So it looks like the new Dylan finally leaked...

[Sir Stewart]

I really don't think I know what he's talking about, and I don't agree with anyone's guesses.

[MattZ]

I am not sure he is talking about LPs as opposed to CDs. I think he is talking about shit music and shit production.

 

LouieB

 

But I thought Dylan's criticsm was of CDs in general as a medium -- not (just) shit production.

 

EDIT: I also agree with Sir Stewart that who knows what the hell Dylan was talking about.

[LouieB]

But I thought Dylan's criticsm was of CDs in general as a medium -- not (just) shit production.

 

EDIT: I also agree with Sir Stewart that who knows what the hell Dylan was talking about.

Yea...could be....whatever

 

LouieB

[mjpuczko]

i think everyone's opinions on this board over hte last year are too loud in the high end.

[Sid Hartha]

My joke above notwithstanding, is the point of the article that CD volume is too loud and so consumers dont have a choice to listen at comfortable levels? What does this have to do with CDs as opposed to LPs? I would think this is just crappy production or a frustrating move in the industry to make the music as loud as possible (sort of like injecting fat into Chicken McNuggets to make them juicier). Right? Or is this a digital phenomenon?

In a nutshell, the method used to make CDs louder these days is done at the expense of fidelity, so it isn't just an option for the end user to simply turn the volume down. What's gone is gone.

 

I will shut up now.

[Synthesizer Patel]

It's the reason why I think something like Summerteeth is produced badly compared to A Ghost Is Born. I say produced, because although the compression is all done in the mastering, if you produce a sound that sounds flat without compressing it in this manner then you have no choice.

 

If you look at it, the whole of Love and Theft is clipped like this, as is the new album, so Dylan's doing it wrong too. Unfortuantely it's really hard to make digital music not sound flat without doing this, so again - this is why AGIB is so well produced.

[Mr. Heartbreak]

Dylan has been ragging on the production quality of CDs for 20 years. He did it in Rolling Stone when he was interviewed around that time ('86 or '87).

He's right, too. If CDs were so friggin' great, there would never have been a need to remaster, like, all of them, thereby inducing suckers like me to buy things 3 times (once on vinyl way back when, once on CD, and once in the new "remastered with bonus tracks" incarnation.)

[jhh4321]

Can anyone help me out with PM here? Would be much appreciated.

[Synthesizer Patel]

Dylan has been ragging on the production quality of CDs for 20 years. He did it in Rolling Stone when he was interviewed around that time ('86 or '87).

He's right, too. If CDs were so friggin' great, there would never have been a need to remaster, like, all of them, thereby inducing suckers like me to buy things 3 times (once on vinyl way back when, once on CD, and once in the new "remastered with bonus tracks" incarnation.)

 

They generally remaster cds because the first time they put them onto cd they simply copied the vinyl masters onto the format rather than returning to the master tapes. It wouldn't matter what format they put them on, they'd still sound lacking, and therefore it's not a case that this was the best they could do, they simply were too lazy to do it properly. Vinyl and cd need to be mastered differently so you have to go back to the master tapes and mix & master them differently to produce the same (or similar) sounds to the human ear.

[solace]

finally a good rip of this has been posted on oink

 

sounds SOOOOOO much better than the old rip too

[imsjry]

finally a good rip of this has been posted on oink

 

sounds SOOOOOO much better than the old rip too

 

 

Now THIS is the news of the day!!!!

 

How great is that last track on this CD!? A new masterpiece from Bob...

[Synthesizer Patel]

finally a good rip of this has been posted on oink

 

sounds SOOOOOO much better than the old rip too

 

I think I can wait till Tuesday now to hear a good copy, that bloody Oink Ratio thing is too much of pain to download the same thing twice anyway, but thanks for letting us know.

 

By the way, is there a lot of clipping?

[TheMaker]

Out of curiosity, is the Oink version 192, or higher? I know I'm being a pain in the ass about this, but I've seen a few versions floating around, though none of them can compete with an official CD release.

[solace]

the oink one is a VBR scene rip and will be exactly what you get when you rip your CD on Tue

 

and no, doesn't come close to clipping here

[Is Chicago Is Not Chicago]

for those who have heard it...tell me if there is humor. The word that keeps getting tossed around is apocalyptic. Is it as funny as love and theft? or is it that dark kind of humor found on time out of mind? or is it a mix of both?

[TheMaker]

To me, it feels like an album of love songs based on blues cliches. He brings a light, expressive touch to much of the material, even on the darker songs (i.e., Ain't Talkin', Nettie Moore). There's plenty of playful L&T-style non sequiturs here.

[nettles]

Can someone PM me as well? the links I recieved the other day the file was done gone.

[Albert Tatlock]

Well you all seem to have heard it, but anyway:-

 

Bob Dylan: Meet Bob the cynic

The new Dylan album, Modern Times, completes a classic trilogy, says Andy Gill. Here he gives his track-by-track guide

Published: 25 August 2006 The Independent

 

Let's be frank: after Time Out of Mind and Love and Theft, anyone looking for young folks' music from Bob Dylan simply hasn't been paying attention. So, don't let the title of this first new studio album in five years - Modern Times - fool you into expecting some cutting-edge techno-rock extravaganza, or spunky MySpace diatribes. That's a vintage yellow cab speeding across the cover, and it's vintage music inside.

 

Although, the cycles of musical fashion working as they do, there's probably plenty here to interest fans of nu-folk and alt.country. Certainly, anyone who ever bought a Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Lambchop or Gillian Welch album would find its ruminations on time, love and life absorbing, and its gentle country and blues modes warmly agreeable.

 

The title plays on our associations of modernity with speed, wealth, technology, all the benefits of progress. But this is an old man's view of modern times, not some trendy young designer's, and Dylan's observations are tempered with hard-won experience, if not a little cynicism.

 

Like Love and Theft, it was recorded by Dylan with his current touring band, who are by now alert to his every whim, musically speaking. While there are no groundbreaking shifts of style, there's plenty of effortless, simpatico playing in the expansive, 20th-century blues modes that characterised Love and Theft.

 

Although it took me a few listens to be won over, it makes a fine conclusion to the trilogy begun in 1997 with Time Out of Mind - the first time in 40 years that Dylan has made three great albums in a row. Here's my track- by-track survey:

 

Thunder on the Mountain

 

The album opens with this gently rolling Western Swing boogie, built on Dylan's own piano vamp and stitched together with neat guitar fills. An early reference to Alicia Keys seems like a typical Dylan red herring, as the song offers a curiously light, allusive apprehension of disaster, with the rich scurrying to save themselves, and Bob contemplating the creation of his own militia: "Gonna raise me an army, some tough sons of bitches/ I recruit my army from the orphanages". But he's being facetious as, elsewhere, he's selfless to a fault.

 

Spirit on the Water

 

A bluesy lilt in which Bob expresses affection for a loved one in surprisingly direct terms ("life without you doesn't mean a thing to me"), using clich

[Sir Stewart]

I just noticed there's only one song out of the ten that clocks in under five minutes. That's some Street Legal-type shit right there.

[Sir Stewart]

This album is in my Dylan top fifteen, with a bullet.

[a.miller]

If there are PMs to be had, please count me in too.

[oatmealblizzard]

This new rip sounds fantastic.

 

Great album.

[jhh4321]

After hearing this I think its a good album but I just don't see it as the type of record I would listen to more than a few times. But congrats to Dylan for still doing it at his age.

[froggie]

WOAH.. if you like the leaked version, the official release has great sound.

 

it came out in australia today, so i ducked down to the shop as soon as it opened to scab a copy. the sound is much more spread out than on the leaked one. i'm listening to it with fake surround sound on my comuter and its mighty impressive. just wait till i put in the proper stereo later

 

excellent album if you like old-time pop/crooning, 12 bar blues and some tunes that sound new even to the dylan catalogue

 

[Analogman]

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) -

Bob Dylan says the quality of modern recordings is "atrocious," and even the songs on his new album sounded much better in the studio than on disc.

 

"I don't know anybody who's made a record that sounds decent in the past 20 years, really," the 65-year-old rocker said in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine.

 

Dylan, who released eight studio albums in the past two decades, returns with his first recording in five years, "Modern Times," next Tuesday.

 

Noting the music industry's complaints that illegal downloading means people are getting their music for free, he said, "Well, why not? It ain't worth nothing anyway."

 

"You listen to these modern records, they're atrocious, they have sound all over them," he added. "There's no definition of nothing, no vocal, no nothing, just like ... static."

 

Dylan said he does his best to fight technology, but it's a losing battle.

 

"Even these songs probably sounded ten times better in the studio when we recorded 'em. CDs are small. There's no stature to it."