I am a massive fan of Depeche Mode. And I really like the latest album, Playing the Angel, as I said previously.
But I am very disappointed by what Depeche Mode did to me (and more generally to us all): the CD version of Playing the Angel is basically crap! The sound quality is horrible. This is the first song for instance (A Pain that I’m Used To):
The left part is the bridge and the right part is the chorus (or more precisely a square wave mimicking the chorus). The audio is 100% clipped. Witness the VU-meter while the chorus is playing:
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Everything is maxed out!!! The peak level is 0dB (on the left) as is the average level (on the right). Hence, the dynamics of the chorus is (a completely pathetic) 0dB!!!
For those of you who are not too conversant with audio and music, dynamics is what makes music interesting. The average level of music must be much lower than the peak level i.e. music must be most of the time soft but sometimes should become very loud. It must not be loud from start to end or else it will sound unnatural and your ears will feel some discomfort. Now, what is important to understand is that the original master for that track sounds much better. Only the CD version (which has been further processed) suffers from this Loudness War (this is another detailed explanation with lots of concrete examples). What is happening is classic : people now buy CDs from supermarkets and the only way to impress them is to make the CD as hot (i.e. loud) as possible. To do that, the average level must be raised up to 0dB. The sound becomes impressive (i.e. over the top) but unlistenable in the long run (try it!) |
So, what do we do? Forget about Playing the Angel?
If you have bought the “normal” CD then you don’t have any choice. Listen to the crap sound!
But for those who have the limited edition of the album, you have luck (is it?) on your side : the DVD contains an uncompressed (read brillant) version of the album. Extract the Dolby Digital tracks (i.e. AC3) using a DVD ripper (I’ve use an old version of DVD Decrypter). Use BeSweet to downmix the 5.1 mix to stereo and convert it to a good-sounding MP3. I’ve used the following command line parameters:
besweet -core( -input file.ac3 -output file.mp3 ) -lame( -b 192 --resample 44.1 )
And here’s the result:
A perfect sounding MP3 of A Pain that I’m Used To!
Sorry to post this here, but I couldn’t find a contact … I listed your blog as a “Live Demo” of the 11:05 theme because yours is done so well! I hope this is O.K. You get a bunch of traffic for it, plus a link on a page with a Google Page Rank of 6. Thanks!
Hi Shawn,
Thanks for the compliment! Of course, I’m happy that you’re linking my site from yours :-)
And keep on the good work, 11:05 rocks!
You like Depeche Mode but not Playing the Angels?
I understand that for those proponents of anti music piracy, buying the CD is more an act of appreciation of the artist’s work. But why buy the whole if one enjoys only one. I’ve read in Newsweek last year that anything apart from ‘Playing the Angel’ isn’t worth a cent!
Btw, I prefer listening to Jean Michel Jarre on my lazy Sunday afternoons esp. Zoolook, Musique pour Supermarchés, and the classy Oxygène. Forget the voices and listen to sth unique!
Read the second sentence!
I really like Playing the Angel but the audio on the CD is crap compared to the Dolby Digital mix on the DVD.
By the way, Newsweek is wrong : most of the albums done by Depeche Mode are really good.
Words are very unnecessary, they can only do harm… ;)
Perhaps it’s you did not well read my sentence.
Their new album is totally crappy except for Playing the Angels. They said nothing about the previous ones.
There is no track called ‘Playing the Angels’ on the ‘Playing the Angel’ album…
That’s unfortunately the way most albums are mastered nowadays…Boosting the levels up and over-compressing the audio for that radio friendly sound…all at the cost of the dynamics and details. :-(
Yep!
And they sound crap. I don’t know if I’m old or not but I’ve been having some problems listening to the latest albums lately.
And I actually can’t listen to the radio at all except at extremely low volume as the distortion is excruciating!
Well, mate…It’s just “A pain you’ll get used to”…Hehehe…
Typical DM fan joke! Sorry couldn’t help it… ;-)