System of a Down - Old School Hollywood (Dynamic Edit)

Описание: This is what I like to call a ‘dynamic edit’ of “Old School Hollywood” by System of a Down! Perhaps the second worst clipped in their discography behind Hypnotize, Mezmerize has a ton of obvious clipping throughout its runtime, and distorts quite heavily as a result. In this, I attempt to undo that clipping and resulting distortion, making the music more dynamic, and hopefully also more listenable as a result!

For those not in the know, the Loudness War is a phenomenon beginning in the mid-90s onward, in which music was mastered louder and louder, with the underlying reasoning being that louder music sounds better, and thus, should sell better. As with any medium, however, there is a peak loudness a signal can reach, so dynamic range compression (not to be confused with data compression, which concerns MP3s and such; dynamic range compression makes the louder parts of the signal quieter while keeping the quiet parts the same loudness) and sometimes even clipping (attempting to make a signal louder than maximum loudness) were used to make music as loud as possible.

The issue with this is that overuse of dynamic range compression and clipping can make music fatiguing to listen to, and sometimes even audibly distorted. Additionally, clipping, poor compressors, or overuse of compressors can result in artifacts such as hiss or crackle being audible atop the signal. There’s a ton of those artifacts across this album, worst in the “RADIO” screams in “Radio/Video”, but present in any other places as well, such as on the guitars of “Cigaro”, the final chorus of “Sad Statue”, and the crescendo of “Lost in Hollywood”.

I attempted to fix up the clipping and resulting distortion on Mezmerize with a program called “Perfect Declipper”. I believe I was able to undo much of the distortion, such as on the parts of “Radio/Video”, “Cigaro”, “Sad Statue” and “Lost in Hollywood” I noted! I did notice that there was still some distortion that I wasn’t able to fix up, such as on the 2:07 scream in “Radio/Video” as well as when Serj yells “denial” in “Cigaro”. The former seems like it may have been resulting from the vocals being clipped during recording, while the latter may be intentional clipping, or an effect put onto the vocals during production. The program I edit with also makes the music more dynamic, and I was able to bring the dynamic range of the album from 5 to 11, and hopefully that makes the music more listenable as a result!

It’s important to note that the dynamics are not being restored with the “Perfect Declipper” program that I use, but rather, they are being approximated. While one may not be able to “declip” an album as one would be unable to “unbake a cake”, I find the results here to be a convincible attempt at doing so. Only in the most extreme examples have I heard the program produce odd artifacts that would appear unintended in the album’s mix.

I also want to make clear that dynamic range compression is not an inherently bad thing. It can tighten up performances, add grit, and help remove dynamic outliers that would take you out of the mix. Additionally, mastering engineers are often underneath the implicit and explicit pressures of artists and record labels to master albums loudly, so the results of mastering may not necessarily reflect a mastering engineer’s intentions for how they wanted an album to sound.

I produce many more dynamic edits on this channel as well as further descriptions in posts over on Reddit! You can look at this for a full list of the albums I’ve done: https://docs.google.com/document/d/19...

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