I agree.. Best to stay an analog kid... Still works today...
Joe

ORIGINAL: agincourtdb

Yeah, I bought it too, yesterday, and I've listened maybe three times.... The thing about Vapor Trails is, while it's a terribly mastered CD, the music itself was good. This one just sounds like Presto. It's a shame, you know... Yes has recently made a great CD (Magnification), and it's sad that Rush can't get their act together too...

I thought Presto was their best album of that general era, so I might like this. Conversely, I thought that Vapor Trails wasn't that great, musically. But Test for Echo was a solid album, and that only goes back three albums, so they can still produce quality music, IMO. It's just kind of hit and miss from album to album and song to song, which has kind of been the case for me since Power Windows. I think Presto was their last great-all-the-way-through album, and Grace Under Pressure (and just about every other previous album) before that. And of course I would agree with many that Moving Pictures is stellar in every respect. Drums, bass and guitar all sound absolutely incredible on that album.

But gosh, I can't believe that this album would also have been squashed to death after all of the Vapor Trails flak they got. I thought I had read somewhere that their label is actually planning to re-release Vapor Trails because of that. Why on Earth would they allow the same thing to happen again??

ORIGINAL: tarsier

Y'all do realize that those of us who don't like the hypersquashed sound are pretty much just like those people who couldn't stand distorted guitars back in the day?

I say this because I hear more and more people saying they like that sound. Even after I point out things like the clipping distortion, and lack of dynamics they say "yeah, I hear it, I see what you're saying, but I like the sound."

They actually like the sound.

Well, certain people like to physically abuse other people in a controlling manner. I can understand why (should I admit that? ), but that doesn't make it healthy for anyone.

It took me a while until I appreciated Californication like you describe (I still haven't figured it out for Maroon 5 -- it just doesn't fit the music). I still don't think I've been able to listen to Californication all the way through with out getting ear fatigue and needing to turn it off. I start to feel like I'm somehow listening a near DC level. You know -- the pressure created with you hook a 9V up to a speaker. An instant WHACK to your ears.

I can crank up pre-eighties albums and still get that high you feel with loud music, but even at low levels this new generation of music hurts me before I can really get into it.

Overcompressing for art's sake. OK. I can get that. But I want to be able to crank it up and feel it emotionally not feel my ears burn and head ache. Am I the only one that is affected that way?


A question about these people who "like" the near-DC level. How consecutively long are they able to listen to this and how much earlier well they start to lose their hearing as compared to us "old-time rockers"?

The benchmarks have changed. From get a better sound to get a louder sound.

It's no wonder old timers don't like it and maybe the reason they hear what we are saying but they still like it is.... it's all they know.

I've seen quite a few, not masses, but several younger kids digging into the music of my era like they discovered a long lost art.

Maybe they did.

ORIGINAL: ohhey

ORIGINAL: mwd
The benchmarks have changed. From get a better sound to get a louder sound.
It's no wonder old timers don't like it and maybe the reason they hear what we are saying but they still like it is.... it's all they know.
I've seen quite a few, not masses, but several younger kids digging into the music of my era like they discovered a long lost art.
Maybe they did.

Yeah.. and to think record labels will have the nerve to blame plumeting CD sales on pirates and digital downloads... thats just like GM making ugly, poor quality cars and then blame Japan for all their problems. I have no pity at all for folks that just don't get it. Let the entire industry die for all I care maybe something good will rise from the ashes.

This made me think... Could we be experiencing what Rush was writing about for 2112? Five years in advance? Think about it.

I'm 37 years old and it's hard to accept we are just getting too old to appreciate today's music. I understand the comparison of what our grandparents liked verses our parents and so forth. Many times I feel like I'm saying the same things about today's music as they did about mine back then. My parents use to rag on a lot of stuff I listened to when I was younger, but not all of it. They thought bands like Iron Maiden and Ronnie James Dio were imbeciles with all the dragons, fire and mummy crap. But at the same time they would not hesitate to express they liked a tune by one of them on occasion. That music may have been cutting edge for it's time but at least it was engineered with care which, in a subconscious way, may have increased it's appeal.

When I started this thread I was primarily criticising the poor audio quality and not the actual music. Unfortunately, in the case with Rush's new CD I don't like the music either. That makes the dissapointment worse. If the CD sounded good I might be willing to listen to it much more by admiring the recording quality while to trying to discover it's musical strengths. That is how I come to love the B side to Moving Pictures as much as the A side. The album sounds awesome so even when the less appealing tracks came on I would let the album play on because I loved the sound.

Coldplay's latest, X&Y sounds like crap as well. However, I really like the writting and arranging so I listen to it regularly but not without ear fatigue which really ticks me off. I should be able to listen to the CD all the way through without having to continually lower the voume as my ears quickly ware out. I'm not getting the most out of the music I purchased so I fee like I'm getting ripped off in a way. They are robbing me of the dynamic range, punch and clarity that took over 40 years to aquire through technology and serving me a sub standard audio product that actually hurts my ears at moderate voumes. I often wonder if kids today are rapidly destroying their hearing with iPods and extremely loud albums.

The loudness war is not a good thing in any way. There is no need for it and the majority of people that think they like it have no idea what they are missing. Ear fatigue is not something I want to see accepted as the norm. I would love to hear Coldplay's X&Y remixed with a wide dynamic range, punch and clarity. I bet if you took the loud version and A/B'ed it at an equal volume to a remix with less loudness and limiting the average listener would prefer the remix better almost everytime. The bottom end would thump, the top end would sparkle while the mids jumped out at you.

I've spent the last 5 years trying to understand how the music I grew up with was engineered so well and how to emulate that. It really dissapoints me to see all that being thrown away today. I'm not going to fall victim to this senseless trend no matter how long it lasts. I encourage you guys to resist as much as you can as well. Stop limiting your mixes to death and just tell your listeners to crank up the voume if they want it louder. They are going to enjoy the music a lot more by doing so. We need to start educating the average listener and start turning this idiocy around.

Check out Paul Simon's, "You're The One". That album sounds incredible. Even though it was recorded at the Hit Facotry in NYC which is one of the world's top studios I use it as a benchmark to strive towards. Punch, clarity and dynamic range. It's all there on that album.

Anyone else have a great sounding album to recommend?

Eric

Hey Eric... HEAR HEAR! absolutely top post, bang on, couldn't agree more.

... The loudness war is not a good thing in any way. There is no need for it and the majority of people that think they like it have no idea what they are missing. Ear fatigue is not something I want to see accepted as the norm. ...

... I've spent the last 5 years trying to understand how the music I grew up with was engineered so well and how to emulate that. It really dissapoints me to see all that being thrown away today. I'm not going to fall victim to this senseless trend no matter how long it lasts. I encourage you guys to resist as much as you can as well. Stop limiting your mixes to death and just tell your listeners to crank up the voume if they want it louder. They are going to enjoy the music a lot more by doing so. We need to start educating the average listener and start turning this idiocy around.

Well said. Personally I want to be able to listen to my own stuff occasionally without cringing and hiding, in fact I'd like to be able to enjoy it and hear the details and so on - which means I'm pretty much out of the running for the Loudness Award.

I have been finalizing the mixing and mastering of my latest trio recording over the past few weeks, and it has been an edifying process to say the least. I'm working with another engineer on it, who brings to the table a great set of objective ears and a room that's considerably better spec'd than mine, so I do fiddly nitpicky stuff on my end and then we go and check it out there and fine tune it. We've been talking about this loudness thing a lot, and doing a lot of A/B'ing with stuff in the studio, examining waveforms and checking RMS stats and so on. This trio album is acoustic, somewhere in between jazz and ambient and new age, very dynamic and kind of sparse compared to very produced pop and rock, but the same stuff applies. We basically do not want the album to be dramatically quieter than well-mastered professional recordings in the genre, but the rule of thumb is if we hear the limiter doing anything at all, even in the loudest moments (isn't that a SuperTramp album? err...) - it's set too high.

That said, I think there is something to the debate on what the projected listening environment of a CD is... From what I can tell many young people now seem to listen to the bulk of their music on mobile phones on the subway... so it has to be pretty compressed if half of what's going on there is going to be heard at all. That's well and good, but it seems crazy to go so far down that road that anyone bothering to listen in an even marginally better environment is going to hear pulverized crap with no punch, sparkle or clarity. We've been checking out the new Killers album, which has been the focus of much debate on this very subject over at GearSlutz (so my friend tells me - I don't hang out there much) where most have been decrying its brutally limited sound - but others will point out that for many of the probable audience, and the environments they'll likely be listening in, it may be just right. I don't know, I'm not convinced.

Luckily, I don't expect that crowd to get into our sensitive acoustic trio record, so I don't have to take them into consideration.

Anyone else have a great sounding album to recommend?

... so, so many. Since I already mentioned it (kind of) Even In The Quietest Moments is a divine-sounding record, lush and lovely.

I listen to a lot of classical music and the mastering aesthetic is often much more purist in those circles, making for very dynamic and clear recordings... you have to turn the volume knob up a tad sometimes but hey, it's not THAT far away from the couch...

On a poppier level, we've been refreshing our ears with E.L.O.'s 'Out Of The Blue' which is quite an astonishing record...

ORIGINAL: ohhey
Let the entire industry die for all I care maybe something good will rise from the ashes.

Britney Spears. Britney Spears will rise from the ashes.

ORIGINAL: John Page

You know I'm with you but Rush has stated several times there's no going back and its 2007 so I made the adjustment but still listen to Farwell to Kings and Hemispheres with fond memories. The sad part is if anybody today made a album sounding like those did they would be fired never to get new work. It’s kind of strange we all want the old sound back but do we really? No we don’t.
I think we want modern recordings with reasonable mastered volume levels.............why is that so friggen hard to get? and why do the labels NOT get it!!!!!!!

I has also been said peoples attention span has shortened but I find the hyper compressed LOUD sounding music is the quickly fatiguing and has me reaching the “next” button on my CD player or radio within 45 seconds so maybe its not my attention span shortened but THE CONSTANT LOUD IN YOUR FACE MIX IS ENOUGH ALREADY !!!!!!!!!!

What was Rush talking about when they said there is no going back? If they meant the kind of material they are writing then I have no problem with that. I can't expect them to stay in 1981. I will either like the new stuff or I will not and I won't rant on about it if I simply don't like the music. But can't they at least make it sound as good as possible. They have all the experience, gear and engineers to make that happen so there is no excuse for such a lousy sounding recording. For crying out loud most serious home studios can produce excellent sounding music these days. Rush must have paid a fortune spending three months writing and recording the album IN THE STUDIO and the end result is an amature sounding record. I mean that from an egineering standpoint.

I think the drums sound like cardboard boxes with a lot of high end added to them. The kick has no power at all. The worst part of the drums are the cymbals. Oh my they sound like crap and noisy. Overall the drums have a minor presence throughout the mixes when compared to the blairing double tracked guitars. For Rush this is unacceptable. The producer should be aware of that as well. I think the guitar sounds pretty crappy too. Muted parts sound mushy with no definition or clear subdivisions. I think the vocals are buried a lot of the times and it seems like the first 4 tracks or so have the same 4th and 5th type harmonies on them. It sounds like a harmonizer was used instead of actually recording a vocal harmony. To be honest there isn't one instrument on any of the tracks I thought sounded nice. It's like it was mixed by someone who is severely deficient in the 1-8k range.

I didn't hear the details in Geddy's playing either. For that matter, I didn't hear details on anything on that album. Even when I played it low volumes.

ORIGINAL: Hansenhaus
Check out Paul Simon's, "You're The One". That album sounds incredible. Even though it was recorded at the Hit Facotry in NYC which is one of the world's top studios I use it as a benchmark to strive towards. Punch, clarity and dynamic range. It's all there on that album.

Yup. And I can't say for sure that I have a favorite album of all time... there's too many great ones... but if I had to choose, that would certainly be in the running. Not nearly as recognized as Graceland, which was certainly great, too, but even better than that, IMO. So deeply layered in every respect, musically, lyrically and sonically.

I just have to chime in again here. I've been unable to get the 1st cut out of my head for 3 days now...It sounds pretty good in my car and my iPod, but when I play it on my Boston Acoustics ...uh. Lets just say Moving Pictures remains their best sounding CD.

It is better than Vapor Trails by a hair in clarity, but far and away not as good as "the old days". The funny thing is, even my 51 year old ears can hear something there. It would be amazing to hear the tracks pre mastering..., But it's like i can hear how it "should" sound in my head...all with all the crystal clarity of Moving Pictures..

CD's can sound great, in some ways better than a record, but the latest trends is directed at MP3s sounding "loud".

As for the argument that somehow this "sound" is comparable to the various ground breaking genres of yore (rock n roll,Beatles, Jimi etc). I don't buy that. Rush is in their mid 50s they don't even begin to compete with tweeners and hip hop...so what audience does the record company think is going to buy it? This is just crappy product. The tunes are some of the more accessible of Rush's career. There are some gems in there esp the
12 string instrumental, which doesn't sound too bad.

Whatever. I'm pretty stoked that some of my little sonic experiments actually sound better than multi million dollar product!

ORIGINAL: mwd

Hansenhaus I think you must work for Rush and you are using reverse psychology on us.

You got me wanting to go buy this CD just to see how crappy it is.

LOL! I don't work for Rush. I'm just a old passioniate fan who was in the middle of rediscovering their music when this CD came out. I'm very dissapointed in how it sounds after the whole Vapor Trails issue.

If you are curious just purchase a track off of iTunes. The CD doesn't sound much better than those lousy 128 bit rate files anyway. :)

I say BS to that

Hi Eric,

While I completely agree with you about the overuse of peak limiting...
I wonder how many of us would actually have our record mastered any different...
IF we had the same circumstances as Rush (stakes career/substantial income/etc).

To kick the Loudness Wars out of vogue, someone's going to have to chose to purposely avoid it... and that record's going to have to go Platinum about 4+ times. If/when that happens, the peak-limiter's role may diminish... just as the massive reverb from the 80s.

I completely agree that modern mastering and production is generally ruining the listening experience, but then most 'young' people don't seem to give a crap about the quality of sound these days as long as it is loud and has no dynamics, in fact most of them are happy to have the mp3 as their definitive listening experience - I have plenty of friends who pay for downloads and have no interest in ever buying a CD or Vinyl.

Vapor Trails was appalling bad as a listening experience, there were some great songs like One Little Victory, completely ruined and distorted. There have been other albums recently that have been as bad or worse, instantly coming to mind is ZZ Top's Mescalero, which is probably the worst sounding CD I have ever heard.

I too thought Rush would have learned form that mistake, but hey, the new album is only marginally better sounding. Unfortunately the songs themselves are not that good, but thats a personal opinion from a 25 year long fan.

One other thing...
Vocals
I've been a fan of Ged's voice over the years.
But the phrasing/inflections really don't sound 'right' to me on S&A...
The phrasing seems awkward for lack of a better explanation.

That would be because the lyrics are generally very poor (as usual).... never Rush's strong point for me.