Badly mastered albums

Computer Help and Discussions The Lounge
1

Imagine having an album so badly mastered and so overly loud that I had no choice but to add this into the comment field, sad really:

This album was slovenly mastered and has many clipped samples that

are audible throughout it which sound like ripping errors, however

they aren't.

I had originally thought I was hearing horrible ripping errors there's so many pops/clicks all over the album. Then I re-ripped the whole album, then loaded the tracks into Audacity and was disgusted by it. It's also supposed to be gapless, but it doesn't even playback that way before being encoded to MP3.

Talk about a major mess up, not even Replaygain normalization can fix such bad clipping. I find it very interesting that those clipped samples sound so much like ripping errors (actually they sound exactly like ripping errors). This is confirmed in Exact Audio Copy with matching Test & Copy CRC's, and with AccurateRip stating all tracks were ripped correctly. I even confirmed it on my home stereo so I know for sure it isn't a ripping issue.

That album is:

Artist: Sick Of It All

Album: Scratch The Surface

Thought I'd share that with everyone should anyone ever run into something thinking it's a ripping error, it could just be the album mastering itself.

2

They don't even engineer music anymore so I'm not surprised they can't master it well.

3

I've had a few albums over the years with mastering glitches, and I've always thought that as unforgivable.

But this one sounds like it takes the biscuit.

"Scratch The Surface" sounds like they picked the right title at least, and "Sick Of It All" is probably an accurate indication of how pee'ed off buyers feel about this masterpiece.

Must have been Divine Intervention made them pick those names.

4
Must have been Divine Intervention made them pick those names.

I never even thought of it that way. :lol: So they were doomed from the get go. ;)