Just listened to the new mix of Hunger Strike with headphones.

Oof. It's almost painful to listen to... physically. Like some of the frequencies really bother my ears.

You're welcome.

Seriously, I don't know what the hell happened to Brendan O'Brien's ears and/or sense of taste.

He didn't just help make some great records in the 90s, he helped make some seriously great sounding records.

My only theory is that he's a guy whose skills were honed in the analogue realm and he never really adapted to working in digital.

I threw on Backspacer tonight for the first time in years and I can't get over how strange it sounds; the snare is absurdly sizzly, the guitars have had all the mid-range heft EQ'd out of them, the low end of Ed's voice seems weirdly absent and the high end of everything seems really...congested, I can't think of any other word for it. There's nothing naturalistic about the presentation of anything, even that unadorned clean guitar in the intro of Unthought Known sounds somehow off.

Totally agree re O'Brien's abilities then and now. I just hope to GOD that they didn't use him to remaster Badmotorfinger (sounds like that may be coming out in November). Fingers crossed for Jack Endino....

No Code, Yield, and Tiny Music are still some of the warmest, crunchiest, most overall satisfying-sounding rock records of all time to me.

Adam Kasper did the remix/master for this

O'Brien remixed the main album, Kasper mixed the outtakes and the alt mixes.

Well that helps explain why I dig the three alternate mixes so much! Probably the best part of this re-issue to be honest.

I hope they don't use Adam Kasper either, his masterings of King Animal and Superunknown are way too loud, the dynamics of the music suffer as a result.

He mastered the surround mix of Temple of the Dog, Billy Bowers mastered the stereo mix. Usually a 5.1 mix will be fully dynamic, but the 5.1 mix of TOTD is the same as the stereo mix. Thankfully Billy didn't slam this like Adam slammed KA and SU, it's got the dynamics of a 1994 release.



The 5.1 mix is even worse, it's the worst possible mistake you can make with a surround mix to place LEAD vocals in the rear channels isolated instead of through the front soundstage and preferably through the center channel only, but Eddie's lead 2nd verse comes only through the rears, ruining the expansive soundfield the instruments have created up to that point.

Really a shame because other than the vocal errors throughout any track where the lead vocal is doubled up in the studio (happened a lot in the 90s), the 5.1 mix would have been very good. The music is mixed well.

Wooden Jesus is one example of a mix with only one single recorded vocal and it comes only through the center, sounds great. Times of Trouble's doubled vocal comes primarily through the right rear channel and sounds ridiculous.

I really wish they'd stop trying to save money mixing 5.1 in house with Adam and let someone who understands surround do the mixes, like Elliot Scheiner or Bob Clearmountain. I'd love to hear "Ten" mixed into surround from the multis by one of these guys and think Badmotorfinger would sound awesome in surround too.

You both seem to be conflating mixing with mastering here.

King Animal was mastered by Ted Jensen.

I don't have the Superunknown remaster, so I can't tell you who did the mastering work on that, but I guarantee it wasn't Adam Kasper.

Ted Jensen

Yep, Ted Jensen...brain fart there as I've had the displeasure of discussing Jensen's mastering jobs many times over. He can't help but crank it to "11". Adam did the mastering of the 5.1 mixes and unfortunately did the mixing of the 5.1 mixes too and with Superunknown they're a giant disaster throughout.

How many albums can Jensen ruin? The difference between the Jensen-mastered 1996 CD of DMB's "Crash" and the Chris Bellman mastered, all analog cut 2016 vinyl of DMB's "Crash" is a night and day experience. At least he doesn't ruin the 5.1 mixes. He did Coldplay's Ghost Stories and the stereo album is awful, while the mastering he did on the 5.1 live Blu-ray is delightful. Alice in Chains Black Gives Way to Blue, awful. King Animal, awful. Big Whiskey/Groogrux, awful. The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here, terrible. New 2016 Megadeth album, ugh. This guy along with Vlado Meller (Chili Peppers), Ian Cooper (Oasis) and now I'm seeing Emily Lazar's name (Coldplay 2015 album) popping up more often from The Lodge, are their monitors just broken? You can find a decent compromise like they found with Temple of the Dog remix without going so loud it only sounds good on $5 in ear buds.

Hopefully someday an audiophile label like Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs, ORG Music, Analogue Productions, Intervention Records, Analog Spark or Audio Fidelity will get a crack at some of these great early 90s albums that were recorded to tape. I know they won't get TOTD with the tape gone awol but Ten, Superunknown, Under the Table and Dreaming, Dirt, Apple, some of these would be awesome.

I like some of Kasper's work a lot, but then he's done some of the worst stuff imaginable, like his "digitally enhanced" remixes on the Nirvana box set. I don't know WTF drugs he is on, but he seems to use them erratically.

TOUR DATES
Nov 4 Philadelphia, PA Tower Theatre SOLD OUT
Nov 5 Philadelphia, PA Tower Theatre SOLD OUT
Nov 7 New York, NY Madison Square Garden SOLD OUT
Nov 11 San Francisco, CA Bill Graham Civic Center SOLD OUT
Nov 12 San Francisco, CA Bill Graham Civic Center SOLD OUT
Nov 14 Los Angeles, CA The Forum SOLD OUT
Nov 20 Seattle, WA Paramount Theater SOLD OUT
Nov 21 Seattle, WA Paramount Theater SOLD OUT

http://www.templeofthedog.com/

We have threads for all of the shows here:

viewforum.php?f=26

wow, that hunger strike remix really is awful. think of the money he got paid to mix that.

does news travel that slow to Norway?

Yeah, that's what kills me about these "professionals". It seems to be who you know and not the quality of your work. Some of the best engineers I know of are currently unemployed. Then you have "veterans" who are clueless when it comes to digital technology, and also people whose work is consistently poor, winning some worthless industry award and they think they've got it all figured out. There are so many hacks of all kinds out there making tons of bread...it's maddening.

welcome to earth

*earf

racist