The Opposite of Maximization...

[Rspaight]

...is minimization, I guess. And I think I've found the All-Time Champ.

Don't ask why I bought this (it involves Tennessee Williams, lots of drugs, and a lesbian with relationship issues), but I found myself in possession of a copy of Kenny Rogers' Twenty Greatest Hits. It's got a copyright date of 1994 on it, but I have no idea if that relfects the age of the mastering. If it does, it's gotta be the quietest CD mastered in the nineties.

Ripping the disc in EAC (which I had to do to "remaster" a usable copy normalized to 0dB) revealed a discwide peak of 43.8%. Even that was a single unusual spike -- the norm for the disc looked to be about 30%. I swear I had the volume on my receiver cranked to well over twelve o' clock and the sound still huddled between the speakers and whimpered like a puppy that knows it peed in the wrong place.

Even the normalized copy sounds like ass because it's still got only seven or eight bits of effective resolution.

Just had to share. As you were.

Ryan