This is what I like to call a ‘dynamic edit’ of “This Is Such a Pity” by Weezer! While Make Believe*’s volume is on par with much of the loudest and least dynamic Weezer releases (*Black*, *Teal*, *Pacific Daydream*, and *Everything Will Be Alright in the End*), *Make Believe suffers from quite a great deal of clipping across a few of its tracks.
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. Clipping can produce audible distortion, often manifesting as crackle or hiss, and is often discouraged in mastering because of it. As noted before, Make Believe clips in quite a few sections, and quite audibly too, such as the beginning of “Perfect Situation” and its guitar solo, throughout “We Are All on Drugs”, and the louder bits of “Hold Me”. (Oddly enough, the beginning of “Perfect Situation” only clips so badly in the version with the single-version chorus, and not the original version.) Vlado Meller was the mastering engineer of this album, and he can be pretty sloppy when he masters loudly, often clipping the signal when it would sound much better if it were brickwall-limited. He also infamously mastered Californication by Red Hot Chili Peppers, which suffered from consistent clipping throughout its runtime.
In regards to both compression and clipping, music that has faced a high degree of dynamic range compression in general can also be fatiguing to the ear. I attempted to fix up the compression on this release with a program called “Perfect Declipper”, can not only help alleviate clipping, but also much of the dynamic range compression that occurs during mastering! In this case, I was able to turn the dynamic range of the album from 5 into 11, as well as rid of much of the aforementioned clipping!
In my edits, it’s important to note that the dynamics are not being restored with the "Perfect Declipper" program that I use, but rather, they are being approximated. While one may not be able to "declip" an album as one would be unable to "unbake a cake", I find the results here to be a convincible attempt at doing so. Only in the most extreme examples have I heard the program produce odd artifacts that would appear unintended in the album’s mix. I also want to present this all with the caveat that dynamic range compression is not inherently a bad thing. Compression can be used to tighten up performances, provide color to mixes, and to achieve hard, punchy sounds.
I produce many more dynamic edits on this channel as well as further descriptions in posts over on Reddit! / posts
13 сен 2021
