mixing on this album is so good... gtfo

OK, it's hot when chicks laugh so hard they pee, but shitting the bed?!? Come ON!!

Yes, it does make my viewpoint valid.

If someone didnt know shit about building drums, and told you that a Sound Percussion set sounded better than the DW they traded it in for, you'd laugh your ass off. Is it an opinion? Yes, but do you have common sense?

Mixing and production is somewhat subjective a craft, yes, but there are still principles that more or less only become obvious through a general practice of it.
I can point out glaring mistakes on both albums, but for a band that has continuously relied on creating interesting and unorthodox structures to their songs, the run of the mill recording and mixing on this album detracts from the already disappointing music. Even the mistakes Bottril and his engineers made on the two previous albums added an extra dimension of listenablility to the albums.
Ænima sounds like an expirement in sound where the engineers only had their previous experience to provide a dark path to some unknown desination. An experiment that could have failed miserably, but didn't.

This one just sounds like a typical compressed for radio junker.

Listen to when the guitar kicks in at the begining of the pot, and tell me you can still hear justin's bass line. It's gone, all you can hear is guitar. The first 4 songs are great, but then the album kind of takes a shit. "Rosetta Stoned" starts of good, but then half way through it becomes way to "Third Eye" and really has no climax. What's up with the riff at the end? The End of "Right in Two" is so lame!!!!!!!!!! Very unoriginal! Danny is even wanking for no good reason!????????!!!!! What is adam playing? Guitar for Dummies? Then the 46 and 2 ripoff ending is lackluster. I don't see how you can argue with me. The second half of the album is disappointing. The artwork and presentation is top notch, but I could care less. I want the music!!!!!!!!

I could argue with you, but it won't change your opinion. Hopefully time will, though.

I don't know if it's quite that bad, but, I'll take Bottrill over Barresi any day.

Uhhh, how many people on this thread have actually mixed/produced music?

That's what I thought. I would be interested to hear what someone like George Martin or Geoff Emerick or even Rick goddamn Rubin thinks about the production.

Has anyone else noticed 'clipping' and 'popping' sounds on this album?

I notice it throughout the album really. Possibly Dannys drums

Check out Rosetta Stoned, it seems to be a bit more noticeable at around the 7:00 min mark (where Danny does his fast tom fill) onwards.

Please let me know if you can hear this. I tend to be a bit anal with this shit

nope...sorry.

I've also noticed what sounds like the drum mics clipping in some spots, specifically the snare and toms. So far I've only really noticed in Vicarious. It might be in other places too. Maybe it's just heavily compressed.

you guys need to turn your cd players down.

I heard something of the sort in my car earlier today. Made me think I was getting something extra through the speakers, but the popping noise is definitely there.

I do it all the time.

Paraflux can probably comment on this subject as well.

I heard it on Right In Two last night, first listen. Took the cd out and it looked perfect, but I wiped it a little anyways. Played fine after that. Might be packaging dust or ink or something on them with all the weirdness to the package.

Then again, I may just have to laugh if they spent the money and time on the package but the album skips and pops hehe. After all, the cd IS the point.

I have mixed several projects. dont be so quick to jump to conclusions I would imagine a few people on here have had experience in audio recording.

Its certainly not to do with the voume of the cd

The pops and cracks are still there. I have tried it on 3 different cd players too. Its not awful....but fucking annoys me that its there. Ah well....what can we do...jack shit

I personally would have liked the drums up a bit.

As im a drummer myself, its half of my facination with them, however theres plenty there to be satisified with.

The only thing I hear is a constant extra ringing on Dannys cymbals during The Pot

I hear a bit of distortion (a very brief static like noise) at 4:11 and 4:12 into Wings (during the last seconds of the build up to the very heavy part).

Anybody else notice that?

I've heard clipping in Rosetta Stoned.

It is due to the extremely high compression that they put on albums these days.

Also, the intro to Vicarious seems to have some kind of digital fuckup.

I've heard clipping too, but I've been putting it down to my soundcard/speaker combo... it's definately not due to "extremely high compression" either; as you'd know if you'd looked at the music in a wave editor.

Vicarious is the only song that comes close to a good mix, an Aenima level mix. Danny and MJK are loud and clear, Adam is refrained, and it is BY FAR the best song on the CD.

i second the notion of snap, crackle and pops.

I heard the actual CD (as opposed to the torrent) today, and I noticed the same thing. I've produced a few albums in my time, and was listening to it on an okay CD player and very high-end headphones. The first thing I asked my friend (who had bought the CD) was whether or not he noticed how much clipping there was.

Strange...

I quickly threw in Lateralus to check the settings and no clipping there. I also noticed many inconsistencies with the mixing and production (I know that's another thread).

I'm glad to see others are hearing the same thing--I'm not crazy after all!

I want to add that supposedly this was mastered by Bob Ludwig--one of the best in the business.

I don't think he would let that happen.

The guitars are loud, but I don't think it's to any other musician's detriment. It's just the style of this particular album.

no clipping here. It's your stereo

I have mixed/produced several albums and I immediately noticed the inconsistencies in mix from one song to the next. The guitars are too loud--the bass is squashed into the center with no "breathing room". There is little to no stereo separation in the toms mix on most (not all) of the tracks. If you listen to any other Tool album--or damn near any album--the mix stays relatively the same throughout the album. Time is usually spent to ensure this, to help the whole thing flow together. Some of the drum tracks sound like they were taken off a two-track and not mixed in post at all, while others sound much more full. It's sooooo all over the place production-wise. I find this very strange.

There's also the matter of clipping in several spots (see the other thread).

Why would they half-ass it so badly? It would make sense if these were leftover ideas and they mixed and matched recording sources, but not if this is the real, final album. Very bad if this is the case. Yes, it sounds better than Undertow, but at least that album is consistent throughout.

yup. Heard it on two or three songs. Mostly bass, then drums. I actually liked how it sounded.

Can you explain the sound on head-phones on low volume? Because thats where I hear it.

Is clipping so bad?

as a former sound engineer, I would have to respond to that question with an irrevocable "yes!"

I dunno what you're hearing, but it could be intentional. remember that guitar distorition is a form of clipping.

it's a lot like "God Hates Us All" by Slayer, it seems to be a recent trend in metal to really push everything too far... it's a little weird to hear Tool doing it, it gave God Hates Us All a good raw feel though.

No, not this sound - what I'm hearing (and I guess what everybody else is too) is that distinctive crackling sound that you get when something's been amplified up past the 0dB mark, and the curve of the waveform gets flattened out.

Hard clipping is the most raunchy of guitar distortion

Exactly.....overdrive.

I'm with wordsmith -- tool seems to be low on the "weird sound effects" scale. They're not primus (lol)

I noticed this awhile ago on the leak but thought it was just because of a bad rip. Perhaps, it was rushed a bit too much.