Скачать с ютуб Baroness - Cold-Blooded Angels (Dynamic Edit) в хорошем качестве

Baroness - Cold-Blooded Angels (Dynamic Edit)

This is what I like to call a ‘dynamic edit’ of “Cold-Blooded Angels” by Baroness! Gold & Grey faced quite a ton of dynamic range compression (not to confused with data compression, which concerns MP3s and such) of its individual elements and its final mix as a whole, and this “dynamic edit” is meant to remedy to an extent that incredibly compressed sound, making the result more dynamic and more listenable. For those not in the know, the Loudness War is a phenomenon beginning in the mid-90s onward, in which music was mastered louder and louder, with the underlying reasoning being that louder music sells better. As with any medium, however, there is a peak loudness a signal can reach, so dynamic range compression (which makes the louder parts of the signal quieter while keeping the quiet parts quiet) and sometimes even clipping (attempting to push a signal beyond its peak) were used to make music as loud as possible. This album specifically seems to have faced a lot of dynamic range compression as an intentional choice during production. Dave Fridmann, the producer of this record, generally approaches dynamic range compression more liberally than most other producers. Compression is undeniably important for the creation of an album, used to tighten up performances, provide color to mixes, and to achieve hard, punchy sounds, but Fridmann often uses it to create an especially rough sort of sound, frequently going as far as to compress his final mixes before sending them off to mastering. Gold & Grey is just… well, it’s a mess because of it. On one hand, the compression of the album alone makes the record rather abrasive and difficult to listen to. Loud choruses blast you, and often songs are compressed in a way that introduces hissy artifacts. This alone I feel is worth criticizing the album for. More fundamentally, however, the production and mixing for this record is neither well-suited for this ridiculously loud presentation, nor is that presentation pulled off well at all. What Fridmann seems to be trying to do is to create a sort of wall-of-sound aesthetic for the record. Not to be confused with the Loudness War, the wall-of-sound is a technique pioneered by Phil Spector in the 1960s. Essentially, Spector produced the orchestra in a way that made individual instrumentation not outwardly clear, but dense and powerful, leaning heavily on reverb for the process. Applying this process to Baroness presents a few inherent problems. The band’s intricate guitar lines are one of their defining strengths, and to bury them in this process only serves to muddy what (I imagine) is beautiful guitarwork. Listening to the album, I desperately wanted to figure out just what was being played, which more often than not was a fruitless endeavor. Even if Fridmann is not attempting this wall-of-sound approach, much of the guitar tones throughout this record are not timbrally tight or outwardly distinct enough to avoid getting lost in the haze of the mix. “I’m Already Gone”, for one, begins with a wobbly guitar from the left side that becomes increasingly indecipherable as more and more instruments introduce themselves. All this is not to say that Baroness couldn’t sound loud and powerful due to their aesthetic, just that poor production and mixing decisions presented the band in a way that obscures their strengths. Fridmann has pulled off such a powerful and distorted aesthetic (albeit without wall-of-sound) years prior with Sleater-Kinney’s *The Woods*, the difference being that Sleater-Kinney’s instrumentation was still readily discernable amongst its loudness. Given the fundamental issues with the sound of this album, an entire remix, not just a remaster, would be necessary to make this album the best it could be. Until then, though, I have attempted to at least fix up the compression of its overall final mix/master with a program I have called “Perfect Declipper” (creating something I dub a “dynamic edit”). This editing process makes the album more dynamic, and hopefully more listenable as a result. In this case, I was able to turn the dynamic range of the album from 6 into 12! I also have a links to all my dynamic edits on a Google Doc here (Reddit links, not download links): https://docs.google.com/document/d/19...