Thursday, August 29, 2013

Trent Reznor Offers Two Different Mastered Versions of New Album

Nine Inch Nails has been getting a lot of press in recent days now that iTunes is allowing fans to stream the full album before it is officially released, but it's one of the technical details of the release that has me more interested than the actual music.  In response to the infamous "Loudness Wars" (read about it here, if you're unfamiliar), Trent Reznor has elected to make the digital release of his new album available in two different versions.

The first, which will be the version available via iTunes, Amazon, and the other big digital music retailers, is the standard "loud" master that tends to be the standard for mainstream music these days - loud at the expense of dynamics.  The second version, which will be available via NIN.com, will be an "audiophile" master which, while not as loud, preserves the dynamics and represents the music more faithfully.

I applaud Mr. Reznor for this decision and hope other artists will follow.  The only way we're going to dial back from the "turn everything into a brick" mentality, is if larger artists reject it, or at least offer their fans the option to buy a copy with preserved dynamics.

[via Synthtopia]


3 comments:

BrendinR said...

I think that this is a fantastic idea - I would love to see this out of more artists. Slamming a master through the roof with compression looses so much of a track. For the first time in nearly a decade I can say - Way to go Trent.

Joshua said...

It's about freaking time.

hazardous said...

he should have one that has creative, ground breaking new music on it, and one with tired preset-pop dancehall tunes with guitar choruses.