BRMSlash

Hey everyone. I discovered something interesting over the weekend.  I watched the music videos on the bluray and found the sound quailty much improved over the audio album on the same disc (at least listening to the 5.1 DTS audio).  The mix is the same, so has the guitar errors in Patience and quiet outro solo in Paradise City, but the sound quality and dynamics are there and has a professional studio sound.  If only the actual audio remaster was the same, I'd be in heaven. The album master is destroyed so much in comparison.

I don't know why record labels seem to want to reduce sound quality so much these days, particularly when they are promoting hi-end formats like 96k 24bit etc.  I mean Blu-ray's are pretty much only played back in a quiet home environment and more often than not through a home theatre system, so why compress and eq them to sound worse?  I can understand mastering louder for a portable format such as a phone, mp3 player or car, but there just isn't any need to do the same for Blu-ray.  Considering how much they're charging for these re-masters, the cost of optimizing the mastering for each format would be insignificant.

Overall, I think it's a decent remaster.  The bass is more present, but not bloated like the Greatest Hits CD.  The bass improvements are the highlight for me.  Depending on the song, the treble of the cymbals are a bit clearer, which is appreciated.  The biggest let down for me is the compression &/or EQ'ing of the guitars into a more generic sound.  The guitars have lost their characteristic raw, energetic grind & crunch.  The vocals also seem a touch more compressed, but it's not too noticeable unless quickly switching between versions.  I also noticed the drum snare, toms & cowbell are compressed/EQ'd and lost some of their character and ambience.

On a more technical note, I've scanned the remastered album with foobar2000's ReplayGain scanner set with True Peak 4x oversampling. The result was an Album Gain of -8.82dB & Album Peak of 1.017029. My original copy has -5.38dB & 1.038265.  So the remaster looks to have around a 3.4dB boost.

I think for a modern mastering, it's decent in that it's not offensively crushed or EQ'd.  But I feel the album has had it's character sterilised into a more generic sound compared to the original.  I really enjoy the bass improvements in the remaster, so it's hard for me to decide, but I think I'll have to stick with the original.

16 hours ago, ©GnrPersia said:

don't get why all these Adler's Appetite topics are posted in this section of the forum...

I was going to post it in the Jungle, but looking at the posts there it didn't seem like a good fit.  The Guns N' Roses - Discussion & News section subtitle was "Past and present era GN'R discussion" and there seemed to be more relevant posts, so that's where I ended up putting it.  I don't mind if a moderator wants to move the thread to a more appropriate place.

14 hours ago, scooby845 said:

So they played Paradise City twice on the same night?

No, I just recorded it in two parts.  I only recorded the last one because Steel Panther came out.

So I've just managed to put up some videos from Saturday night's performance by Adler's Appetite.  The gig was outstanding!  It was really intimate & packed with energy.  One of the best shows I've been to.  Steel Panther were staying at the same hotel, so were invited along to feature on a couple of songs as well.  I also got to shake Steven's hand at the end too.  Massive night!