It’s that time again where we extol those releases that exemplify high caliber production and condemn those which exact tyranny on all of our collective volume knobs. 2015 was a break out year for production in metal if you ask me. Not because the percentage of releases had higher DR scores mind you. Quite the…

Despite the laundry list of projects Dan “The Man” Swanö has been associated with, most fans know of Dan from his years of service with Bloodbath or as the singular mastermind behind Edge of Sanity. Sure, his solo record, 1999’s Moontower, was stellar too, and so is some of his more recent output with his…

Well, it’s not. It’s actually two letters and a number technically speaking. However most audiophiles, or at least most who purport that their never-ending quest for fidelity is a holy one, curse the MP3 and blame it for single-handily destroying modern music. Why? Well the usual line of thinking goes as follows: Since MP3s are…

We recently covered an article that appeared in The New York Post written by James Covert, which was a surprisingly reasoned and well researched piece detailing why the Pono music store is largely a cynical exercise. At the end we also mentioned a similar article in Gizmodo, which we did not cover in detail. That…

A little while back, Pitchfork posted an article written by Jordan Kisner about the “dark art” of mastering music. Unusually, the article lead with a brief overview of what went wrong with the production of Death Magnetic, or rather, what fans perceived had gone wrong. This is unusual because when most conventional outlets talk about…

Every week we get a question that goes like this, “Now that I know what dynamic range is and why it’s important, how can I measure it?” Technically speaking, there are a lot of tools that will actually do this, yet very few of them are readily available. We have standardized on the Tischmeyer Technology…

As many of you know, we are big fans of Earache Records Full Dynamic Range (FDR) initiative. Since its onset, with last year’s re-release of Napalm Death’s first two albums, we have seen many more of Earache’s unbelievable back catalog given the FDR treatment. The tape you see on your left is the original betamax…

Finnish outfit Insomnium need very little introduction, as they have been one of melo death’s finest for the better part of the last decade. With their potent combination of epic riffage, gargantuan hooks, and gothic tinged atmosphere, Insomnium has breathed new life into a genre that for all intents and purposes is considered to be…

Dan “The Man” Swanö is a legend. Period. Just the sheer number of fantastic projects he has been involved with as either a contributor or as the main driving force is mind boggling. Edge of Sanity. Bloodbath. Nightingale. Moontower. Death metal clearly runs threw this guy’s veins. But what a lot of you don’t know…

This follow up to my review of Witherscape’s The Inheritance is a bit different from the norm. In all previous vinyl follow up articles I digitized the vinyl version by recording it to my computer, and used the digital “vinyl rip” (also known as a needle drop) to measure dynamic range. In this case that…