This month we have a new release from Cher...Dancing Queen. It consists of songs from the excellent pop group ABBA. It is most interesting because it is produced by the ABBA themselves. So the same team that made the originals 40 years ago, made this album. The arrangements are virtually identical and that means that the music and the sound is excellent. The main difference, aside from Cher's voice, is that the mastering job is a typical, squashed peaks, modern mastering job.
Here are the numbers...
LKFS/LUFS -7.5 dB
Clipped Samples Left 10,022
Clipped Samples Right 9,027
DC Offset +.059%, +.057%
Dynamic Range 6.4 dB
RMS Level Left -7.88 dB
RMS Level Right -8.00 dB
So after all the effort went in to making a great album of great music (unlike most of the previous entries in this blog), we end up with a mastering job that has 19,000 clipped samples. Also unnecessarily squashed to - 7.5 dB, with a remarkably high DC offset, even for modern mastering. You would think that this would not be allowed to affect a good recording, but, unfortunately, this was not the case. This album is different than most because it was an excellent recording until the mastering step, which is supposed to make it better, not worse.
Here is the evidence...zoom your browser to see the details.
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