because pre-amps are what take an audio signal and process it (eq, etc) before the power amp. a shoddy preamp would make a hot signal like 10,000 days distort. a high end preamp would compensate for this, and a clean signal would pass to the power amp.

This has nothing at all to do with excessive limiting. An excessively limited track can sound distorted and max out at -10db, ie, not a hot signal.

Amen. Digital can choke on it.

I first noticed this distortion when i first listened to the album on my headphones (I too am a sound engineer) I was like "whoa are my headphones fried?" but i think the album was mastered a little too hot, which is a shame. i dont notice it on larger systems, but i have noticed that i reach for the eq when i blast it through a P.A. something i never used to do when i used lateralus the check out p.a's

That's a little unfair. I can make professional recordings in my room WITHOUT gratuitous white noise and digital clipping. Not to mention analog tape is incredibly expensive, and I don't think they are even making it anymore.

Um...what?

i listen to mine with no eq and sitting close to the speakers in a the proper triangle positioning i dont hear the clipping no matter how loud i crank it and its going through studio monitors and through fiber optic so its bit perfect note for note... dont hear these distortions... sorry...

Whoops. I could've swore I read an article stating they weren't manufacturing the stuff anymore. Maybe that was vinyl records.... STILL it's incredibly expensive.

I don't understand these problems that everyone are having. I've listened to 10,000 Days on my headphones, loudspeakers, and in the car and every time it has sounded perfect. No distortion, no bleeps, nothing. It might be a possibility that you guys DO have faulty discs as there is no other way to explain this...

No, there's definitely something unusual about the recording. Hissing pretty much throughout (though it's not THAT intrusive). Also there is distortion during heavier parts of songs, usually when there is heavy drumming and guitar (?), times when I would normally not expect bass to bottom out, but it does. (Not sure if that is correct terminology, but fuck it).

You won't notice it on car stereos, and probably not on run of the mill home stereos, and not on PC speakers. I used my brother's garden variety headphones and the album actually sounded pretty good. Then I used my Koss headphones and I noticed all of the above stuff. And (I think) Koss have a rep for being good bass headphones, so it's quite noticeable.

Overall, though there is some very cool stuff on here as well. Right In Two has some "Angels, angels...." blah which I think is cool. And The Pot has some nice little surprises in there as well (with headphones).

Bah, enough...I think only "purists" would really be bothered by this. I think it works alright, just different.

i bought my copy in the netherlands and its fine.

I'm very eager to see some "offical" comment on this (in my eyes) bad production. It bugs the hell outta me, for the album is otherwise great. The distortion has nothing to do with poor playback equipment, as it is quite noticeable when I load the tracks and play them back through my Pro Tools-rig as well, and it has nothing to do with reconstruction overs (voltage values between samples that exceed the limitations of the DA-converters) either. Most curious.

i agree, i loaded all the songs into my studio gear last night, just viewing the wave files them selves, was unbelievable...i'd like to know how or why this audilbe clipping made it this far...the dinamics of this album have been squashed and compresed to the limit...tool must have been eating lobster's and someone from the record label was standing over top of ludwig saying ""make it louder""..
this is the only part of this album i don;t like

They could have eased up a bit on the maximizer, but it's not the worst example of loudness madness out there. Anyway, this is probably not the cause of the distortion. To me, it sounds like a digital unit of some sort has been driven into saturation during mixdown or mastering. Whether intentional or not, it sounds very harsh to me, and I hope this is a production error rather than an artistic decision. Of course, such a serious error would be quite a blow to the reputation of the audio engineers involved...

I'm also a bit amazed that some people don't seem to hear the distortion - do they have different pressings of the album where these artifacts have been remedied? The distortion is extremely apparent and annoying to me.

Sounds fine to me, on every system I've listened to it on.

Then it's probably a batch problem - certain pressings might have had error-ridden masters or something like that. I've heard three different copies (probably from the same batch, though) of the album on my stereo, my discman, my Pro Tools LE-rig with mid end Fostex studio monitors and a Pro Tools|HD-rig at work with high end Dynaudio monitoring. Same result, ugly distortion in all cases.

I'd like to hear a song from the supposedly "clean" pressings...

It sounds fine on my M-Audio Delta 10/10 via RCA to 1/4" to my Mackie HR824s.

I guess none of you guys have ever listened to Kyuss. The engineer that engineered the really badass Kyuss albums engineered this album, and all their albums sound a little fuzzy. It was a part of the sound that Kyuss was going for. It would be my guess that this is an engineered part of the album.

I have a couple of Kyuss albums with mr. Joe Barresi behind the mixing console, and there's nothing on them like the distortion I'm hearing on 10,000 Days. In my ears it sounds very ugly - almost to the point where my enjoyment of the album is affected, but then again I might be a bit inclined to get hung up on such things since I'm an audio tech myself...

I have heard a lot of Barresi's work through the years, and I think that albums he produces/engineers sound badass, he gives them the right amount of 'grittiness' and such. No complaints from me, but this is really something else entirely. This isn't functional in any way, it's ugly and annoying. If you think it adds to the feel of the album, then you're lucky, but hearing this from a semi-professional point of view....it's unacceptable IMO, and not supposed to be there AT ALL.

Tool, Barresi and Ludwig didn't get where they are by giving us, the public, shitty sounding albums.

Excuse me, do you live on the same fucking planet as the rest of us???

McDonalds didn't get where they are by selling fat laden, shitty quality food with flavour enhancers that make our tiny minds go back for more.

Coca Cola didn't get where they are by selling us a shitty coloured drink with a shitty taste loaded with a drug so we go back for more.

Microsoft didn't get where they are by selling us all a shitty o/s that is memory and CPU greedy and prone to crashing for no apparent fucking reason.

Need I continue? And what was my point, anyway? Well, when I started this reply I had one. A point, that is. Now, I don't believe in anything any more.

Damn you greedy corporate motherfuckers! Damn you all to hell!

Waar heb je die cd gekocht?
Ik vind het wat zuiverder klinken dan de rip. Voor de rest zie ik geen probleem ;x.

[dutch flame]

kunnen al die lelijke austaliers een keer de kaak dicht houden. Ga fietsen in je eigen kangaroo land ipv het forum vol te spammen met jullie negatieve berichten. Dit klinkt generaliserend maar het zijn altijd jullie mensen bij wie ik de negatieve dingen en de flames lees, mislukkelingen!

[/dutch flame]

Yeah, well... any views regarding the topic discussed?

I'm very disappointed with the production also. Perhaps the less defined nature of the drums is also related to the problem causing the static clicks/distortion?

It's shocking to see them go from Lateralus (which had FLAWLESS production in my opinion) to this.

The distortion sound appears to be from too much limiting. The drums are, overall, too low in the mix for my taste, but aside from that it sounds like the eq on the kick is scooped too heavily, the snare and toms don't seem to be compressed enough, and the cymbals sound like they've been way too compressed and then ran through a very narrow bandpass eq. There's very little articulation on the drum sound on this album.

I've never heard it on any of Barresi's other work. Maybe it wasn't his fault.

It's not too distracting, but this is the first cd in recent years that's had me moving to other systems to make sure I wasn't just hearing things. Almost kind of like a crackling when the guitars and drums get too hot. It was really apparent on the leak of the vicarious single.

I'm ok with the high noise floor (makes sense with the way they recorded this one), but this "distortion" seems rather strange for a commercial cd.

edit: "seems">"is"...*nod to elevate

It's not that strange. It's all over Rush's Vapor Trails, which was made so noticeable because, similar to Tool, Rush's previous albums were meticulously recorded.

Elevate: How do I deal with Tool falling off the production wagon and not focusing on all parts of the record as they always used to-Saturnist

Nah, this isn't rather strange at all. It's just a trend I've been noticing a lot more recently. I don't think the band really has much to do with this. It has to do something I'm sure with something in post production.

I feel this way because the leak had none of this. The leak had other problems, mind you, but not this clipping/cracking when the drums/guitars get really busy.

Yes, my copy had a nasty distortion too. In Vicarious, in the second riff, when all exploid, i can hear very good this dirty points sounded. it's on the entire album too, but more smooth and less perceptive.

Um...you try to ignore it(?).

The leak I have has the same problems.... ???

[dutch answer to dutch questions, in dutch, also]

ik heb mijn cd gekocht bij de waterput in bergen op zoom, echt een hele toffe zaak. Ik heb daar denk ik wel 10 verschillende exemplaren beluisterd, die allemaal die klote-kraak hadden. Ik vind het gek man, je zou zeggen dat het een productiefout is, omdat Tool schijt heeft aan normen zoals het hard masteren van cd's en omdat ze gewoon een perfect werk willen afleveren. Maar aan de andere kant loopt het gekraak over de hele cd samen met de pieken in het signaal...het klinkt na verdere bestudering mee als een probleem met de compressie. Luister maar eens goed naar het stuk in Vicarious vlak bij het einde, als Danny steeds krachtig één slag op zijn toms geeft: je hoort de klap op de toms (de piek in het signaal) en pas daarná de kraak. Alsof de compressor in één keer uitklapt en daarbij kraakt, ofzo... Ik weet het ook niet precies hoor, ik ben wel een audio engineer, maar nog niet zo super ervaren :-P

Voor de rest, de mensen hier zijn redelijk ok, maar die reactie op mijn vorige post is dan echt weer een geval van Totale Zinloosheid, waarin artiesten worden vergeleken met verachtelijke kapitalistische bedrijven... Ach ik kan er niet wakker van liggen =)

[/dutch blabla]

I didn't d/l the leak so I can't comment on that... I am however, upon closer inspection, more and more worried that this isn't a faulty pressing or anything, just listen how the distortion consistently follows the peaks (loud bits) on the album.

Also, I noticed that the distortion/crackle always comes áfter a loud hit, not during. That's gotta mean it's got something to do with the compressor rapidly switching on and off, right?

It took you this long to notice? That's a part of the Tool charm: the fact that they are assholes.

They've been assholes.... thing is now I can't take it with a grain of salt anymore.

harbong is right. i am an audio engineer, this is what i do for a living.

the reason this album sounds so sexy [despite the distortion and nosie floor] is because instead of playing hard with low gain, they record playing real soft, with maxed gain. it boosts the dynamic range or the tracks, which allows for more compression [if needed] because they are compressed to shit, and the levels are boosted, if you try and further boost those levels, they will exceed the max. notice that the only clipping occurs at the really high and really low ends? turn your lows and highs down! also, i like a little boost between 2.5kHz-4.5kHz, let maynard shine through a little more, but just a little boost. maybe 3dB....

anyway, that is the reason tehre is clipping. to make the album sound bigger better fatter and more spacious, thats what they had to do. genious if you ask me.

Sounds good.... but Lateralus... Aenima... and Undertow have way more beef and sound immaculate.

Agreed. Lateralus sounds FAR more powerful than 10KD. 10KD just sounds like a big distorted mess.

The only thing I really notice that sounds rough (but I guess is supposed to) is the bass in Jambi around the parts where they lyrics are "beg like a hooker all night long". Not sure about that...

Maybe they did it just to fuck with audiophiles, because... well... it's pretty amusing.

devi-