“Angry Metal-Fi is a series of articles that are cross posted on Angry Metal Guy and Metal-Fi as a collaborative effort to evangelize dynamics in metal.” This time we examine the MP3 itself and its inherent limitations. Things are getting techy up in here!
“Angry Metal-Fi is a series of articles that are cross posted on Angry Metal Guy and Metal-Fi as a collaborative effort to evangelize dynamics in metal.” Tis the season for lists, so let us start off 2015 with a look back at the very best and worst sounding albums of 2014 with the help of those audio gnomes at Metal-Fi.
“Angry Metal-Fi is a series of articles that are cross posted on Angry Metal Guy and Metal-Fi as a collaborative effort to evangelize dynamics in metal.” Follow along as the tech masters at Metal-Fi break down how to find the proper turntable and all the related equipment you need to become a true vinyl fiend.
Angry Metal-Fi is a series of articles that are cross posted on Angry Metal Guy and Metal-Fi as a collaborative effort to evangelize dynamics in metal.
“Let’s pretend for the sake of argument that you’ve read all of our articles and are now a true believer: The overzealous use of dynamic range compression coupled with brickwall limiting yields lifeless, dull sounding records. But if this is indeed all true, then why does the industry continue to approve of (and even insist on) this insanity in the first place?” Now that’s a good question, and the Metal-Fi guys have answers you might not like.
“But I like my metal loud. It just sounds better to me.”
This is bar none the number one reaction I get from fellow headbangers, who after they read one of our articles, go off in a frenzy and measure all their record’s dynamic range only to discover they almost always prefer the hyper compressed albums over the dynamic ones.
Not surprising. In fact most of the time, their results only reinforce why the Loudness War exists in the first place. Let me explain.” And explain he does!
Angry Metal-Fi is a series of articles that are cross posted on Angry Metal Guy and Metal-Fi as a collaborative effort to evangelize dynamics in metal. In this particularly entry Dave-Fi takes on some myths about vinyl in honor of Record Store Day, explaining why one might want to use it… but why it ain’t perfect.
Iced Earth is a bonafide heavy metal institution, and part of their long staying power and general widespread appeal has got to be attributed to their fearless leader and head riff master Jon Schaffer, whose strong work ethic, unwavering live free or die attitude, and keen sense of aesthetics, has kept this machine rolling for over the last two decades. With his tried and true formula of power, thrash, and lyrical armageddon, Schaffer has churned out a number of genre leading staples, ranging from 1995’s Burnt Offerings, with all of its dark imagery and heavy riffing, to 1998’s Something Wicked this Way Comes, whose last three songs became the basis for the multi-record Something Wicked Saga, an epic fantasy about the rise and fall of man.
In our first Angry Metal-Fi article, Alex pointed out exactly what’s wrong with Fleshgod Apocalypse’s Labyrinth — it’s compressed to within an inch of its life, ruining the music that the band worked so hard to create. It’s easy for us to sit and point fingers though and tell you how everyone is doing it wrong, (which they are). To really get a sense of what you’ve been missing, you need to hear some examples of bands and engineers that are doing it right. Once you’ve heard how good fully dynamic metal can sound, and how much better your favorite albums could have sounded had they been mastered with full dynamics, we hope that it will make you angry. You might even shed a tear for everything that’s been lost over the last 20 years, so many great albums ruined because of the insanity that is the Loudness War.
“When Dave and I founded Metal-Fi, we were prepared for many things, but the one thing we weren’t prepared for was that Angry Metal Guy would get well, angrier.” So begins the first in a series of cross-posting articles about production and sound dynamics in heavy metal from the boys at the excellent website Metal-Fi, called “Angry Metal-Fi.”
