TranscendingMusicAudio Blog

So anybody who knows me or knows about me reading online bio info or the like knows I like heavy music. Lamb of God is not a band I really listen to, but nonetheless I respect their status, resilience, and the following they’ve amassed. What  kind of piqued my interest about 2 years ago regarding the band was the release of a special edition of their album “Sacrament”. This aroused the audio engineer in me because it was a special release based around the concept of “you” the consumer getting a chance to actually mess with, mix, and dub tracks over their studio tracks from this particular album. I mean whether you like a particular band or not that is a pretty unique opportunity to get your hands on some commercial tracks to play around with. I figured what the hell and I went out to pick it up from Best Buy or where ever it was at the time. Now, this is a rant so let me just say I was more than disappointed when finding out what the actual tracks were.

First off, the reason I’m bringing this up now is because just recently I was reminded of it while in a forum some seasoned pro’s and amateur mixers brought it up. Now after acquiring this special edition CD, to my dismay these weren’t pristine raw tracks right from the studio. Now I know that I am an audio professional and perhaps for the layman, to have some kind of isolated version of what a normal album sounds like is exciting and interesting. However, anticipating that perhaps the layman would still purchase this special disc to mess with it and have some fun I firmly still think that full disclosure of the nature of the content should have been provided so I, or someone like myself, would not waste time and money on it. So what was/is the problem with this “special edition”?

Like I mentioned before, these weren’t raw audio tracks. The tracks are super processed, program compressed (“mp3′ed”), maximized, and grouped or put into stereo stems like the drums for example. For me, or someone like me, this is a huge disappointment and a bit misleading. Sure on some beginner’s level, one can still chop these up, do over dubs, re-mixes, etc., but the actual audio aspect of it is vilified because of the nature of these tracks. You can’t really expect to create a nice full, clean but heavy true re-mix; not with these tracks.

I don’t know, maybe I was delusional expecting more than what this turned out to be but I don’t see why the description of the contents couldn’t have been more explicit and clear as to what you are actually getting. To that end, this was a misleading product.

if you want to get a glimpse at a commercial track from the inside out to some degree and just want to mess around or be artistically creative with these tracks by all means, get it. But if you think you can practice your audio skills with these it’s a bit of a lost cause. That is of course if you as a pro or an aspiring pro want to test your skills in a situation where you may have no choice but to work with overly processed MP3′s then by all means, get it. Just don’t expect actual studio tracks as you’d think they’d be. The pretext to this is a bit hyped and misleading.