Clipped masters

[Hugh Robjohns]

It's alright, I think we all realised it was an external reference track and not your work.

Still scary that someone would create that deliberately....

[SafeandSound Mastering]

The sole goal was extreme volume. dBFS meter pinned to 0dBFS from start to end of the track.

It's not even cool or maverick to do that, it's inconsiderate to your listeners IMO.

[sonics]

Shocking, indeed. What sort of ears/brain can actually listen to that? I really can't understand it, but we now have more than a full generation of loudness-impaired listeners, I suppose.

A couple of times recently I've encountered music on YouTube (I listen to some guitarists' channels, so very loud music tracks do come up) that is so unbearably loud that I can't even listen to it with my volume control at 5%. That's one step above off. I found it oppressive and disturbing.

[Drew Stephenson]

Does rather remind me of sound-checking at a gig a few years ago when the relatively famous* headliner stepped out into the audience area and insisted to the engineer that there wasn't enough top end.
At the point that the rest of us had our fingers jammed into our ears and were crying in the corner he pronounced himself satisfied and went back on stage.
At which point the sound guy immediately dropped the top end back down to something that wasn't going to deemed an assault on the bat population of the city.
The headliner obviously had no top end left on his hearing at all.

* Who shall remain nameless.**
** Because I've forgotten his name. Worked with Bowie a fair bit but it's safe to say he wasn't the songwriting genius part of the set-up.

[SafeandSound Mastering]

I have attended a few select festivals in recent years (I hasten to add with ear plugs in and generally at significant distance from the PA systems, tent edges etc. I have a great time even with no upper mids and tops ! I use Honeywell 3301161 Howard Leight MAX Foam Earplugs and forego the loss of top end, it's fine you get used to it after a while. I don't care about tailored frequency responses. I take in the atmosphere which is nice in itself.)

It is important to hear how these systems sound, how music sounds loud. And nothing beats outdoors sounds, open air = infinite bass traps to the sky. (especially IMO Funktion-One systems an amazing UK company)

https://funktion-one.com/

And I went into an enclosed barn once that was playing this genre despite having ear plugs in I felt a distinct sensation of heat in the volume of the music. It was loud, most systems obviously are, it's party time afterall. But there was something different this time. I backed away and left despite wanting to stay. There was something distinctly wrong, a relentless assault (even with ear plugs in) that was simply unbearable, glass shards etc. etc. I believe it was a mass of aliasing from clipping in the highs a wall of "HF wrongness" on all levels.

I now understand why. This is not good, not good in any way shape or form if this becomes the norm. I work with a reasonable amount of this genre and I make it sound good. I sincerely hope for itself as a genre it has not taken a very wrong turn. I suspect this ref was a self mastering job with a punky attitude. I hope.

It's irresponsible and dangerous to people's hearing faculty.

[tea for two]

Just for information value I was recently presented with a reference track that was -2.7 LUFS integrated. Heavily clipped master, sounded like total trash.

Flippin eck. I'm grimacing just imagining it. Was it a Thrash Metal reference.

This was a reference track not my master just to be clear.

I presented my thoughts on the reference to my client in no uncertain terms.

We settled on a still loud but very good sounding end result (about -6/-7 LUFS integrated) without clipping (I never clip because you don't need to) and I did a secondary set of streaming masters inclusive.

We know you are World Class SASM.

[Hugh Robjohns]

Does rather remind me of sound-checking at a gig a few years ago when the relatively famous* headliner stepped out into the audience area and insisted to the engineer that there wasn't enough top end.

Reminds me of a high-end audio product launch many years back at a well known London recording studio.

The manufacturer was playing a selection of lovely high-quality demo tracks, one of which was a remastered to high-res Elton John track. A resident engineer complained that it sounded dull and "rubbish"... and he went off to get a "much better version".

Said better version was played later, after the main presentation, and it had a top-end that did the 'shards of glass' thing and ripped our collective ears off.

The resident engineer professed himself pleased that it sounded so much better than the remastered version we heard earlier. A lot of the guests were muttering things under their breath as we politely nodded and tried to exit quietly at the back...

Ho hum...