Is not a thing of knowing about mixing/producing/etc to properly judge if you liked an album or not, but to just listen to the damn music.. Don't understand those who REALLY care about the sound, and who's the producer, etc... it's DT, who cares about all that?..
I can understand your point, but IMO, of course the sound matters. At least to some extent.
I mean, if you compare the drums in FII to those in DT12, it just stands out that the depth of the sound is miles away from each other.
I think the worst drum sound was produced in DT12. In some songs (Enigma Machine for example) I can't stand the drums, they just sound so muddy and flat. It really hurts the whole listening experience for me.
For comparison (an exaggerated one, but still valid), it would be like the guitar solos were played without distortion (on a clean guitar). The notes and rhythm would still be the same, but the impact would be completely damaged.
The thing is that, when I listen to an album, I just only listen to the music.. Listen to the melodies, the chord progressions, riffs, solos, etc (and much more we have to pay attention to in regard to the music itself when is a prog band, you already have a lot of elements within the composition to listen to; why concentrate so much in the sound?)... I don't "compare" it with another album, at least regarding its sound.. I remember I was listening to DT12 like for the 10th time and was really into it, and starting to love more songs with each listening, when I decided to see what other people (in these forum and in yt/fb comments mostly) were thinking about the album, and found all this negative comments about the drum sound and general sound of the album, like... almost no one was talking about the music!..
Your example is not "exaggerated"; it just doesn't fit at all with what I was saying.. I wasn't talking about what type of sound each instrumentist wants for his instrument, but about how the album sounds after the mix and mastering.. So I don't get why DT fans (in general) are so critics of the production rather than the quality of music, when they actually have had at least from good to nearly excellent album productions.. Why remark all the time those few negative aspects that makes an only "good" production only
just good and not better rather than the positive ones, or, once again, the content itself?..
I mean, I understand
what you're saying, because I can say that it happens to me, in some extent, with WDADU, and (to name other bands) with Animations self-title album or Metallica's Kill'em All.. But with the recent DT albums?.. Not at all..