So, I got the new Coldplay CD for my birthday last week. I know, I know… say what you will about them as a band. Personally, I really like a lot of their stuff, but I won’t fault anyone for thinking they are trite crap. Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t. Regardless, their records have always sounded really nice. I frequently use “A Rush of Blood to the Head” as a reference recording and to cleanse the aural palette, so to speak. Even their last record, while fairly loud, squashed, and produced, wasn’t too offensive to me.

Now then, the mastering of their newest record is beyond upsetting, even taking into account the current trends in loudness. Even on the lowest settings in my car, I can hear the kick drums and low end collapse into a wobbly, farty mess. The mids are grating and exhausting at any level, the sibilance of the voice is piercing and just sounds like bursts of white noise. Aside from that, there doesn’t even seem to be any sonic consistency from one song to the next. It’s as if the mastering engineers have finally been pushed as far as they can go, and they are just throwing up their hands in defeat. I don’t blame them per se; there’s probably a lot of pressure from all sides to deliver a loud product. It’s just a really disappointing sign of the times.

Look, I’m not championing the levels of CDs pressed in 1989. Frankly, it’s annoying when I can’t turn them up loud enough in my car. I appreciate a little bit of attitude from some of the music I listen to, and if that comes from a bit of aggressive compression or even clipping, so be it. If it sounds good, who cares how it was done. Not all music needs to be treated this way, but it suits some styles just fine.

That said, COME ON GUYS. At a certain point, it just stops doing anything other than just being loud. Any inkling of sonic integrity has been zapped out of it. And honestly, at this point, if this is what passes for mastering these days, then my job is obsolete. There’s no reason to hire me or anyone else calling themselves a “mastering engineer.” You can do this at home.

And I’m being 100% serious: if you’re a budding engineer (or even a musician with some plugins & a laptop) and the new Coldplay CD sounds good to you, don’t waste your money hiring me. Master your record yourself.

Unlike modern mastering, maybe I’m being a bit heavy handed to make a point. Good engineering does mean something. Yes, the song and performance is 80%, but the recording itself is a snapshot in time. Do we really want this era of our lives to be remembered for being ugly, grating, annoying and hateful? I don’t. Like I said before, that blown-out sound certainly has its place, but not applied to everything.

Thankfully there are ripples in the underground, and if that is any litmus test for the future, things might not be so dire. 50% of my work these days is spent mastering for vinyl, and it doesn’t seem like people give a crap about the competitive loudness of LPs… at least not to this extent. I’ve only had one client in the past 4 years ask me to revise their CD master to be louder, and I usually am fairly conservative from the get go. The people I work for seem to be a little more aware of the so-called loudness wars. Unfortunately (and I’m sometimes guilty of this sort of self-consciousness as well), until big dudes start backing off the limiters, selling good-sounding records is going to increasingly become a niche business.

Or maybe not. It seems like trends and progress in the music industry always flow from the bottom up, right? Maybe, just maybe, if us little people keep doing what we’re doing, keeping our heads down and making great-sounding, tasteful records… maybe the big guys will eventually take notice and follow suit. Because, dammit, I’d like to buy a new record by a band I like in the future without it causing me to have an existential crisis.