Sound quality

If you think today's musical releases don't have the sound quality that releases made two decades ago did, you're right. Here's a musical demonstration of the evolution of the Beatles' "Something" over four CD releases:



In the first three cases there's really nothing to complain about; in fact, the 1993 mix is probably the best because it spreads the dynamics over the maximum possible range of values. The fourth mix, though, completely destroys all sense of dynamics in the original recording. Audio data which should be proportionally louder than the maximum CD audio threshold will allow is "clipped" to the maximum threshold, creating a sense of horrid distortion that sounds, to anyone who isn't completely tin-eared, unnatural.

Unfortunately this tendency is no longer confined to major-label releases. The below image compares and contrasts the second track on the CD release of Two Hunters, the 2007 album by Wolves in the Throne Room, with rip I made of the same track from my vinyl copy.

(large image is large)http://www.almost1337.com/mp3/aaron/dynamics.png

Now granted, black metal isn't a genre that's noted for high-quality sound recordings in the first place, but it's clear to all which recording should sound more organic and natural.

I'm not sure how many other people on EoFF care about things like this, but it's gotten to absurd levels. One of the worst offenders is Metallica's last album Death Magnetic, which was apparently intentionally remastered by the band or Rick Rubin to a level that makes it literally unlistenable, to the point where the mastering engineer Ted Jensen has disowned the official release. Again, a simple comparison of waveforms (the Guitar Hero version was mastered properly) will make the cause of this scourge plainly evident.

One possible solution to this problem is simply for people to stop buying music that's mastered like crap. Turn Me Up certifies CDs that are actually mastered at volume levels that allow the sound to breathe; I'm probably only going to buy these discs from this point forward, unless it's stuff that's clearly intended to have a deliberately 'necro' production for the sake of atmosphere (e.g. most black metal). I would also encourage users to stop buying records released on RIAA labels, as the RIAA has by far been the worst offender with regard to encouraging the practice of poor mastering.

If people care about things like this I can discuss it more. At least, in the case of Death Magnetic, fans have made mixes that actually contain dynamic range; in more severe cases, options like that may not be available.

It kinda sucks they try to make things louder and louder and before long the difrence between the low sound and high sound is very slim.
Aslo you are righ about death magnetic thats one of the worst perpitrators out there.
We shoul all go back to vinyls they have much better sound quality if they are in good shape. you can even get a thing now to hook to your pc and convert the songs on a vinyl record to mp3s

Here's a good illustration of what clipping on actual recent CD releases does to sound quality. Here's another illustration that makes it even more blatant, although it's not from a real release.

Granted, both of those YouTube videos have YouTube's own sound compression, which carries its own issues (lots of loss of treble, for starters, which makes the drums sound awful even in the "good" recordings). I honestly don't know how anyone can stand mp3s, apart from not having decent enough equipment/hearing to be able to tell the difference.