This happy little nugget is from the new Tool record. A friend bought me a copy for my birthday, and I have to say, it’s quite good. Listening to it through headphones, I noticed the drums (Danny Carey is a wonderful drummer, BTW) sounded “mushy,” particularly the snare. The decay on the cymbals was muted as well.
I went ahead and ripped it, which was no small feat, since the CD is copy-protected. Thank goodness for Linux and cdparanoia. My hatred for copy-protection is a whole other topic, but I did think these CD’s were supposed to me marked in some way…
Anyhow, the above snipped (click image for detail) is the waveform from “Vicarious.” Smashy, smashy! Not only is the whole thing hard-limited at -1.7db (the slight artificial headroom at the top margin), but it still clips. Peak levels for a good recording should be around -9db.
The ReplayGain value is an indication of how many decibels the track would have to be reduced by to fit an 89db industry standard, in this case 8.5. Continued...