Loudness War: Albums you've listened to that really suffer

Lady Gaga's Born This Way suffers. Even on the vinyl it suffers from the brickwalling and sounds unlistenable.

edited 30th Apr '13 2:03:23 PM by Completion

Oh God, yes...it's not that obvious from the videos but if you get the actual album it's like a 2X4 to the ears.

It all started with Oasis' "(What's The Story) Morning Glory?" for me. Terrible album made worse by terrible production. It's just gotten worse since. The "war" is one of the main reasons that most of my music collection was recorded before 1990.

I liked that album...

Anyway, I never really noticed that with it before. I'll need to listen to it again more closely.

Krewella's "Come & Get It!" turned me into an audiophile. I don't think it's really surprising, given the song is driven by incredibly fast dubstep and drum-and-bass breaks. That does not mean this song has to be incredibly loud.

I loaded the song on Audacity and in some parts entire sections are filled with blue and no grayish-white (pardon that, but I'm don't know what those are called). And the song sounds like it's at a normal volume when I turn the output volume to 0.1.

If anybody could teach me how to post picture inside TV Tropes discussions I'd be happy to post pictures of the Audacity plot spectrum of the song.

edited 11th Nov '14 1:19:40 PM by FromtheWordsofBR

Since I'm a big Death Metal fan, and that genre in general is a massive offender in the loudness war, I've got a metric ton of overcooked albums in my line-up. Perhaps because of this, brickwalling and even mild-to-moderate clipping isn't normally something I really notice or care about except on really good speakers.

That said, there are cases where even I've been turned off by a butchered production job. One that stands out the most, even more than Hate Eternal's infamous Fury and Flames, has to be the same year's (2008) release from Krisiun, Southern Storm. It's just an overwrought mess of noise, even by Brutal Death Metal standards. The overcompression actually serves to blunt the band's normally jagged sonic assault. Needless to say, I've retired that CD from my regular line-up.

edited 17th Jul '13 7:47:25 PM by JamesShade

See, this is why I'm grateful to have a tin ear. In practice, being an audiophile seems to mean finding more things unlistenable than the average person does.

Second'd. I prefer to be able to tolerate modern music.

About "Come and Get It", the version I got for free from Facebook is noticeably louder than the Spotify version, yet I find nothing wrong with the former except that it's louder, but not enough that switching from one track to another would hurt my ears. *

Still holding on to this loudness war immunity.

edited 18th Jul '13 12:16:18 PM by chihuahua0

I've discovered a quick and easy way to determine something's loudness on my computer without dumping the file into Audacity—the Windows 7 volume controls show the actual loudness of something in addition to whatever you have it limited to. I figured this out after a friend of mine sent me an A Day To Remember song to listen to; I went to adjust the volume since it was really loud in general, and the volume control showed that the song was pretty much brickwalled as hell. Not a bad song though.

I noticed that too. "Come And Get It" on Spotify is at a decent level, while the MP 3 I got from Krewella's Facebook is maxed out.

I just got the new Filter album and I am seriously wondering if what I am hearing is the famous loudness... :/ :/ :/

According to one site that ranks albums on their consistent loudness, Prurient's And Still, Wanting... and Merzbow's Venereology are two of the loudest albums of all time. I am not surprised.

I'm actually starting to notice this trope in songs. I noticed that the Roxette song "Fading Like a Flower" sounds significantly louder on the compilation The Ballad Hits than on the album it's on, Joyride.

edited 11th Nov '14 1:20:28 PM by FromtheWordsofBR

I am terribly, terribly fond of Ceremonials by Florence And The Machine, but they brickwalled the shit out of it.

"Contraband" by Velvet Revolver. Great album, horrific mastering.

Imagine Dragons' Night Visions is a recent victim of this phenomenon. Jeez, that damned distortion in Radioactive is HORRIBLE.

CHVRCHES' The Bones of What You Believe. The "kick" of songs like "Lies" are completely ruined with the poor mastering.

And The 1975's Self-Titled Album. A great album ruined by crap mastering.

Also, I'm listening to Haim's Days Are Gone right now and the music just blares in my ears. Why is the loudness war also common in indie music, too?

edited 28th Nov '13 7:19:39 PM by FromtheWordsofBR

"Radioactive" is definintely distorted, but I took that as an effect that was deliberately added. The rest of the album is incredibly meh to me so I haven't paid attention to see whether or not it's brickwalled.

It most definitely is brickwalled. DR values that match Death Magnetic levels (and sometimes worse, like the aforementioned Radioactive) and just plain overdriven sound in general.

Blur's latest box set. It isn't so loud artifacts appear, but loud enough to be oppressive to the ears.

I did listen to all the original album releases first.

I love Nero, but their album Welcome Reality is mastered horribly. The dynamics of many songs like "Doomsday" are far gone and sucked away, and as a result, it makes listening to them really underwhelming. And that SERIOUSLY disappoints me. No, really, it honestly disappoints me this album is mastered so poorly, because Nero's songs are pure, unadulterated [sic?] Awesome Music.

edited 6th Dec '13 4:22:22 PM by FromtheWordsofBR

Loreen's Heal. Great album, PAINFUL mastering.

edited 24th Aug '14 8:40:20 AM by FromtheWordsofBR

I'm still trying to figure this trope out. Being blind I should have greater perception to this, and in general acoustic terms I do, but I'm wondering if I don't notice much because I tend to keep my music pretty low on the volume. Like my usual laptop is at a speaker volume of 35.

Not louder per se, but the latest album from The Megas, History Repeating: Red has some fairly muddy sound production, but that might just be due to the heavy synthesizers. Still a great album, though.

Tbh I feel alot of the loudness stuff is like relative to style of the shit. Like Skrillex's Recess is ultra bricked out, yet it doesn't sound like super maximized. On the other hand, anything Rick Rubin touches sounds like total ass tbh.