Dynamic Range site

Found a cool site where you can see the dynamic range of remastered CD's compared to original releases. I don't own any Priest remasters but I have heard they are terrible. The lower the number, the worse they are. Check it out here:

http://dr.loudness-war.info/album/list?artist=judas+priest&album=

In the upper right hand corner is a "links" button. You can download software and analyze your own cd's and upload the results to the site. I haven't downloaded it yet but look forward to checking it out. I did a quick look of the original Rush Vapor Trails and as expected it was poor. I was surprised that the Vapor Trails remix also scored low. Stryper's latest releases were also very low.

There are some CDs in my collection I really don't WANT to know about.  Seriously, while it's awesome when something can mathematically be balls and still sound good to my ears, it just makes me wonder how much care and work went into arrangements, recording, mixing, etc. only to be squashed to hell at the mastering stage.

And then we have to wait 30 years for a viable remix/remaster to come out rectifying the crap they did to it.  If I wanted to listen to something with the dynamic range of a 78...

EDIT: I decided to pull up what I'm presently listening to - Collective Soul's "Disciplined Breakdown" - and was surprised to see it's on the cusp of "bad" dynamic range. Made me laugh because I think it's a stunning album sonically...

We've talked about this website many times on here. I use it to check out the the loudness of many remasters before I buy them.

I use it a lot.

The most eye-opening feature is being able to compare CD releases to the same titles released on LP or HD download. There's nothing like seeing the CD has 6db of dynamic range...but the LP double that amount with 12. One of the reasons I still buy some albums on vinyl as my first choice.

How often is the HD release that much better than the CD? I've seen tons of reviews that seem to point to sites as HDTracks as not particularly reliable when it comes to offering QUALITY HD material.

HDtracks release whatever version the record labels send. Sometimes it's a flat transfer (pre-compression), sometimes it's a specific master tailored for HDtracks, sometimes it's just as compressed as the 16bit counterpart. That's why you have to read reviews before purchasing, there is no standardized practice amongst the varying record labels. Not the fault of HDtracks.

They just added the flat masters of Steven Wilson's remixes of Aqualung and Thick As A Brick. The CD releases were mastered by a separate engineer and Wilson hated how he boosted the high end and added additional compression to the final mix. Because of that Wilson will no longer allow a mastering engineer to touch his work after his mix is completed. Thanks to HDtracks, we can now hear those releases as Wilson intended.

S.D. wrote:

They just added the flat masters of Steven Wilson's remixes of Aqualung and Thick As A Brick.  The CD releases were mastered by a separate engineer and Wilson hated how he boosted the high end and added additional compression to the final mix.  Because of that Wilson will no longer allow a mastering engineer to touch his work after his mix is completed.  Thanks to HDtracks, we can now hear those releases as Wilson intended.  

Must be nice to be so in-demand that you can tell the labels to bugger off and not touch your work when you're done with it. Do we even have any other "celebrity" remix/remaster folks who can command that kind of attention?

Runicen wrote:

Do we even have any other "celebrity" remix/remaster folks who can command that kind of attention?

Dave Grohl seems to care about the recording process. He pays a lot of attention to detail. Now as far as the final product is concerned, I think something gets lost there that is probably out of his hands. But that's the first name I thought of.

MetalGuy71 wrote:

Runicen wrote:

Do we even have any other "celebrity" remix/remaster folks who can command that kind of attention?

Dave Grohl seems to care about the recording process. He pays a lot of attention to detail. Now as far as the final product is concerned, I think something gets lost there that is probably out of his hands. But that's the first name I thought of.

If Dave Grohl had the final say I seriously doubt the Sound City soundtrack would have been as horribly compressed as it was.  All that care taken in the recording...and then it gets ruined in the final production stage. Not Grohl's fault...that's the record labels doing. But, for this not to happen you need to get mastering written into your contract as something you have "final approval" of. It's the equivalent of a movie director getting "Final Cut" written into their contract.