Imagine Dragons - Nothing Left to Say (Dynamic Edit)

Описание: This is what I like to call a ‘dynamic edit’ of “Nothing Left to Say” by Imagine Dragons! Night Visions faced quite a lot of dynamic range compression (not to be confused with data compression, which concerns MP3s and such) in its mastering. I attempt to undo much of that compression, making the album more dynamic, and hopefully 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, sells better. As with any medium, however, there is a peak loudness a signal can reach, so dynamic range compression (which 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. Clipping or poor compressors specifically can introduce audible artifacts such hiss or crackle into the mix. I don’t hear any of that crackle in *Night Visions*, though I find the album is very compressed in its mastering, often making the percussion fade into the background. Oddly enough, this arguably complements the overblown aspect of many of its songs, making the choruses just feel bombastic and distorted.

Regardless, I attempted to make Night Visions more dynamic with a program I have called “Perfect Declipper” (creating something I dub a “dynamic edit”). The editing process makes the album more dynamic and can also eliminate artifacts of crackle and hiss from an album’s compression. In this case, I was able to turn the dynamic range of the album from 4 into 11!

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 think it’s also important to note 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 also 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...