Rip,

Perhaps the title, "Worst Mastering Engineer" is not the best subtitle for this effort.

I got an email from Prorec.com today asking me to spread the word about your latest article, which I did.  I posted the request on TheGearPage.net in the recording forum, hoping to get some input from the many folks that hang out there.  Their main objection, and one to which I may agree,  was that the problem of poor mastering was most likely due to the label execs insisting on the loudness of the CD to the detriment of the music.

Many of the readers of the the forum to which I posted your newsletter object to blaming the mastering engineers directly for the poor sound quality.  Perhaps you could explain a bit about this to clarify the issue.

I have been a reader of ProRec.com for some time and have come to know this site to be one of integrity and an excellent resource for those wishing to increase their knowledge of recording.

Cheers,

Ken

Would music purchased as MP3 be eligible? Truth be told, I've been buying most of my music thru emusic.com for the last couple of years. A couple of those albums are tragically overcompressed.

I don't know what to think about purchased MP3s.

On the one hand, MP3s have more than enough dynamic range to support the needs of rock/pop music without all the compression.  So it's no more necessary to overlimit an MP3 than a CD.

On the other hand, I forsee a lot of people questioning the legitimacy of an article that talks about mastering in terms of MP3 creation.  They'll wonder if statements made about an MP3 apply to the CD.

And, while almost all MP3s are simply extracts of the CD, it's certainly possible that there are MP3s out there that are mastered differently from the original CD, so that statements made about the MP3 wouldn't apply to the CD.

I'm curious what other readers think??

I know that when using OGG, it'll barf on anything over -0.5dB

I have a suggestion - check out the song 'Joyride' by Rooster. It is so overcompressed that what little musicality it had in the first place has been wiped clean off the recording. A friend (with bad taste) once put it on a compilation CD for a road trip, and we ended up turning the CD player down about six or seven levels when it played - it was genuinely painful. This really is a great example of the detrimental effect of the loudness war on music.

Rip,

Thought this was an interesting phenomenon...two publicly released versions that are different, with the CD noticably overcompressed and the mastering engineer embarrased to be associated with the CD.  WOW.

From Rolling Stone - Rock Daily

With last Friday’s release of Death Magnetic, Metallica fans knew that the band’s new album would be playable that day for Guitar Hero 3. What fans didn’t know was that the video game version of the album would actually sound better than the CD counterpart. That’s what mastering engineer Ian Shepherd discovered when, on a tip from a Metallica forum, he compared the compression rates between the CD and the GH versions. Shepherd discovered that the CD is boosted as much as compressively possible, making it ten decibels louder than the GH version while completely bleaching out the dynamic range. The subject of compression and the loudness wars was discussed in much more detail in our “The Death Of High Fidelity” piece, but Death Magnetic seems to be the biggest violator, with fans both demanding the band re-mix the album and threatening to perfectly-execute GH’s in-house version and send that to fans clamoring for a proper mix. Even Ted Jensen, who is credited with mastering DM in the liner notes, admitted on a message board, “Believe me I’m not proud to be associated with this one, and we can only hope that some good will come from this in some form of backlash against volume above all else.” Jensen said the mixers of the album are to blame for the compression problems. Metallica is usually on hand for the mixing stage, but this time around they were away in Europe.

http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2008/09/18/fans-complain-after-death-magnetic-sounds-better-on-guitar-hero-than-cd/

Rip Rowan wrote [...] If the mix was trashed, then where did the GH version co  me from?  Surely there wasn't a second mix. [...]

Rip, tracks has to be sent to GH game developers seperately for the game to work the way it works.
I guess the tracks were sent to the producers of the game much before anyone mixed and mastered the production.
So, no final butchering from the master buss, or mastering process applied for the GH3 mix.

I studied the case pretty closely but I am reluctant to make any blog posts about it.

There's so much more squashed CDs out there which don't sound as bad as this one.
I'll post a screenshot soon. Hopefully.

Artist: Metallica
Album: Death Magnetic (2008)
Song title: The Day That Never Comes
Mixing & Recording Engineer: Greg Fidelman
Mixing engineer: Andrew Scheps
Mastering engineer / facility: Ted Jensen / Sterling Sound

Ripped using EAC (Secure Mode) - Meters: VU / PPM

Cursor position (Time)  00:07:33,510
Left Channel:         
RMS level (dB):   -7,794  (for 10 seconds from cursor position)
Right Channel:
RMS level (dB):   -7,598 (for 10 seconds from cursor position)

Clip length: 1 sample > Clip # : Too much to count. About 500 or so I guess

Clip length: 2 samples > Clip # : 4

Personal note:
This goes to "Loudness War" topic for sure. But personally I believe, audible distortions was in the mix before the mastering. 
Digital and inter-sample clips is not the mistake of the mixer, though. 

This is how it looks like when we check: "The Day That Never Comes" (using Sound Forge):

Horrible.
But we've seen worse stuff than this. As you can see, there is a tiny little dynamic er... gap. 
That range floats in around 1dB (from the 0 dB ceiling). This one will not proove anything. So it follows:

Let's check another track which seemed very interesting to me. (It is almost as if Ted Jensen left this behind, so I could follow the mysterious footprints)
Track #7 (titled: "The Unforgiven III") is the least compressed of all with an RMS of -10 dB, and it doesn't match to other tracks as volume (it is not as loud as the others, definately). This section below is from a snare/drum fill at about 3:03:
(~300KB gif image, please wait for it to load)

The transient of the snare (and/or the whole mix) is brickwall-ed or compressed to death. 
It is possible to see the horizontal line of the wave weighing at aroud -2.5dB. This can be caused by 2 things:
1- Bad mix
2- Bad mix
I have seen such things before. It usually happens when the mastering engineer tries to rescue the mix by adding some breath, -using again- nothing but compressors and a little bit of eq.
Although I might be wrong, I believe this mix was done badly. Very badly.
Mastering is not so great too. Otherwise it would be difficult to explain these digital and inter-sample clips.

But overall, the reason was clear: making this album "The loudest. Ever".
I'm not sure who has done the butchery, that's all.

If I try to listen to the mix, disregarding the distorted moments, this mix is also ear fatiguing.
Too hot around 2,5-7kHz area in average power (not only "hit and run").

I had a listen to the Guitar Hero 3 "mix" too. Sounds better, but still, a bad mix.