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

I don't know really. I was roped into it a few years ago when the site's editor scouted me out on a forum. I still write for them but we've phased out reviews, so I mostly only do a biweekly One-Hit Wonder column anymore.

Agree on Mama's Broken Heart and nearly anything Dann Huff.

I usually stick to bluegrass. It's free from a lot of pop-influenced glam trends, and as a general rule bands stick to high mastering in a genre where it's all about organic sound.

But of course, like any genre there's exceptions to that rule.

Whereas I find that nearly all bluegrass sounds exactly the same. It's often too minimalist and/or too frenetic for me. So you can play a million notes a minute on that mandolin; how about you stop noodling and give us, you know, a MELODY?

(Disclaimer: I play the mandolin.)

How 'bout that mandolin in "Piano Man"

You mean the song whose lead instrument is a HARMONICA?!?

O...kay? ??

That's just something that bothered me the first time I heard Piano Man. The song is PIANO Man and the most prominent instrument is a harmonica.

Not really. For like half the song the piano is the only instrument, and it's the only one that plays constantly throughout the entire song without a single pause.

This thread makes like Jesus and rises from the dead!

I recently got Mastodon's "Blood Mountain", and it sounds really bad. I can actually hear a crackling distortion sound (I assume this is 'clipping') at some points on the album. I've seen a lot of talk about "clipping" on loudness war discussions, and that is something I don't usually notice, but I can definitely notice it here. I actually took the time to make a home-"remastered" version of the album using Audacity's Clip Fix function, and this version is a lot more listenable. I've done this before with a few other Loudness War-affected albums, and it's not an ideal solution (the resulting sound is kind of flat), but it makes these albums a lot easier to listen to casually.

Another album I've heard recently that suffers from this is Incubus's "Light Grenades". The album alternates back and forth between louder songs and softer songs, and while the softer songs sound fine the louder songs are definitely affected. The title track, which the one of the band's heaviest and most intense songs, particularly suffers. There are certain intense moments in the song that aren't as effective as they should be and instead sound like an overbearing mess. It's not as bad as Blood Mountain, but it's still noticeable.

edited 20th Apr '15 11:28:14 AM by djbj

Primus' Brown Album. Could have been worse, but the drums are way louder than they need to be. It gets really distracting when you are trying to listen to the bassline and the drums just go PDUPDUPUDUBUDUM over everything else.

edited 20th Apr '15 11:39:45 AM by Small_Mess

Pretty much all of Kanye West's albums are incredibly loud compared to most other albums. I remember one particular time I was half asleep with my headphones on and my music on shuffle, then a Kanye song came on and jolted me awake.

Fallujah - The Flesh Prevails really, really suffers from this. It's particularly pointless when you consider that it takes influence from a lot of genres that tend to have a lot of dynamic range (dream pop, ambient, trip hop, etc.), and all of the different tracks fighting for space is distracting as shit. I talked to Alex Hofmann about it, too, and even he thinks that they went a little too far. He said that they apparently wanted a bombastic, larger-than-life production, but I think that they all realized that not allowing an album with a lot of tempo shifts and moody quiet passages some room to breathe killed a lot of the impact that it could have had otherwise.

As much as I love Songs for the Deaf, I think its mastering could have been much better than it was. Holy bejesus, it's loud.

Fifth Harmony's Boss. I remember when I was sneaking trying to listen to music, half asleep on headphones, it woke the whole damn house up.

To be fair, its name.

Is it weird that, despite agreeing with people's sentiments about the loudness war, I can't actually hear it in the music?

I was waiting for someone to point that out.

I tend to not hear the distortion caused by clipping, with Death Magnetic and Born This Way being notable exceptions. That said, how I have to adjust the volume when I'm listening to an album for it to be comfortable says everything.

edited 6th Oct '15 8:00:40 AM by Willbyr

It's more of a problem if a) you listen to a variety of music in a disorganized fashion (I can't tell you how many times I've been jolted out of a near-nap by Kanye West suddenly screaming in my ears after literally any other song), or b) if you're listening to a particular album that suffers using decent audio equipment (e.g. it may not be as noticeable using a pair of cheap earbuds as it would using, say, these) and from the resulting listener fatigue that may ensue.

edited 6th Oct '15 7:44:32 PM by Odd1

Life in the Underground by Anarchy Club. Although this is a case of musicians mixing the thing themselves without knowing what they were doing. Album does not sound completely horrible, but in some places it almost does.

Hypocrisy's Virus album is the worst case i heard, i linked it to friends on skype and one said they lowered their volume to 2 and it was still loud.

The remasters of the albums Storyteller and The World Keeps Turning by Razorcuts. They're '80s Jangle Pop albums. I don't know why the remasters are so freaking loud.

Some more Miranda Lambert:

The guitar solo about 3:00 is such a mess that I can't even make out any notes, just total noise.

And this one is even worse:

Not so much an album which suffers as one which could have sounded even better than it does: Bell Witch, Four Phantoms. A record with a fair deal of musical nuance for such a minimal setup, and still very enjoyable, but mastered with a poor dynamic range that makes the crests feel less crushing and the soft sections feel less poignant where a less oversaturated mix would make those gulfs feel appropriately titanic.

Raw Power. Just Raw Power