I am seriously concerned about the latest pieces of music I've been presented to, over the last two years of giving a listen to anything new added to the site. It all sounds flat, right?

No punch at all, the drums barely work as drums, the cymbals are always way to loud, the guitars are taking all the space. It's just a nasty wall of sound, and I can't get it to the right volume, because it is so flat that I percieve it either way to loud or way too quiet. It has no beat, no impact, it's blend and unappealing. I could have said that's a just a problem of bad mixing, or that it's just because it's Babymetal, but no! it's becoming the norm. Nowadays everything that I listen to is just an instant turn of for me, independently of the musicianship.

Also death metal vocals tend to be overly saturated and artificial and don't resemble a voice anymore. All drums are replaced by samples or triggered. Everything is compressed like hell. I don't understand. Do people really enjoy this? Are the artists ok with it and demanding such things? Is it just that it's targeted for headphones users?

To the point that it threatens the arrangement. Big intro, cymbals slowly building up to the main riff where all instruments comes in, and... in fact the percieved loudness of the riff is lesser than what it should be. Because loudness is more important than music it seems.

I find myself enjoying way more some mixes from the 70s or 80s. Billy Idol, KISS, Accept (just to name a few) sound shockingly better than any recent mix, so I don't believe it is because of youtube compression either. I fact I realise that the releases I pick every year were nothing but the less annoying and less flat. Bent Knee had an exceptionnal dynamic range.

I'm really getting frustrated. Whenever I want to spin one of the new records, I have to put some Refused in between as a comparision. Dynamics nowadays is dead it seems. What's your thoughts about this? Do you feel the same? Do you have any explaination?

EDIT: I'm gonna provide examples of flat songs I'm coming accross
The Projectionnist (there I assume the mix is bad, because it also has spectrum issues)
Irist (constant cymbal drench and ringing guitars, 'soft' moments have barely the same loudness as the rest)
Ikarass (constant cymbal drench, compressed to the point of sounding glitchy (maybe youtube's fault), loads of reverb on the vocals)
Cloven Hoof (total lack of groove, uneven balance, bass and reverb are always loud in the lows, and all peaks have been clipped af. Some of the vocals have also been overly saturated (at the end))
Wallop (ultra-compressed drums with glitchy cymbals. The lows are muddy too.)
...

Have you switched your main listening device lately?

Written by Karlabos on 03.04.2020 at 15:54

Have you switched your main listening device lately?

No. My computer is plugged in aux to a hifi setup. It's been like this for years. And the problem I report is specific to modern mixes (modern meaning with abusive compression techniques, and records in this category existed since the 2000s or so - but they are becoming inescapable)

Just steer clear of demo's that havent had the highs eq'd, my ears still havent recovered.