NLOTH Mastering? / Clipping?

[Scorpionac]

Yes let's petition U2 and have the album delayed another few months so they can master it correctly. I think not.

But just think how much better HTDAAB would be were it mastered properly. It does matter, you know. The decisions they make about the mastering are very permanent. Mastering as hotly as that is a stupid gimmick, a product of the times, and worst of all it shows no regard for the music (not to mention anyone who listens to it). It's a theory of mine that Crumbs From Your Table was a joke, and the band was just seeing what they could get away with.

 

[AchtungTiger]

yeh i put the 45 sec clips in audicity and they are more quite and dynamic than Boots.

Maybe Boots on the album will be of better quality than the single version?

 

[gweeps]

Clipping on the horizon?

I notice some in Moment of Surrender when Edge's solo comes up near the end. In White as Snow, when the bridge hits (2:32ish).

Anyone else?

 

[bathiu]

I notice some in Moment of Surrender when Edge's solo comes up near the end. In White as Snow, when the bridge hits (2:32ish).

Anyone else?

no, in fact I don't even hear those two you have listed

In MOS, in right channel (I think) there is someone clapping hands, the whole song. It's not sample/loop because every "clap" is different, maybe that's what you're hearing.

 

[Irishteen]

There's clipping on nearly every song, from looking at the waveform Magnificent has to be the worst, along with Stand Up Comedy.

White as Snow and Cedars on the other hand are completely clip free from what I can see

 

[whackjester]

Mix of NLOTH

Before the album leaked, many hoped that NLOTH would be mixed better (less compression / clipping) than the band's previous effort. Now that you've heard NLOTH, what your take?

I think overall that the mixing is better, but I still definitely hear some major distortion on Moment of Surrender and Crazy Tonight.

Listening through headphones, the line "we set ourselves on fire" hurts my ears sooooo badly on Moment of Surrender. Crazy Tonight clips out quite a bit.

 

[shaun vox]

the one good thing this album has is, its Production.

 

[paultjr]

I'll reserve judgment until I hear the CD instead of the leaked MP3's!

 

[If you shout...]

It'll be compressed and distorted to shit, but I don't think that that's so much a fault of the band's, or even the team. It's an industry-wide epidemic. This sounds no worse than (most) other records released, these days.

Which is to say, of course, "It sounds/It will sound atrocious." But not particularly atrocious.

 

[clerks]

I work at an audio post production place and last U2 tour... two engineers went to see them live and I said "how's the show?" and they bitched about song mix...

I hear the same stuff in this thread...

You make it sound like U2 did this themselves on their home computer in 2 minutes... I'm not an audiophile, but this is over the top.

I mean how can you even listen to such garbage? It's SO BAD.

 

[purpleoscar]

From what I can hear of the variable rate mp3's (which mimic the CD) it's mixed loud but not as loud as bomb. The only way to avoid that is to listen to the vinyl version or rip the vinyl and put it on CD.

Of course if Linear has great DTS sound that would help too.

 

[AndrewCowley]

From what I can hear of the variable rate mp3's (which mimic the CD) it's mixed loud but not as loud as bomb. The only way to avoid that is to listen to the vinyl version or rip the vinyl and put it on CD.

Not sure about that. Didn't the story go that with Metallica's Death Magnetic the vinyl version was clipped to buggery as well? The conclusion drawn being that the clipping wasn't due to the CD mastering but was introduced earlier in the process (during the mixing perhaps)?

 

[purpleoscar]

Not sure about that. Didn't the story go that with Metallica's Death Magnetic the vinyl version was clipped to buggery as well? The conclusion drawn being that the clipping wasn't due to the CD mastering but was introduced earlier in the process (during the mixing perhaps)?

It must be more rare on vinyl because all the vinyl rips I've heard are amazing incomparison to the CDs. I've got the Vertigo from the 18 singles in vinyl and it's not even close to mixed loud.

The best examples of a huge improvment would be the vinyl for The White Stripes latest album and the Raconteurs latest. Steve Hoffman did a good job with the White Stripes album.

 

[ianshepherd]

I've been listening to the preview of the album on Spotify, and in my opinion the mastering is fine. In fact I was quite excited as I started listening to track one, since it's a lot more dynamic than the last album, which was mastered at an unnecessarily high-level, and suffered as a result. However unfortunately the sound is still quite distorted in some places - I don't mind it too much on "Boots", for example, but "I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight" is a mess, and pretty tough going.

Of course the streaming data-compression won't be helping, so hopefully the CD will sound a little better. The fact that some tracks sound much more squashed and distorted than others strongly suggests that these were production decisions, NOT changes made in the mastering. Overall this is still a high-level album, but thankfully it's no Deaf Magnetic, either !

For anyone interested to find out more about the so-called Loudness Wars, I've blogged regularly about it recently. Posts that relate to some of the issue raised in this thread are:

Metallica "Death Magnetic" sounds better in Guitar Hero

Metallica "Death Magnetic" - Stop The Loudness Wars

Metallica "Death Magnetic" - Vinyl sounds better than CD

Chinese Democracy: The Loudness War Is Over - If We Want It

Want to know what the best-sounding U2 album is ? The original release of "Joshua Tree" - it's a little dull, like lots of their stuff, but crank it up and it blows most modern releases out of the water.

It's great to see that you guys care about this stuff !

Cheers,

Ian

 

[purpleoscar]

Thanks and keep up the good work letting people know that human ears love dynamic sound.

 

[chrissybaby]

I've been listening to the preview of the album on Spotify, and in my opinion the mastering is fine. In fact I was quite excited as I started listening to track one, since it's a lot more dynamic than the last album, which was mastered at an unnecessarily high-level, and suffered as a result. However unfortunately the sound is still quite distorted in some places - I don't mind it too much on "Boots", for example, but "I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight" is a mess, and pretty tough going.

Of course the streaming data-compression won't be helping, so hopefully the CD will sound a little better. The fact that some tracks sound much more squashed and distorted than others strongly suggests that these were production decisions, NOT changes made in the mastering. Overall this is still a high-level album, but thankfully it's no Deaf Magnetic, either !

For anyone interested to find out more about the so-called Loudness Wars, I've blogged regularly about it recently. Posts that relate to some of the issue raised in this thread are:

Metallica "Death Magnetic" sounds better in Guitar Hero

Metallica "Death Magnetic" - Stop The Loudness Wars

Metallica "Death Magnetic" - Vinyl sounds better than CD

Chinese Democracy: The Loudness War Is Over - If We Want It

Want to know what the best-sounding U2 album is ? The original release of "Joshua Tree" - it's a little dull, like lots of their stuff, but crank it up and it blows most modern releases out of the water.

It's great to see that you guys care about this stuff !

Cheers,

Ian

Great first post, I love all this stuff!

 

[bcrt2000]

I've been listening to the preview of the album on Spotify, and in my opinion the mastering is fine. In fact I was quite excited as I started listening to track one, since it's a lot more dynamic than the last album, which was mastered at an unnecessarily high-level, and suffered as a result. However unfortunately the sound is still quite distorted in some places - I don't mind it too much on "Boots", for example, but "I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight" is a mess, and pretty tough going.

Of course the streaming data-compression won't be helping, so hopefully the CD will sound a little better. The fact that some tracks sound much more squashed and distorted than others strongly suggests that these were production decisions, NOT changes made in the mastering. Overall this is still a high-level album, but thankfully it's no Deaf Magnetic, either !

For anyone interested to find out more about the so-called Loudness Wars, I've blogged regularly about it recently. Posts that relate to some of the issue raised in this thread are:

Metallica "Death Magnetic" sounds better in Guitar Hero

Metallica "Death Magnetic" - Stop The Loudness Wars

Metallica "Death Magnetic" - Vinyl sounds better than CD

Chinese Democracy: The Loudness War Is Over - If We Want It

Want to know what the best-sounding U2 album is ? The original release of "Joshua Tree" - it's a little dull, like lots of their stuff, but crank it up and it blows most modern releases out of the water.

It's great to see that you guys care about this stuff !

Cheers,

Ian

Hah, your blog has been mentioned here many times when talking about the loudness wars. Its a good read

I wish more people in the industry would realize how silly the loudness wars are.

I haven't been paying attention, but do you know if U2 have been messing around with the loudness on their re-releases and greatest hits compilations?

 

[dopper]

I've been listening to the preview of the album on Spotify, and in my opinion the mastering is fine. In fact I was quite excited as I started listening to track one, since it's a lot more dynamic than the last album, which was mastered at an unnecessarily high-level, and suffered as a result. However unfortunately the sound is still quite distorted in some places - I don't mind it too much on "Boots", for example, but "I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight" is a mess, and pretty tough going.

Of course the streaming data-compression won't be helping, so hopefully the CD will sound a little better. The fact that some tracks sound much more squashed and distorted than others strongly suggests that these were production decisions, NOT changes made in the mastering. Overall this is still a high-level album, but thankfully it's no Deaf Magnetic, either !

For anyone interested to find out more about the so-called Loudness Wars, I've blogged regularly about it recently. Posts that relate to some of the issue raised in this thread are:

Metallica "Death Magnetic" sounds better in Guitar Hero

Metallica "Death Magnetic" - Stop The Loudness Wars

Metallica "Death Magnetic" - Vinyl sounds better than CD

Chinese Democracy: The Loudness War Is Over - If We Want It

Want to know what the best-sounding U2 album is ? The original release of "Joshua Tree" - it's a little dull, like lots of their stuff, but crank it up and it blows most modern releases out of the water.

It's great to see that you guys care about this stuff !

Cheers,

Ian

Maybe they decided to compress the tracks they feel will get on the radio (i.e. Crazy) and leave the rest alone? Is this a common practice? Thanks for participating in this thread.

 

[gweeps]

Yeah, I used to wonder why TJT and Hotel California were so quiet. Now I know why and am grateful.

 

[zooropop40]

Did anyone notice this?

Sorry if something like this has been posted before

but... I just downloaded the 350kbps version of NLOTH, and all the versions of the album seem to have the same wierd thing... The vocals on the first and second track are VERY low, like you can hear them... but not well.

Did anyone else have this problem (maybe its my headphones?) Anyways, I hope its not like this on the actual cd, maybe some bad mixing?

....again i apologize if this has been posted already.

 

[DarkAcrobat]

 

[ShipOfFools]

Sorry if something like this has been posted before

but... I just downloaded the 350kbps version of NLOTH, and all the versions of the album seem to have the same wierd thing... The vocals on the first and second track are VERY low, like you can hear them... but not well.

Did anyone else have this problem (maybe its my headphones?) Anyways, I hope its not like this on the actual cd, maybe some bad mixing?

....again i apologize if this has been posted already.

I commented on this when the album leaked. The first 2 tracks are mixed lower than the rest of the album (which means I have to turn down my stereo when I get to the third track.) I don't know if they did it intentionally or just screwed up, but it's very distracting.

My only complaint about the album.

 

[zooropop40]

I commented on this when the album leaked. The first 2 tracks are mixed lower than the rest of the album (which means I have to turn down my stereo when I get to the third track.) I don't know if they did it intentionally or just screwed up, but it's very distracting.

My only complaint about the album.

well for me, the first 2 tracks have only lower vocals, the rest of the sound is fine for me. but the music is much louder than the vocals....?

 

[ShipOfFools]

well for me, the first 2 tracks have only lower vocals, the rest of the sound is fine for me. but the music is much louder than the vocals....?

Yeah, that's what I meant. It's improperly mixed.

 

[zooropop40]

Yeah, that's what I meant. It's improperly mixed.

hmm... yea sometimes it changes depending on what head phones I use. Some headphones make the vocals lower and some make it higher .

If you change the "EQ" setting in iTunes, sometimes it can make the mixing sound better.

 

[zooropop40]

Oh and also, to agree with everyones thoughts on HTDAAB, on most of the album when Bono pronounces his "S's" they come off very sharp (almost painfully so). other than "we Set ourSelves on fire" in MOS, that is not a problem on NLOTH.

 

[buzzkill27]

Thanks Ian for taking the time to give us your expertise on the matter.........please come back after the CD is released and let us know what you think of the production and mastering

 

[Bean Skidds]

Oh and also, to agree with everyones thoughts on HTDAAB, on most of the album when Bono pronounces his "S's" they come off very sharp (almost painfully so). other than "we Set ourSelves on fire" in MOS, that is not a problem on NLOTH.

Yep the 'S' vocals on the Bomb were a problem. Thanksfully they dont seem to be a problem on the new album. I seem to remember this having been a problem as far back as Pop as well. Mofo comes to mind for having the harsh 'S', although I havent listened in awhile.

 

[ianshepherd]

Thanks Ian for taking the time to give us your expertise on the matter.........please come back after the CD is released and let us know what you think of the production and mastering

No problem, will do ! There is a slightly grainy, crunchy feel to the Spotify version which I hope won't be there on the CD, but I have my doubts...

Ian

 

[PowerSurge]

But just think how much better HTDAAB would be were it mastered properly. It does matter, you know. The decisions they make about the mastering are very permanent. Mastering as hotly as that is a stupid gimmick, a product of the times, and worst of all it shows no regard for the music (not to mention anyone who listens to it). It's a theory of mine that Crumbs From Your Table was a joke, and the band was just seeing what they could get away with.

With all due respect, a badly developed picture of a piece of shit is really no different than a well developed pitcure of a piece of shit, other than the whole "development part".

Seriously though, HTDAAB would have been easier to listen to if it were mastered properly, but we are still talking about SOUND quality and not SONG quality which is inevitably why the album doesn't deliver in the end.

One last comment....I actually think Crumbs is a great song. Were you referring to it being a joke because of the mastering? or the song itself? because I think the song is great, the sound leaves little to be desired.