Deep Purple - Machine Head 1972

 

It was 1972 and I was in year 9 at high school. I had already shown a strong interest in music on the radio and my parents had given me what looked like a nice all black 3 piece plastic record player. But while it meant I could play records in my room I was always disappointed with it because it sounded terrible. [place holder for link to equipment story]

I did receive pocket money and saved up and this was the first record I purchased. Mum ordered it for me at her local record shop which was the kind that stocked old time adult music like Tom Jones, so it didn't normally carry pop/rock. I had to wait weeks for it to come in, the agony! This was the start of my music collecting odyssey.

I owned that record up until around 1983 when I was forced by a religious cult I was stupid enough to get involved in taught that rock (secular) music was of the devil. They even had record burning ceremonies. There was no way I was going burn my records, so begrudgingly I sold majority of them by taking them into work. Some did not sell, so I still have those to this day, plus I got back 18 from a friend that had purchased them back then.

It was kinda bizarre because he had left Australia for a very long time and I had lost touch with him. But he finally returned to Australia and looked me up. Some how we got talking about music and he told me he had some of mine. WOW! What really! I had forgotten he had them. It took some convincing to get him to sell them back to me in 2011. He had them in storage all that time and never played them because he was into country music now, so had no interest in them at all. I was thrilled to have these beloved albums back in my possession because I had originally purchased them new when first released..

Anyway, back to the 1980s, after several years of the cult (Pentecostal Assemblies of God) I woke up that what they were teaching was bullshit. It was 1985 and CDs were promoted as the best thing ever. So I re-entered music collecting by buying a very expensive Sony CD player (which I still have) and begun collecting CDs and re-purchased many of the albums I'd relinquished due to the cult.

So of course I got a normal AAD CD reissue of Machine Head. Then in 2008 I upgraded from the Sony to a Yamaha CD2000 SACD player. I'd also upgraded other gear as well and thus begun another adventure, tracking down the best sounding CDs and SACDs, so of course had to get the SACD of Machine Head.

 

HORRIBLE DISCOVERY

When I restarted collecting music on CDs the first album I got was Dire Straits - Brothers in Arms 1985 which sounded amazing on my system. Thought this was the peak of audio with a fully digital recording or DDD as it was known then.

In the 2000s I had upgraded the CD player, amp and speakers and was buying more CDs than ever. Spotted Brothers in Arms 20th Anniversary SACD so I had to get that.

Put it on expecting to be blown away, but the longer I listened the less I enjoyed it. WHY? This was an album that sounded great cranked loud, but I found that I couldn't bare it and had to keep turning it down. I put my original 1985 CD on to compare and the punch and crankablity was back. What was going on?

I forget what led me to find this but I compared the ripped waveforms visually in Audacity software and that is the moment I discovered the horrible truth, Dynamic Range Compression (DRC), brick walling, loudness war was to blame.

Here are those waveforms and you can see a very big difference with peaks actually clipping (distortion).

This process makes everything as loud as everything else which is explained in this very short video

It was an horrendous abomination! The better your sound system the more this defect was revealed. This discovery led me to seek out non-remastered CDs and check forums for which CDs where less effected by this stupid trend.