It is now April and the #3 song on Billboard's top 100 is from Bruno Mars and the 24K Magic album. Taking a look at the m4a track as it came from iTunes, it has the normal litany of errors that we have come to expect from mastering in the 21st century. The LKFS level is -9.1 dB, which is average carnage these days. The true peaks land at 1.4 dB above the 0 limit, resulting in clipped samples along these lines...1790 in the left channel, 1798 in the right. Do we need to talk about this anymore? The EQ curve is flawed pretty majorly in the bottom end, from 20 to 200, it is wrong on several counts. From 200 Hz to 20 KHz, the EQ is fine. The dynamic range is average for modern tracks. The DC offset is off by .019% in the left channel, .022% in the right channel. "Another fine mess..." You can see the numbers and the 'brickolian' dynamics in the picture below. (dynamic range of peak waveforms resembles a brick)
Okay, what would it look like if all the problems were fixed? See the results below. Low end problems fixed, clipped samples fixed, DC offset fixed, and yes, it sounds better.
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