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tinmachine

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Posts posted by tinmachine

    what's everybody listening to now?

    in General off-topic discussions

    Posted

    I'm curious just to hear how Chinese Democracy sounds.

     

    Quote:
    In 1991, Guns N' Roses were the biggest band on the planet. Four years after its release, their swaggering debut album, Appetite For Destruction, was still in the album charts. The band set a new record with Use Your Illusion I & II – two albums released simultaneously – when they went to number one and two in the US charts. Seventeen years on, four of the five original members have gone and the story of the band's singer, Axl Rose, his monstrous ego, and his attempts to finish the most expensive album of all time have become legendary.

     

    Described by The New York Times as "the recording industry's most notorious white elephant", Chinese Democracy is Guns N' Roses' long, long, long-awaited follow-up to the Use Your Illusion albums. Due out tomorrow, it's been 14 years in the making and has run up a reported £7m in studio bills. In that time Rose has hired and fired four managers, eight producers and at least 20 musicians. Chinese Democracy was originally due to appear in 1996 but was delayed, according to Rose, due to the departure of long-standing band-mates Duff McKagan and Slash. Rose claimed they left of their own free will, they said Rose began treating them like session musicians.

     

    In 2000, Rose invited Rolling Stone magazine to his Malibu mansion to preview a dozen new tracks and a release date was set for later in the year, but nothing materialised. In 2004, the band's bassist Tommy Stinson said the album was "almost done"; Rose told fans on his website they'd be better off waiting for the resurrection of Christ.

     

    So great has been the feeling that the album would never see the light of day that earlier this year the soft-drink company Dr Pepper promised a free soda for everyone in America if Chinese Democracy was released before the year was out. Whatever bright spark came up with that one will no doubt be clearing their desk in the morning. The musical landscape has been transformed since Guns N' Roses bestrode it like a tattooed, leather-trousered Colossus. Television talent shows now dictate what's in the charts; the record industry is facing extinction; hard rock has been in, then out, then in again. In making the world wait for 17 years, we could yet find that Axl Rose has timed it to perfection.

    Lehman Brothers

    in General off-topic discussions

    Posted

    Thousands of jobs go in the company, but,....

     

    "Andy Hornby, the chief executive of crisis-hit HBOS, is to receive shares worth almost £2 million in Lloyds TSB following yesterday's emergency takeover.

     

    The head of Britain's biggest mortgage lender will get a multi-million pound stake in the new bank despite HBOS having to be rescued from the brink of collapse."

    Death magnetic - new metallica album

    in General off-topic discussions

    Posted

    I might like it better if it wasn't as distorted as it is.

    Apparently it sounds better on Guitar Hero.

     

    -----

     

    Audiophile fans of Metallica shouldn't bother buying copies of their new album, Death Magnetic. According to one analyst, the record sounds better in the Guitar Hero video game.

     

    "On purchasing our CD ... we gave the disc a spin and couldn't help wondering if our office headphones were faulty as the kick and snare drum seemed to be audibly clipping, along with some of the palm-muted guitar parts," wrote Chris Vinnecombe, guitar editor of music-making website MusicRadar.

     

    The sound issues are a result of the "loudness war" - an ongoing industry effort to make recordings as loud as possible, so that on cursory listens tracks leap forcefully from the speakers. While any album can just have its volume turned up on your stereo, records like Death Magnetic have their audio compressed, making them inherently louder at the expense of dynamic range and sound quality.

     

    The CD version of Death Magnetic takes this to an extreme, pushing the compression past the point of distortion. The version used on the Guitar Hero videogame, where players can solo along with James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett, has been mixed differently - with far better dynamic range. The videogame version of the record was made available last week, as an $18 (£9) download.

     

    Mastering engineer Ian Shepherd's analysis of the two versions - shown as graphical waveforms - makes the CD version's hyper-compression acutely visible.

     

    While there is no official response from the famously cantankerous Metallica camp, the engineer who mastered Death Magnetic is apparently as frustrated as the fans.

     

    "I'm certainly sympathetic to your reaction," said Ted Jensen, head engineer at Sterling Sound, quoted on the Metallica forum. "I get to slam my head against that brick wall every day. In this case, the mixes were already brick-walled before they arrived at my place. Suffice to say I would never be pushed to overdrive things as far as they are here."

     

    "Believe me I'm not proud to be associated with this one, and we can only hope that some good will come from this in some form of backlash against volume above all else."

    Poor quality MP3s, loud CDs and the music business

    in General off-topic discussions

    Posted

    Metallica the latest one to sound shite (whether you like the songs or not)

     

    Audiophile fans of Metallica shouldn't bother buying copies of their new album, Death Magnetic. According to one analyst, the record sounds better in the Guitar Hero video game.

     

    "On purchasing our CD ... we gave the disc a spin and couldn't help wondering if our office headphones were faulty as the kick and snare drum seemed to be audibly clipping, along with some of the palm-muted guitar parts," wrote Chris Vinnecombe, guitar editor of music-making website MusicRadar.

     

    The sound issues are a result of the "loudness war" - an ongoing industry effort to make recordings as loud as possible, so that on cursory listens tracks leap forcefully from the speakers. While any album can just have its volume turned up on your stereo, records like Death Magnetic have their audio compressed, making them inherently louder at the expense of dynamic range and sound quality.

     

    The CD version of Death Magnetic takes this to an extreme, pushing the compression past the point of distortion. The version used on the Guitar Hero videogame, where players can solo along with James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett, has been mixed differently - with far better dynamic range. The videogame version of the record was made available last week, as an $18 (£9) download.

     

    Mastering engineer Ian Shepherd's analysis of the two versions - shown as graphical waveforms - makes the CD version's hyper-compression acutely visible.

     

    While there is no official response from the famously cantankerous Metallica camp, the engineer who mastered Death Magnetic is apparently as frustrated as the fans.

     

    "I'm certainly sympathetic to your reaction," said Ted Jensen, head engineer at Sterling Sound, quoted on the Metallica forum. "I get to slam my head against that brick wall every day. In this case, the mixes were already brick-walled before they arrived at my place. Suffice to say I would never be pushed to overdrive things as far as they are here."

     

    "Believe me I'm not proud to be associated with this one, and we can only hope that some good will come from this in some form of backlash against volume above all else."

    Support bands

    in General off-topic discussions

    Posted

    I am about to watch the X Japan concert on Wowow here and was just thinking - looks like there's no support band. Same with Bon Jovi when they showed that live here as well.

     

    No support bands in Japan on tours, or is it just a televised thing?

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