Jump to content
Muse

Drones Album Discussion Thread

Spectrum IV

By Spectrum IV
in Songs & Releases

 Share

Recommended Posts

jonisdead Escapee

jonisdead

Posted
Posted
Probably very few. Personally I think BH&R is worse for it (TAB'especially). But at the end of the day the vast majority it won't even register or recognise.

 

What was the main gripe with BHaR anyway? When I listen to it the main thing is the mixing isn't crisp since all the levels seem the same/brickwalled.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
weezul Escapee

weezul

Posted
Posted
Probably very few. Personally I think BH&R is worse for it (TAB'especially). But at the end of the day the vast majority it won't even register or recognise.

 

If the vast majority won't even recognise, then why bother pushing it so loud at all? it does nothing better, and only makes it worse for the people who can hear the problems. I don't mind a loud as fuck master as long as it's done well. This album has audible digital clipping on it and it is uncomfortable to listen to. I shouldn't have to suffer because some butt-nugget can't hear a song through his 0.5inch fucking phone speaker.

 

The argument that 'it doesn't matter' is just going to bring the art form of making music down and down and down. If a load of people supposedly 'at the top of the food chain' in terms of making an album (the band, the producer, engineer, mastering engineers) don't seem to care then what hope is left? Volume will eventually be leveled out again through iTunes Radio, and Spotify, and YouTube is starting to apply volume leveling to it's playlists, so hopefully in the long term it will go back to not being an issue.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
jonisdead Escapee

jonisdead

Posted
Posted
Volume will eventually be leveled out again through iTunes Radio, and Spotify, and YouTube is starting to apply volume leveling to it's playlists, so hopefully in the long term it will go back to not being an issue.

 

In theory, yeah but even though volume leveling makes the bad stand out and also makes the good stand out, I don't think that would be enough motivation to get those people at the top to end the wars.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Citizen_2 Escapee

Citizen_2

Posted
Posted (edited)
If the vast majority won't even recognise, then why bother pushing it so loud at all?

 

This ^. The argument for compressing singles (and this is going back to 60's/70's now) was always that it made songs easier to hear when they came in over the radio on your Ford Escort's sh*tty mono speaker on the way to work.

 

Then when CDs got invented the record industry banged on about the low noise floor and super wide dynamic range - and if you listen to early pop/rock CDs, they are usually bloody well mastered. Yet now somehow we're back to everything being compressed again. I'm not sure how much of this is the result of mixing and mastering engineers thinking about the end product being an MP3, and working with that in mind.

 

Reminds me of an interview I saw with a famous 1970s/80s producer who always used to switch the studio amps and monitors off and listen via the line input of a rubbish little portable radio. He figured if it sounded right on that, he was doing his job...

 

The argument that 'it doesn't matter' is just going to bring the art form of making music down and down and down.

 

Yep. And, frustratingly, clearly someone in Team Muse, either the band themselves, or the production/commercial chain, knows it *does* matter, or we wouldn't have been offered 24/96 FLACs of the last two albums - and we probably wouldn't have got the T2L ones in the way we did.

 

Volume will eventually be leveled out again through iTunes Radio, and Spotify, and YouTube is starting to apply volume leveling to it's playlists, so hopefully in the long term it will go back to not being an issue.

 

I'm not so optimistic about the problem going away - as it depends what the content producers supply, and also depends on how the levelling is actually carried out. It could simply mean we get *more* compressed dynamic ranges, not less. Dolby have a fairly advanced method of dynamic range control in their DVD/Blu-Ray soundtracks for example. Without that being coded in at source, and adoption across the streaming services, the only other ways of normalising stuff are fairly crude by comparison.

 

Anyway, all this is (hopefully) premature. Fingers crossed that the HD downloads on Monday are a breath of fresh ear.

Edited by Citizen Crazed
Link to comment
Share on other sites
FabriPav Escapee

FabriPav

Posted
Posted
What program is used to that and when can we expect that, few months down the line?

I'm sarcastic, it's probably going to sound like shit. If ADL thinks it sounds better is because of placebo effect.

 

I don't know what program is used to simulate 5.1 surround btw.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Citizen_2 Escapee

Citizen_2

Posted
Posted (edited)
What program is used to that and when can we expect that, few months down the line?

 

There are any number of audio tweaking progs that will upconvert a stereo input to multichannel. Pro Tools, Wavelab, Audition, plus many more no doubt. As Fabripav says, if it's someone playing around with the released album and upconverting it after the fact, it'll be totally random, and have all the same issues and limitations that are in the release, just coming through five (or six etc) speakers instead of two. Hell, if you have a home cinema system, it probably has a button on it somewhere that will upconvert stereo source into multichannel on the fly.

 

And as Pav said up there, if someone prefers something done in that way, it's purely a question of personal preference/placebo rather than your third party bootleg multichannel mix being technically 'better'.

 

The only exception to that is Resistance, which had an official 5.1 channel mix done in the studio (and also has a longer edit of Unnatural Selection) - and which came on a DVD when you bought the upmarket versions of the album.

 

The 'purest' mixes are the studio masters, period. From there on in, even in a digital realm where there's no generational degredation, once the elective artificial compression and limitation gets done, there's no way to directly undo it and get back to the earlier version of the audio - unless you still have access to the earlier files. The T2L HD FLACs vs the CD are the perfect comparison as the FLACs were taken from the pre-mastering stage of the production process.

Edited by Citizen Crazed
Link to comment
Share on other sites
MalvaBlanco Escapee

MalvaBlanco

Posted
Posted

Listened to Drones in the car with my parents (who are both in their fifties).

 

My mom showed some interest in the concept of the album and seemed impressed by the guitar playing in the ending of Reapers and the solo of Defector. They talked through the entirety of Mercy and The Handler and fell silent around Revolt.

 

Interestingly, after 5 seconds into Aftermath, my Dad went: "Damn, this is beautiful. Sounds a little like Dire Straits." :D When it ended, my mom remarked "Wow that was amazing, they haven't really made a song in this style before have they?" and my Dad was singing their praises. "At least someone's making real music again"

 

The Globalist was also well-received.

Dad: Is that real whistling? :LOL:

Me: Yeah, the intro's based on a Morricone piece.

Mom: So that's Bellamy doing the whistling?

Me: I'm pretty sure it is.

Mom: He really can do everything, can't he?

 

Around two minutes -

Dad: That's it, I'm getting myself a copy of this album. :LOL:

Mom: This is a relaxing listen.

Dad: I know right? The guitar tone is very Zen, it reminds me a little of dolphin calls. :stunned:

 

When the heavy section began -

Mom: Whoa, guitar battle. So what's happening now in the story?

Me: Eh... the protagonist has become a dictator, and he's nuking everybody. This is the countdown.

 

We got home with still 4 minutes to go in The Globalist, so Mom told Dad to not turn off the engine because she really wanted to hear the rest :D

Link to comment
Share on other sites
serpentsatellite Escapee

serpentsatellite

Posted
Posted
It's alright, you'll listen it on monday, if not you're free to revolt.

 

Sorry if that pun felt forced in :LOL:

 

Tuesday. Really, really late Tuesday. And that's if it shows up on release date. :(

 

My T2L showed up weeks late, and I just bought a second copy of the damn thing before it showed up.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
topo_musero Escapee

topo_musero

Posted
Posted
Tuesday. Really, really late Tuesday. And that's if it shows up on release date. :(

 

My T2L showed up weeks late, and I just bought a second copy of the damn thing before it showed up.

 

Well, my copy will show up around June 17th :rolleyes:. Amazon doesn't like me.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
serpentsatellite Escapee

serpentsatellite

Posted
Posted
Well, my copy will show up around June 17th :rolleyes:. Amazon doesn't like me.

 

I got overexcited when Dead Inside came out, and ordered the "box" set on the website here.

Tried to cancel it a few times, but they ignored me. :chuckle: Oh well.

 

Not real keen on the fact that there's no separate CD cases, in the event I wanted to, you know, BRING the CDs anywhere.

 

Plus I can't see myself buying a new player just for the vinyl.

 

Essentially wasted a good deal of money here. :erm:

Link to comment
Share on other sites
topo_musero Escapee

topo_musero

Posted
Posted
I got overexcited when Dead Inside came out, and ordered the "box" set on the website here.

Tried to cancel it a few times, but they ignored me. :chuckle: Oh well.

 

Not real keen on the fact that there's no separate CD cases, in the event I wanted to, you know, BRING the CDs anywhere.

 

Plus I can't see myself buying a new player just for the vinyl.

 

Essentially wasted a good deal of money here. :erm:

 

Well, Dead Inside is an amazing song, so, I can see why you got overexcited :LOL::LOL:. It sucks that there aren't any separate CD cases, you can always buy some "standard" and "boring" CD cases, but I guess it's not the same :rolleyes:

 

 

It's indeed a good album :happy:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share
Go to topic listing
×
×
  • Create New...