The Vinyl Adventure
06-05-2010, 11:12
Takk is most known for the track that fetured in the BBC's stunning series 'Earth' .. That's the reason I bought the album anyway...
When I got it home I was a little disapointed, not in the music - which is epic and moving to say the least, but in the sound quality. I had the cd version, I was never put off listening to it, was just always a bit disatisfied with the level of compression, both dynamic and in terms of it sounding like it had been compressed to mp3 - grainy and tinny etc. Since being a memeber of this forum I have learnt of the 'loudness wars' and more about compresion etc, people, including me are often banging on about most modern music sounding shite and lacking in dynamics and well just sounding too loud. Well I have just bought the 200g vinyl version of 'takk' and it does sound better than the cd version - less gravely and noisy. But it still sounds in many parts very dynamically compressed.
In the title of the thread I say 'I kinda get it now' .. What I mean by that is that now it's not had the extra aparent problem of being put on cd, it seems a lot clearer to me that in fact that this dynamic compression is not the result of anything but artistic licence, perhaps I'm giving the band the benefit of the doubt, but I think they wanted it to sound this way? It goes well with the distortion that has been applied to various intruments and samples (that also sound much better on this vinyl version. Also It does after all give it a slightly disquieting and slightly anxious feel to it which is quiet apt concidering it comes from Iceland, a stunning beautiful place that what with it's tendancys to spurt lava could also be concidering disquieting and anxious.
Maybe I'm thinking about it too much, I'm not sure, either way I'm happy I bought this 'audiophile' vinyl version as I am now feel i get the album a lot more, even if my interpretation isnt the intended, it suits me just fine!
When I got it home I was a little disapointed, not in the music - which is epic and moving to say the least, but in the sound quality. I had the cd version, I was never put off listening to it, was just always a bit disatisfied with the level of compression, both dynamic and in terms of it sounding like it had been compressed to mp3 - grainy and tinny etc. Since being a memeber of this forum I have learnt of the 'loudness wars' and more about compresion etc, people, including me are often banging on about most modern music sounding shite and lacking in dynamics and well just sounding too loud. Well I have just bought the 200g vinyl version of 'takk' and it does sound better than the cd version - less gravely and noisy. But it still sounds in many parts very dynamically compressed.
In the title of the thread I say 'I kinda get it now' .. What I mean by that is that now it's not had the extra aparent problem of being put on cd, it seems a lot clearer to me that in fact that this dynamic compression is not the result of anything but artistic licence, perhaps I'm giving the band the benefit of the doubt, but I think they wanted it to sound this way? It goes well with the distortion that has been applied to various intruments and samples (that also sound much better on this vinyl version. Also It does after all give it a slightly disquieting and slightly anxious feel to it which is quiet apt concidering it comes from Iceland, a stunning beautiful place that what with it's tendancys to spurt lava could also be concidering disquieting and anxious.
Maybe I'm thinking about it too much, I'm not sure, either way I'm happy I bought this 'audiophile' vinyl version as I am now feel i get the album a lot more, even if my interpretation isnt the intended, it suits me just fine!