THE GENERAL - MONSTERS - Official Discussion Thread. NO LINKS OR ASKING FOR LINKS

[Coma16]

3 minutes ago, Sweersa said:

A lot of the issues would be resolved if they used mixes from the CD-era. 

Caram gets shit on a lot but it seems to be more of a garbage-in garbage-out scenario 

[DingBat]

16 minutes ago, Voodoochild said:

And where's Buckethead and Robin Finck there? 

I know! How can you not tell the difference between Slash/Bucket/Finck?

Have you seen "The Cut of the Jib" channel on YouTube? The guy's a self-proclaimed "guitar expert" and has been attacking fans for weeks in the comments section who knew it was Slash on The General and not Bucket and Finck. Even now after the credits have come out he's trying to wriggle his way out of it. 

Edited December 7, 2023 by DingBat

[Voodoochild]

LOL

Yeah, there's no defense for Caram on this one. 

2 minutes ago, DingBat said:

I know! How can you not tell the difference between Slash/Bucket/Finck?

Have you seen "The Cut of the Jib" channel on YouTube? The guy's a self-proclaimed "guitar expert" and has been attacking fans for weeks who knew it was Slash on The General and not Bucket and Finck. Even now after the credits have come out he's trying to wriggle his way out of it. 

Hahaha, YouTube algorithm recommended it to me, but I've never watched it. Didn't know he said all that, now I guess I'll watch if for shit and giggles. 

[Blackstar]

3 minutes ago, Voodoochild said:

LOL

Yeah, there's no defense for Caram on this one. 

Would this mean that the mastering is also different from the one on Perhaps? (Bob Ludwig mastered that one).

[Blackstar]

4 minutes ago, Voodoochild said:

Hahaha, YouTube algorithm recommended it to me, but I've never watched it. Didn't know he said all that, now I guess I'll watch if for shit and giggles. 

That guy also claimed that the metadata of The General leak said it was a demo from 2006

[Voodoochild]

1 minute ago, Blackstar said:

Would this mean that the mastering is also different from the one on Perhaps? (Bob Ludwig mastered that one).

Absolutely. This is one of the worse things I've seen and heard in the last few years. I bought a pair of semi-professional speakers recently and oh boy, it's clipping fest. 

1 minute ago, Blackstar said:

That guy also claimed that the metadata of The General leak said it was a demo from 2006

Hahahaha now I definitely need to watch it. 

[kever20]

1 hour ago, rumandraisin said:

Pitman!

I was more excited for French Eric!

[kitstuai]

4 minutes ago, DingBat said:

I know! How can you not tell the difference between Slash/Bucket/Finck?

Have you seen "The Cut of the Jib" channel on YouTube? The guy's a self-proclaimed "guitar expert" and has been attacking fans for weeks in the comments section who knew it was Slash on The General and not Bucket and Finck. Even now after the credits have come out he's trying to wriggle his way out of it. 

This guy claims that the vinyl picture from GnR France is fake and that someone had it pressed by a Czech manufacturer. I mean, who prints just one unit.. You can't do that lol. Especially with all the Guns copyrights slapped on it. Anyway, I was skeptical too, saying it didn't sound like Slash playing, because the mix didn't feel recent. Turns out, it's even worse—they took the old mix and recorded some guitars and bass over it.

I really can't understand why they released such a poorly produced song. The drums are a disaster, clipping all over the place. Just give it a spin at 1:00, and you'll hear two kick drums out of sync—it's clearly a mistake because the next pre-chorus has just one. The whole orchestration is like -40dB, and the choruses are basically copy-paste.. Come on, this could've been an awesome song, but after 20 years, we get a demo version. I'm happy if most fans dig it, but personally, it's a letdown.

I still love the lyrics and think this is a powerful song.

[AxlRQ93]

 song could’ve sounded a lot bigger. The mix is very narrow. 

[Voodoochild]

11 minutes ago, Blackstar said:

Would this mean that the mastering is also different from the one on Perhaps? (Bob Ludwig mastered that one).

I didn't have a better quality version of Perhaps here, but you can see that at least it's not clipping all the time (the dark blue part is not hitting the ceiling as much). It does look compressed and loud, but to my ears it's a lot better. 

[bmus1]

6 minutes ago, kitstuai said:

Just give it a spin at 1:00, and you'll hear two kick drums out of sync—it's clearly a mistake because the next pre-chorus has just one. The whole orchestration is like -40dB, and the choruses are basically copy-paste.. Come on, this could've been an awesome song, but after 20 years, we get a demo version. I'm happy if most fans dig it, but personally, it's a letdown.

This is exactly why I thought the vinyl was recalled, because this is everywhere on the leak too. F'n yikes.

[Stay.Of.Execution]

18 minutes ago, Voodoochild said:

LOL

Yeah, there's no defense for Caram on this one. 

[Blackstar]

2 minutes ago, Voodoochild said:

I didn't have a better quality version of Perhaps here, but you can see that at least it's not clipping all the time (the dark blue part is not hitting the ceiling as much). It does look compressed and loud, but to my ears it's a lot better. 

I remember another waveform screenshot for Perhaps (I guess it was the hq version) where it looked significantly less loud.

[Zeppelin]

So, the production sucks ass. Big shocker.

[AxlRQ93]

what does clipping mean

[Lethalis]

5 minutes ago, AxlRQ93 said:

what does clipping mean

Because many people listen to music on crappy devices, many bands release their music as "loud" as possible. This unfortunately also means that you lose dynamics (because everything is loud), but it also leads to clipping. Clipping occurs when a sound is too loud and gets distorted. If you have good head phones you might be able to hear this (clicks and such), which is a shame.

Basically it only sounds good on a crappy device, because a good audio device will let you hear everything... including the distortion caused by clipping.

[Sweersa]

9 minutes ago, AxlRQ93 said:

what does clipping mean

It means the wave form (what you see posted here from Audacity) is increased (made louder) to a point where it jumps out of the listenable spectrum, in other words, dynamics lost, it's all loud as fuck and so loud you can't hear whatever bits jump out of the listenable spectrum.

[AxlRQ93]

1 minute ago, Lethalis said:

Because many people listen to music on crappy devices, many bands release their music as "loud" as possible. This unfortunately also means that you lose dynamics (because everything is loud), but it also leads to clipping. Clipping occurs when a sound is too loud and gets distorted. If you have good head phones you might be able to hear this (clicks and such), which is a shame.

Basically it only sounds good on a crappy device, because a good audio device will let you hear everything... including the distortion caused by clipping.

a question re this

Can you make a song “loud” like wall of sound like while still preserving dynamic range? For example the guitars on ain’t it fun from TSI sort of create a wall of sound and are loud but it doesn’t sound compressed? 

a lot of GNR songs since 99 sound very small, for lack of a better word. Tinny

[Sweersa]

35 minutes ago, Voodoochild said:

There's absolutely no excuse for this. Do these people even look at the wave form before submitting the mixes? That is trash, absolute trash. It's bad enough we don't get to hear a lot of Bucket and Robin on these songs.

I miss CD-era Axl. He wouldn't have put up with all of this shit associated with the NITL lineup. I get making piles of money, but at the very least, give the music room to be music. 

[Voodoochild]

7 minutes ago, Stay.Of.Execution said:

Song shouldn't look like a brick there. It should've been more dynamic, with less of this blue stuff. This below is the song Evidence, by Faith no More. It's a slow song and clean song, but it's good to show how a more dynamic track should look like. Keep in mind, this song was ripped from YouTube, that apply compressing on its own - the track on a CD should look better than this. BTW, this song was produced by Andy Wallace.

5 minutes ago, Blackstar said:

I remember another waveform screenshot for Perhaps (I guess it was the hq version) where it looked significantly less loud.

So yeah, my ears didn't tricky me. I believe that audio file I have was also ripped from YouTube.

2 minutes ago, AxlRQ93 said:

what does clipping mean

You know when you put any song in the maximum volume on your earphones or speakers and it starts to distort? That's like clipping. The frequency shouldn't be cut (in that blue waveform you can see where it's quieter). With a good pair of headphones or speakers, you can actually hear the drums distorting, like a crunchy blip.

[Lethalis]

1 minute ago, AxlRQ93 said:

a question re this

Can you make a song “loud” like wall of sound like while still preserving dynamic range? For example the guitars on ain’t it fun from TSI sort of create a wall of sound and are loud but it doesn’t sound compressed? 

a lot of GNR songs since 99 sound very small, for lack of a better word. Tinny

Well, usually guitars are also placed on a "position". Left, right or in the middle... so you can hear all of them distinctively at the same time, which will give you a "wall of sound".

But they shouldn't be "too loud".

[allwaystired]

What's the reason behind them producing it so badly? Any theories? 

Is it just that they couldn't give a fuck and have done it on the cheap? 

[Lethalis]

1 minute ago, allwaystired said:

What's the reason behind them producing it so badly? Any theories? 

Is it just that they couldn't give a fuck and have done it on the cheap? 

"Producer, Associated Performer, Vocals: Axl Rose"

[Zeppelin]

1 minute ago, allwaystired said:

What's the reason behind them producing it so badly? Any theories? 

Is it just that they couldn't give a fuck and have done it on the cheap? 

They just don't care/are lazy. A lot of artists/engineers seem to have forgotten that people have volume controls and don't need artificial loudness/brickwalled mixes injected into every bloody track.

[tboneman]

Here's a quick 30 sec example of Metallicas Death Magnetic Guitar Hero version vs CD version. Lars defense for the sound was that it sounded good on his cars speakers lol. 

Edited December 7, 2023 by tboneman