strutting:

via Chockenberry, the damage record companies have wrought on the Rolling Stones masterpiece Exile on Main Street. LET’S MAKE EVERYTHING LOUDER YEAH THATLL SOUND GREAT …

… buncha jerks.

Wow.

What’s going on here is that in remastering (top soundwave), the audio has been distorted (via compression and amplification) so much that basically everything is the same volume. There’s no dynamic range; every instant of sound is now at peak loudness. One of the greatest recordings of all time has been made harsh, dull, and tiring to listen to because record company executives want it to sound “loud.”

It’s hard to tell from this graphic, but it looks like there may even be some clipping going on. See where the waveform is flattened against the top and bottom of the window? That’s audio data being amplified to the point of becoming indistinguishable noise. Normally when this happens, it’s a mistake: some piece of equipment is turned up too loud, overdriving the thing it’s plugged into. You turn it down, the clipping goes away. But when the clipping is part of the recording, it just sounds like dogshit at every volume level, forever.¹

I’ll be keeping my non-remastered, non-ruined copy, thanks.