OT: Rush - Snakes and Arrows Pt. 2

Agreed, it's a horrible sounding album. Plus the songs are the worst collection of Rush's career so far IMHO, but that is just a personal opinion of course. Great band poor effort all round this time.

It's impossible for me to say this album sounds horrible when Vapor Trails was released years ago.

This album sounds light years better than Vapor Trails

ORIGINAL: Hansenhaus
My overall disapointment from the CD to the DVD is twice as bad. First off there is VERY noticalbe pumping from needless over compresion on the mixes.

Is this on a Dolby Digital soundtrack? If so, that could be the Dolby Digital dynamic range control kicking in. And if it is, you should be able to turn that off somewhere in your DVD player. I think most players default to having dynamic compression enabled, and they call it by different names. Poke around in the setup to see what's there.

Typical post 1990 Rush album. It sounds great except for the oversquashing. This most dramitically effected the drums. Listen to some of the drum fills on this album and then listen to some on the Moving Pictures album (for example). I noticed right away that the drum dynamics/accents were killed in the new album.

RIGHT
Not as Bad this go 'round
Songwriting I thought was better on VT
SnA = songwriting is lame IMHO

Live they were fantastic

ORIGINAL: tarsier

ORIGINAL: Hansenhaus
My overall disapointment from the CD to the DVD is twice as bad. First off there is VERY noticalbe pumping from needless over compresion on the mixes.

Is this on a Dolby Digital soundtrack? If so, that could be the Dolby Digital dynamic range control kicking in. And if it is, you should be able to turn that off somewhere in your DVD player. I think most players default to having dynamic compression enabled, and they call it by different names. Poke around in the setup to see what's there.

This might be the case. I was using Windows Media Player though. When I first noticed it I starting looking for that kind of option but did not find any. I will try it on my DVD player in the living room.

On the DVD is a high resolution stereo mix. I A/B'd it against the CD and there is a small improvement in sound quality but overall it still sucks. However, the stereo mix on the DVD does not exhibit the massive pumping effect like the 5.1 mix does.

ORIGINAL: Hansenhaus
On the DVD is a high resolution stereo mix. I A/B'd it against the CD and there is a small improvement in sound quality but overall it still sucks. However, the stereo mix on the DVD does not exhibit the massive pumping effect like the 5.1 mix does.

Ah, that might be your clue. It sounds like the DVD's stereo mix is PCM and the 5.1 is Dolby Digital. And if there is massive pumping, I'm guessing that they set their Dolby Digital encoding parameters wrong. I may have to buy this DVD just to analyze it.

I have been a Huge Rush fan since 6th grade (1977) and they were a huge part of my pre teen, teen, and adult life, and I NEVER thought there would be a day when I didn't like Rush any more...but...the last album I liked was Counterparts.

It took me a long time to come to terms with that realization, and I've gone back and re-listened and re-listened to the albums since Counterparts (to try and find something in them for me) and I still feel nothing in particular when I hear them. For me the songwriting has lost that magic and feeling that it once held for me (not the albums I have always loved but everything post Counterparts) and it just doesn't excite me anymore.

I haven't heard the new album yet, but I haven't had much desire to...especially after reading the threads here. I'll probably get around to it some day.

I have fairly highend Harden Karden CD player into a Mackie board out to KRK V8’s and / or HR824’s and I’m not hearing the what you guys are hearing. How about picking a song and the time in the song where you think something goes real wrong and we can analyze it?

ORIGINAL: John Page

I have fairly highend Harden Karden CD player into a Mackie board out to KRK V8’s and / or HR824’s and I’m not hearing the what you guys are hearing. How about picking a song and the time in the song where you think something goes real wrong and we can analyze it?

I started the thread mainly about the DVD audio that was just reelased. However, the CD sounds like crap hands down. I have a very good CD player with a Benchmark DAC-1 to my Mackie Hr824s. So I hear the detail on the CD and the stereo DVD mix. The stereo mixes are are just hyper comrpessed and limited to death. The 5.1 mix on the DVD is much worse with massive pumping effects. However, someone suggested it may be a setting in the player that is causing the pumping. I had a super busy day yesterday and didn'thave time to investigate that. I will try and take a listen again today.

Eric

ORIGINAL: Hansenhaus

ORIGINAL: John Page

I have fairly highend Harden Karden CD player into a Mackie board out to KRK V8’s and / or HR824’s and I’m not hearing the what you guys are hearing. How about picking a song and the time in the song where you think something goes real wrong and we can analyze it?

I started the thread mainly about the DVD audio that was just reelased. However, the CD sounds like crap hands down. I have a very good CD player with a Benchmark DAC-1 to my Mackie Hr824s. So I hear the detail on the CD and the stereo DVD mix. The stereo mixes are are just hyper comrpessed and limited to death. The 5.1 mix on the DVD is much worse with massive pumping effects. However, someone suggested it may be a setting in the player that is causing the pumping. I had a super busy day yesterday and didn'thave time to investigate that. I will try and take a listen again today.

Eric

Ok good stuff indeed lets dig a bit deeper I will also have a look at the CD in Forge. It was easy to pickapart VT I just want to agree on some parts instead of a general panning of the CD

ORIGINAL: tarsier

ORIGINAL: Hansenhaus
On the DVD is a high resolution stereo mix. I A/B'd it against the CD and there is a small improvement in sound quality but overall it still sucks. However, the stereo mix on the DVD does not exhibit the massive pumping effect like the 5.1 mix does.

Ah, that might be your clue. It sounds like the DVD's stereo mix is PCM and the 5.1 is Dolby Digital. And if there is massive pumping, I'm guessing that they set their Dolby Digital encoding parameters wrong. I may have to buy this DVD just to analyze it.

Yup something was wrong with Windows Media Player! It wasn't playing the 5.1 audio properly. From what I can see Windows Media Player is really F'ed up with 5.1 DVD audio. I also have a 5.1 Sting DVD and that would not play properly with WMP either. It was like all the channels were shifted to the right. The center channel was coming out of right side and so on. Very strange. I guess WMP is not really 5.1 compatible. I will have look into that. For now WinDVD seems to playing everything correctly. I'm still experiencing the pumping effect but it's not nearly as noticalbe. The SnA mixes are not too bad in 5.1. At least I can hear the drums a bit better and it's not as ear fatiguing as the CD is but it'still rather harsh. I think I can sit through the whole album now and maybe start to recognize it's strengths.

If you are interested in SnA give the DVD a shot. You also get high resolution streo mixes with the DVD and the behind the scenes video.

Eric

I do not have the new rush album and the last rush I bought was power windows so let that qualify my participation. I read the thread at GS first and then found this one over here. They are 180 degrees apart and I find it rather intriguing.

I checked all the clips on itunes and they don't sound totally destroyed any more than anything else. They generally sound competitive to other contemporary products. The mixes sounded like they fit into the context of a nickelback or linkin park type of product (both bands I don't really care for but recognize their market share). I also checked out Moving Pictures and it sounded as fantastic as I ever remembered but it also didn't sound like a contemporary product despite it's excellent sonics. The drums were more forward on the older product where the new CD has more vocal and guitar.

So what are they supposed to do to please their fans that seem so dedicated to the band but wont hesitate to tell people to stay the hell away from the CD (with some exceptions in this thread). It seems like they are in a trap. I've had my own experience with producing a record by a band with an extremely dedicated fan base. Some of the members of the band forum posted scathing reviews on amazon, itunes and other web 2.0 sites with user reviews. Some of them even posted on multiple sites with the same user name they have in the forum.

I just don't get it. These bad reviews have to hurt the sales at some point. What good does all the ****ing do? It's the band that hurts the most from all of this. It seems to be the sonics of the CD that is the major rub for most and not the performance. The guys who mixed or mastered it were payed long ago but the band has to wait on sales. It seems the production team are the ones who have earned the criticism. Why not start a thread bashing those guys instead of the band so many here seem to endorse (for lack of another description).

Just an alternate viewpoint on bashing the record. It's the times and not the band.

Cheers, wm
P.S.
It was quite a time warp to hear a new rush song!

Have you checked out the hi res 2.0 mix on the DVD yet? I wonder if there's a way to pull one of those files into an editor to look for clipping. I listened to the 2.0 mix and I liked it, but I probably wouldn't know pumping if it slapped me in the face.

I don't expect every Rush album to sound the same...I thought the drums sounded very cool. I think we might get bored if every Rush album sounded exactly like Moving Pictures.

The songs seem far better on this album than any other from recent years.

ORIGINAL: Hansenhaus
I did some further testing on my Sony home theater system. The pumping effect was much less noticable than on my PC. I guess it depends on the DVD player and/or software. I know for sure my Sony home theater has no dynamic range control enabled.

Ah, good. So perhaps the remaining pumping is actually in the mix.

my PC's SB X-Fi card concerning any dynamic range control
...
I guess the X-fi card just sucks huh? LOL!

Hey, I've actually been pondering getting an X-fi! (I just haven't been able to admit it around here ) --Because they claim to do DVD-Audio disc playback. Have you had an opportunity to try to play an actual DVD-Audio disc through the X-fi? Does it work?