Hi All,

New to the forum, first posting, longtime fan of Crowded House / Finn bros. Also big fan of Mitchell Froom and I generally like Bob Clearmountain's mixes. Woodface is still high on my best-sounding albums of all time list. Therefore I had high expectations of EIH and although I like the album very much musically I'm a bit disappointed in how it sounds.

Anyone feels the same about that?

It sounds so damn loud that it's as if I'm listening to a radio broadcast or mp3 already; I have the idea that the mixes themselves were brilliant but that there's just too much limiting on the mastering.

Lots of cd's have this btw, I know, I'm not aiming to start a general discussion over the loss of dynamics in pop music - but with this album, I really care...

Anyone know if there are plans for a SACD release? I would buy it immediately and buy an SACD player with it.

best,

Ivo

Have a look back through some of the older threads, a lot of us thought the same as you when it first came out Way too much compression on the release, it's a real pity, becuase the visconti tracks sound so much better, much more depth and space.

I doubt there are plans for an SACD release. I have an SACD player and would be delighted to have EIH in that format, but I think it's still in the risky "will this catch on?" phase..

What is SACD????

Lorrie

quote:

Originally posted by Lorrie:
[qb] What is SACD????[/qb]

Basically, Super Audio CD (SACD) is a format where the music has been transferred to disc much more accurately and at a much higher resolution - 64 times that of a standard CD.

SACD discs need special players to play them on, but the sound quality of many SACDs is often a staggering improvement over regular CDs. Sometimes the SACD releases of albums feature mixes done in 5.1 Surround.

There is a rival format called DVD-Audio: the only Finn-related music available in that format at present is Crowded House's debut album.

It would be interesting to hear what Everyone Is Here would sound like on SACD. It does seem to be mixed quite 'loud'...

SACDs are great!

I particularly like the Hydrid SACDs, which will play on both standard CD players (but without the full effect of the technology), as well as SACD players. As has been mentioned, SACDs (non-hybrid) will not play on standard CD players, however.

Anselm, I'm with you -- I'd be very interested if EIH were to come out in (hybrid) SACD format.

It's really common at the moment unfortunately.
One of the reasons i'm a big Frames fan. There's none of that on their recent records...

I don't think it's the mixes so much as the mastering. I mean look at Together Alone as an example of nice dynamic mixing, most things that Bob Clearmountain mix do sound good, so i wouldn't blame him. It's just that squashy mastering that's so prevalent. I remember being disappointed with the sound when I got it too. It sounded like a cd burned from MP3s to be honest.

Strangely enough, I've yet to roadtest SACDs vs DVD-Audio. I think DVD-Audio will win the battle very simply because DVD is an established standard, whether it's technically superior or not. I did hear a 5.1 mix of Dark Side of The Moon on SACD, which I quite liked. It was a hybrid SACD, but then even the stereo CD version was amazing mastering on that CD.

as for EIH, I suppose it might be as a result of the above that my ears tired of it quickly. (And probably why FINN still delights them, but we're not opening that worm can again), sonically I mean. To be honest, I'd like to hear Everyone Is Here completely remastered (just mastered differently), even on stereo 44.1khz 16 Bit CD. A SACD version would be interesting, but not if it was the same master simply left at 96khz (Is this the SACD standard?) rather than being dithered down to 44.1khz.

Again, apologies to anyone who feels this would be better posted at rec.audio.pro!

Thanks for all the replies - too bad there are no immediate plans for SACD (or DVD Audio) releases.

And yes, that would only make sense if they would master the stereo mixes again for the new release.

Although SACD and DVD-Audio offer superior sound quality to cd, cd doesn't have to be bad - I too would be very interested in a remastered version of EIH.

I just think that a release on SACD or DVD-Audio is more probable than FINN saying 'Hey Bob Ludwig, we don't like the way you mastered our cd, let's do a remastered version'...

The first thing I'll check out about FINN now is how they sound live in the Heineken Music Hall next week...

bye,

Ivo

This is very interesting to me as I only recently picked up the album [shame on me!!!] and playing it through a new pair of moderately high-end studio monitors I actually was hearing distortion, and not of the pleasing variety. The dynamics in general are too squashed. Very surprising, it sounds like a great mix passed through some dodgy plug-ins.
Wow...

Since everyone seems to agree the mastering of Everyone Is Here was less than perfect, here's a great article on the overcompression of modern music... I didn't really understand it until I read this: http://spectrum.ieee.org/aug07/5429

quote:

A SACD version would be interesting, but not if it was the same master simply left at 96khz (Is this the SACD standard?) rather than being dithered down to 44.1khz.

Some SACDs are simply made from a high-quality PCM source (basically, a .WAV file) and end up being 96,000Hz, 24-bit.

But that's not really a true SACD. The sound format that was invented for SACD is called DSD, Direct Stream Digital, which is completely different from the PCM type used for CD and DVD. It's sampling rate is 2.88 MEGAhertz. It also uses a 1-bit modulation scheme which many argue is superior to the PCM system. Also, its frequency range extends to about 30,000Hz. That's beyond the range of human hearing, but it allows harmonics to exist that interact with audible music and give it more depth.

That's why the regular CD layer of so many hybrid SACDs sounds better than a non-SACD; if DSD was used, it has been dithered down to 44.1kHz from 2.88MHz.