Ean wrote:nyanyanya wrote:KevLikesLoudGuitars wrote:My point is - if you think the sound is too tinny, turn your bass up! If you think there's too much middle - turn it down..! And if you can't......then buy a better stereo. I've been listening to VDC through Windows Media Player, my personal CD player and my car stereo, and it sounds just as good (and I sing along just as much) through every single one. But then - I'm not afraid to adjust my equaliser!!!!
This only proves my initial point. It does sound OK (not good but OK) on crappy equipment.
Adjusting bass, treble or equalize. Why?
It's not about personal preference in sound. On better stereos you don't even have those options.
Like too many albums nowadays this one seems to have been mixed to sound better on mp3-players. Which I find really, really sad.
Actually, your initial point was that the songs were crap, but you seem to have drifted a bit - Kev seemed to be suggesting that it sounds good on all of his players, no matter what the media.
A good album should be mixed so that it plays well on anything from the cheapest, tinniest to most expensive player - this used to be achieved by mixing on tres-expensive studio monitors, then running outside to somebody's car stereo to see if it sounded any good: I'd imagine it probably still is. Your own (earlier) argument refutes what you say about it being mixed for MP3 players (notwithstanding that there's no way to tell how someone will encode the tracks, so there's no real way to do this). You say it lacks bass, which unfortunately is one of the things you lose when you rip something to MP3 - the algorithms are unable to convert the rich depths that a cd can reproduce except at higher bit-rates than most people use (i.e. 200kbps plus).
Of course it's about personal preference in sound - everyone's ears are different (and some are more fucked than others). I don't need a sub on any of my stereos, but I like the way it sounds - so I have one (um, several). The 'neutral' eq point on every stereo is different (dependant on an almost infinite number of possible differences between makes), so there's no way that just playing the mix that's on the cd will make it sound exactly like the artist intended.
The only thing I've noticed about the mix is that it could have used a bit of gating on the cymbals to kill the ringing a bit here and there, particularly on the chorus to The Way - even the forward mixed guitar part in L.O.V.E. doesn't get to me any more.
Are you a sound engineer? and if you aren't.... WHY ON EARTH NOT? That's actually a serious question.
