This is what I like to call a ‘dynamic edit’ of “Take It All Away” by Red! Both Innocence & Instinct and the band’s first album faced a decent amount of dynamic range compression (not to be confused with data compression, which concerns MP3s and such) in its mastering, which, when used in excess or poorly, can make music fatiguing to listen to over time and cause audible distortion. In this, I attempt to undo that mastering compression and resulting distortion, making the music more dynamic and hopefully, more listenable!

For those not in the know, the Loudness War is a phenomenon beginning in the mid-90s onward, in which music was mastered louder and louder, with the underlying reasoning being that louder music sounds better, and thus, should sell better. As with any medium, however, there is a peak loudness a signal can reach, so dynamic range compression (which makes the louder parts of the signal quieter while keeping the quiet parts the same loudness) and sometimes even clipping (attempting to make a signal louder than maximum loudness) were used to make music as loud as possible.

The issue with this is that overuse of dynamic range compression and clipping can make music fatiguing to listen to, and sometimes even audibly distorted. Additionally, clipping, poor compressors, or overuse of compressors can result in artifacts such as hiss or crackle being audible atop the signal. Despite these albums featuring a not especially high dynamic range, they are mastered in a way that honestly doesn’t result in much distortion. There are elements where there’s a slight limiting to the snap of the snare, such as in parts of “Let Go”, “Lost”, and “Take It All Away”, as well as parts during “Start Again”, where I heard the mix audibly crackle from distortion, but aside from those examples, it really isn’t that bad. It just goes to show that a simple number showing a dynamic range value is not enough to tell you how an album sounds, with an album like The White Stripes’ Icky Thump distorting far worse than these two Red albums despite having a higher dynamic range value than them.

For what is there though, I attempted to undo the album’s dynamic range compression with a program called “Perfect Declipper”, which can not only affect clipping, but other types of xompression found in mastering as well! I was able to make the snare a bit snappier, like in “Let Go”, “Lost”, and “Take It All Away”, as well as fix up the distortion during the parts of “Start Again” that I noted, and make the album as a whole more dynamic! Through this process, I was able to bring the dynamic range of End of Silence from 7 to 12, and the bring the dynamic range of Innocence & Instinct from 5 to 11, which hopefully makes it more listenable as well! Keep in mind that “Intro (End of Silence)”, “Already Over, Pt. 2”, and “Intro (Canto III)” have not been edited, as they were too quiet to have been affected by mastering compression.

It’s important to note that the dynamics are not being restored with the “Perfect Declipper” program that I use, but rather, they are being approximated. While one may not be able to “declip” an album as one would be unable to “unbake a cake”, I find the results here to be a convincible attempt at doing so. Only in the most extreme examples have I heard the program produce odd artifacts that would appear unintended in the album’s mix.

I also want to make clear that dynamic range compression is not an inherently bad thing. It can tighten up performances, add grit, and help remove dynamic outliers that would take you out of the mix. Additionally, mastering engineers are often underneath the implicit and explicit pressures of artists and record labels to master albums loudly, so the results of mastering may not necessarily reflect a mastering engineer’s intentions for how they wanted an album to sound. Also, whether my edits sound better than the original release is up to what the listener thinks!

I produce many more dynamic edits on this channel as well as further descriptions in posts over on Reddit! You can look at this for a full list of the albums I’ve done: https://docs.google.com/document/d/19...

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