Post by frozenhero on Feb 17, 2016 21:22:32 GMT
After having seen these DR numbers, I don't reasonably see how anybody could class these releases as "dynamic" (they seem to be crushed to hell and back!) and "audiophile". CF are selling a scam, I am not an audiophile but I know audiophiles want LESS compression, MORE dynamics and generally LESS processing. The Tim Turan remasters werer moderately compressed, but Culture Factory have jumped the shark. And it's not the first time they've been caught. If dynamics are important for your listening experience, avoid these at all costs. I don't rule out the possibility that they may have better tonality than others but in this case, there seems to be some severe limiting going on, and that is the overriding aspect for me.
Just for comparison: On the Andy Pearce remaster the DRs are between 10 (Drifting Away) and 13 (Slow Train). The RMS (average volume) is somewhere between -11 dB and -15 dB. That means the CF is three times as loud, and has only a fraction of the original dynamics still left. It's only two dB away from some of the worst loudness war victims like Death Magnetic, and louder than any original Quo release (ISOTFC goes all the way up to -6 dB RMS and has some tracks in the DR 5 range). I also see that there is a couple of overs in the MP3, meaning that if it wasn't clipped on the CD already, it certainly led to additional distortions during the MP3 conversion.
I wrote some rants about the latest batch of Saga remasters. Saga, like Quo, have succumbed to the loudness wars as far as new releases are considered, but I was shocked with the complete lack of dynamics on the new remasters. This is even more limited and would probably lead to my mind turning off after some two minutes.
so you aren't going to buy one and try one FH...?
Oh sure. But that's macrodynamics. Quo, like most rock bands, don't have that much macrodynamics anyway (though some tracks, like ROLD, BFM or Backwater actually make great use of them). However the microdynamics (i.e. constantly changing volume - mainly drum hits) - as measured by the DR meter - are absolutely essential because the less of them you have in a recording, the less rhythm, excitement and space there is in a recording. In other words, when the drums aren't louder than the rest of the music, when it all looks like a flat line in a wave editor, chances are that it will sound just as flat. Our brain then processes the music like white noise, i.e. tunes it out and stops paying attention. Or worse... I've once gotten a headache from standing in the electronics store and looking for CDs to buy while the loudspeakers blared out the incredibly terrible and annoying "Heartbeat Song" by Kelly Clarkson! Man that was unpleasant, I tell you.