Don’t Blame the Format for Bad Sound, Blame the Suits
By Robert Archer
With "the loudness wars" still dominating the mastering techniques of many popular recordings, you may want to check out these releases vinyl versions as they may feature less compression than CDs.

Within the recording community, and to a lesser extent the audiophile community, the “loudness wars” have been a prime topic of conversation for a number of years.

Summing up these respective communities thoughts on the hyper amounts of compression prevalent on today’s popular recordings, audiophiles claim the loudness wars are robbing the public of experiencing the full potential of recorded music.



Meanwhile, the recording community has tried to distance itself from the practice by saying it has no choice in how music is mixed and mastered, because it’s the record labels that are calling the shots.

A recent blog by the British mastering engineer Ian Shepherd, owner of Mastering Media, says that with the release of the latest Red Hot Chili Peppers’ (RHCP) album the music industry may be handling the format of vinyl differently than the more popular CD format.

According to Shepherd, who posted his comparative analysis of the song "Monarchy of Roses" from the RHCP’s I’m with You album using a clip from the track taken from the vinyl and CD releases as the basis of his opinion, it’s the mastering process and not the format that’s to blame for the loudness wars controversy.

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