Post Random Pearl Jam-Related Thoughts You Have

[chewm]

By the Way is probably my favorite RHCP album at this point.

[LoathedVermin72]

RHCP's By the Way is brickwalled, and I wouldn't change a thing about it.

Verm, I think In Utero is a good example of how The Woods could have retained its signature sound without killing ear drums. All the loudness and rawness are there, but the quieter parts allow my eardrums some time to catch their breath, so to speak.

I love the sound of both albums, but they are necessarily and intentionally different. I wouldn't change either of them.

[Birds in Hell]

Indeed, it's really nothing to do with volume - it's dynamics. And it's not simply the impact on the difference between loud and quiet sections of a piece of music, which is obvious, but what I'd guess you could call the micro-dynamics: drum hits, cymbals and guitars don't decay like they should and the overall effect is really unmusical. I can't get into the music because there's an odd disconnect going on where I'm aware that the drums don't quite sound like drums, etc.

It absolutely stops me listening to things, even music I really enjoy. I'd rather just listen to something else.

I'm not quite there with you. An album with bad mastering is just a strike against it, but not a dealbreaker. I can think of some examples where brickwalling to the point of distortion is the point and can work aesthetically-- I dunno, the first one that comes to mind is Jay Reatard's Blood Visions, or the Flaming Lips' Embryonic-- and others where it's just the result of incompetent engineering, like Iggy Pop's mix of The Stooges' Raw Power. I can't understand how a human being with functioning ears could think that version of the album sounds good. Or, to bring it back to Pearl Jam, something like the intro to "Worldwide Suicide" which sounds like literal aural garbage.

The extent to which loud mastering is detrimental to enjoyment of the music is subjective, but also varies from album to album. I generally stay away from super brickwalled stuff because I don't like how it makes the frequencies all flattened out and tinny, but it's not the main thing that will cause me to turn an album off. Bad songs will.

I like Embryonic too and I think you can draw a distinction between a circumstance where an artist is using blown-out digitally-clipped sounds during the recording process as an intentional artistic device and something like Worldwide Suicide where the heavy-handed mastering approach doesn't feel as though it's consistent with what the band were trying to achieve.

[Jorge]

Here is an example of an intentionally brickwalled album that still sounds like shit and that is an OK criticism to make

[LoathedVermin72]

[Kevin Davis]

When listening to an album in full, I just set the volume where I like it and go, just like any other album.

That is a complete misunderstanding of the basic fundamentals of the argument at hand. It's like throwing a snowball to prove that global warming isn't real and therefore doesn't matter.

When something is brickwalled, you can't listen to it at any volume without hearing fatigue setting in. And it gets worse as you get older. It hit me really hard about a year or two ago...I can't listen to anything brickwalled now without actual severe frequency loss. And that makes it really hard to "get into" what you listening to.

I don't know that I ever intended to make any kind of "argument" with that statement, or some objective case in favor of this mastering practice, and certainly not a claim that it "isn't real" or "shouldn't matter" -- I'm just explaining how I personally, in my own listening, adjust for recordings that are inherently imperfect, for any number of reasons, poor mastering among them, to arrive at the best available compromise so that I can focus on the things in the music that I care about. I'm aware that turning the volume down on a track where clipping is inherent isn't going to make that clip go away, just as adjusting the EQ on a shitty audience recording isn't suddenly going to make it sound like a soundboard. But we all have different things that register with us on an instinctive level when we listen to music, and much as Joey doesn't register EV's current vocal limitations as that big of a deal (which is what prompted me down this thought corridor of "things that seem to drive everyone else crazy but which I don't really even hear"), how an album is mastered simply isn't something my ears gravitate towards -- it doesn't faze me if it's done poorly and it doesn't excite me if it's done well. And I don't mean to say I can't hear it at all -- "Californication" always sounded to me like if I played it at full volume I'd get electrocuted. But I have never once experienced Spenno's scenario of "drums not sounding like drums," etc. To me that seems a little dramatic, but hey, if it's what your ears respond to, it's what they respond to. My ears respond to other things.

The idea that this practice uniformly causes some kind of "listening fatigue" seems dubious to me, though -- I have a hard time thinking that all the bajillion people who bought "Californication" or some other brickwalled commercial juggernaut found themselves inexplicably unable to listen to more than 3 songs of it in one sitting despite the fact that they generally liked the music on the album. No one agonizes over this besides music nerds.

RHCP's By the Way is brickwalled, and I wouldn't change a thing about it.

I would change everything about it. I would throw it out the window.

This would not change anything about it, it would just make it slightly physically further away from you than before.

[Kevin Davis]

I like Embryonic too and I think you can draw a distinction between a circumstance where an artist is using blown-out digitally-clipped sounds during the recording process as an intentional artistic device and something like Worldwide Suicide where the heavy-handed mastering approach doesn't feel as though it's consistent with what the band were trying to achieve.

Isn't this exactly what L.V. has been saying the entire time?

[Jorge]

RHCP's By the Way is brickwalled, and I wouldn't change a thing about it.

I would change everything about it. I would throw it out the window.

This would not change anything about it, it would just make it slightly physically further away from you than before.

I would do both things

[Kevin Davis]

RHCP's By the Way is brickwalled, and I wouldn't change a thing about it.

I would change everything about it. I would throw it out the window.

This would not change anything about it, it would just make it slightly physically further away from you than before.

I would do both things

This is illogical. If you changed everything about it, it would become an album you loved, in which case throwing it out the window would make no sense.

[Jorge]

Let me just make this quip

[stip]

i decided I prefer the avalanche lyric/version of who you are better than the circumstance version.

[epilogue]

i decided I prefer the avalanche lyric/version of who you are better than the circumstance version.

I do like the actual lyric better. But it's presence on the No Code reissue bugs the shit out of me.

[VinylGuy]

RHCP's By the Way is brickwalled, and I wouldn't change a thing about it.

I would change everything about it. I would throw it out the window.

[VinylGuy]

The Mark Richards interview they did for LB is really, really good.

[bodysnatcher]

Are the latest reissues of Pink Floyd's "The Wall" brickwalled? I really hope so

[McParadigm]

Are the latest reissues of Pink Floyd's "The Wall" brickwalled? I really hope so

It's just a repressing of the 2011 remaster with a bunch of packaging changes, so no. Those actually appear to be slightly less compressed than the previous issue, at least for The Wall. They did boost some frequencies high up on the chain, from what I understand, to enhance the feeling of brightness and presence. But the overall reaction is positive.

But to your point, rereleasing their entire catalog as a special edition box, then promptly offering their three biggest records as "immersion editions," then reissuing them all 5 years later with no sonic changes whatsoever and just some new graphics work.....is pretty much where we should expect Pearl Jam to be within the next 5 years.

[bodysnatcher]

Oh I was just saying that I hope "Another Brick in the Wall" was actually brickwalled

[evenslow]

.....is pretty much where we should expect Pearl Jam to be within the next 5 years.

Ah yes, the patented McParadigm screeching left turn into a Pearl Jam insult. That's the stuff.

[Strat]

.....is pretty much where we should expect Pearl Jam to be within the next 5 years.

Ah yes, the patented McParadigm screeching left turn into a Pearl Jam insult. That's the stuff.

[epilogue]

.....is pretty much where we should expect Pearl Jam to be within the next 5 years.

Ah yes, the patented McParadigm screeching left turn into a Pearl Jam insult. That's the stuff.

Yeah, I laughed.

To be clear, I don't disagree with McParadigm. But I did laugh.