albums ruined by Sonic Solutions' NoNOISE

Don't know if they used NoNoise or CEDAR, but the Deep purple remaster CDs and Judas Priest is some of the worst I have heard!

Using NoNoise or CEDAR is kind of a catch-22 moment. If you use very little, you will not hear it, so what's the point? If you use it so you can hear it, well, then you have over-used it and destroyed the sound.

Btw, the new Grinderman CD have also noise reduction.

 

The two albums were fantastic, and I would think the new single CDs would have to be better than the two-fer.

 

I've got one that just got killed by NR: The MCA CD of Rupert Holmes' "Partners In Crime". I'm big on natural decay during fade-outs and on this album, it sounds absolutely horrible. Given when it was recorded, I can't imagine it was that noisy that it needed NR. What were they thinking?

Ed

 

love sculpture blues helping

http://www.cduniverse.com/productinfo.asp?pid=1268843&BAB=E

remastered by peter mew, which is ironic because he engineered the original sessions.

later, chris

 

I bought that cd when it was released, it is easily the least-played Steely Dan/Donald Fagen/Walter Becker album I own. Now I know why I never liked the sound on it.

 

Deep Purple in Rock

 

I just bought a Bing Crosby & The Andrews Sisters comp (The Essential Collection on MCA/Spectrum) for my girlfriend and it has the most intrusive NR I've ever heard! The first time I listened to it I thought I'd gone partially deaf, because all of the high frequencies were gone!

 

Just read this thread for the first time. I find that ELO CD pictured earlier hilarious - I've never actually seen a CD that advertises the use of NoNoise. If only that horrid Genesis DE of "Trespass" would have done so, I'd have known not to buy it in the first place.

What I find funny is that when I was made aware that professional engineers were using this on major reissues, I assumed they had such expensive software and great experience (certainly above what I had with my noise reduction plugin with CoolEdit Pro!) that they'd actually be able to remove the noise without negatively affecting the music. Boy was I wrong.

I honestly would find it hilarious that some fool made me pay a bunch of money for those Genesis DEs simply by doing what I could have done myself to my old CDs with $200 software. I'd find it hilarious, that is, if not for the fact that they made money off of my ignorance of this fact.

If you ask me, we can complain all we want on forums like this, but the only way it's going to stop is if we start returning these terrible products to the record company as defective. Which, in my opinion, is precisely what they are.

 

I have a few CDs with that logo or a similar one. The elimination of noise is a selling point to a lot of listeners and most people do not have a sense for what is missing when NR is used.

There are also plenty of early EMI reissues that proudly state that the music as mastered using Sonic Solutions.

 

The same goes for Original Jazz Classics CDs that were released in the early 1990s - I've listed a few NRed OJCs earlier in this thread and I should add the Sonny Rollins Complete Prestige Recordings and the Wes Montgomery Complete Riverside Recordings box sets to that list; parts of those otherwise great sets were also NRed and Sonic Solutions' NoNOISE is mentioned in the booklets.

 

this should be an ongoing thread!

everytime I hear a nonoised CD I think there's something wrong with my system!

 

are there other cd issues of these that sound better? to be honest I didn't notice much of a problem with these but I never heard them any other way; I'd only heard vinyl of the singles.

 

I was so disappointed with the 2 CD set of Blind Willie Johnson. DEAD as a doornail...

funny thing, the BWJ tracks on the original series sampler sounds better?
I guess they used less treatment.

 

all of the 1990 2-fers!

 

One of the worst offenders in my CD collection.

Forms and Feelings ain't much better. :thumbsdn:

 

Below is a sample of the worst NR I've ever heard. This is from a CD of songs and dialogue excerpts from an old Indian film. Absolutely terrible. Keep in mind that this is a wav file with no processing on my part and not a low-bitrate mp3!

http://rapidshare.com/files/92140560/NRSAMPLE.wav.zip.html

 

I don't mind the sound of the 1990s two-fers, either. In fact, I wish I hadn't sold them when the remastered ones came out. I kept Today/Summer Days, thankfully.

The only BB two-fer I don't like is the newer (2001?) iteration of Surfer Girl. If a shriller CD exists, I don't know what it is (with the possible exception of the most recent BB compilation).

 

The Moody Blues SACD of Search For The Lost Chord. Repulsively bad use of NR. I'm not a fan of that series yet somehow they made this album sound worse than the rest.

 

Quote:
Originally Posted by Candy
Little Deuce Coupe/Shut Down Vol:2 Beach Boys 1990 Capitol.

Especially everything from 'Today' to 'Wild Honey'. Take already muddy sounding mono masters (due to way too many overdubs and generation bounces), add heavy NR, and you're left with absolutely no high end. Which cannot be compensated for by user EQ at home. The information is just gone. I'd rather have the slightly over-bright 2001's, where I'm able to "deaden" the brightness...

 

While perhaps not one of the absolute "worst offenders", I would personally love to love the Deep Purple box - Listen Learn Read On - a whole lot more.

It seems to me much TLC went into the actual substance or material of the box, but he-at-Abbey Road just shines right on through the mastering.

 

The 'Very Best Of Hermans Hermits' 2 cd set from a few years back. There's no life in the beast...shame as there's some joyous breezy music trying to get out!

I've also got a cd of Kiki Dee's 60s stuff which has had 'the treatment'. Sounds shockingly shrill.

 

No processing on your part, but how can you be sure that the source wasn't MP3? It certainly wouldn't be the first commercial CD with MP3 conversion somewhere in the audio chain.

FWIW, AudioChecker identifies this clip as MP3-sourced with 100% certainty, although there's no guarantee that heavy-handed NoNoise use might not produce the same result.

 

I asked Mark Linett about that in an email a few years ago as I wanted to know what happened to the analog tape hiss. Mark told me about the use of Sonic Solutions No-Noise and he regrets ever using it. Live and learn.

I prefer the slightly bright 2001's...they fixed some errors in there too. I can drop the treble