The Petra Zone

Yes released today on Australian iTunes - brilliant. So many more effects and sounds and cleaned up instruments than what I ever heard before. Takes me back for sure

AntonW wrote:Yes released today on Australian iTunes - brilliant. So many more effects and sounds and cleaned up instruments than what I ever heard before. Takes me back for sure

Hmmm... These clips sound just like the original but with more compression:
http://www.amazon.com/This-Means-War-An ... B008A4PKJO

Nah not just compression - all the individual tracks and nuisances sounds distinctly clearer and more separated

AntonW wrote:Nah not just compression - all the individual tracks and nuisances sounds distinctly clearer and more separated

That could be a description of what you get with multi band compression.

Digitally remastered - try a little trust

I would say ripp your old TMW CD to wav plus a few "live" solo tracks from your old CITAS CD, Download Reaper, run all tracks through the effect "ReaXComp"... Now it's digitally remastered... and you have saved your money.

Either way I'm not sold on this product; this really doesn't benefit the band just puts money in some CEO's pocket.

OMG! It will never end. Compression, compression, compression. It makes my ears hurt, just like listening to Rush's Clockwork Angels makes my ears hurt. Stick with the original.

Boray wrote:I would say ripp your old TMW CD to wav plus a few "live" solo tracks from your old CITAS CD, Download Reaper, run all tracks through the effect "ReaXComp"... Now it's digitally remastered... and you have saved your money.

Well, I see the humor in it....

That is the point. All these guys can do is mess with the finals of the previous work. They need to remix all of these oldies first. THEN it might be worth buying.

so with all this talk about compression, what exactly is compression? I can imagine what it means, but I don't know for sure and could use a layman's explanation

Very simplified: When the volume goes above a specified threshold for a specified amount of time, it's reduced by a specified ratio. After that you can raise the volume of it all as the volume tops has been reduced. Multiband compression: The audio is first divided into several frequency bands and the compression is applied to each individually and then they are all mixed together again.

Right. Engineers, musicians, etc take the music and remove the dynamics. A good recording will have dynamics. Classical music, for example, has lots of dynamics. There are low passages, there are loud passages. Classical recording captures the instruments and voices as they are, preserving the volumes, textures and room acoustics captured in the recording as they were intended by the performers, conductor and composer. There are great engineers who have recorded some of the most notable pop and rock albums without compression. (Bruce Swedien used no compression in the recording or mixing of Michael Jackson's Thriller. That album still punches and sounds great. Bruce says compression is more of a gimmick and crutch for the novice.) Compression is now used to take the dynamics out of the music, allowing the music to be louder. The average (RMS) of the music is brought up to the peak. Compression adds distortion...always. That is why it has traditionally been frowned upon. When the CD loudness wars were started by the marketing guys at the record companies (because they realized that people think products are better when they are flashier, louder and brighter sounding), we stopped caring about noise and distortion. It was all about the dollar.

Thanks guys! Am I right in thinking a lesser or uncompressed song will sound more "open" than a compressed one? Have either of you guys heard D&K's album "Streetlight"? I always thought that had a great open and live sound. Would that be an example of less compression? To me, Back To The Rock has a very "closed" sound...did they use a lot of compression? If I'm getting this right, I definitely am not a fan of this compression fad that seems to be going on.

superfly wrote:Thanks guys! Am I right in thinking a lesser or uncompressed song will sound more "open" than a compressed one? Have either of you guys heard D&K's album "Streetlight"? I always thought that had a great open and live sound. Would that be an example of less compression? To me, Back To The Rock has a very "closed" sound...did they use a lot of compression? If I'm getting this right, I definitely am not a fan of this compression fad that seems to be going on.

Back in the day, everyone was using tape, which has a natural compression itself. People would solve problems or go for a "sound" by hitting the tape harder. Compressors were used, but not like today, and not in such great quantity. Thats not to say it was not abused. The Beatles engineers abused it by the order of the label execs. The band and the engineers hated it. When vinyl and tape were the delivery mediums, they had to watch it. Too much compression would completely jack the lathe cutting the master disk. Now that we have CD, and the CD does not have a limitation or sound on it's own, the gloves came off.