Sure, I'm listening to the album right now; I'll add the timestamps as I go. I'm listening to the FLAC from nin.com through foobar2000 on decent, but not great speakers, but it's also noticeable on my high end headphones.
The Start of Things: 1:46 - 1:49, 2:28 - 2:32
Big Wide World: 1:03 -1:07, 1:22 - 1:27, 1:51 - 1:53, 2:13 - 2:18, 2:24 - 2:27, 2:50 - 2:54
Finding a Place: 1:18, 1:56, 2:17
Further Along: 0:37, 0:40, 0:43, 0:48 - 0:50, 1:17, 1:21 (this one is extreme); 1:30 - 1:32, 1:35 - 1:39, 1:47 - 1:50, 1:58 - 2:04, 2:08 - 2:12, 2:14 - 2:17
This isn't even all of it, just the parts that are so extreme that it actually takes away from the music, and in many cases the sound of the clipping actually exceeding the volume of the piano itself. You have FAR more experience than I do, botley, but I do want to throw in that I did go to school for and work as a professional audio engineer for a few years before I made a career change, and I'm pretty sure I can identify this distortion accurately as just a case of being mastered too loudly and clipping. If you think it's something else, let me know! I also want to emphasize (in case Reznor is lurking) that I do genuinely love this album, it's something I've wanted for years (a piano based album), I just have this one mild criticism of it, and it's not even a criticism of the music.
Edit: Here's a screenshot of the waveform for Further Along just to illustrate my point for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about (anywhere the peak of the waveform is cut off instead of pointed produces the distortion, the wider the cutoff, the more pronounced the distortion):
Last edited by zecho; 10-20-2018 at 11:34 AM.
Brotha52 - Is your user name a Fish reference? If so, cracking song!
Must admit, I said to my wife last night it sounds like its distorting....and not in a good way. Didn't massively detract, but it was a distraction from the effortless beauty of the tracks.
Last edited by simonn; 10-20-2018 at 01:37 PM.
Hm, that's weird, so it's not just on Spotify. Their lossy compression scheme goes down to as low as, what is it, a 96kbps stream? So I wasn't surprised it sounded bad. But my FLAC version sounds great.
Sidebar, kids. Don't ever listen on Spotify, unless you're paying for the "Extreme" quality option (even that is only around the normal bitrate for Apple Music or Tidal). I believe they just issued an updated advisory for Spotify uploaders, saying that their truly extreme amount of compression causes excess waveform peaks well above the original master's full scale limit, and you should change your masters to be quieter first before uploading to avoid added distortion (yikes, not good news for the Definitive Edition remasters appearing there any time soon).
Back to the mid90s FLAC, though, I do see the peak limiting you're indicating @zecho but those peaks don't have any audible distortion on my end. There's a little bit of 'pumping' but no obvious "shit, that's clipped" crunchiness. Maybe there's something foobar2k or your sound card is doing on playback to introduce inter-sample distortion, perhaps converting to a different sample rate somewhere, or doing something else to change the waveform and pushing those peaks higher than they originally were. I say this only because, after looking closely on a spectrogram and playing the tracks at full volume through my Yamaha monitors, nothing on the EP produces nearly the same level of distortion you're describing. Do you have any EQ, or other DSP settings engaged? Is the output going directly through your soundcard, or is it being mixed with other audio inputs from other applications? Is there a way to turn on 'exclusive mode' and have all that stuff bypassed?
One other thing to try is just lower the input volume on foobar2k, then compensate by turning your speakers up. According to Adobe Audition waveform statistics, the FLAC files I have all peak at or just below 0dBFS, with only one case of a true-peak possibly above the 0dB limit in "Further Along" (which doesn't register as clipping), so it's not a case of there being clipping baked into the files themselves... but perhaps they're pushing the limit a bit for some extra playback volume. Maybe I'll try lowering the volume of the files losslessly and see what happens then.
Last edited by botley; 10-20-2018 at 02:39 PM.
Holy shit, you're right. It was a sound card problem. I'd have never guessed, as I haven't had any problems with this system before, and I've had it for a few years. I wonder what made this different. So yeah, maybe I should come to you for audio issues in the future. It's still a little loud for piano album for my tastes, but the clipping completely disappeared after I fucked around with the settings for my sound card. Thanks for mentioning that, it's really gonna improve my listening experience! I kind of feel like I have egg on my face, just assuming it was mastering and not on my end.
PS. apologies to everyone for apparently bitching about nothing.
This sounds truly wonderful and I'm disappointed it's only four tracks. I know a lot of people tend to see the score work as sort of same-y, and I tend to agree for post-GDT scores (though they still sound very good), but this EP feels distinct to me, probably because it's entirely piano-driven. Not a lot of mysterious electronic sounds, no slow brooding, just strong piano melodies with some additional background noise. Each track feels identifiable to me, moreso than some of the other recent score work. I would love to hear more in this vein.
Very easy to listen to! I, on the other hand enjoy that it's only four tracks. I love how many soundtracks the guys are doing now..but SO many instrumental songs, they're all starting to blend together to me. I really enjoy the short soundtrack!
They were officially posted on Trent Reznor's Apple Music Connect feed:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/post/sa....4-039dd4f77b10
https://itunes.apple.com/us/post/sa....3-e42cb86dc273
Since they were publicly freely posted, I don't see a problem with sharing and downloading them via other means. The original files were 256 Kbps AAC.
Any idea if this will be available via amazon, either to download or as a physical release?
If this movie were set five years earlier, they could release it in CD in a longbox. Remember those?
Download is right here.
@botley , if you get FLAC files and upload them to Google Music, I assume that it convert's it to 320Kbps versions with less compression than what I found on Spotify?
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross have created a beautiful soundtrack for a kind and sweet boy who stands at the end of his safe and sheltered youth; now eagerly embracing streets which are filled with excitement and countless opportunities for success, failure, and most importantly danger.
The whole Wu-Tang bad ass beats and songs are good for illustrating the temper and vibe on the streets; but that's not the mindset of Stevie... its TR/AR soundtracks that remind us of the sensitivity and fragility of what we are watching.
The Start of Things and Big Wide World are absolutely stunning and a couple of my favourite instrumental tracks the duo have done. I like how The Start of Things just ends, I could also see it as an intro/scene setter to something with the way it builds before cutting out, kind of like The Frail in to The Wretched.
anyone know where i can get these "abandoned sets/bonus tracks/unreleased songs"??? i checked the old GG thread and i saw some "PM's" floating around. anyone care to help a brotha out?
I just can't get enough of the score work from these guys. Everything is absolutely brilliant and the mid90s score is no different. great work, cant stop listening. I wish it was longer though
Last edited by davemuzik85; 10-24-2018 at 12:18 PM.
As @Final Destiny pointed out in the ninwiki thread, "Escape Attempt" is literally the exact same track as "Inquiries" from the Patriot's Day score, but I sent you "Abandoned Sets" via PM.
You can get all the material that Trent posted to Apple Music Connect (including the Gone Girl tracks) from here:
https://mega.nz/#!uBMyVQoC!CqZKOv4Td...iiyiY94-ERArSg
This article makes it seem like these four tracks are it.
Perhaps the soundtrack coming out on the 29th, if there is a full soundtrack coming, is a various artists compilation with the four score tracks???
https://www.nme.com/news/music/trent...mid90s-2393228
I just listened to the tracks on youtube today and I must say they are absolutely stunning. I have immediately fallen in love with them. So hauntingly beautiful and melancholy. Really great stuff from the lads and I also like the fact that it is only 4 tracks, it forces more of my attention on each one.
Also, although it is not NIN, I think it would make a nice coda to the EP trilogy, sort of like the credits rolling at the end of the story. I must try that later. Lastly, I know it gets said all of the time, but we really are getting spoiled with the level and the quality of releases from TR/AR these days.
for anyone who has purchased this on nin.com, is there a null# and/or catalog number in the notes?