, I'm basing this off of a user post because I don't know the interview in question) confirms they had issue micing the kit.

[Enigmachine]

I think everyone can agree something went awry there.

I can't, though I'm probably in the minority.

Sorry to annoy you there brother. Not sure if this is directed toward me but my previous comments in this thread regarding MM's drum sound were in response to this:

Nah, that was just a general comment on what I've seen around the internet. Not directed at you.

[mikeyd23]

Nah, that was just a general comment on what I've seen around the internet. Not directed at you.

Cool, its all good. I get the frustration. And your point stands, at the end of the day it's completely an opinion as to whether FII drums sound better than DT12 drums. In fact I know several people that prefer DT12's, I don't, I think most of the people at DTF don't, but that's just an opinion.

[Jinx]

Mangini seems like everything has to be so exact to his specs - I would not be phased at all if he said he has slightly different sticks for left and right hands

I can't for the life of me remember which video I watched about this but he did basically say he has a different weighted stick for each hand and that although ambidextrous he is still right hand dominant.

[bosk1]

The only thing that ever bothered me about Mangini's sound was the snare on DT12. I think everyone can agree something went awry there. Not quite St. Anger wrong, but it was an odd production choice (and make no mistake, it's a post production thing).

I have no idea what you are talking about.

[shadow1psc]

The only thing that ever bothered me about Mangini's sound was the snare on DT12. I think everyone can agree something went awry there. Not quite St. Anger wrong, but it was an odd production choice (and make no mistake, it's a post production thing).

I have no idea what you are talking about.

Maybe generalizing as something went wrong is the wrong way to put it, but you really don't hear the immense difference in snare between ADToE and DT12?

[TJPNET]

Maybe generalizing as something went wrong is the wrong way to put it, but you really don't hear the immense difference in snare between ADToE and DT12?

There is certainly a difference but I've never understood the hate it gets.

[BlackInk]

It's because it doesn't sound like a snare. What I hear is someone pushing a button on a computer, and some cheap snare sample comes out with the near exact same loudness each time. Maybe would've worked really well on Skrillex's next album, but not on a metal/rock album.