Loudness War



""I like my music like I like my life -- everything louder than everything else.""

- Meat Loaf

Ever since the dawn of humanity, it's been a known fact that people respond more easily to louder audio stimuli. Thus the illusion that "louder = better". With the advent of music recording technology, the music industry sought to capitalize on this; if our album is louder than their album, and the listeners don't adjust their volume dials to compensate (or can't, if they're hearing it in a bar, etc), our album will sound better! But, they hit one tiny obstacle along the way: vinyl records have an absolute limit on how loud they can be. The search for loudness became easier with the introduction of the compact disc in 1982, which besides a larger storage space also boasted an improved dynamic range (about 90 dB).

Any recording medium has an absolute limit when it comes to amplitude, and compact discs are no exception. Once audio engineers managed to max out, the only solution to go even more Up to Eleven and out-loud those other CDs was to break out the dynamic range compression, which squashes every bit up to the same volume level, causing listener fatigue. The often-used analogy here is that of attempting to read a text written entirely in capitals with a huge font. In movies, Orange Blue Contrast has a similar effect; since the contrast is pleasing to the eye, producers will push at as far as possible, often over-saturating the film in these colours and squashing out more subtle colours entirely.

Compression is not inherently bad. Used with a light touch, it "smooths out" recordings to remove unintentional volume spikes, caused by random fluctuations during recording or by layering the "loud moments" of two instrument tracks on top of each other (not unlike using sandpaper to minimize jagged edges on a wood carving). This can give an album a fuller sound and more consistent volume across tracks. But when taken too far, it can result in severe clipping, unpleasant and harsh-sounding distortion that happens when the signal is pushed to the saturation point. The illustration on this page explains why the practice is sometimes known as "brickwalling" in audiophile circles.

The absolute peak of loudness started slowly creeping up in 1995, when Vlado Meller mastered Oasis' (What's the Story) Morning Glory? to -8 dB RMS. Since then the tendency has been to make records louder, while Meller has gone on to ruin more albums like Californication. The resulting loudness war is due to a variety of factors, such as commercial concerns, stupid executives, following the leader or listeners / musicians who are unaware of this phenomenon, can't tell the difference and don't care, and some actually LIKE how it sounds, while others take advantage of it for artistic purposes.

One of the most Egregious aspects of the industry's reliance on increasing loudness is that hundreds of albums that originally had good dynamic range are now being "digitally remastered" with almost completely brickwalled peak levels.

By contrast, one of the sadder aspects that Nick Southall highlighted was the belief that if you master the songs loud, they'll be played more on the radio. It doesn't work like that: radio stations (as well as TV stations) have their own compressors and equalisers to squash everything up to the same volume, with the result that any CD will get loudness war'd for broadcast and an already hyper-compressed CD will just sound like shit squared.

This is the main reason why people say vinyl records are "higher quality" (besides personal taste reasons such as the crackle and hum of records). The inherent quality of CDs is far better than records, but since "records are for audiophiles", there is far less incentive for audio engineers to trade-off quality for loudness on records. Additionally, vinyls have a smaller dynamic range, and any attempt to pull loudness war stunts on them will usually just throw off the needle or make them unplayable. The Irony in all this is that digital formats like the CD finally made it possible to make audio as quiet as you wanted without any analog hiss obscuring it, but with a lot of equipment out there accommodating the audio levels of the War, exploiting this quality will often make things simply too quiet to hear.

For further information, Imperfect Sound Forever is required reading. More information is available online, including these two videos that do a great job of providing abbreviated explanations. There's also a 20-page forum thread dedicated to poorly mastered albums for examples. See also this, to show things are more complicated than they seem. This website allows you to use offline software to measure the dynamic range of a CD, express it as a number and add it to its ever-growing database.

There are algorithms that can be used to repair clipped audio to a certain extent; none of them are perfect, but they will generally produce end results that sound better than the commercially released versions with clipping. More info on one of them is available here.

When loud music is used as a weapon, that's Loud of War.

Worst offenders

 * The picture shows Iggy Pop's 1997 remaster of Raw Power by The Stooges (specifically the song "Search and Destroy"), hands-down the worst offender, being constantly in the red and occasionally averaging -4 dBFS. The album was intended to sound loud, blunt, and unsubtle, but there's a difference between "exhilaratingly loud" and "headache-inducing, unlistenable sonic mess". Even his bandmates James Williamson and Ron Asheton think he fucked up horribly here.
 * This is often cited as an example of an artistic use of the phenomenon, as Iggy Pop has been cited as saying he wanted to "recreate the feel of an old, worn-out vinyl". Given the overwhelming amount of crackling, distorted midrange on the disc, it's easy to say this goal was at least somewhat accomplished.
 * There is hope, however: Sony released the "Master Edition" in April 2010 with the original David Bowie mix reinstated and slightly beefed-up to fix some of the valid criticisms of his original mix (inaudible bass and the like). It just might be the first step towards reversing the trend in general.
 * Even better was the 2012 Kevin Gray remaster of Iggy's mix, which was released as a vinyl edition for Record Store Day (along with another remaster of Bowie's mix). This completely cut out the clipping and other problems that plagued Iggy's mix while keeping the improvements over Bowie's original mix (beefed up guitars, better midrange and bass presence, etc.). This has been getting lots of praise even on the notoriously hard-to-please Steve Hoffman forums. The general consensus seems to be that the album has finally gotten the mix it deserves.
 * Strapping Young Lad invokes this for the sole purpose of of creating a gigantic and unrelenting wall of sound. It's unpleasant, but that's the point.
 * The same applies to many acts on Ed Banger Records, like Justice, SebastiAn and to an extent Uffie, who use absurd amounts of compression to create a signature sound.
 * This is also done to almost riciduous levels by Boys Noize. For example this.
 * Oasis' 1995 album (What's the Story) Morning Glory? arguably was the catalyst for increasing abuse of this trope. Nick Southall himself agrees, saying that "If there’s a Jump the Shark moment as far as CD mastering goes then it’s probably Oasis."
 * Some have cited this as a result of excessive cocaine use by all parties involved. Cocaine can apparently affect your hearing and as such probably shouldn't be used by recording engineers. Though in all fairness, working with the Gallagher brothers in the studio would drive anyone to narcotics in the end.
 * Some also say the mixing was for the record to be heard better in loud environments (such as cars and crowded pubs).
 * A Place to Bury Strangers have actually been trying their damned hardest to be one of the loudest bands in the world. This becomes a problem when the sonic noises bursting your eardrums overpower the artistic quality of their albums.
 * It looks like they've settled down a bit with the brickwalling if Onwards To The Wall is an indicator of anything.
 * Most Shoegazing bands that released an album after My Vitriol's Finelines suffered from excessive loudness. This is why a lot of the albums get acclaimed for the song writing, but dodge perfect/ near-perfect scores because of the poor productions quality. Shoegazing used to use loudness as a means to make all the effects pedals in the music more audible, but a lot of the more recent producers are Completely Missing the Point and wind up brickwalling everything.
 * To be fair, the brickwalling on Finelines was the result of a bad producer and Executive Meddling, as many live recordings mixed by the band don't have this problem.
 * Red Hot Chili Peppers' album Californication is loud (maxed out at 5.6 dB) and has excessive high-frequency clipping, to the point that even non-audiophile consumers complained about the atrocious mastering and people even recommend a very popular "unmastered" version of the album that's floating around on the Internet over the actual album (see Metallica below for a similar issue). Vladimir "Vlado" Meller is officially The Scrappy of audiophiles everywhere - we could put up an entire category just for the albums he was involved in ruining.
 * The vinyl and cassette versions do not have the distortion the CD has, so it is fair to say it was done intentionally. The 'unmastered' version of the album (which has several different tracks to the final version) has about the same fidelity as a vinyl rip, but it comes from a prerelease CD of an early version of the album. Because of this we can see more was done later on, or this isn't Meller's mix. Rubin was quoted as saying that he regularly has four people master an album and he chooses which one he likes best. Meller's always wins, apparently.
 * Contrary to the information above, the vinyl of Californication appears to be clipped too and appears to use the exact same mix as the CD. This is averted with RHCP's later albums -- Stadium Arcadium did use a demonstrably different master on the vinyl and it sounds leagues better than the CD version. Luckily, the unmastered version of Californication, as mentioned, is not clipped and is not terribly difficult to find on the internet.
 * Indeed, the vinyl Stadium Arcadium was mastered by audiophile favorite Steve Hoffman.
 * John Frusciante was noticeably upset with the mastering of "Can't Stop" and "Universally Speaking" on the follow up album By The Way, and remixed the tracks for their single releases. They were a vast improvement.
 * Also, Frusciante's solo albums To Record Only Water For Ten Days and Shadows Collide With People also have this, which is why he insisted on releasing his albums on indie labels who would not meddle with his mastering from that point on.
 * This actually started before Californication. I just listened to One Hot Minute for the first time in awhile and it could have been called One Hot Master - it's really compressed as well, although not as badly as the commercially released mix of Californication was. Looking at the waveform bears this out; it's almost a solid brick wall except for a couple of acoustic tracks. Is anyone surprised that this was a Rick Rubin production?
 * Manic Street Preachers releases (albums and compilations) since Know Your Enemy. The worst offender is the second CD of The Holy Bible (10th Anniversary Edition) which is remastered so badly that it practically has no dynamics, and you can hear the noises caused by clipping. Also, quieter sections (such as the quotes before songs) seem to be mastered much quieter than rest of the songs themselves, which means that if you are listening to this for the first time and don't realise it, prepare to be shocked. Forever Delayed, Lipstick Traces and the remaster of Everything Must Go also have this, but it's not as bad. For the latter it almost suits the album, for instance on A Design For Life.
 * Hypocrisy's album Virus has a total album gain of -14.09 dB, and one of the songs looks like this. Fucking hell.
 * Metallica's newest album Death Magnetic is so distorted and clipped that even mastering engineer Ted Jensen has criticized it, adding that he couldn't do anything since the preliminary mixes came in already "brick-walled". Interestingly, the version made for Guitar Hero 3 was based on a "rough mix" that features far more range, and those tracks have been subsequently ripped and distributed via peer-to-peer services. To sum up: Metallica, the anti-Napster poster boys, now have an album that can only be truly appreciated via piracy, and a video game featuring a guitar with 5 buttons on the fret-board is the best way to enjoy an album... the irony boggles the mind.
 * However, said Ted Jensen has brickwalled a few more albums than just this one. Which just goes to show how badly Death Magnetic was screwed up if even he complains about it being too brickwalled.
 * It's worth noting that even the vinyls of Death Magnetic were horribly clipped, and Metallica charged $100 for the 5LP version. The Guitar Hero 3 version is definitely the only way to go.
 * Not the worst offender by any stretch, but Queen's latest compilation, "Absolute Greatest", has the dynamics sucked right out of it. You know how the first verse of "We are the Champions" is really quiet, then the loud chorus comes blasting out? Prepare to be severely disappointed.
 * Rush's album Vapor Trails suffers from constant peak distortion. You can barely hear any of Neil Peart's amazing drumming because it's a huge mess of white noise. Improved remixes of 2 songs from the album appear on the compilation album Retrospective 3, and more remixes have not been ruled out either.
 * Confirmed: The entire album will be remixed for release later in 2012. And the Fandom Rejoiced.
 * Garbage's Bleed Like Me Album gain: -11.78 dB. Track gains: from -7.1 dB to -13.2 dB.. The self-titled debut album is an interesting reversal: individual parts are intentionally compressed to distortion but the whole somehow manages to have dynamics.
 * Fall Out Boy's Infinity on High.
 * Arctic Monkeys' Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not.
 * Queens of the Stone Age's Songs for the Deaf. (Of course, this may be intentional -- the entire album is supposed to sound like it's being listened to on a car stereo.)
 * For the curious: album gain -10.88 dB. And Rated R two years earlier has an album gain of -9.92, which casts doubt on the "car stereo" theory.
 * This is likely due to the fact that Songs for the Deaf has an extremely dark, bass-heavy mix, and Replay Gain uses loudness contour analysis to determine how loud an album actually sounds vs. how loud it actually is. Lower-end frequencies don't trigger higher values nearly as much as upper-midrange signals—Songs for the Deaf is notably abundant in the former and lacking in the latter. Recent updates to the Replay Gain system have leveled out in this area, becoming closer to the absolute-volume RMS standard.
 * Audioslave's eponymous album is another victim of the Rubin/Meller treatment. This is especially disappointing given how meticulously produced Soundgarden and Rage's material had been (the posthumously released Renegades, mentioned further below, being an exception, which shouldn't be surprising since it was also produced by Rubin).
 * I had no idea Audioslave had elements of German power metal in their sound. Unless you meant that band that was Against the Machine.
 * System of a Down's album, Hypnotize... ah, hell, probably all of their albums.
 * Hypnotize was definitely the worst of them; the guitar solo during "Lonely Day" has very noticeable clipping, even on poor speakers. Rick Rubin (of Death Magnetic infamy) would seem to be a likely culprit, until one notes that he produced all of their albums (starting to notice a pattern with Rubin productions here?). Maybe he just stopped caring around 2001 or so.
 * It would have to have been by 1998 at the latest, because SOAD's first album is pretty clipped, too, although not as bad as their later stuff.
 * Oh, it's clipped pretty bad, it just doesn't sound as loud because it's more bass-heavy than any of their later work. Actually, their follow-up, 2001's Toxicity, is their closest album in relation to being reasonably leveled. However, this is more rather irrelevant by the fact that the music itself is compressed to make what should be quieter sections anticlimactically even with everything else.
 * Given the nature of the band's music, it does kind of Come With the Territory.
 * Foo Fighters' One By One, with its muddy guitars and drums which bleed into everything else.
 * Wasting Light both plays into this trope and averts it. The regular CD version is max out, but the special edition vinyl downloadable MP3 versions are normal.
 * Slipknot's Vol. 3: The Subliminal Verses. Not only is it pushed to the limit of modern-day loudness, it doesn't even peak. And I'm not just talking about below-zero flat-lining or extreme soft-clipping here either. I'm talking about rampant straight diagonal lines, suggesting that the mix was even worse than usual in the maxed-out clipping department, and the mastering engineer had to turn it down post-processing, just to meet today's ridiculous standards. And guess who was behind the production helm? That's right, Rick friggin' Rubin.
 * U 2's How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.
 * The Mars Volta's Deloused in the Comatorium and Frances the Mute.
 * These also contain extended quiet passages, so that the brick-walled bits hit you EVEN HARDER.
 * Every single Mars Volta album contains some degree of clipping, although Octahedron is significantly less clipped than the rest. Then again it's supposed to be their "acoustic" album (although, true to form, it's not entirely acoustic). However, Nocutourniquet is bad enough that even the mastering engineer has disowned it, indicating that she was forced to master it that way by either the label or someone in the band. At least some of the vinyl editions, contrary to popular belief (including the previous form of this very entry), are also clipped.
 * Pop music is not immune to this either. Heart in Motion by Amy Grant and Stripped by Christina Aguilera are the most commonly cited examples. Brandy's Full Moon has also been singled out.
 * Paul McCartney's Memory Almost Full, to the point where McCartney was motivated to act on it. See Aversions.
 * Depeche Mode's album Playing the Angel. This is just one track. And side by side with previous releases.
 * Thankfully, this was also released on vinyl.
 * This trope covers most DM releases starting with Ultra and its singles, unfortunately. Besides the new releases (albums, singles, and LiveHereNow releases of shows from the Touring The Angel and Tour Of The Universe tours), this also includes the 2 singles compilations, Singles Boxes 4-6 (1-3 were straight-up re-releases of the 1991 boxes, thankfully. If you need the singles from Strangelove through In Your Room, get the individual versions released in '92-'93 as they're properly mastered. You can see a comparison of the waveforms of the 2 different versions of the Strangelove single here.), Remixes 81...04 in its various forms, The Best of Vol. 1, and the '87-'94 DVD-only bonus tracks accompanying the remastered albums (Sourced from the 2004 boxed set versions instead of being re-done with the albums). The remastered versions of Ultra and Exciter weren't fixed.
 * The exceptions are the MP 3-only Remixes 81...04 Rare Tracks Bundle that was briefly available to buyers of the three disc version of the main compilation and the pre-Ultra remastered albums, which are louder than before, but still with dynamic range and don't clip nearly as much as the other releases (Alan Wilder, a vocal opponent of the loudness war, supervised the remastering process on the albums from his period with the band, and the previous two albums are at similar levels). Thankfully, you can get most of the problematic releases on vinyl, but some (like the 2 bonus discs from the Sounds Of The Universe boxed set and most of the Peace remixes) are unfortunately CD-only.
 * Speaking of Sounds of the Universe, it thankfully appears to mark the end of this trend for DM. It's certainly more compressed than early DM releases, but even tracks like the intentionally overdriven "Wrong" have a pretty wide dynamic range.
 * Except the disc is almost as loud as their previous release, with a Replay Gain value of -10.20 dB (Par for the course for rock, but outright fucked up for synthpop).
 * Keane's Hopes and Fears, as well as their second album.
 * One journalist discussing this trope specifically noted the absurdity of Keane's light piano rock album actually being louder than Nevermind by Nirvana.
 * Sleater-Kinney's The Woods.
 * By the same producer: The Flaming Lips' At War With The Mystics and Embryonic. Damn you, Dave Fridmann...
 * It really started with Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, but like the Raw Power remaster it's clear the albums are supposed to sound really loud and distorted.
 * Low's "The Great Destroyer" also produced by Fridmann, is horribly compressed. Seems to be his trademark style rather than incompetence though.
 * Supposed to doesn't equal "creating the sonic equivalent of a wet fart", you can be loud and distorted without sacrificing dynamic range. Also, Yoshimi's quite squished but tolerable, Mystics is where the damage really begins.
 * The Darkness' Permission To Land.
 * Not that this is surprising, or entierly inappropriate. That said, their Lighter and Softer follow-up One Way Ticket to Hell... and Back has no reason to be even more extreme in regards to this.
 * The Strokes' Room On Fire.
 * Especially daunting since their debut album was widely considered a breath of fresh air from this.
 * Black Holes and Revelations by Muse. The difference is immediately clear when compared to live versions of the songs.
 * All of their albums since Absolution, really, even when they mixed/mastered
 * Fear Factory's Cyberwaste.
 * Anything after Demanufacture, really (and even that album could get rather clippy at points). Case in point: "Shock" starts up with a blast of distortion that clearly should not be there.
 * The Killers' Day and Age. Horrible clipping and compression.
 * See also: their first and second albums, so it's not really surprising that their third one should follow this trend.
 * Day and Age is actually slightly less loud than the other two albums (according to ReplayGain), but it sounds much more distorted (especially the drums on "Spaceman").
 * It might very well be that this was what they were going for (you never know with Brandon Flowers...)
 * Intentionally invoked by a number of Noise and early Industrial artists, most notably by Whitehouse on Birthdeath Experience (1979) and Right To Kill (1984), on which everything is "in the red". Hell Is That Noise, indeed. Averted by legendary harsh-noise artist Merzbow, whose production tends to be frighteningly clear.
 * Someone hasn't heard the man's mid-1990s works, particularly Pulse Demon and Venerology, the latter having Replay Gain values in the negative twenties, and also contains what might be the loudest track ever put to compact disc in "I Lead You Towards Glorious Times"
 * Apparently the new Joy Division collector's edition albums are squished. I bet Martin Hannett would have been furious.
 * Everything mixed by Howie Weinberg since 1999, including some New Zealand albums (sadly).
 * Edguys latest album Tinnitus Sanctus gets this one badly.
 * "Holy Ringing Ears" indeed.
 * Ben Folds' 2008 album Way To Normal was badly compressed in its initial release -- and fans complained so much this time that the studio actually reversed course. The album was rereleased barely a year later as a deluxe 2-disc set, Stems and Seeds, with all the tracks "demastered" and some other goodies included to justify the purchase.
 * This wasn't exactly new, as 2001's Rockin' the Suburbs was victim of the same fate.
 * At least one reissue of Renaissance's Scheherazade and Other Stories is so distorted that the climax of the title track sounds substantially better in a medium-bitrate MP3 of the original vinyl. Or So I Heard.
 * The Boy Will Drown's debut album Fetish
 * Despised Icon's The Ills Of Modern Man.
 * Iron Maiden seems to be suffering from this (the video's author is shocked to see how balanced is the mastering of their recent song "Different World"!).
 * This happened to the 1998 and 2002 reissues of Powerslave, too. Dynamic range = out the window. It sounds rather muffled, and the vocals are now too loud compared to the drums. Ditto for most of their other reissues, eg Number of The Beast.
 * However, the balance in mastering from "Different World" and the other A Matter of Life and Death tracks carried through to The Final Frontier. Frankly, both albums are among the best-sounding of Iron Maiden's career.
 * Lacuna Coil's Karmacode. It's a particularly egregious offender given that their earlier albums were characterized by dynamics that you could practically breathe in.
 * Even poor Weird Al isn't immune to this. Compare "That Boy Could Dance" from his 1984 album In 3-D (one of the more arrangement-heavy songs on that album) to, say, "Hardware Store."
 * Despite the fact that Bob Dylan harshly criticised this entire trope (famously declaring "You listen to these modern records, they're atrocious, they have sound all over them. There's no definition of nothing, no vocal, no nothing, just like ... static."), this has befallen his latest albums Modern Times and Together Through Life. Luckily enough, they were also released on vinyl, which just seems to confirm that it was the record label's fault and not his.
 * Rise Against are basically war criminals in the loudness war. War criminals with an army and tanks and CDs. Very compressed, very loud CDs.
 * Most amateur live performances seem to suffer from this. How it usually works is the sound check starts with setting the volumes at an acceptable level in the audience. The performers then complain about not being able to hear themselves and, rather than adjust their foldback, jack the volume up.
 * BT - These Hopeful Machines. Full stop. Here is the waveform of "Suddenly". The chorus in particular suffers from painfully obvious distortion.
 * Back in 2001-2002, his 10 Years in the Life singles compilation also got loudness war'd, although to a lesser extent.
 * Gorillaz' Plastic Beach and Spoon's Transference have been "mastered" by Vlado Meller, so there's a very high chance of this bullshit.
 * The Secret Machines' Now Here Is Nowhere. It's a real pity, because it has some good songs but listening to them on a good pair of headphones is headache-inducing.
 * Eurobeat producer Magic Hammer's Most Extreme Ultimate Thunder album. It's supposed to be loud, because he's from a heavy metal background, but the brickwalling is just plain tinnitus-inducing, ruining otherwise awesome tunes. The Super Eurobeat series, as well as Hi-NRG Attack, SCP, and Dima Music's own releases, are also guilty of this as of late.
 * Many Industrial artists have become casualties or combatants of the loudness war as of late, especially Front Line Assembly's Artificial Soldier (and most of the remix album Fallout), Decoded Feedback's Aftermath, and Funker Vogt's Blutzoll. The latter in particular is nearly unlistenable as a result.
 * Musicians in noise and affiliated genres (noise rock, noise pop, et al.) intentionally use this as an aesthetic.
 * Radiohead has an interesting example: In Rainbows. The album wasn't brickwalled as Hail To The Thief was, but all the tracks have been peak limited so there are no dynamics in the songs, or at least, not any great amount of it. Averted by the vinyl edition, which is pristine like all their other LPs.
 * They started be major perpetrators of this with the highly-lauded Kid A. To quote an old audio review "'Everything in its Right Place' is so loud it's almost behind you!" Artistic License may apply, but it's certainly a pitfall from OK Computer, and certainly Pablo Honey. OK Computer brickwalls in its loud sections; The Bends is mastered loud by 1995 standards, but is quiet by today's.
 * Rage Against the Machine's final album Renegades suffers from this, most likely due to the fact that A) the band had already split up, B) it's a collection of covers that aren't all from the same recording session, and C) Rick Rubin "produced" it. Interestingly, the track "The Ghost of Tom Joad" appears here in only slightly altered form from its previous release on a Brendan O'Brien-produced single, and the difference is quite evident when it's played directly opposite audio sludge like "How I Could Just Kill A Man". The trope had started to creep in somewhat to their previous album The Battle of Los Angeles as well, and to an even lesser extent to Evil Empire, but neither of them are anywhere near as bad.
 * This happened to the iTunes remaster of Cygnus X's Hypermetrical album, which was originally released in 1995 (and thus had decent dynamic range). Brickwalled to death. Keep Circulating the Tapes, bro.
 * Dismember's "Pieces" EP has an album gain siting at -14.4 dB. This was released in 1992.
 * Even game soundtracks can become victims, such as the Redbook CD music to Descent 2, released in 1995. It Got Worse with the 1997 Updated Rerelease, The Infinite Abyss.
 * This accusation has been leveled at Jeremy Soule quite a bunch from the nonaudiophile crowds. (He doesn't brickwall, but you can be forgiven for believing he does. The soundtrack for Total Annihilation was especially bombastic.)
 * Starflyer 59's 2003 reissues of Silver and Gold, while not as objectively bad as some examples on this page, were still decried by a vocal portion of the fanbase. Silver wasn't that different, but Gold was declared "ruined". Notably, when both albums were re-re-released on vinyl, the record labels involved insisted on using the original mixes, rather than the 2003 remasters.
 * Every single release by Shiina Ringo. Muzai Moratorium was tolerable, but Shouso Strip is probably her worst offender: pretty much 55 minutes of dynamics-less white noise, which really ruins enjoyment of the otherwise good music.
 * To be fair, considering the amount of control she has over her music and her... eccentric personality, she did that on purpose. And besides, Kalk Samen Kuri no Hana has some pretty wide range.
 * Presenting Scranton, PA's Terror on the Screen. TURN YOUR VOLUME DOWN.
 * Spiritualized reached a peak point of loudness while still keeping dynamics with 1997's Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space, and then proceeded to throw away the dynamics with every album since.
 * Bleeding Through's Declaration is so badly compressed that the kick drums drown out everything else whenever they're played. Which happens a lot. It can be a painful listen, even though the production isn't that bad, other than the godawful compression. Have a listen.
 * For the audiophiles, that song is mastered to -8.9dB, which drops to -8.6dB if you cut out the ending.
 * Both of Apoptygma Berzerk's albums after their Genre Shift to indie-emo electro rock.
 * Venus Hum's Sonic Boom. Imagine hearing this with a severe ear infection and front row seats. You may cringe now.
 * The Veronicas are ridiculously loud for a girl band.
 * Almost any remaster of New Order material. Just compare the versions of "Blue Monday" and "Perfect Kiss" on the Singles compilation to the originals (if you can find them).
 * Why Is Angels & Airwaves album LOVE so normal-volume, but if you play I-Empire it's twice the volume? Imagine, you're about to go to sleep, I-Empire in your CD player just about to start up at what you deem a normal volume, then WHAM! Your ears hurt from the dB count. So you end up adjusting it so I-Empire sounds normal and everything else all quiet-like.
 * Every release by Funeral for A Friend apart from their first two EPs. Most notorious example is the tracks on their Greatest Hits. The waveforms of the four exclusive tracks form perfect rectangles that fill up the whole window. In an album example, there is Memory And Humanity, with distortion so evident as to make the album exhausting to get through. On their other albums the tracks are loud, but they are not distorted. Bizarrely, this album was released on the band's own label, which they set up to avoid Executive Meddling.
 * The Pet Shop Boys started to get louder with 1996's Billingual, and the loudness war reared its ugly head on their latest album Yes, whose dynamic range is a paltry 6 db. Conversely, the remasters of their older albums gained in volume, while retaining most of their dynamic range.
 * Rihanna's "Only Girl (In The World)" is quite obviously brickwalled, being actually distorted during parts of the chorus.
 * Armin van Buuren's Mirage. Not as brickwalled as the aforementioned These Hopeful Machines by BT, but still quite squashed.
 * Signum's For You, also on AVB's Armada label, is even worse. Is it trance, or unlistenable wall of white noise anti-music?
 * Katy Perry's Teenage Dream is louder than Megadeth. Let that sink for a moment. Especially "Peacock", and "California Gurls", where the drums constantly clip.
 * Her first album, One of The Boys, was even worse.
 * Likewise, Cracked's article on the Loudness War expresses shock at seeing Celine Dion, "I'll Be There For You" and Ricky Martin being louder than AC/DC.
 * Worse yet, Avril Lavigne is louder than Dragon Force.
 * Another victim of the Meller miasma: Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.
 * Most of West's recordings are brickwalled, but MBDTF is by far the worst, with the clipping audible on pretty much every track.
 * Even happy hardcore/hard trance has been affected. Just listen to this. Pure Ear Rape.
 * In fact, Blumchen exhibited this trope way back in 1996 with Herzfrequenz, which has an overall range of -5 dBFS.
 * Genesis' entire catalogue was remastered in 2008. It was not an improvement.
 * Dragon Force are loudness war criminals overall, but Sonic Firestorm, particularly the reissue, is brickwalled to the point of being unlistenable. The vinyl release of Ultra Beatdown seems to be mastered a little more responsibly, however.
 * If we're talking original releases, Valley of the Damned was significantly more guilty of this, with the following two being surprisingly reasonable in this regard, especially compared to their genre peers. In fact, Sonic Firestorm is probably one of the best-produced and best-mastered songs of the decade. That said, Inhuman Rampage is easily the worst-sounding of the three for completely different reasons (fatigue-inducing overproduction and searingly harsh upper-midrange dominant EQ, just to name a couple).
 * VNV Nation's Reformation 01 live boxset, as well as their latest couple albums, especially Of Faith, Power, and Glory, which is unlistenably distorted throughout. Oddly, two of Automatic's tracks, "Streamline" and "Radio", are much less brickwalled/distorted than the rest of the album.
 * Even the prog rock underground is not immune. The two albums by the Japanese jazz fusion group Machine and the Synergetic Nuts are brickwalled to a painful degree.
 * Ditto Japanese zeuhl band Koenji Hyakkei, which apart from the compression are pretty much the closest thing to Magma apart from Magma's side projects. But that still hasn't saved their albums, or at least the U.S. versions of their albums (there are previously released Japanese versions that are incredibly hard to find that may avert this trope), from being noticeably clipped.
 * Pixie Lott. For example, listen to "Boys And Girls", which painfully blares in your ears from beginning to end. Also Lampshaded with the album titled Turn It Up Louder.
 * Blackguard's major-label debut, Profugus Mortis, was pretty badly compressed (to nobody's surprise in particular). But the follow-up, Firefight, has extremely conspicuous compression and clipping. The parts that clip are in red.
 * Animals As Leaders' Self-Titled Album. The drums are mixed loud, and they'll clip even during the passages with clean guitars. Turn on the distortion, and you get a sea of red. Looking at heavier songs like "CAFO" in Audacity is quite jarring.
 * Bad mastering must be a trend in djent (then again, a lot of djent is self-produced), because Periphery's self-titled debut long-play record has the same (and extremely audible) clipping issues. The part where the whole band comes in at once in "Ow My Feelings" (or, rather, "Ow My Ears",) looks like [[http://dl.dropbox.com/u/16081358/Ow
 * Rise Of The Tyrant by Arch Enemy. [[http://dl.dropbox.com/u/16081358/In
 * Surprisingly, their 2003 album Anthems of Rebellion averted this trope somewhat, a daring move for the time (let alone now).
 * ZZ Top's Mescalero.
 * R.E.M.'s Collapse Into Now, particularly the songs Discoverer, All The Best and Mine Smell Like Honey. The vinyl version of the release is much better and, when equalised properly has about the same fidelity as the Lifes Rich Pageant LP.
 * This was also the case with their previous album, Accelerate, so it's not entirely surprising.
 * See also: In Time: The Best of R.E.M. Limiting all over the damn place, giving formerly lively songs a much duller feeling. Good luck trying to find an authentic, pre-digital fuckery version of "Bad Day" (unless you count "It's The End of the World as We Know It...")
 * Their 1994 album Monster is an early example of this trend, though it was probably invoked deliberately to give the album a more raw sound.
 * Every Electric Six album, but it's most noticeable on Senor Smoke which has some pretty audible 'whispering' on the vocals.
 * Crash Test Dummies' 1996 album A Worm's Life is an interesting example in that some of the tracks are like this ("Overachievers", "He Liked To Feel It") and some aren't ("My Own Sunrise"). The two tracks mentioned as being like this were the intended singles, so there may have been a compromise somewhere.
 * Not even Country Music can escape this:
 * The trope is discussed by former Country Weekly critic Chris Neal in this article, mainly referencing Miranda Lambert's Revolution album. (Frank Liddell said that they tried to make "Only Prettier" obnoxiously loud on purpose, which actually fits the song's attitude, but the rest of the album has no excuse.)
 * Frank Liddell is guilty of this on his work with Eli Young Band and David Nail, as well.
 * Many tracks on Thompson Square's debut album are so loud that they're fuzzy and distorted. "Are You Gonna Kiss Me or Not" is an exception, however.
 * Ditto for The Band Perry. It's not as noticeable since they tend to play more subdued ballads, but on the song "Double Heart," they just let 'er rip, and it always sounds like it's being listened to on a radio in another room.
 * Mark Wills' "Take It All Out on Me" has a lot of clipping in the intro. To be fair, this seems to be a rookie mistake from Brett James, who is primarily a songwriter and made his production debut on that album.
 * Jake Owen's Barefoot Blue Jean Night has a lot of noise issues, especially the clipped floor toms on "Alone with You".
 * The above could be the fault of Tony Brown, who also turned the Reba McEntire and Kelly Clarkson duet version of "Because of You" (from Reba's Duets album) into a bombastic mess — ultra-compressed guitars blaring throughout, and the instrumentation of the bridge mixed so absurdly loud that Reba is nearly inaudible).
 * The soundtrack CD to Raiden IV. The tracks are much louder and more distorted than in-game, making the otherwise Awesome Music nigh-unlistenable.
 * Many songs by Lights fall victim to this, such as "Second Go", and even worse "Saviour", where the chorus is completely brickwalled. Her sophomore album Siberia has taken this trend further, being distorted to the point of unlistenability.
 * Alice in Chains' most recent album, Black Gives Way to Blue was hit hard by the loudness war. For example, this is what "All Secrets Known" looks like. Somewhat justified, in that it was also released in vinyl format, which requires the maximum volume level just to be half as loud as the CD. Unfortunately, the vinyl is also pretty clipped.
 * Subverted with Rachael Please, whose tracks are ridiculously clipped in order to get the effect he wants.
 * Covenant's latest album, Modern Ruin, is brickwalled and clipped through the roof (ruined, so to speak), going so far as to show the waveform of one of the songs on the cover. 2002's Northern Light was also pretty badly smashed, although Skyshaper(2006) is a slight improvement (not saying much).
 * Emilie Autumn's "Opheliac" on the album of the same name. It seems to have been done on just this song, and blasts any subtlety (and melody) out of the water. Especially bizarre considering she's a violinist.
 * The trance label Hook Recordings has been digitally rereleasing its classics, and many of them, e.g. "Neuro" by X-Cabs, have been subject to the loudness war treatment.
 * KMFDM's post-reformation albums do this to varying degrees, the worst being Blitz and WTF?!. Their old-school remasters mostly avert it, although gaining in volume.
 * Noisia's Split the Atom, or shall we say "Split The Eardrum", has its dynamics almost completely obliterated, averaging about -3 DBFS.
 * Killing Joke's latest single, Endgame.
 * The 20th anniversary remaster of Nirvana's Nevermind is the ultimate disgrace to fans. Kurt Cobain is rolling in his grave... Witness the audio carnage here.
 * The Black Eyed Peas' Elephunk ranked #1 in Cute Studio's CD Hall of Clipping Shame.
 * The Chemical Brothers have been brickwalling since 1997's Dig Your Own Hole, which was extremely compressed even by today's standards.
 * Ditto for The Prodigy starting with The Fat of the Land also in 1997, their worst offender by far is 2004's Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned. FOTL and Invaders Must Die do have vinyl editions which avert this.
 * Both these artists released most of their best-known material on vinyl editions which, fortunately, avert this. For instance, all of the Prodigy's main albums are available on LP and at least the first three have pretty good dynamic range. Same for the first two Chemical Brothers LPs. There are rips circulating the internet which should be pretty easy to find.
 * You didn't think Adele would be so loud, right? Wrong! Several of the tracks on 21, including the signature single "Rolling in the Deep", are brickwalled down to -5 dbfs. Luckily for audiophiles, this had a vinyl version.
 * One-album wonder Gearwhore's Drive is brickwalled beyond belief, e.g. constant clipping of percussion on "Accelerator" and "11:11", and "Train" is almost a perfect rectangle. This was 1998, mind you.
 * Frequently intentionally invoked by Hellektro bands such as Suicide Commando, whose latest album is pretty much solidly brickwalled.
 * Anything produced by Yasutaka Nakata: technopop group Perfume, capsule, MEG, Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, etc. Nakata's production has steadily been pushing the limits of what compression can do with every successive release he's worked on. His 2011 albums, capsule's WORLD OF FANTASY and Perfume's JPN, hit Californication levels of distortion, to the point where melody lines that are supposed to be dead centre are wobbling around the stereo field from all of the other instruments momentarily hogging frequency range. Things also have a habit of ducking out of the mix for split seconds all over the place, much like the music ducks out when a voice speaks during a radio commercial, due to Nakata's ongoing quest to make every second of a song hit 0db.
 * The White Stripes' 'Icky Thump' album is a particularly bad offender, the drums being VERY noticeably distorted on many tracks, to the point of the album being unlistenable on most speakers
 * This has long been a trademark of the band, actually.
 * Stitches of Eden, Helalyn Flowers' second album, was ruined by this trope, after their first album, A Voluntary Coincidence averted it. Inexcusable. For comparison, here's "Digital Blood" from the first album, and "Your Killer Toy" from the second.
 * Black Metal band The Axis of Perdition utilise this trope deliberately on most of their releases to make their music even more cold and inhuman. Their first official release, The Ichneumon Method (and Less Welcome Techniques), is one of the most clipped releases this troper has ever encountered. Their most recent release, Tenements (of the Anointed Flesh), on the other hand, is an aversion - it is mixed extremely quietly for a black metal album, with lots of dynamic range.
 * Green Day's American Idiot and 21st Century Breakdown are both pretty clipped.
 * Live's Throwing Copper still has a good deal of dynamic range, especially when compared to most of the albums on this list, but significant portions of the album are brickwalled and clipped. Notable that it predated (What's the Story) Morning Glory?, which is usually regarded as the point where this trope got really, really bad, by about a year (released in 1994).
 * Most rock records from that year, as well as the following two, are like that; loud enough to peak consistently at the limit but still have most of their dynamics. Morning Glory took this way, way further, constantly pegging the peak limit and beating all surrounding albums by at least 3dB (not a lot to the human ear, but makes a lot of difference to a CD at this stage). It wasn't until 1997 when albums like that became commonplace, and the 2000s (after another notoriously loud disc that starts with a "C") that they became more or less standardized.
 * Notably, both Californication and Morning Glory were Vlado Meller masters. Meller wasn't the first person to ruin portions of an album with clipping, but he may have been the first person to ruin an entire album with clipping, and he took it further than anyone had before (and probably further than anyone other than Iggy Pop has since).
 * The Downward Spiral, also released in 1994, has the same deal as Throwing Copper - overall there is a lot of dynamic range, but the loudest portions of the album are brickwalled and clipped. This would continue with most of Nine Inch Nails' releases throughout The Nineties and in fact dates all the way back to their 1992 EP Broken (although the version of this that I have may not be the same as the original release). However, knowing Reznor's perfectionistic tendencies, it's quite likely that he intended the clipped parts to sound exceptionally distorted, so your mileage may vary as to whether this counts as a straight example of this trope or whether it's a subversion.
 * The Fragile took Downward Spiral's loudness Up to Eleven, going baiscally from Throwing Copper to Morning Glory levels within the span of a single album. Guess those dastardly mid-'90s standards wouldn't let Trent realize his "true vision".
 * Notably, even the vinyl editions of both TDS and The Fragile were clipped. Which is a shame, because almost everything else about the vinyl of The Fragile was pristine.
 * Both of Retraux-electro artist Lazerhawk's albums are offenders to some degree, but the brickwalling and distortion on Visitors is downright atrocious. Too bad, this was an otherwise great album.
 * Mindless Self Indulgence used compression rather perversely: their album Tight is not quite that brickwalled, which gave them the opportunity to mix the song "Diabolical" so that it crescendos during the last bar, suddenly deafening you.
 * Ildjarn made extreme compression an essential element of his style, except in his ambient works
 * Venetian Snares & Speedranch's 2001 release Making Orange Things destroys the competition when it comes to brickwalling. One of the tracks, Unborn Baby has a ReplayGain of -15.98dB and is currently the least dynamic album ever released according to the unofficial dynamic range database. In fairness, this is very much an intended effect as the album is made up of very distorted synths and harsh noises.

Amusing casualties

 * Because the dynamic range of most digital music is squeezed right near the top of the format's capacity, the available volume settings in many modern mobile devices such as the iPod are literally incapable of playing correctly recorded digital audio at the proper volume. This means that even with the internal amplifier at maximum volume through the included headset, what should be normal passages are quiet, and intended quiet passages are inaudibly soft.
 * It seems half the comments on the YouTube showing of Star Trek the Original Series (only available to Americans) are about the advertisements being way, way, WAY louder than the low-levelled audio. Video advertisements being infamously louder than TV programs (with much of the same brickwalled audio quality that even the uninitiated can recognize as 'sounding like a commercial'), and the TV program being leveled at about what you might get in the 1960s (or maybe a DVD), suddenly the advertisements get perfectly normal people screaming to all-out boycott the products advertised.
 * This comes up in Australia every few months.

Aversions

 * For the most part, this phenomenon is not present in the more "sophisticated" genres, such as classical, opera, jazz, orchestral movie soundtracks, and most musicals, due to the loudness of the sound (and lack thereof) being, in itself, a crucial element of the music. Ditto for the more "rootsy" genres such as folk and bluegrass, which put an emphasis on having a natural organic sound versus a slickly-produced one.
 * Only holds true for Old Europe classical/opera. Some of the Russian masters appear to have been 'remastered' by Rubins. The Black Dog remaster of Prokofiev's Alexandr Nevsky flings itself from silent to blistering with barely any padding in between. Generally speaking, the more 'nationalistic' the tone of the piece, the more likely it gets brickwalled. Insert snarky puns about Berlin here.
 * We all know that the 1997 remaster of The Stooges Raw Power is atrocious, but the 2010 Legacy Edition is a hell of a lot better. It's a remaster of the original David Bowie mix. The remix Iggy Pop made for the 1997 remaster turned everything up to match the lead guitar, after which everything was turned up even louder. The original mix has the lead guitar standing out in the mix in order to be intentionally unpleasant, but with a merciful master it's audio ambrosia compared to the 1997 version. There are times when it sounds like you're listening to a skilled cover band. An ideal version would turn the lead guitar down and use the 2010 master.
 * Paul McCartney's Memory Almost Full is considered one of the worst offenders (see that section above), but was later released in an "audiophile" edition, an exceptionally rare example of an album being remastered "the other way".
 * The new stereo Beatles remasters received a minimal amount of peak limiting: not to make the songs louder, but to keep a consistent overall volume across the albums while maintaining the original dynamics. The mono remasters did not have any peak limiting used on them.
 * Rivers Cuomo of Weezer has often made the observation that his records are mixed low (so as to sound better when turned up through a stereo), saying that Weezer's albums "sound like crap" when listened to at a low volume.
 * Rivers is full of shit then. Both the Blue Album and Pinkerton clip despite having a good dynamic range, The Green Album is infamous for having a completely flat, claustrophobic mix except for "Island in the Sun" (the only song on the album with some sense of space!), Maladroit is similarly brickwalled, Make Believe, The Red Album and Raditude suffer from Rick Rubin being involved, and it seems that their move to an indie label with Hurley hasn't weaned them off loudness warring their albums.
 * The Cure's Disintegration mentions in its liner notes how it was mixed to be played loud and that one should start turning up the volume.
 * Porcupine Tree. Singer-Songwriter-Guitarist Steven Wilson is a self-producer and is adamantly opposed to this. He considered putting "Please note that this record may not be mastered as loudly as some of the other records in your collection. This is in order to retain the dynamic range and subtlety of the music. Please, use your volume knob" on the sleeves of the Deadwing album. Unfortunately, the CD version of the album got fucked in mastering, and only the DVD-Audio version is properly mastered (this also affected the CD of In Absentia). All other PT albums since have been mastered at lower levels.
 * Hot Hot Heat have songs such as "Jingle Jangle" with impressive dynamic range, going from a quiet acoustic feel to a loud, jangly, catchy-as-hell song and back again. They've said in the past that they try to take control of making their albums to avoid having any label induced sourness.
 * 65daysofstatic were inspired by this article on dynamic range compression to produce their album The Destruction Of Small Ideas much more quietly than their previous two, as mentioned in this interview with the band by the author of the aforementioned article. As a result, while the production on The Destruction Of Small Ideas is harder to get a grip of, the overall sound quality is much better.
 * All but the last 2 remastered Depeche Mode albums avoid this...partially. Like the Beatles remasters, they're louder, but still have their dynamic range. The clipping is minimal...for the most part. This is presumably thanks to Alan Wilder supervising the remastering of the albums from when he was in the band.
 * Spinal Tap. Their speakers may go to eleven, but their albums? Less so.
 * With Devin Townsend's new(er) album Ki (which he also produced), he announced "I officially pull my hat out of the loudness wars."
 * He's still making good on that promise with the follow-up, Addicted!, despite it being a ton heavier than Ki.
 * I find these claims kind of strange, because Addicted and Deconstruction in particular are brickwalled, and in fact audibly clipped. They're less clipped than a lot of his earlier recordings, but Deconstruction has a ReplayGain value of -10.14 dB, which indicates quite a bit of compression. Addicted is -9.86. Ki is -7.57, which is better, but there is still clipping on a few parts. Even the "ambient" album Ghost (ReplayGain -6.23) has clipping on a few tracks, although it's nowhere near as prevalent. Ki and Ghost at least actually have dynamics. Most songs on Deconstruction and Addicted, by contrast, do not.
 * While Ki is at times dynamic, as its worst, it is far worse than even Deconstruction. The ReplayGain on the last 45 seconds of the title track comes in at -13.47 dB!
 * Soundgarden's career ran its course before this trope really came into its own, but it was beginning to creep up. Superunknown, the band's first major mainstream hit, has a higher overall volume than any previous Soundgarden albums -- which is to be expected -- but also higher than that of the follow-up, Down on the Upside. This makes sense when you find out that DOTU was largely self-produced and that the band members generally favored minimalistic production (they frequently mentioned their annoyance with Superunknown's producer Michael Beinhorn, calling him "anal" about sounds and being frustrated at taking days to record a single song).
 * Superunknown is actually a rather notorious aversion to this trope in that it was a few decibels below the surrounding rock albums of the time. Whereas most had been amplified to the point where they would consistently peak, Superunknown stayed true to the standards of the past several years with noticeable headroom and minimal clipping.
 * Averted by Los Lonely Boys on their debut album. Producer John Porter intentionally tried not to make it too loud, and it worked.
 * Cult pomp-rock band The Enid generally avoid brickwalling, although some of their more recent remasters have used a bit of it on peaks. The CD reissues of their first two albums from 1976-7 (long-delayed for legal reasons) avoid it altogether.
 * The Doors' 40th Anniversary remasters generally avoid it, although there are one or two odd exceptions like "The Wasp".
 * Swans. Loud enough to get banned from Switzerland, yet always recorded with perfectionistic clarity, thanks to front-man/producer Michael Gira.
 * Skinny Puppy's The Greater Wrong of the Right is fairly loud, but retains decent dynamic range, in contrast with most contemporary Industrial albums, which are brickwalled to hell, as mentioned above. Mythmaker, while not totally brickwalled, is somewhat more compressed. Also averted with the remasters of their 80's albums, including Rabies, whose original was accidentally mastered with Dolby Noise Reduction. Likewise for OhGr's solo albums.
 * Even better is Handover, their latest album.
 * The Seldom Seen Kid, along with most of Elbow's discography, has managed to roughly keep volume at a reasonable level. This may have something to do with the fact they've self-produced all their albums since 2005.
 * Nine Inch Nails, for the most part. Trent Reznor has always walked a fine line between audiophilic auteur and pop musician, so most of his 1990-2010 output is compressed enough to maintain consistent loudness and maximize the potential of the CD format without brickwalling or distorting anything (that wasn't supposed to be distorted). There was, however, some controversy over the 2010 re-master of 1989's Pretty Hate Machine, supervised by Reznor and Tom Baker. First impressions of some of the preview clips suggested that it may have been brickwalled. But it turned out that while it was undeniably louder on average, and a select handful of moments were made less dynamic (like the twice-as-loud-as-everything-else synth burst in "Sanctified"), Reznor & Baker were still careful to ensure that it didn't become an indistinct, brickwalled mess.
 * To be fair, while Trent does like to keep the overall dynamics of his songs intact, he also likes boost them to clip-happy levels. Broken and The Downward Spiral averted this somewhat due to the more modest standards of their time, but once time for The Fragile came around, boy did he let loose.
 * Front Line Assembly's Improvised Electronic Device, like the previously mentioned Skinny Puppy albums, is loud, but avoids brickwalling, unlike Artificial Soldier.
 * One weird early example: the 1973 album Wizzard Brew by Roy Wood’s Wizzard was deliberately subjected to heavy amounts of compression and distortion, with VU meters pushed heavily into the red. Early consumers thought this was some sort of audio defect, not an artistic choice. It actually sounds less distorted than many commercially produced CDs these days!
 * Sunn O))), in order to retain fidelity at their substantial low end, defy their live reputation by mixing their albums quiet. Their mantra, "Maximum Volume Yields Maximum Results", is basically an instruction to the listener to turn the CDs up themselves.
 * The Cult's Beyond Good and Evil may appear to have only the vocals mixed high in the mix, but listeners who turn up the volume even more to really feel the bass will have their ears ringing the next day.
 * Iced Earth, a heavy metal band, has thankfully bucked this trend. Their album remasters do not have any compression applied (but minimal normalization to make the sound even) and have improved sound quality due to being recompiled from the original multitracks, with previously subdued being made louder in the mix, but the overall tracks not being that much louder than the original recordings.
 * Horror Show and The Glorious Burden have it, but the rest of their albums, including remasters, are ok.
 * The 2011 Legacy Editions of the Peter Tosh albums Legalize It and Equal Rights avert this with by retaining all their dynamics and having waveforms that look like they come from 80s CDs.
 * Overclocked Remix demands a reasonable level, regardless of whether the song was produced by instruments or computers, to the point that high-demand piano mixes have been delayed\rejected due to distortion problems.
 * The 2008 expanded remaster of The Prodigy's Music for the Jilted Generation.
 * Binary Finary averted this with their Lost Tracks digital compilation and their recent collaboration singles.
 * The 2011 remasters of The Smashing Pumpkins' Gish and Siamese Dream adverted this. They're plenty loud while preserving the dynamics and original mixes while being brighter.
 * Siamese Dream and Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness also averted this trope upon their respective releases by being mastered with the intent of having a good amount of headroom left while the band's contemporaries were content to hammer the 0 line with each snare hit.
 * While Vlado Meller is reviled by many audiophiles nowadays due to his excessive brickwalling, it's interesting (and almost hard to believe) to note that he was responsible for mastering 1994's The Sweetest Illusion by Basia. Pretty much no clipping to be found. Example here.
 * For the most part, the 2011 Queen remasters try to avoid this, trying to remaster the albums in a similar manner to The Beatles, and they are mainly bought for the newly discovered demos on the second discs on each album. Most reviews are favorable because of the way the sound clarity in the older albums are now
 * The 2011 Pink Floyd remasters avert this trope almost as adeptly as the 2009 Beatles remasters.
 * So, putting the obvious joke out of the way: The Wall isn't brickwalled.
 * Jerrod Niemann and producer Dave Brainard mixed Judge Jerrod & the Hung Jury analog. Between the lower mixing and heavier reliance on acoustic instruments, the album is noticeably quieter and less processed than most other country music.
 * Squarepusher CDs are always mastered at a sensible level.