David Nail - I'm About To Come Alive
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CD Details
Artist: David NailEdition: Music CD
Audio: English (Unknown)
CD Release Date: 2009-08-18
Music Label: MCA Nashville
Soundtracks:
- Mississippi
- I'm About To Come Alive
- Red Light
- Again
- Clouds
- Summer Job Days
- Strangers On A Train
- Looking For A Good Time
- This Time Around
- Turning Home
- Missouri
Music reviews of I'm About To Come Alive
Music Review: Induces headaches from overdriven mixing
Rating: 2 Stars
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
I've never heard of David Nail, but I do have a varied selection of music in my collection, including country music. The samples provided for this album sounded good, so I figured I would give it a try.
When I received the disc, I put it in the same DVD player that I use to listen to music CD's and started to listen to the album from beginning to end. At least, I intended to listen all the way to the end.
The first thing I noticed was that the music was very loud. I turned down the volume as far as I could and still hear it, which helped. Unfortunately, about half way through, I had to turn it off because it was giving me a headache.
I came back to it a few days later and realized the cause for the irritation. By examining the audio on the disc, I found that the music was mixed at a very high level. Bringing the track data into Sound Forge, the waveforms showed what I was hearing. Many times, the audio was close to being clipped because it was mixed at such a high level.
Using dbPowerAmp's tools, I was able to determine that, in order for this disc to be normalized in volume, the tracks on this disc had to be reduced in volume anywhere between 9.4dB (This Time Around, Track 9) and a whopping 11.45dB (Summer Job Days, Track 6). This means that the best track needed to be reduced in volume by 9.4dB in order to be normalized in volume! The Album Gain reading came out to -10.75dB to normalize the volume of this album as a whole, which is just sad.
Using these tools, it is possible to bring down the energy level. Unfortunately, it means that the low sounds will be lost as the the entire track is reduced in volume to accomodate for the high average energy. This serves to deaden the sound quality and mute any nuances that might be in the music.
It's especially sad since the music itself sounds pretty good. It's similar to other country music that is popular, and I don't necessarily have anything bad to say about the quality of the artist or his work. Unfortunately, some bad choices were made in the production of this disc, and I can only hope that this was a pre-production run sent out for reviews, and that the full production run was fixed before it went on sale.
What I find surprising is that none of the other reviews here have mentioned the compressed dynamics of this disc. This is the first time I've ever run into a disc that was overdriven to this extent, and the fact that others have not noticed it baffles me. Either I have a bad disc or the current state of music quality is so bad that people accept this as normal.
For more information on this issue, please do a search for "Dynamic range compression" and how it relates to broadcasting and music production. Actions like this serve to degrade audio quality, not enhance it, and it should not be tolerated by the buying public.
As a result of the poor mixing done on this disc, I cannot recommend it. Giving it two stars is a gift, and only because the artist shouldn't be given an "I hate it" rating for something he was probably not able to control.
Artistically, the music is OK. Technically, this disc is a mess and should never be sold to the general public. I will be contacting the publisher to see if there is a corrected version available, and I would be happy to revise this review if I find out that the problem is isolated to the pre-production run.
Description of I'm About To Come Alive
David Nail's debut album I'm About To Come Alive is full of hard knocks and heartache, good times and bad, small towns and big cities - it's all in his music. The first single and title track "I'm About To Come Alive" is currently available from Amazon MP3.Country CDs
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