WhazUp

Regarding why Monsters was leaked alongside The General, not that I think they are the same song like the way Rocket Queen's two sections are but I do still have a theory of them being linked in some way Like, maybe they were originally side-by-side on the followup to CD or something and were meant to be played one after the other. Both have Beltrami orchestration and you can easily interpret the lyrics to Monsters as some anger and then closure to The General

I get what you are saying, but to me I have seen no post that leads me to believe they are making up hearing the clipping Emporer's New Clothes style, just to have something to complain about. The clipping is pretty prevalent as has the loudness wars in the music industry in general - and to me I am seeing more or less a reaction to that rather than it being merely hyperbolic complaining by those who hate everything about GNR nowadays

Are you suggesting that there are people here who, even though there is obvious clipping on these tracks, are making up the fact that they are hearing audible clipping on these tracks just to bitch about something?

I don't have much in the way of GNR vinyl but I do have a 180g reissue of Appetite that came in this box with a AFD cover T-shirt, I have the banned cover (original pressing) and Chinese on vinyl that I got at Best Buy the day of the album release

Up earlier in this thread check out both my description of what to listen for as well as the timestamp I cited - the clipping is objectively there on the recording. Hope this helps in terms of assisting in what to look for in hearing it

Clipping always bugged me no matter what band - Vapor Trails by Rush for example suffers the same fate in its original mix as does 10,000 Days by Tool at various points in its mix/mastering I don't think it is controversial to make the suggestion that overuse of compression and pushing everything into the red in the mastering phase is not a pleasant trend in music since the 90s

I think the only impact it has had is to make hardcore nuGNR fans rethink what the phrase "big guns" means in terms of unheard songs and setting expectations too high lol

With headphones try listening to specifically the drum fill that occurs at 1:28ish to 1:30 that brings the first chorus to an end - you will hear some light crackles/popping noises that bounce around the stereo image due to the drums. While I can hear it throughout the duration of the song, to me this is one of the more prevalent examples

I do have to chime in just because I did some listening this weekend - the Apple Music version is the same verbatim mastering as what I have heard via the Quobuz 24-Bit/48 kHz high resolution version, clipping and all All digital versions are sourced from the same mastering - I can't speak to what was pressed on wax on the vinyl single but all digital versions - be it streaming, or digital download, all have the same mastering and flaws due to the loudness-wars liberal use of limiting and bringing the audio past the dB threshold to induce clipping

In the chorus especially it is pretty audible, in particular if you listen to the kick drum hits You will hear it sound distorted, but not in an intentional way like electronic/industrial music where the drums can intentionally all sound overloaded for effect - in this case it will sound similar to if you blew out cheap speakers. "Crackling" is the best descriptive term I can use for it

Lol sure

I thought the show I caught this year had great flow, personally I am glad they are still delivering such decently lengthy shows when they could easily coast doing way less. Gotta give Axl and everyone credit for that

Death Magnetic, at least the album as was mixed and mastered for official release in 2008 (the Guitar Hero stems are a different story) indeed has clipping all over the place

I get what you are saying, but I don't think really overly compressed and pushed-to-the-red clipping is a part of that - though I think the distorted vocal effects are obviously a part of that intention The compression and clipping are nothing more of producers buying into the whole loudness wars thing and sacrificing audio clarity for the sake of wanting things to "seem" louder

It is really hard to say "best" but giving some of my personal favorites: Felt Forum 1988 The Tokyo 1988 shows Paris '92 Ritz '91 Argentina shows 1993

The clipping is fairly obvious to my ears, it sounds like your headphones/speakers are blown out in certain moments of loudness or thumps (in this case the drums especially in the chorus of The General). That crackling sound that cheap speakers get when you use them too much, except it is embedded within the actual audio file due to the cutting off of sonic information when you bump everything into the red to maximize loudness

If you are wearing an oversized uncomfy helmet, even guitarists who can go off muscle memory would be distracted and impeded for sure

I agree with many others, I am not quite sure the relevance of a "versus" thread with a fanmade approximation of a song that ended up being a totally different song, to the song that ended up being not the same song lol

On a related but side note, I feel like the term "big guns" was one of the absolute worst things that fans latched onto when it comes to Chinese era material. You take a couple of comments referencing a song by a couple of people in or close to the band, and give it enough time and the expectations just skyrocket for no reason The same unrealistic expectations gave fans a shock when "Atlas Shrugged" leaked and people realized it was just a fairly normal song that wasn't the second coming of Estranged "The General" to me brings my GNR fandom down to earth at the realization that these songs are odd little sonic roads Axl went down and to take them for what they are and meet them where they are at

I like The General, but I have to be perfectly honest I listened to "Breakdown" right after it and man I hate to sound like one of those "it isn't the same" people but the interplay of musicians is just on another level. That is what I miss about GNR - musicians sounding like they are in the studio having fun recording tracks together like any other rock band You hear Slash's solo on Breakdown and it is reactive, its feeding off the energy from Duff, Matt, and the rhythm guitars + paino. You have Axl's spoken word reactive to all of that, and everything sounds full of life Even the more traditional sounding tunes like Hard Skool are missing that organic spark of life in it that makes even a mid-song like Shotgun Blues still a fun listen. And so when you see non-hardcore fans ripping on The General, even as someone who likes the song overall, I get it

You can sound dark and mysterious and have ambience without the kick drum in the chorus making it sound like your speakers are malfunctioning and blown out due to clipping - this is just another botched mixing job by someone catering to the Loudness Wars trends

Maybe the GNR version of Izzy's composition "Down By The Ocean" that Axl cited in the forum chats?

Now this comes from a place of love Sweersa, but if I had a nickel for every post from you that is only purely just an excuse to mention that you wish Bucket and Fink's parts were still there I could have single-handedly funded Axl's Chinese Democracy era more than Universal did

I have got some sweet open-back cans and closed-back, as well as a modestly decent monitor setup for my own mixing projects, this official release is the same mix as the leak

Is the question about the fidelity being better, or it being the same mix like you originally asserted?