Rush Vapor Trails Remixed

Big Rush fan here. I just picked this up last night and I'm listening as I type. Sounds very good to me. I plan to import a wav from the original and the new mix into Sonar to compare with my various meters. This is supposed to have more dynamics and or less compression. The drums sound fantastic. Anyone else got this?

My all time favorite Band....
 
I termed it "Intellectual Rock" back in my teens...no one
had a clue what I meant then...they'd just look at me funny...

Eventually...they figured it out...

I'll have to look for it.  I enjoyed the tour and I liked the songs.  The mastering was heavy handed and had to be overlooked to enjoy the music.  I think this is a case of needing to know the audience.  The average Rush fan is not going to be impressed with massive compression for that "radio friendly" sound.  This is Rush.  Act like it.

This is wonderful news. I've never even heard the Vapor Trails album. One look at the waveform and I knew I wasn't going to spend money on it.
 
It's always mystified me why a band that's been around for so long and done so consistently well has always been pushed around by record labels. At one point they were forced to get awful haircuts and dress up in silly outfits to look like Air Supply in the 80's. You'd think that by now they'd be calling the shots themselves, hiring their own engineers and having the final say on releases.
 
P.S. Just ordered the CD, which is pleasantly priced at just 9 bucks, presumably to encourage those who'd previously bought the squashed version to buy again. Plus, you get the MP3 version of the album thrown in for free. Good marketing, or maybe it's an apology.

Oh great. Now Bit's going to hate it and blame me. I don't give Amazon refunds! Hahaha! For those interested...I recently imported a track from "Clockwork Angels" (The Anarchist) into Sonar and pulled up T-Racks metering. The music alone was around -12 rms and the perceived loudness was -14 before the vocals came in. Some people (Rush Fans) have complained about the mastering of Clockwork Angels, but it sounds pretty good to me. It has a lot more dynamic range than say...Van Halen's latest one. VH comes in at about 5db louder than Rush. I must admit it sounds pretty good too. Only a pro can squash one that much and it still sound ok. It does get fatiguing after awhile though like the original Vapor trails release.

Do you have Clockwork Angels? I know the same guy produced Snakes and arrows and CA, but I'm not sure who mixed and mastered them. I like Snakes and arrows too, although (I'm sure you would agree) -8db and 8,000 overs seems like a sloppy job. I wonder how well CA would stack up. My metering options are not what yours are. I tend to use the percieved loudness in T-racks for a visual, but it doesn't have a running average...so it's hard to tell.

I don't care if it sounds good. Some stuff sounds awful while some...like the Van Halen cd, All my meters would suggest that it should sound like crap, but I like it. It has only about 5db of dynamic range but they got away with it in my opinion. Some people hate it. Whatever works...works.

My perception of Clockwork Angels is that the mixing/mastering is better than on Vapor Trails, but that's not saying much.  The songs are still growing on me.  It's hard to say with absolute certainty which album sounded best because the compositions are different.  I'm one of the dinosaurs who thinks that Moving Pictures was their best sounding album ever.  It's hard to top that.

i have an original release CD of HEMISPHERES, and when i put it on back to back, with say, the new Queens of the Stone Age album, you can barely hear it if i play QOTSA first, and then play the rush disc...
 
but once i volume match it, man does it sound good.
 
 

Great movie! I have that too. I believe that dvd is what finally put them in the Hall of fame. Rush is one of the few old bands that are still getting better in my opinion.

As I recall, the original Rush CD's weren't normalized to anything approaching 0dBFS, which is why they're so quiet.