What's wrong with Music these days?

[Frizzle]

Some Modern music.... that i have on my droid... i them all in MP3s however I don't down load shitty 128bit compression files... 256 bit minimum! They sound good enough for my stock honda 300 watt speaker system with a 8 inch sub... kinda wish i would hook up my California amp and Elemental designs 10 inch sub for a bit more bass push for the dance/top40 stuff.

House

Adam K & Kaskade - Raining (Original Mix) - YouTube

R&B

Cee Lo Green - Bright Lights Bigger City - YouTube

Country

Toes - Zac Brown Band Lyrics - YouTube

Rock

Alter Bridge - Ghost of days gone by (With Lyrics) - YouTube

Modern Rock

Coldplay Paradise Lyrics - YouTube

Top 40

LMFAO Feat. Natalia Kills - Champagne Showers - YouTube

Joe buck i think ur right old ppl complain about how new music is crap... same thing was said about musicians such as Elvis, the Beatles and many other now 'iconic' bands/musicians

[kingpin]

I'm not old, but I can tell you that your MP3 quality will never match a quality recorded session. Whether it's digital on a SACD or DVD Audio, or analogue with a good DAC.

[Frizzle]

Originally Posted by kingpin

I'm not old, but I can tell you that your MP3 quality will never match a quality recorded session. Whether it's digital on a SACD or DVD Audio, or analogue with a good DAC.

obviously however data storage is an issue.... eventually MP3s won't be needed.

[Wathen1955]

The other issue you have is music that is recorded too loud like Metalica's Death Magnetic.
New Metallica Album, Death Magnetic, is Too Loud. Many Say Unlistenable - The Classic Vinyl Record

New Metallica Album is Too Loud. Many Say Unlistenable

A while back I posted “Why Vinyl Records Sound Better” which had some reasons why vinyl was better from an audio standpoint than newer CD’s. I saw a new article that has the perfect example using Metallica’s new album Death Magnetic.

The Wall Street Journal carried this post saying that even heavy metal fans are complaining that music is too loud. Following are some quotes from the article:

“…even though Metallica’s ninth studio release, “Death Magnetic,” is No. 1 on the album chart, with 827,000 copies sold in two weeks, some fans are bitterly disappointed: not by the songs or the performance, but the volume. It’s so loud, they say, you can’t hear the details of the music.”

“…audiophiles, recording professionals and some ordinary fans say the extra sonic wallop comes at a steep price. To make recorded music seem louder, engineers must reduce the “dynamic range,” minimizing the difference between the soft and loud parts and creating a tidal wave of aural blandness.”

“When there’s no quiet, there can be no loud…Louder recordings, with higher average sound levels, leave less room for such variation than quieter ones.”

This next one is amazing;

“…the critics have inadvertently recruited a key witness: Ted Jensen, the album’s “mastering engineer,” the person responsible for the sonic tweaks that translate music made in a studio into a product for mass duplication and playback by consumers. Responding to a Metallica fan’s email about loudness, Mr. Jensen sent a sympathetic reply that concluded: “Believe me, I’m not proud to be associated with this one.”" [Wow. Even the engineer who worked on the album isn't happy.]

“Sound engineers say artists who insist on loudness paradoxically give people less to hear, because they end up wiping away nuances and details. Everything from a gently strummed guitar to a pounding snare drum is equally loud, leading to what some call “ear fatigue.” If the listener turns down the volume knob, the music loses even more of its punch.”

“But many musicians, producers and record-company executives “think that having a louder record is going to translate into greater sales,” says Chris Athens, Mr. Jensen’s business partner and a fellow engineer. “Nobody really wants to have a record that’s not as loud as everybody else’s…” [These are most likely the same people who think that people actually love to pay for crappy music.]

Thousands of fans have already started petitions to have the band remix and re-release this album to make it sound better. That to me is just crazy, when your own fans say your album sucks because of the sound quality, you might want to make them happy.

Below is a graphical representation of the wav files for …And Justice for All, and Death Magnetic. There is no dynamic range to Death Magnetic, which makes everything the same volume. That isn’t music.

There are play buttons on these, but they don’t work as this is an image, but please, go to the Wall Street Journal link above and click on the graphic and listen to the sound files. The new Death Magnetic is unlistenable.

Is Heavy-Metal Getting Too Loud

[PLRX]

[PLRX]

Originally Posted by Wathen1955

The other issue you have is music that is recorded too loud like Metalica's Death Magnetic.
New Metallica Album, Death Magnetic, is Too Loud. Many Say Unlistenable - The Classic Vinyl Record

I said that the day it came out.

[MattW]

*All* of my music is in MP3 format now; I never use my CDs any more. But the remastered, transferred 70s/80s/early 90s stuff, almost uniformly, has dynamic range and clarity missing from the tunes I have from the last couple of years. This includes the "harder" stuff like KISS, Black Sabbath, Def Leppard Gun N Roses, Poison, Van Halen.

On my Eagles tunes, you can hear fingers sliding on the guitar strings; I can't pick out that kind of detail on any of the 2011 music. But they're both MP3 straight from Amazon.

Hmm... I need to pick up a copy of "All Summer Long" (Kid Rock, etc) and see how it sounds compared to the original "Sweet Home Alabama"...

[NB2K]

Originally Posted by Wadoka

*All* of my music is in MP3 format now; I never use my CDs any more. But the remastered, transferred 70s/80s/early 90s stuff, almost uniformly, has dynamic range and clarity missing from the tunes I have from the last couple of years. This includes the "harder" stuff like KISS, Black Sabbath, Def Leppard Gun N Roses, Poison, Van Halen.

On my Eagles tunes, you can hear fingers sliding on the guitar strings; I can't pick out that kind of detail on any of the 2011 music. But they're both MP3 straight from Amazon.

Hmm... I need to pick up a copy of "All Summer Long" (Kid Rock, etc) and see how it sounds compared to the original "Sweet Home Alabama"...

Don't do it.

like poppin' an ex one more time, you can't go home again...

[DJ_Critterus]

Originally Posted by kingpin

I'm not old, but I can tell you that your MP3 quality will never match a quality recorded session. Whether it's digital on a SACD or DVD Audio, or analogue with a good DAC.

There's a reason why some of the bigger bands around still like to use DAC or Digital Audio Tape for their recordings. Korn is famous for recording this way, for example (but they aren't on my favorites list).