How to play a CD - A easy guide.

[The_Burg]

Early CD, pre mid 90's

1: Open case
2: Put in CD and play.

Modern CD:

1: RIP to WAV
2: Reduce overall level by 10db using Audacity
3: Run the Nyquist de-clip plugin
4: Export back to WAV
5: Burn back to CD
6: Play the thing at last.

And they wonder we don't buy CD's anymore.
It takes around 3 hours work to make the CD useable.
(Though i skip 5 & 6 and stream to my Squeezebox).

Any of you clever folks have a automated method of doing this rather than track by track?

[The_Burg]

ShadownINja said:

Are you saying the recording levels were wrong? Surely this should be a complaint to the publisher?

Have a search for 'The loudness war' loads of stuff out there.
It's record companies that f@ck it all up.

[The_Burg]

ShadownINja said:

That doesn't make sense. I thought people recorded things at a balanced setting because they have monitors rather than home speakers.

I just had a thought. Maybe it's the music you lot listen to that's just rubbish.

Just googled it. In the end, isn't it down to the consumer's volume knob and if it clips... they'll turn it down/off?

Edited by ShadownINja on Sunday 24th May 11:34

The signal is already screwed, turning the volume down makes no difference to the sound just the volume.
Lack of dynamic range is potentially very damaging for your amp and speakers too.

[The_Burg]

rockinatmidnight said:

Funk said:

rockinatmidnight said:

Worst i've noticed with this is Metallica's last album, 'Death Magnetic'
Terrible sound quality Even I am noticing this and im a young 'un!

Get the version ripped from Guitar Hero III - it's miles better production-wise:

http://mastering-media.blogspot.com/2008/09/metall...

It's a good album sadly let down by appalling mastering. It's available if you know where to look and I can confirm that the sound quality is leagues ahead of the CD.

Edited by Funk on Monday 25th May 14:25

Cheers! Shall have to give that a try tonight.
Death magnetic is the worst i've heard, brilliant music, but the quality is a total let down! Distracting when your trying to play along to it too!

Have a hunt for Californication unmastered, only ever seen a 128k MP3 but still sound a million times better than the CD. (If anyone knows of a FLAC version please let me know). As an side as i own the real CD is this actually completely lega?

[The_Burg]

JustinP1 said:

As a result, tracks were mixed and mastered with a lot less bass because basically the listener's system couldn't really reproduce it anyway and it would only induce distortion. To gain clarity on things like a snare drum, and to make a bass drum audible at all engineers used to have to boost a high frequency with the drum to keep the drum audible in the rhythm.

Sorry but i strongly disagree with this. I would in fact say that HiFi in general peaked around the late 80s.
Or do you mean 'HiFi' as in crappy midi system type setup?
There have been improvement to the true high end esoteric stuff but the average real HiFi has not.
(Strangely the death of real affordable HiFi died around the same time that CD quality declined, so not only has the horrendous quality of modern CDs affected the recording and artists it has also killed of reasonably priced HiFi. No longer are there specialist in every town, FFS even Dixons, Comet sold proper seperates back then).