I mean, is there anything to be gained? It was originally mastered for CD using what was surely state of the art equipment at the time. Is there anything that would need correcting during the re-mastering process?

I'm totally down for the bonus material that will come with it, but is there any reason to believe that the remastered album will sound better than the original?

Its a pretty muddy sounding record, so yeah.

Not muddy...BIG!!

So what was the reason that they didn't do the absolutely best job possible when making that album? This was a huge album for a huge band.

TOASE

So what was the reason that they didn't do the absolutely best job possible when making that album? This was a huge album for a huge band.

I think it sounds great

So what was the reason that they didn't do the absolutely best job possible when making that album? This was a huge album for a huge band.

Label didn't want them to put out a double record and only funded the production of 1.

Some of the songs are a bit too bassy (Tales Of A Scorched Earth is a good example), but it was the mid nineties, everything was bassy then. I don't think MCIS needs a remastering. Flood did a very good job at producing this album, I love Flood's work. But sometimes I wonder what MCIS would have sounded like if it was produced by, say, Steve Albini or Butch Vig.

but it was the mid nineties, everything was bassy then.

Listen to dance music from 1995-1998 and you'll see what I mean.

does that apply to stylistic changes to more bass heavy genres like DnB and Big Beat, or just in general?

also TOASE is supposed to sound that way ,guys

yup yup! I would like to hear some alternate takes of songs like 33, In the arms of sleep, and maybe even muzzle or galapogos! Are they supposed to do the TAFH boxset remastered too? or would that be considered overkill?

Apparently the MCIS reissue is going to be a massive 6 CD set, so it's safe to assume TAFH will be reissued along with MCIS.

It would be neat to hear it with only half of the overdubs.

it would be great to hear the afternoon live rehearsal/soundcheck sessions from before the double door shows...

Some of the songs are a bit too bassy (Tales Of A Scorched Earth is a good example), but it was the mid nineties, everything was bassy then. I don't think MCIS needs a remastering. Flood did a very good job at producing this album, I love Flood's work. But sometimes I wonder what MCIS would have sounded like if it was produced by, say, Steve Albini or Butch Vig.

Can't imagine Steve Albini producing a SP album. His albums tend to sound small in scale which really isn't the Pumpkins style.

hey guys:
albums get remastered to suit changing playback systems

It's not because something was wrong with the original masters, but because the common system of 90's isn't whats common 20 years later. Labels want the old catalogs to stay relevant and sound good compared to new releases that are made with the current systems in mind.

also
remastering is NOT for audiophiles.
Todays remastering is for laptops and ipods.
the SP remasters sound better on these systems. If you have an audiophile system just keep listening to the original releases because we're never gonna a remaster that has a higher DR rating. Even the 24/96 releases are likely to not satisfy audiophiles. I wouldn't be surprised if the 24/41 PI release was just feed an extra 8 empty bits to satisfy those that paid for the High Quality release.
I'll check it later with my SSL intersample peak meter. get an actual bit depth reading.

^ That's interesting, I didn't know that.

holy shit, it's bunny!

where's T&T

machina mystery time

this SSL plugin is totally free. and it's a good read too.
http://www.solidstatelogic.com/music/X-ISM/index.asp

maybe someone can get billy to read about these details. I'm sure he likes learning about stuff.



and people are totally right about MCIS being bass heavy. I wonder if it's that's relative to the bass lite systems we used to have or if it was following a growing trend. In the 90's hiphop created a demand for extra bass (does rap-rock also qualify as 'extra heavy, extra lows?). We started getting these boom boxes with new features like "V-Boom" & "Super-Sub-Bass" and ports for pushing air (from speakers with 2" woofers). sound system technology (cost efficiency being a big factor) changes drastically every decade (I'm not talking about audiophile stuff though)

billy had gish remastered in 94 because he thought it was too bassy, if i recall

I personally don't think ANY of the catalog NEEDS to be remastered.
Mellon Collie is my all time favorite album. I love it.
That being said, I am excited to hear the re-master. As others have pointed out, it is a bass heavy record. Who knows, maybe the remaster will be a revelation. If it ends up just sounding like it got a volume boost and it clips, whatever. The original isn't going anywhere and it'll be nice to have a DVD for that era of the band... Plus I am curious to see what they dig out of the vaults for the bonus discs.

But no... It doesn't NEED to be remastered.

I am stoked for the remix of Machina.

But sometimes I wonder what MCIS would have sounded like if it was produced by, say, Steve Albini or Butch Vig.

These producers are complete opposites of each other. Or is that your point?

billy's too vested in studio production to get involved with Steve Albini. Albini might have done a great live album for the band though. captured their live energy on disc. probably what the original Machina plan was actually.


then again apparently much of MCIS was tracked live off the floor at pumpkinland, and then they took that into studio (and probably overdubbed everything)


earlier today i was commenting on how buried the drums are on SP records. with walls of guitars it's probably impossible to get a great drum presence anyways (can't have everything!) but jimmy is such a great player you can still feel his god like drumming regardless of the crappy mix. anyone care to dig up some jimmy quote about how he doesn't listen to the albums because he doesn't like the mixes, and how he only listens to 1/4" tape versions at his home, which have different mixes anyways.


mixing an album for a band is always a bitch. bassist wants more bass, singer wants more vocals, drummer wants more drums, guitarist wants more guitar, harp player wants more harp. with billy in the producer seat it's obvious we'll get more of what.

OT, (relating to billy saying that Jeff is a better guitar player then he is) maybe we're getting more vocals today then guitars because jeff is the one playing most of the guitar tracks?

So what was the reason that they didn't do the absolutely best job possible when making that album? This was a huge album for a huge band.

Because Flood is a doofus that is not specialized in live-band recording and getting a good drumsound as Vig did.

It was originally mastered for CD using what was surely state of the art equipment at the time.
Advances in technology should theoretically improve the mastering process (if done right anyways).

reason to believe that the remastered album will sound better than the original?
Yes, listen to the pbthal rip of the vinyl, it's less muddy (sse Slingero's comment below). They can certainly make a better master.

Its a pretty muddy sounding record, so yeah.

This, all day long.

billy had gish remastered in 94 because he thought it was too bassy, if i recall

It's the other way around, he wanted to boost the bass.

there's some songs on MCIS that the mix is pretty decent but it just seems flat or "quiet at all levels" if that makes sense.

Like I love Jellybelly but there's something about the mix where I just expected more crunch or something.

The quiet songs on MCIS basically sound perfect, but I wouldn't mind some crisper sounding versions of the heavy ones. I think the bassiness/muddiness was most likely a stylistic decision and not "bad production" or whatever, but if you listen to Geek USA and then listen to Jellybelly, it sounds like you are missing a lot of the attack and sharpness and clarity in the latter, especially in the drums. I've said this exact same thing before, but Jellybelly sounds like an insane cluster of noise. And you know, there is something cool about that, but I would also like some more instrument separation and such.

Problem is that mastering won't necessarily change that muddiness, will it? Could also be an issue with production, and I feel this is likely because not all the songs have the same issue going on. A good example of this: listen to the guitar tone and the drum sounds in Bodies for a few seconds, then listen to when the distortion comes in on TAFH... Bodies is super muddy and cluttered sounding, whereas TAFH sounds much more open. There's more separation and the sounds aren't so overwhelmed by the low end.

MCIS is indeed "quiet at any level" and bass heavy. While I suppose I was always mildly frustrated that I could crank the stereo and it would only ever get so loud, it worked quite well in the sense that aided in MCIS as feeling like a dark and heavy record. I frankly think that all the mastering sucks today because it is just too bright. I don't enjoy bright, trebly, wide-open-mids, angular sounding mixes at all and it's probably why subconsciously I hate the sound of pretty much everything produced past 1998 or so.

Problem is that mastering won't necessarily change that muddiness, will it?
Yes it can.
then listen to when the distortion comes in on TAFH... Bodies is super muddy and cluttered sounding, whereas TAFH sounds much more open. There's more separation and the sounds aren't so overwhelmed by the low end.

Remember that TAFH was recorded at a different studio, with a different producer, and at a different time. I've always said the best drumsound SP has EVER gotten was at the Charing Cross Sessions (where TAFH, Last Song and Transformer was recorded). Just listen to that monster kick and snare! YIKES! :0

MCIS is a little dark & murky, but the last thing I want is some overly bright and treble-y remastering trying to overcompensate for it...with clipping on top of that. Hopefully it will not be heavy handed.

Yes it can.


Remember that TAFH was recorded at a different studio, with a different producer, and at a different time. I've always said the best drumsound SP has EVER gotten was at the Charing Cross Sessions (where TAFH, Last Song and Transformer was recorded). Just listen to that monster kick and snare! YIKES! :0

damn I never knew that! I remember the quote about Flood saying it was too heavy metal, but not until right now did I realize it wasn't recorded until later. Makes sense cause the Transformer guitar sound is enormous and hard hitting as well.

But still, the quiet songs on MCIS sound great and don't seem to suffer the same sort of instrument bleed over the heavy ones do. Are you sure the root problem is with the mastering?

Well, no I'm not saying the root problem is with the mastering. I am saying they could make it less muddy in the mastering process by accentuating certain frequencies and hiding others, the same way that the SD remaster is brighter you know?

The "root problem" though, in my opinion, was Flood's production. He simply was not suited for a live band looking for a killer drumsound.

Dynamic Range

Gish: DR11 [remaster: DR8]
Siamese Dream: DR10 [remaster: DR9]
Pisces Iscariot: DR11 [remaster: DR9]
Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness: DR9
Adore: DR8
Machina/The Machines of God: DR7
Zeitgeist: DR5

did people sit around and dissect the sounds and audio nuances of records before the internet boom and before "remastering" became a universal money-making trend in the industry?

Record execs and labels don't have a fucking clue what people want or how a record should sound in today's day and age. This is proven by ludicrous practices like "remastering specifically for Ipods and computer speakers", if that is indeed true

did some of you actually buy MCIS back in 1995 and say "Ugh, this sounds like SHIT! TOO muddy! Can't wait for that 2013 remaster, ugh!"

Take a gander at who is producing these reissues. The Terrible Twins of Brickwalling...Bob Ludwig and Howie Weinberg. If what everyone here believes is true about Zeitgeist and RTB, then that makes three "name" producers Billy has worked with in the last five years that have ruined the sound of the band's music.

what makes you think that they're suddenly going to pull their heads out of their asses and get MCIS to the specifications that you desire?

did some of you actually buy MCIS back in 1995 and say "Ugh, this sounds like SHIT! TOO muddy! Can't wait for that 2013 remaster, ugh!"


Nope...MCIS always sounded good in my opinion.

Not you, amo

these other sound-obsessed heretics.

this is the only remaster i'm interested in, the other albums sound wonderful already

did some of you actually buy MCIS back in 1995 and say "Ugh, this sounds like SHIT! TOO muddy! Can't wait for that 2013 remaster, ugh!"

no, but i thought everclear was a good band then too so

i mean i listen to it now and it sounds like shit, really. esp. compared to SD

what about MII?

i would love to hear it remastered and actually have a CD copy that isn't from a vinyl rip.

did people sit around and dissect the sounds and audio nuances of records before the internet boom and before "remastering" became a universal money-making trend in the industry?
Yes, of course.


did some of you actually buy MCIS back in 1995 and say "Ugh, this sounds like SHIT! TOO muddy! Can't wait for that 2013 remaster, ugh!"
No because I was 15 at the time.


what makes you think that they're suddenly going to pull their heads out of their asses and get MCIS to the specifications that you desire?
Because it's Mellon Collie. It will receive as much sonic attention as SD did, because in the eyes of EMI, only SD and MCIS are the only two hit albums, and the only ones that deserve it (Gish, fortunately for it and us, was just kinda slipped in with SD and rode it's bootheels into decent mastering). EMI didn't give a shit about "Corgan's little b-side collection with that Stevie Nicks cover," "that techno album" or "that concept album that tanked".

MCIS is the least of the worries, it's Adore and Machina that we should be worried about, the albums that EMI wouldn't give two shits about.

I am excited about it, but I also just bought a fresh CD copy of the original from Amazon, to be safe. I want to have an unscratched version of the original master. Even if it's inferior, it's the way I remember it, and so will probably always be my favorite. That's just the way memory works.

When is Melloncollie expected? November like SD?
When did they announce the Gish/SD rereleases, October?

my fav, here is no why, could also sound more accentuated after a good remaster i guess. i hope that promised alt. x.y.u. take is coll and that it's not as messed up as the remasters up until now

what about MII?

the intent is to remix both Machina albums and sequence them the way billy wanted to back in 2000.

Because it's Mellon Collie. It will receive as much sonic attention as SD did, because in the eyes of EMI, only SD and MCIS are the only two hit albums, and the only ones that deserve it (Gish, fortunately for it and us, was just kinda slipped in with SD and rode it's bootheels into decent mastering). EMI didn't give a shit about "Corgan's little b-side collection with that Stevie Nicks cover," "that techno album" or "that concept album that tanked".

MCIS is the least of the worries, it's Adore and Machina that we should be worried about, the albums that EMI wouldn't give two shits about.

If they fuck up Adore and Machina... :mad:

Dynamic Range

Gish: DR11 [remaster: DR8]
Siamese Dream: DR10 [remaster: DR9]
Pisces Iscariot: DR11 [remaster: DR9]
Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness: DR9
Adore: DR8
Machina/The Machines of God: DR7
Zeitgeist: DR5

Well, Siamese Dream didn't suffer too badly. Or Gish or Pisces. Compared to other remasters where the DR gets cut in half.

I am a little confused, is the opinion that PI has inferior remastering because less money was spent on it?

I am a little confused, is the opinion that PI has inferior remastering because less money was spent on it?

Seems something like that. First disc was remastered fine, 2nd was loud as hell with clipping and shit and both have little audio glitches on some songs. Seems rushed tbh.

I'm not really sure that makes sense to me. I'm not saying I straight up don't believe it, because it could be true, I'm just not sure I understand how it could cost that much more in time and money to keep it from clipping

I am a little confused, is the opinion that PI has inferior remastering because less money was spent on it?

I wouldn't say that less money was spent on it, but that less attention was given to it. And the reaosn being is that (in the label's eyes) it's an insignificant part of the band's discography.

I'm not really sure that makes sense to me. I'm not saying I straight up don't believe it, because it could be true, I'm just not sure I understand how it could cost that much more in time and money to keep it from clipping

Laziness I guess

Sometimes I will have MCIS on and songs like Galapagos are so quite I will miss half the song before I realize the radio is still playing.

Sometimes I will have MSIC on and songs like Galapagos are so quite I will miss half the song before I realize the radio is still playing.

turn the volume up. It's got good dynamic range.

it kind of sucks that disk 2 of PI is treated like a shoddy compiled playlist, it's like they expect us to only listen to those songs on shuffle. the soft songs are just TOO loud imho, no consideration given to the continuity of the it as one disk. an important part of making certain tracks loud and heavy is contrast, mastering engineers should know this.
2012 billy is NOT the same guy he was in 1994. it's a shame in contrast to how wonderful the continuity of PI (as a mixtape) is compiled actually comes off as a well thought out album.

the same can be said about the gish and the SD bonus disks



so the digital download of Plume has been updated??? i downloaded some .m4a (24.49MB) file and it's exactly like the original, not remastered but with a volume change. is this available as a 16/44 lossless file? [for discussion sake lets call 1994 version 'Original', 2012 remastered alt vocal, 2012 updated remastered]
looking at the spectograph, the 1994 and the 2012 updated remaster both have a 15.250kHz frequency. the intro to both of them is also exactly the same. the Alt vocal version has the 15.250kHz frequency cleaned up, and the intro has an extra feedback fuzz before the first chord is struck.
the 24/44 version I have (from what.cd) is the original vocal with the 15.250kHz frequency, and is actually 24 bits (so it's not just upsampled)
did the high-rez version come out with the alt vocal take too?

mastering engineers should know this.


>>>

The Despair Of The Mastering Engineer

The Level-War and the Lost Dynamics
I have been recording music from the age of 16 and have been working as a professional sound/mastering engineer since 1972. The Loudness-War has been with us for as long as I can remember.
 However, over the last couple of years it has grown completely out of proportion.
 So far that today's music is really suffering from this hyper-compression and so is the listener.

About Compression and Limiting.

Over-compression, as we hear on many CD's today, takes the life and excitement out of the music and only gives the listeners a headache. It takes all depth and detail out of the mix and just puts it "in your face".

"...this effect can obscure sonic detail, rob music of its emotional power and leave listeners with what engineers call ear fatigue."(David Bendeth/Rolling Stone).

The sad thing is that this loudness-war not only affects pop- and rock-music, but is starting to affect jazz- and even classical music. 
True, we need compression, some form of dynamic control is needed.
Pop and rock vinyl albums had an average dynamic range (difference between peak and RMS) of 14 to 16 dB, so did the early CD releases.

Digital dynamic control with preview option offered the possibility to reduce the dynamics further without the disturbing artefacts present in the analogue world. Then somebody invented the digital compressor/limiter as a computer plug-in and made it affordable. This is when the record companies discovered that everything could be louder and decided that "louder is better".
 So today's music ends up on CD with hardly any dynamic range at all, heavy metal or intimate ballad, all the same! 
Some recent rock albums I have measured only had a DR2.

Another argument is that radio programmers only listen to the first few bars and decide only on the impact this makes. Just make sure your song is musically interesting and they will listen beyond the first bars.

Radio Ready.
Radio is the great leveler.
 The argument that your CD will not be as loud on the radio than others just does not hold. All radio-stations use 5-band compressors that will make sure all songs to be broadcasted equally loud; radio is the great leveler. All will depend on the way your song has been recorded and its frequency content. By the very nature of the radio compressor an hyper-compressed song might sound less loud on the radio than a well balanced, open and moderately compressed one. A hyper-compressed track might even start to distort.
 Tests have shown that different degrees of compression on the same title makes hardly any difference to the loudness on the radio, they all sound equally loud. Hyper-compressed CD's even sound less loud and start to distort after passing through the radio processors. 
The fact that these days all CD's are converted to some form of data-reduction before being broadcasted makes matters worse than ever before: http://pleasurizemusic.com/en/why-do...ed-songs-radio
Numerous times I have been hearing this sentence: My song is not as loud on the radio as the others! It is all in-between the ears!!

The next argument we hear so often is: “When I play my CD in my car, I cannot hear the soft parts unless I turn up the volume so loud my system will start to distort when the loud parts play.” The old Compact Cassette had a greater dynamic range than today's' CD'sDon't believe it? Try it!), in-car noise-levels sure were higher in those days and car sound systems of inferior quality. So, what is going on? 
The only solution would be to put a compressor in car CD players; perfectly possible and affordable with today's technology.

It's not only the total dynamics and the dynamic balance between the songs that are ruined. It also ruins what we would call "the micro-dynamics", the difference between the level of the notes and the silence between the notes. The effect of the hyper-compression is off course most evident on percussive sounds like drums and piano, making everything sound loud but dull, uninteresting, hard and with lots of distorted transients.
 The term "Digitally Re-Mastered" has become synonymous for "Severely Reduced Dynamics".
Mastering is the art of making the final Master sound “better”, not necessarily “louder”! But “louder” is what most clients expect. Why mix your album for days, adjusting every single track of a song to within 0,5 dB to make your mix just right and then ask the mastering engineer to completely alter your entire album in a couple of hours by slamming a compressor-limiter over it, compressing it to death. And all this for the sake of being louder than the competition!??
I do not understand why mix-engineers are not up in arms against the mastering rooms for ruining their work. It is my sincere conviction that a lot of albums would have sounded a lot better without passing through some “Mastering Room”.
However, in most cases, it is not the mastering engineers’ fault. 89% of our clients ask to make everything louder, it’s epidemic.
Here is a very interested article on compression by Bob Katz: http://www.digido.com/compression.html

Every musician, music lover, recording engineer, mastering engineer I have spoken to recently thinks this madness must end. Still the first question I get after a session usually is: "Can you make it louder?" If clients ask:” Can you make it dynamic?" 99% mean: "Can you make it loud?"
 The engineers who make the "master", recording engineer as well as mastering engineer, are under constant pressure to compromise sound quality, most of them very reluctantly and sometimes under protest.

Listeners are by now so used to this over-compressed sound that they will reject a CD if the music is not cutting off their ears with the first bar ... or isn't it? Maybe they are buying less CD's because they are tired of this constant attack on their hearing.

I’ am getting blue in the face trying to explain there is an alternative to this madness. Most masters I receive from the studio already have enough compression anyway or are sadly enough already over-compressed
. I always try to convince the client not to go for loudness, but for quality. There is still a level pot on every amplifier. If it is not loud enough: Turn it up! Laziness should no longer be an excuse, the remote control has been invented years ago.
Some years ago I was mastering the soundtrack of an international dance act. The technical crew asked for a copy for use with the show. They came back to me and asked for a less compressed version. I had to ask the studio for new uncompressed versions of the mixes before they were pleased with the result.
Other technical issues.
There are several other technical reasons why we should take care not to over-compress and watch out very carefully for overloads even for 0 dBFs. "Interleave Sample Overs" might occur at the playback side as explained here: http://pleasurizemusic.com/en/why-do...yback-what-are

To make matters even worse, a similar effect happens when tracks are converted to mp3: overs as high as 6 dB will occur with these kind of tracks, see: http://pleasurizemusic.com/en/why-do...rs-no-headroom

Here is the proof: Let's take Pink's "SoWhat"
:
-
Statistics for: 1 So What.wav
Number of Samples: 9488556
-------------
-

Left/Right

 Peak value: -0.01 dB/-0.01 dB
-Avg RMS: -6.50 dB/-6.63 dB

-DR channel: 4.85 dB/4.86 dB
------------
-

Official DR value: DR5
If we now convert to mp3, even at 320 kbps, and then back to wav, we are getting overloads:

-
Statistics for: 1 So What_mp3.wav
Number of Samples: 9499392
-----
-

Left/Right

 Peak value: over/over 

-Avg RMS: -6.50 dB/-6.63 dB
-
DR channel: 4.85 dB/4.86 dB
-------------
-

Official DR valueR5
======================================== ==
Overs were at 1.5dB. If we were to use lower mp3 bitrates, the overloads would get worse!

It will be very difficult to agree on a standard of compression or average dynamic range. Every production is different. However, a solution has to be found; if the rate of dynamic reduction goes on as it is doing lately, it has nearly become a law: -1dB of dynamics/year, we will soon end up with CD's with white noise!
 Your tracks have been painstakingly mixed with adjustments of 0.5dB to different instruments and effects. If it is being over-compressed later, the whole mix will change by the very nature of the compression process.
 A DR14 seems to be a reasonable compromise.

If it is necessary I will ad compression or limiting, taking care that the balance of your mix changes as little as possible.
 So please do not over-compress your recording, do not us a limiter/compressor on the mix-bus; this leaves us very little room to do any equalizing if necessary.

Beware of, or forget about: finalizers, maximizers and other dangerous animals.
If you insist on a very loud compressed master I will of course do it for you, I just want you to consider the alternative. Let us bring the dynamics back to music.
 Please do not drive your AD-convertors into overload; do not use them as limiters. I receive a lot of CDR's with heavy overloads: this means DISTORTION. This distortion increases with every further digital- or analogue signal processing; the distortion might be quite unacceptable at the end of the process: Your CD or LP!

Please let us stop the level-war and bring back the dynamics to our music!


- Loudness makes no difference for radio broadcast.
Do not over-process your tracks for radio. The radio-engineer will put his processing on top of it, maybe making the end result unbearable.
- The quality of compressed (data-reduced) formats will be better if we reduce levels and the amount of compression. I-Tunes has an option in preferences, “Soundcheck” ,that, if checked, makes i-Tunes play all songs at the same loudness level. It takes some time to analyze all the tracks present in the i-Tunes library, then plays them all at the same loudness level. Maybe it works a bit like what Pleasurize Music propose: taking DR14 as reference and dropping the level of say a DR8 by 6 dB! All i-Pods users can benefit from the same feature. Users off other players can download a plug-in like i-Volume.
- Live sound might be loud, but is usually more dynamic.
So why are we still constantly compromising CD quality??

Finally the opposition against this murder of our music’s dynamics is getting organized. There are protests off music lovers and professionals all over the internet and organizations like “Turn It Up” http://turnmeup.org/ and “The Pleasurize Music Foundation” http://dynamicrange.de/en/our-aim might help to finally bring the dynamics back to our music. Let’s all join forces.

Source:
http://recording.org/blogs/foon/332-the-despair-of-the-mastering-engineer.html

Yeah, MCIS sounds too muffled maybe. Lets come the remaster and see.

MCIS is like the opposite of brickwall. MCIS is so quiet and lacks any dynamic whatsoever. It's just quiet, muddy and bass-heavy. Not to mention poorly balanced. Ever tried to listen to Thirty Three or To Forgive in a car stereo with a subwoofer? Forget it.

yeah jim is in general kinda washed out on this compared to butch vig's crystal clear direction of the drums

srsly the opener for geek is so clear it sounds like gunfire

i'm not bagging on flood either, he produced one of my fave albums of the last couple years with the pains of being pure at heart

Well he's had 15 years to figure out how to record drums properly.

MCIS was the first SP record with a natural drum sound, which is probably why I like it so much.

rly? i mean u know what u r talking about more than me that is probably 4 sure

I'm so looking forward to this one. 70 extra songs...

It's entertaining how much mis-information is in this thread. Mastered for iPods? Seriously? You have no idea.

Music production is an art and it is based on the opinions and ears of those involved in EVERY step of the process. MCIS sounds the way it does largely due to mix, not master. If it's not being remixed a different master is not going to substantially change the way it 'sounds'.

However, the lack of dynamic range will be addressed and it will be 'louder' because this record definitely wasn't brickwalled.

As a passing point, most of the guitars were recorded through a JMP-1 which is piece of shit IMO. The bass heaviness is probably largely impacted by the fact that the guitars and taking up all the bass frequencies leaving no space for the kick or bass guitar (particularly in the heavier tracks). So you can blame Billy and Flood for that.

It's entertaining how much mis-information is in this thread. Mastered for iPods? Seriously? You have no idea.

Yeah, you're right, this isn't a phenomenon that was even commented upon by Bob Ludwig himself.

http://bobbyowsinski.blogspot.com/2012/03/bob-ludwig-on-mastering-for-earbuds.html

Oh, wait.

EDIT:
So that you can be more educated on this matter, feel free to do some more research. Here's a good one
http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2012/02/24/147379760/what-mastered-for-itunes-really-means

And another...
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/02/mastered-for-itunes-how-audio-engineers-tweak-tunes-for-the-ipod-age/

I'm sure you can find many if you googled it just right. ;)

That's addressing mastering for specific formats. This has always been done such as with a vinyl master recording usually being different to the one used for a CD because as those articles point out, different formats (even digitally) respond differently to the same amount of compression (and limiting etc etc).

Mastering still has fundamentally the same role it always did, to make a piece of music sound relatively the same regardless of the system or format in which it is played.

Which is what we are essentially talking about, isn't it?

I like how you're so excited to wave your studio-cock around in this thread, you want to criticize what we said, then just reword our orignal conversation as a retort.

The machine of god really come off like a high-horse dick calling these facts 'mus-information'.


there's a lot more elements to capitalize on then just the fundamental role.
I know that if I was getting something remastered I'd want to address the changing landscape of playback systems. Id' want to take advantage of the changing technology that people are listening to my music on. Format and form go hand in hand. how many times have the beatles and pink floyd catalogues been remastered, why?
Another major factor is obviously also the loudness wars because of shuffle mode (whether i tbe on your ipod or the radio). And that's gotten wore because common music listeners don't actually care about quality, generally accepting "louder is better". The average music listener doesn't even notice brickwalled and clipping masters, let alone mp3 artifacts. This race to the bottom is compounded by the popularity of affordable (read shitty) playback systems.

make a piece of music sound relatively the same regardless of the system or format in which it is played.
You must have really shitty ears if the music you listen to sounds relatively the same regardless of the system or format in which it is played.


i'm not even gonna respond to any of his further replies.

Why does The Machine of God instantly evoke an image of a Fox News anchor reading said post about "mis-information" to me?

The next argument we hear so often is: “When I play my CD in my car, I cannot hear the soft parts unless I turn up the volume so loud my system will start to distort when the loud parts play.” The old Compact Cassette had a greater dynamic range than today's' CD'sDon't believe it? Try it!), in-car noise-levels sure were higher in those days and car sound systems of inferior quality. So, what is going on? 
The only solution would be to put a compressor in car CD players; perfectly possible and affordable with today's technology.

It's not only the total dynamics and the dynamic balance between the songs that are ruined. It also ruins what we would call "the micro-dynamics", the difference between the level of the notes and the silence between the notes. The effect of the hyper-compression is off course most evident on percussive sounds like drums and piano, making everything sound loud but dull, uninteresting, hard and with lots of distorted transients.
 The term "Digitally Re-Mastered" has become synonymous for "Severely Reduced Dynamics".
Mastering is the art of making the final Master sound “better”, not necessarily “louder”! But “louder” is what most clients expect. Why mix your album for days, adjusting every single track of a song to within 0,5 dB to make your mix just right and then ask the mastering engineer to completely alter your entire album in a couple of hours by slamming a compressor-limiter over it, compressing it to death. And all this for the sake of being louder than the competition!??
I do not understand why mix-engineers are not up in arms against the mastering rooms for ruining their work. It is my sincere conviction that a lot of albums would have sounded a lot better without passing through some “Mastering Room”.
However, in most cases, it is not the mastering engineers’ fault. 89% of our clients ask to make everything louder, it’s epidemic.

Source:
http://recording.org/blogs/foon/332-the-despair-of-the-mastering-engineer.html

MCIS is like the opposite of brickwall. MCIS is so quiet and lacks any dynamic whatsoever. It's just quiet, muddy and bass-heavy. Not to mention poorly balanced. Ever tried to listen to Thirty Three or To Forgive in a car stereo with a subwoofer? Forget it.

I've always hated this about the album. not only the balance issue, but the fact that certain songs just never "explode" when they're supposed to. like when all the instruments finally come in on WBFTT, or the intro to XYU. it just feels sonically dull.

I've always hated this about the album. not only the balance issue, but the fact that certain songs just never "explode" when they're supposed to. like when all the instruments finally come in on WBFTT, or the intro to XYU. it just feels sonically dull.

Yeah, like when Soma comes in on Siamese Dream, it's like an explosion. Or the guitars in Plume...earsex. MCIS has none of that. Even Everlasting Gaze had that explosion.

porcelina?

porcelina tries for that, but i always felt that riff comes in flat.

A remaster can't hurt, unless they 'Nevermind 20' it.

A remaster can't hurt, unless they 'Nevermind 20' it.

Yeah, I'm not into that at all. Picked up the 2 CD used for cheap and figured I'd give it a shot... no way. Will always come back to my MFSL version (http://amzn.to/Qfoo8C) of that album... sounds unreal. So, so good.

Nah, there's some big dynamic range on the album, listen to Ruby or Porcelina...

Also, listen to Stumbleine and then XYU. Now THAT'S a dynamic range. It doesn't have to be in one song... Isn't that the point of the album? to go from quiet songs to loud songs?

yea idk what you guys are talking about mcis is perfect as is, but a new mix/master W/O FUCKING AWFUL UNLISTENABLE BRICKWALLING would be a nice new perspective on an album i've played hundreds of times.

at this point i could care less but in the past i was bothered by how the vocals don't have much space on some songs/parts. ruby probably being the worst. you can hear em, but sometimes it's hard to clearly hear every note in the melody [some have argued that this makes it rawk more, and to a point i agree, i'd just like to hear the notes a bit better]. applying compression/eq to the whole shit isn't going to improve it that much, so, who cares. i think he did say they were going to actually *remix* machina, and that i am looking forward to.

Porcelina is definitely the best produced "heavy" song on the album.

LOL...it's 2012 and there's a new unwrapping YouTube clip of MCIS >>>
And guess what...first and only comment:


the reissue is coming later this year with TONS of extras!

montelds



<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/C03sWVme9rU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>