Californication Mastering Comparison - The Importance of Mastering

The practice of applying excess compression to boost the overall perceived volume artificially progressed exponentially throughout the 90s. By the time we reached the decade's end, there were several notable examples where even non-audiophile listeners began to notice quality issues. Perhaps most famously, Red Hot Chili Peppers "Californication" and Metallica's "Death Magnetic Magnetic" were among some of the worst offenders.

Both of these records suffer from extreme compression that sucks the dynamics from the music and the levels into clearly audible digital clipping.

In this video, we compare several vinyl copies and talk about the effect of mastering on each. Included in the mix is the 2012 180g cut by Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering. Does it sound better? Watch and see.

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